|
”Solovox plays electronica that is melodic, danceable and very cool despite (or perhaps because of) a pronounced affection for ‘70’s prog-rock keyboard godheads Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman. If you’re looking for guitar-free thrills, here’s your best bet.” The Oregonian
”Vintage synthesizers, declared obsolete and read their last rites when digital technology bulldozed onto the scene have proven hardy…witness them in the sure hands of Carlton Tietze a.k.a. Solovox. Plugging away at an array of equipment that would make any old analog fetishist sweat with envy, Solovox channels everything from the squelchy throb of Keith Emerson to the soaring pseudo-strings of Vangelis, then slips them into modern techno-funk trax with enough contemporary dance rhythms to keep you from thinking you’re at a museum. It’s history come to real, pulsating life, a shivering time warp with a beat. John Graham, Willamette Weekly
“Feats of electronica…it’s pretty entertaining, not to mention extremely funky, to watch Tietze keep those electronic plates spinning in sync. Stan Hall, The Oregonian
“Solovox is the new, one-man outlet of keyboard experimentalist Carlton Tietze. His steez for this show is to set up five or six different keyboards onstage and play them all over beats, running the gamut of house/trance/funk and whatever else you can dance to—interesting, if only to see how he does it.”
Julianne
Shepherd, The Mercury
It is the brainchild
of keyboardist/producer Carlton Tietze III, whose deft skill on the analog
ivories and catchy songwriting prowess
generate much, much more than typical "electronica"
squelches and blurts. Solovox's debut album, Break Out of Prism, offers
the soul-bearing soar of Low era
David Bowie, but played as if both Booker
T and Keith Emerson sat in on keyboards.
|
|
In the Solovox
groove
|
|
Late last month, the Trojan nuclear power plant tumbled to a pile of smoldering dust in a stunning but all-too-brief show. Later that same week, the city of Portland was fueled by another source: "hydra-electricity." Hydra-Electric at The Fez Ballroom featured three of Portland's most potent live electronic talents: Surrounded by Ninjas, Cates & DPL and sizzling headliner, Solovox (aka Carl Tietze). Late in the night, dancers moved to the melodic swirls and sharp beats of Solovox, the one-man musical extravaganza who crafts improvisational works from a few select stage tools -- a Roland, an Apple, a vocoder -- and then tosses in his frenzied, unreproducible showmanship. This also marks Solovox's fifth "birthday." Tietze, who moved to Portland from Athens, Ga., in 1998, invented his musical moniker back in May 2001. At Fez, the birthday boy took the opportunity to vent a little steam. Local independent label electronic artists rely too much on simplistic riffs, letting the technology make most of the music, Tietze says. "It's the kind of music I was doing back in high school when I was 15," he says with a laugh before his set. "And what seems to get the critics up in a lather is the stuff that sound like its been made on a Commodore 64." Solovox's melodic swirls offer a populist kind of fun groove the city's arty set and live critics tend to ignore, he says. He has regular gigs at Doug Fir, Baraka on Northeast Alberta and Imbibe. The man who taught himself piano (at age 10) now also instructs in music at Portland's Spun Academy. Proving he has appeal outside the city limits, last spring, Solovox took his sound to the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Something perhaps out of reach for Portland's purveyors of what he terms "dorktronica." "The bottom line is I can make that kind of stuff in my sleep," Tietze says, just before taking his energy to the stage this night. "But can those guys do what I do?" Judge for yourself: Catch Solovox at 7 p.m. every first Monday at Imbibe, 2229 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.; 503-239-4002; free; and Monday, June 26, at The Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E. Burnside St.; 503-231-9663; $5 cover. Check out www.solovox.com for more dates and to hear music samples. |
|
click here for THE SOURCE review of Solovox
click here for
THE OREGONIAN
review of Break Out Of Prism, by Marty Hughley |
tekst