It’s been a while since any kind of update! Sorry! Lots of things been happening… but not so much from me in the way of updating the website!

Except(!) for the LIVE/TOURS page, which I do diligently make sure is up to date the moment events or tours become confirmed.  Featured there presently are new dates I am delighted to be performing again with the composer Maria Schneider together with that great NDR Big Band in Hamburg.  Preceding that is a small European tour with the group UK, featuring Eddie Jobson, John Wetton, guitarist Alex Machacek, and myself stepping in for drummer Terry Bozzio.

Please continue to visit this page regularly as it will be frequently updated!

Another update I wanted to offer concerns the website itself.  As you can see it’s still far from finished.  I’ve been so busy with other things and haven’t managed yet to find a replacement for Nadja von Massow (who originally built this website and designed it around my specifications) to help me develop it fully.  Nadja’s too busy to continue with it now, but I am optimistic I will find someone to take over in due course.  The message here, though, is that you will see some good changes and developments around the website once this work takes place.

A new inspiration of mine is to put in motion some online “lessons” and set up another website specifically for that.  Again it’s going to take the right people to recruit to help me set it up properly, but I do intend on pursuing this avenue and setting it up.  There’s a contact for me on this website, and it’s reliable.  If any of you would like to send me a notification that you may be interested in hearing more about this please let me know.

Of course, my newest album “Dirty & Beautiful Volume 2″ is out everywhere now, and I’m so delighted to see it’s generated some really wonderful reviews and press already.  Here is a very brief selection of current ones.

Walter Kolosky’s Review

John Kelman’s Review at All About Jazz

Ian Patterson’s Review at All About Jazz

In addition to these, there’s a new “catch up” interview with me on the same website also by Ian Patterson here.

As a special bonus, I received two beautiful, captivating videos (to accompany two of the tracks from the new album) from a dear and talented friend of mine, Sturla Nøstvik.  View for yourself his great creations for the pieces Fuguie and Rain.  Another new friend I made recently is at the moment looking at some crazy ideas for a video of the Wayne Krantz feature track from the album; East River Jam.  I’ll keep all news updated about that.

Gary Husband * Dirty & Beautiful Volume 2 available as WAV and 320 kbps MP3. Get it Here Now!!

Dirty & Beautiful Volume 2 is also available as a CD or download at online Amazon stores worldwide, and through Abstract Logix Records.

View the “Story Behind Dirty & Beautiful” interview at this YouTube link

Thank you everyone though, for all the great comments on the album – for listening – for all the continuing support.  I appreciate it!

One more thing!  We’re all excited about John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension this year – there’ll be the new album (released around August time) of music we recorded last December in Antibes, and we’ll be touring this October/November.

This picture of us at the recording sessions was taken by John Bouchet.

Best wishes everyone.

I had the pleasure of mixing in Austria (with the splendid engineer Marcus Wippersberg at the helm) two of the feature cuts on the album just recently – one being a real tour-de-force piece written by Alex Machacek, and the other being my piece “Sulley” (which is a tune performed regularly by ourselves in John McLaughlin’s 4th Dimension.)  On the former – which is still at rough mix stage – I am featured on drums, and I feel it’s turned out very strongly.  The version of “Sulley” I am also particularly excited about.  I have maestro John McLaughlin and bass giant Mark King going head to head throughout the whole piece.  There’s an interesting tonality aspect to it all that I’ve introduced, and I’m very proud of the experiments we made on this cut.  I think it’s all come off marvellously rude, audacious, pretty different and (for me) very stimulating.  It reveals a stunning and monstrously spirited performance by Mark that I feel probably only a certain few would associate with him (from his legendary stylings over the years in his famous group Level 42), and I’m really very proud to feature it.  John is John, and is on absolutely great form throughout.

You’re hearing also a tiny snippet at the end of another piece by me – “England Green” – which, when mixed, will reveal a lovely performance guitarist Jimmy Herring played.  He has something very, very special and soulful and I’m particularly delighted to be featuring him on the album. On bass on that track; again the very formidable Laurence Cottle.

There is also an unmixed version of Allan Holdsworth’s “Fred” we have in preparation for mix (originally featured on the Tony Williams New Lifetime album “Believe It”, and it’s a tune I have also played regularly with Allan over the recent years.)  On bass here, again the sublime Mr Jimmy Johnson, and on keyboards and synth solo once again on this follow-up album we have the great Jan Hammer. From the original LA sessions I will also feature another take of “Boulevard Baloneyo” which for me is very special, and for this album we’ll probably give it a “re-travelled” tag in the title.

There are sweeter moments regularly planned for the album (many of which I’m working on from the keyboards) which I hope will enchant.

I’m back in the studio in London this month (June) preparing two other electric pieces.  A cover of John McLaughlin’s piece “New Blues Old Bruise” featuring a great friend and tenor saxophone virtuoso Sean Freeman (along with bassist Etienne MBappe and myself.)  I will also be recording another electric piece – an older piece of mine previously entitled “East End West End” – which will feature another great old friend of mine; the very electric Ray Russell on guitar.

It’s a wait and see situation with my brother Allan Holdsworth. I have asked him for a new piece which we’ll do together … I know he’s on the way with it, but whether we get it together or not in time for the album remains to be seen.  I’m keeping everything crossed.

Add to all this more of Robin Trower and Livi Brown, hopefully a track to be recorded with Wayne Krantz and maybe another with Mike Stern, and a cover of another Jan Hammer track called “Rain”.  That’s actually a piece that was featured in Jan’s excellent music for Miami Vice, and it’s a touching little thing – very much with a pop sensibility to it.  For guitar on this I’m in now in touch with Neil Taylor, who is someone I’ve personally been a huge fan of on guitar since I heard his riveting solo in the ’80s on Tears For Fears song “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”.  Hopefully all goes to plan with this and I get him for the track around his busy schedule with Robbie Williams.

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I’m still following leads and trying to schedule accordingly around mine and their diaries.  Many more developments to come!

I’ll be back with further updates soon.

Sincerely,

GH

Expect as much in the way of abstraction as in fiery pyrotechnics.

It appears that Husband intends on extending this game-plan into Volume 2, slated for a 2011 release.  Based on the merits of this production, chock full of solid material and synergistic interplay, the follow-up should reveal more goodness from Husband’s luminous imagination and superior technical craftsmanship.

• America/Canada:
  16 November 2010
• Australia/New Zealand:
  20 November 2010 (through Planet/MGM Distribution)
• Japan:
  20 November 2010 (with bonus track) on King Records
• South Korea:
  28 November 2010
• India:
  1 December 2010 (through Virgin/EMI Distribution)
• Europe (incl. U.K.):
  28 January 2011

Pre-orders (and audio samples) are available now at Abstract Logix Records

You can also pre-order the CD at:
Amazon U.K. |  Amazon U.S. |  Amazon Germany … and more!

There is a brief audio montage there of many of the featured tracks available to hear, as well as the official Interview / Press Release and CD front cover image.

Dirty & Beautiful, Gary’s eagerly awaited upcoming CD, features John McLaughlin, Allan Holdsworth, Steve Hackett, Robin Trower, Jan Hammer, Steve Topping, Jimmy Johnson, Mark King, Laurence Cottle, Jerry Goodman, Livingstone Brown and others.

The recordings took place at Red Vine Studios (Ternberg Austria), Eastcote Studios (London), Red Gate Studio (N.Y.C), Mediastarz Studio (Monaco), The Summerhouse (Isle Of Wight) , Conway Recorders (Los Angeles) among others.

For those who may wish to pre-order the CD you can also do that at the page.

If you check out the ‘Dirty & Beautiful Sessions’ album in the Photo Gallery here on this website you will hear a slightly alternative brief audio montage of many of the tracks while you view the pics that document many of the recording sessions.

Dirty & Beautiful Volume 1 is released on the Abstract Logix Records label in November 2010

Availability – currently unavailable.

The music all came out quite “filmic”, and I think reveals something of my aspiration in that area. This album also documents a time I feel I was really starting to make headway in my development as a soloist on keyboards, and starting to find my way.  I was also experimenting here a lot with textures – sound upon sound ideas. Also with short-form composition.

Reviews

David Dorkin, Fuse Magazine, U.S. — While many may know Gary Husband as the stellar drummer with Allan Holdsworth, Gary Moore, Steve Topping and Jack Bruce, he is also a unique composer and keyboardist, as evidenced on the disc of originals composed through the years while on the road. Stylistically, fans of Holdsworth and the ECM school, as well as anyone looking for modern music with challenging and unusual harmonies (and rhythms) will be delighted and surprised by the maturity and depth of Gary’s work here on these 22 short pieces. Recommended.

John Bungey, Avant Magazine — Gary Husband has enjoyed an enviable twin career. He has drummed for everyone from Syd Lawrence to Allan Holdsworth to pop funksters Level 42. He has also played keyboards with Billy Cobham and Randy Brecker plus his own band. The result of being in demand is that Husband has spent much of the last few years in the strange netherworld that is a musician’s life on the road (“If it’s Tuesday it must be Salford”) with it’s brief hours on stage and long days in transit. But while other players were using their time off to investigate the hotel mini-bar or on the tour bus video collection, Husband has had a more telling project. The result is this album, comprising 22 keyboard improvisations inspired by people, places and atmospheres during six years of travelling the motorway networks of Europe. They were recorded on a Korg M1 Workstation that Husband would hook up in his hotel bedroom, dressing room, even on his tour bus bunk. The music ranges from spiky jazz funk to ruminative moodscapes to avant experiment. At times the liquid lead lines set against chordal washes and percussive polyrhythms recall mid period Weather Report. The ghost of Jaco Pastorius and his fretless bass walks again in the busy runs of VIEW FROM THE SCAFFOLD or THE PHOTOGRAPH. All the tracks are necessarily short – thanks to the limited memory of the Korg M1 – and some have precipitate endings. They are compositions pregnant with ideas, served up with the minimum of embellishment – the aim, says Husband, was to preserve the purity of the original creative spark. Nevertheless it would have been interesting to hear a full band arrangement of, say, the sharp funk of ENGLAND GREEN or SAVOY. Husband never settles for the obvious and even the simplest grooves are subverted by odd metered percussion. Thanks to the march of technology “bloke-with-synth” CDs are not hard to come by but Husband has something more eloquent to say than most.

Enjoy!