The Paisley Plaid

The Paisley Plaid is a collaborative creating original music. Members, Rob Keay and Dan Folkus, combine existentialist words with electronica, loops, acoustic and electric instrumentals. Keay has an art MFA from Pratt Institute and specializes as producer, arranger, primary musician and cover artist/designer, embedding voice and lyrics by Folkus, who has a BA in philosophy from Lawrence University, and who plays instrumentally on occasion.
Music
Their methodology is eclectic and variable. For example, most of their songs began with the voice tracks by Folkus. But the sixth album, On the Shore of Wishes, shows a radical departure in which most of the music came first, the voice and words spontaneously elicited by Keay's personal catharsis. Since then they have stuck to the original method for the most part, with Keay layering sound over the voice. An example video so far is Tied to the Mast off their seventh album.
Each song has a theme, not limited by the times we live in, yet aiming to be relevant today. The Golden Age, off their sixth album, goes back some 4600 years to the ancient Indus River civilization of Harappa - contemporary with Sumer and the first dynasties of Egypt. Never are modern politics mentioned - which is not to say that the group rejects the topical. Wiki Inside, off their upcoming eighth album, When the Modem Went Down, speculates that the modern internet audience seems godlike, omnipotent and omnipresent: "They know everything like they said He did." Other songs present a revival of old fashioned Christian humility: I Love Thy Will and Let It Lie. On the other hand, God's Friggin' Universe, takes the point of view of a forger getting into heaven by subterfuge.
History
The two have worked together since 1984, but The Paisley Plaid only formed as a collaborative entity in 2003, when their paradoxical name evolved to not limit a style as wildly divergent and inclusive as gospel and psychedelia.
Future Music, a newsstand magazine for electronica, reviewed their first album, Follow the Lights (March 2004), stating they were "very impressed with the spoken and sung vocals... The Plaid was well recorded and certainly has a style of its own."
Blog To Comm reviewer, Christopher Stigliano, said "This release from what I guess is a "studio"-only affair called the Paisley Plaid is but one of many of these spiritual children of the eighties cassette culture days, featuring interesting instrumental grooves courtesy Rob Keay..."
Airplay: DJ Joe Gasko of New York Metropolitan radio station WFMU selected Don't Be A Jerk, one of the Plaid's most popular songs with effects, while DJ Kurt Gottschalk, also of WFMU, chose one of their most straight forward efforts for airplay, Meditation, which features Rob on Guitar and Dan on five string banjo.
Discography
*First Album: Follow the Lights (2003)
#The Polymorphous Gelled Superbeing
# Birdland
#The Mystery of Love
#Handmaiden
#Follow the Lights
#Nice Shot
#Innocence
#Just Colored Lights
#Patterns
*Second Album: The Sands of Mars (2005)
#Inside The Crystal Sphere
#Experiments With Puppets
#Subservient Masterpiece
#Like An Acid Flashback
#Love And Kindness
#Dragon Train
#The Sands of Mars
#Make Magic
#Under The Bridge
#Gently Thru Snow
*Third Album: Double Undeaded (2006)
#Legacy
#Oil City
#House Hunting
#A Demon Lies Within
#My Skaldic Wheel
#Double Undeaded
#Beyond Jupiter
#Longevity Frog Pond
#Tender Campanierro
#Mud Flats Creeping
#Mockingbird
#The Fabric of Illusion
#Brilliance
*Fourth Album: Slither Space (2008)
#Anathema
#Try To Fly One More Time
#Don't Be A Jerk
#Slither Space
#Z-49
#This Blessed Thing
#The Ultimate Man
#Meditation
#The World Inside
#Write About Us Some Day
#On Your Pedestal
#You Say Blah, Blah, Blah,
#One Good Thing.
*Fifth Album: Garden At The Well Of Indifference (2009)
#Headwaters
#On A Dog Walk
#Into The Hole We Went
#Be Alive
#Out Of The Blue
#Pyramid Scheme
#Brother Dan Works It All Out
#Visitation
#Love, Love, Love,
#Automatic
#Sky Blue
#Garden At The Well Of Indifference.
*Sixth Album: On The Shore Of Wishes (2010)
#The Galactic Heart
#Lullaby Don't Cry
#On The Shore Of Wishes
#All Of A Sudden We're In Love
#Source Of Love And Vision
#The Trenches Of The Golden Age
#He's A Big Man, But Only Upside Down
#Yin Yang Liberty
#Many Rooms
#Plangent
#Flowchart
#Conundrum In The Slipstream...
*Seventh Album: Tis as Tis (2011)
#Tis as Tis
#Comin' for Me
#The Death Cure Perfected
#I'm Just a Baby Bird
#Tied to the Mast
#How Many Times
#Fist of Peace
#We Won't Say Goodbye
#Love from a Jaded Root
#Be a Palimpsest
#I Love Thy Will.
Eighth Album: When the Modem Went Down (2012)
#Clear Again
#Let's Go Back
#When the Modem Went Down
#The Eighth Wonder
#Phighting Phantoms
#Perspicacity
#God's Friggin' Universe
#The Wiki Inside
#Let It Lie
#I Love Thy Will
#Propeller Brain
#Take It to Another Level.

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