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Year End Awards for Block Ice & Propane!
Block Ice One of "The Best Jazz Albums of 2007"
"..haunting, lulling, adventurous, and disorientingly magical. Friedlander combines a modern classicist's sense of harmony—Copland's open chords, but also Crumb's gnarly grit—with rhythmic nods toward early folk and blues. Is it jazz? I'll leave that to the philosophers. It's great music by a great jazz musician; that should be enough." --for Slate By Fred Kaplan [read more]
BlogCritics Magazine
Block Ice and Propane, Erik Friedlander (SkipStone) - Likely you heard a bit of this one in the Apple commercials in the last few months of 2007. Friedlander plays the cello pizzicato style, so that it sounds like a thick-stringed guitar, as he recalls his childhood summers crisscrossing the country in a camper. Another piece of Americana like The Angola Project, but this one with a lonesome nostalgia that inspired less heartbreak and more wistful smiles.
The PHOENIX
Erik Friedlander | Block Ice & Propane
A solo cello recital that has parallels in Bill
Frisell’s hazy heartland tone poems,
Friedlander’s program is novel because it
stresses melody over chops. That means there’s
not all that much extrapolation here, but the
enchanting mood and vivid dynamics make up for it.
Critic Steven Dollar ranks Block Ice 6th best CD for 2007.
SNL Spoof of iPhone Ad
SNL spoofed the Errol Morris iPhone ads my music appeared on. Check it out!
DOWNBEAT Review - ****
John Corbett's 4 star review:
"If there's a venerable tradition of American road
films, Block Ice & Propane belongs in the
associated list of great road albums." [read more]
Rock & Rap Confidential Reviews Block Ice
"Black Ice and Propane, Erik Friedlander (Skipstone)—Listening to the first track, the muscular “King Rig,” you think that you’re hearing a very unusual acoustic guitar sound. It may be a few tracks later, or maybe only when you read the liner notes, that you realize that it’s a cello being plucked and hammered by a very unusual virtuoso. This concept solo album is about the trips Friedlander took as a kid with his parents in a cramped trailer towed along the open roads of the west. Without vocals, he effectively conveys the landscapes, the campsites, the thrills and the boredom of such a journey on an album that is, to say the least, entirely unexpected."
Rock & Rap Confidential is the monthly newsletter edited by Grammy-winning writer Dave Marsh.
Fox Business Appearance
I got up early to go on Fox Business Network. Check it out:
Erik On The Roof
LAB 01.2 - ERIK FRIEDLANDER - Airstream
Uploaded by lablogotheque
The piece is actually "King Rig" -- took place on the
roof where I live in NYC.
Hot summer's day.
Block Ice & Propane..& the iPhone!
Last July, as part of a mini-tour supporting the
release of Block Ice & Propane I played at
The Lily Pad, a
small club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A friend of
mine, cellist
Josh Gordon, came to the show and brought along his
friend, filmmaker, Errol Morris who enjoyed the music
and bought a copy of the CD. As it happens, Morris ended up
working on a new series of spots for the Apple iPhone
and he found that my piece, "Yakima", worked well with
the stylish testimonial, real-person-on-the-street work
he created.
See The New Ads: iPhone ads
FIND YAKIMA FOR DOWNLOAD
|
| Napster |
eMusic
Scene + Heard Feature
"Almost everyone has at least a few pictures documenting the family vacations they took growing up, but not everyone’s childhood memories were preserved by a renowned photographer. So it makes sense that images from the camping trips cello ace Erik Friedlander took with his father, Museum of Modern Art-approved artist Lee Friedlander, gradually snuck into his subconscious and, eventually, his latest solo album, Block Ice & Propane." [click on pic to read whole doc..]
Review from OhMyRockness.Com
"Improvisor/composer Erik Friedlander simply owns his instrument (that instrument being the cello). A stunning musician whose talent blurs genres, Friedlanders often plays with avant-garde legends like John Zorn and Laurie Anderson, but can also be found on stage with more indie-friendly acts including The Mountain Goats (not only did he open for them on their most recent tour, but he also collaborated on songs during their set) and John Vanderslice. Plugging in, playing, and capturing tones you just won't hear anywhere else, Friedlander is that one-of-a-kind New York musician that can bridge the gap between the old school and the new school. He is jazz. He is rock. He is classical. He is all of these things, and he is none of these things."
Blog Speak
"..Friedlander’s live performance resonated a depth and warmness, which, blended with his long-honed and heralded technical prowess, kept the crowd in awe for the entire set. [ read more]"
"..He played some tunes from his latest CD, BLOCK ICE AND PROPANE, and they knocked me out. [ read more]"
"John Darnielle/Courtney Love/Laurie Anderson collaborator Erik Friedlander performed immediately afterwards on the same stage with nothing more than a cello..[ read more]"
"..as a jazz cellist, you may not think you’ve heard Friedlander but you’ve heard this dude and probably didn’t know it, I would bet. He’s been all over the music industry backing artists from Dave Douglas and John Zorn to Alanis Morissette and Joss Stone. [read more]"
"..Friedlander’s impressive and vast technical skill lets him transform the cello into an instrument that’s played in many cases like a guitar, where rather than single or double-note pizzicato, he actually finger-picks and strums. [ read more]"
Review from Pitchfork
