Dean Peer's New Website

Dean Peer just sent me an email to inform me that his new website is up and running. You can check it out at www.deanpeerbass.com.

Dean's been actively performing over the last few months with his drummer Bret Mann. The new website has details on upcoming shows, and you can directly order some of Dean's amazing recordings. He's currently working on a new project, and I've heard some of the tracks he's laid down...they're very different than his past work. You can get updates on this project through the website as well!

Another visit with Dean Peer...

For the holidays, Colleen and I visited bass virtuoso Dean Peer at his home north of Austin. This was the first time I've seen Dean's home, which houses the studio in which he recorded last year's stunning album, Airborne. While the studio is tucked away in a corner of his house, it's still quite a sophisticated facility with sand-filled walls, a floating floor (also filled with sand) and plenty of room treatment. Dean uses a combination of a classic mixing board and digital software to achieve his innovative sounds on the bass guitar; he laments that the former will soon be obsolete, but he is determined to mix at least one more project on it.

A few weeks ago, I heard through the grapevine that Dean was working on some new material, and that a new album is probably in the works. Considering that Dean has recorded two albums in about twenty years, this is good news. Dean sat down with me and played a couple of the new songs, and they were quite different from what we've heard on Airborne and Ucross. What I heard was dark, moody and slightly sinister, but with a strong emotional undercurrent. For everyone who was surprised by the difference between his first two albums, you'll be even more surprised by the third.

At one point, Dean handed me a LP copy of the Dixie Dregs' Night of the Living Dregs from 1979 and asked me if I was familiar with it. He told me to take it home and listen to it and tell him what I thought. It turns out that Dean is planning to work with Dixie Dreg's bassist, Andy West, on the new project. It's been a few years since Andy played with the Dregs (he's a big-time software expert now), but it will be interesting to pair Dean's elaborate bass harmonics with Andy's more solid and fundamental sound.

Here are a few more pics from the visit. This is one of Dean's basses, the one featured on the cover of Airborne. You'll notice the "dp" on the fret; that's for Dean Peer, since this was made especially for him.

Notice the knob? Yep, that's a Cardas nautilus shell knob. Dean's association with Cardas Audio goes way back--they currently sponsor his shows, and he uses their cables throughout his gear.

These Meyer Sound studio monitors were interesting to listen to. As Dean said, "They're not much fun to listen to because they're so FLAT, but they're incredibly accurate." As I listened to him playing his bass through the mixing board and the Meyers, I was struck by the pinpoint imaging. It was strange to see Dean play a few feet to my right, and then have the sound from the strings placed so firmly between the speakers to my left. I certainly didn't think they were unpleasant to listen to, but they were very far from warm and romantic.

Here's the more modern side to Dean's recording studio...

...coupled with the more traditional side. As you can tell, Dean has kids.

And a healthy sense of humor.

And now my dog Lucy is famous, too. She was extremely curious yet well-behaved around so much expensive gear. Then again, she's used to it at home.

I'll keep you informed about the new album. I'm really looking forward to it!

Dean Peer's Ucross available as digital download

Just in time for Music Night at Blackbird Audio, bassist Dean Peer has finally made his 1991 album Ucross available as a digital download. I've owned the LP for close to twenty years now, and it's always been one of my true reference recordings for evaluating audio equipment.

You can download it at http://deanpeer.bandcamp.com/album/ucross for just $17.97. You can also choose between a variety of formats such as 320K, MP3, FLAC or "just about any other format you could possibly desire." You mean like vinyl?

Check it out...it's a truly awesome recording.

Dean Peer - Airborne

There's an old bass guitarists' saying that the first three rows of every Primus concert were filled with bass guitar players trying to figure out how Les Claypool managed to play the way he did. Well, I think there must have been at least one time where Les himself was sitting front row at a Dean Peer concert. Dean manages to wring more sounds out of his bass than just about any bass player on the planet, and his new album, Airborne, just about cements his status as the most gifted and innovative guy ever to pluck (or in his case, tap) four thick strings.

I first discovered Dean's music back when I used to read Stereophile. That audio magazine really championed his talent, and I wound up buying his LP Ucross based on their absolutely glowing review. Over the years, Ucross became one of my reference records for testing and evaluating stereo equipment. Since Dean himself is an audiophile, he always takes extra care to ensure his recordings sound fantastic. On Airborne, the sounds of his bass, coupled with some downright huge drumming from Bret Mann, creates some of the most astonishing and expansive soundscapes I've heard in a long time.

While it's hard to categorize Dean's music, I guess I would have to place it in jazz fusion. On the opening track, however, Dean and Bret lay down a momentum that actually rocks in more ways than one. Dean's unique style, which makes it almost impossible to believe that there's only one instrument playing, comes from a double-tap technique that allows him to travel into octaves that are alien to most bass players. Yet Dean eschews tricks and effects and focuses on how much sound he can extract from his instrument. If you're a fellow bassist, you'll be inspired and amazed. If you're not a bassist, you'll still think you're listening to a trio or a quartet instead of a duo.

Again, if you're into sonic pyrotechnics, Airborne will not disappoint. It's the perfect album for discerning what my new Cardas cables and my new Trenner & Friedl ART monitors are capable of achieving. I'm really fortunate that my system can now do justice to this fascinating album.

Incidentally, I received Airborne in a totally new (to me) format--the USB sound card. It's the exact size of a credit card. Just to show how technically challeneged I can be, I started looking around the sides of my laptop for an orifice that would accommodate the card. My brother Mat, the computer genius, pulled out the small insert on the right side of the card to reveal that it's just a garden-variety USB jack. D'oh!

You can get Airborne at your favorite record store, from the Cardas Audio website at http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=music&content_id=9&pagestring=USB+Audio+Cards or you can visit Dean's website at http://deanpeer.com/music.htm.