Special Event 09 April 2009
On April 9, 2009, Blue Coast Artists Keith Greeninger & Chris Kee were joined by world-class drummer Brain for a one-time only performance and live recording at the request of Blue Coast Records' producer and founder, Cookie Marenco.
Some of you know Brain's incredible drumming skills from his work with Primus, Tom Waits, Buckethead, Guns N' Roses and many others. Keith Greeninger's familiar voice is heard in the lead-off track on the Blue Coast Collection - Keith is a stunning performer. Chris Kee, also featured on the Blue Coast Collection, is playing acoustic bass. Chris plays bass on Jane Selkye's Blue Coast Collection pieces, though recently he's becoming known for his work with Houston Jones and Peter Rowan.The recordings took place at OTR Studios, homebase for Marenco. In house IT specialist and General Manager for OTR, Patrick O'Connor, handled all the details for creating the site, uploading and backend support. Tim Jones, house engineer at OTR Studios, assisted Marenco with the E.S.E. setup. E.S.E. (Extended Sound Environment) is the proprietary technique created by Marenco and Jean Claude Reynaud for use with Blue Coast Recordings.
The music was recorded to 2" analog tape and mixed to the Sonoma Systems DSD (direct stream digital). From the DSD, the music was tranferred to 96K and 44.1 .wav files for uncompressed downloads. The full song can be streamed at 124kbps mp3 quality. "These are big files, but not as big as DSD, which we are hoping to release soon," says Marenco. "The DSD sounds incredible. If there is enough demand, we may release the multitrack as .wav files for people to make their own mixes at home."
Response to the high resolution downloads has been remarkable. Computeraudiophile.com commented on the event calling it "one of the coolest releases so far in 2009". Fans are choosing the 96K download 8 out of 10 times. Plans are in the works to release the Blue Coast Collection, the flagship recording, for 96K downloads before the end of the month.
Marenco adds, "The recording with Keith, Brain and Chris was a tremendous success on a musical level as well. Considering the musicians had never met prior to the session, let alone played together, this is a remarkable achievement. We are planning on another live session before Brain leaves to tour with Guns N Roses and Keith and Chris have their summer festivals."
The event was created for visitors, Ed Martin and Andy Gilbert, who flew from Oklahoma to visit Blue Coast Records. Other guests in attendance were Merl Saunders Jr, Mike Newman, Anne Vrolyk, and Scott Thompson. Blue Coast offers special thanks to Andrew Doyle and Mike Howle assistants at OTR who helped but were not at the event.
From Recording to Worldwide Distribution within 3 hours... AMAZING!
Wow, this is one of the coolest releases so far in 2009. I'm so impressed I couldn't let this one disappear into the forum black hole if nobody saw it in time. Thus, a front page story. Blue Coast Records founder Cookie Marenco assembled artists Keith Greeninger, Chris Kee, and drummer Bryan “Brain” Mantia for a performance and live recording last night (April 9, 2009). Three hours after the performance Blue Coast offered 16/44.1 and 24/96 WAV downloads of the recording! Blue Coast Records is known for great artistic talent, great sound quality, and its Extended Sound Environment (E.S.E.) recording technique. At Blue Coast Records sound quality and musical enjoyment are not mutually exclusive. Read more for details and a link to download two of the tracks.