Igor's Egg

Igor's Egg

by Papa Muse

New to the vibrant Ithaca music scene, Igor's Egg combines intricate composition, experimental improvisation, and quirkyness into a funk-groove throwdown with an artistic flare. Their instrumentation features dueling guitars, bass, drums, percussion, keyboards, and violin.

Their live show reminded me of the sophistication and flair of Frank Zappa's most extreme work, fused with the bounce and jam of bands like Phish, innovative and at the edge of reality. I went and saw them play at Castaways and experienced their performance in conjunction with an artistic indie film that never could be predicted. The band's show was wild, dramatic and impressive. -- Papa Muse

It was of my purest intentions to conduct a civilized and highly academic interview with that elusive septet of Phyllo-sophical degenerates, Igor's Egg. The following is an account of such an interview, conducted entirely within the confines of their official summer home and creative retreat: a large red blimp fashioned in the shape of a manatee, currently free-floating approximately 2,000 ft above the township of Carlsbad, New Jersey.

Nathan Maxwell Cann: So, tell me aboutÉ the Egg.

Adam Nash: Well, I prefer to have it scrambled, Jeff and Samuel like it over easy, Salvatore eats primarily omelets, and Rosen will only eat it whole.

Dave Rosen: Of course it depends on the overall consistency.

Samuel Henschen: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.

Jeff Scott: With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

NMC: I'm sorry, but can you explain that? IÕd hate for you to be misunderstood. Samuel Henschen: Is it so bad to be misunderstood?

Adam Nash: To be great is to be misunderstood.

David Rosen: Men imagine that they communicate their virtue and vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath at every moment. (At this point, the interview was interrupted when drummer Johnny Boujan John West stumbled in the room, drinking a Wild Turkey Manhattan out of the freshly chopped skull of Richard the III. Violinist Liz Cary followed close behind, carrying a large cardboard box with the words &quoFree Kittens&quo written on one side.)

Liz Cary: Listen! You can hear the children laughing!

Adam Nash: And this is what Igor's Egg is really all about.

The Egg's upcoming album, Prototype, is just a taste of the epic science-fiction mythology that they incorporate into their music. Igor's Egg hopes to bring something new to the musical world. Their style will for better or worse, invoke strong emotions in the hearts and minds of their listeners. You can find out more about the Egg and hear some tracks at www.igorsegg.com. - Papa Muse

"I need to know how to get your music, all of it. These three songs will not satisfy my need for more Igor's Egg."

"Finally a band with an original sound."

"Dude you guys rock...Your music doesn't sound like anything else I've heard, I really dig it. You're one of the few bands I've heard with a legitimate claim to originality."

"Holy shit you guys are crazy. AWESOME WORK...very impressed."

"Love the sound, very very different-in-a-good-way."

"Usually when I listen to new music it takes me a while to get into it, but what I like about your songs is that they immediately click with me. Truely a brilliant manifestation of different sounds. It's only a matter of time before you take off. How would I go about getting more of your music?"

"You guys should really tour. If I could see you play in Colorado, it'd be INSANE!"

"Musical geniuses right here."

"Keep on revolutionizing the music industry guys"

"I received your demo via Mr. McFeeley yesterday. The speedy delivery was most welcome. I will force this demo down the gullets of Northern Californians with the power of Ninjitsu and Leathercraft."

"I have been a huge phish fan for years and never heard anyone or any band play as good or better than phish. Fantatstic music comes from the soul. peace and love my friends...Tally :) "

"The funk is deep! get to PA!"

"I've been waiting for a prog/funk band. Thats real innovative. Keep the good work up :)"

"I thought I was tripping, but then I looked up and Igor's Egg was playing...Thanks for the add and for blowing my mind."

"Love your sound...and your pics are awesome!!! keeps playing with my eyes!!!"

"I looooooooove your sound - it's great!"

"Love the violin!"

"PROGRESSION - The Grateful Dead......Phish......Igor's Egg ????? You guys are great ! If you ever get into Michigan, let me know."

"Most Definetly Awsome, I like what you are doing with the band, fresh smooth progressive style."

"Fucking awesome sounds....very eclectic. -- syd barrett meets the P-funk! Rock on..!!"

"That breakdown in 'Awakening' is ruling. totally dig."





- various fans & musicians

By Zachary Dinerstein:
On a breezy fall afternoon on the back proch of their practice space, Jeff Scott- the lanky, shaggy-haired guitarist of Ithaca prog-Rock band Igor's Egg- explains to me where his band's name originated.
"Basically," he tells me, "it comes from a local chicken resistance in a chicken processing plant. This one chicken named Igor was kind of the leader of this chicken resistance movement...and basically, the chickens wer being exploited and badly treated and their symbol of solidarity and unity was the egg- so, we are igor's Egg."
As Jeff unfolds this story, lounging on a worn futon with his clear eyes staring straight aghead and giving nothing away, it's hard to tell if I'm being messed with or not. A chicken resistance? Really? Come on...
But Jeff sticks with his story. "You can drive out there," he insists. "Old Buttermild Road, right next to the Smiths' farm. The chicken isn't actually there anymore, because of the life span of chickens- very short- but that's where the name comes from."
Now I know how journalists must have felt when they asked Jack White to explain his relationship with his drummer, Meg.
But for Igor's Egg, which returns to Castaways Saturday night for its biggest headlining show to date, this shouldn't be surprising. The band often projects student-made, experimental films together with their two-hour plus stage shows and their original material contatins tales of fabricated characters Phil, Ted, Lucus, and Jorge- four young men in the Egg's own ongoing mythology. Considering this, a made-up sotry to aggrandize their origins is understandable.
The actual backstories of each of the seven musicians, who came together in Ithaca from various hometowns to form Igor's Egg, are just as interesting. sam Henschen (guitarist) is soon to graduate from Ithaca College with a concentration in Ethnomusicology. Liz Cary (violinst) has been classically trained and Dave Rosen (bassist) invented a contextual language used amonth the band's members. Jeff Scott (guitarist) went to school for rocket science before joining the Egg. Sal Galati (drums) is a recognized "Poker Champion," John West (drums is a journalist/ park ranger, and Adam Nash (keyboards) studied screen writing at Ithaca College, and now often uses his knowledge to write out the band's most recent story ieas in screenplay form, adding to their character's ever-growing back stories.
Dave Rosen, the band's thick-bearded bass player, enthusuastically explains the reasoning behing the Egg's mythology.
"We've seenall these concept albums..."Dark Side of the Moon, Apostrophe, Quadrophenia...and that's one level," he says, his hand gestures becoming more animated as he speaks. "So, why not take that kind of story idea- these characters and the places they're in- -and spread it almost up to the point of "Lord of the Rings"... where you have your own world and adventure and stories?
The fable he's describing plays out in part during the Egg's live show, but will be laid out fully on their first full-length album, "Prototype", which is being recorded at Electric Wilburland Studio and is planned for release in Spring 07'. If the Egg's live sound is any indication, the album will blend their signature Pink Floyd orchestrations with souring space-jams and dinosaur guitars. The record's lyrics deal with an alternate world where a young band known as Horsechipsstruggles to become famous. As the band vies for the top, they meet a record execture, name Mr. Hogs Pogs, who offers to make the young band's dream come true. Instead, the record they create is used to enslave the minds of the populace, leading to a global apocalypse that destroys most of the life and technology on their planet.
This kind of extra-musical hook has been a part of music for centures. Igor Stravinksy was as well known for his lavish ballet productions as for his symphonies, and The Beatles, as everyone remember, wore those matching gray suits when they performed on the "Ed Sullivan SHow." Dave Rosen explains the thought behind the band's mythology.
" I think the original idea was,...there's so much good music out there, all different genres, and there's plenty of talented musicians," he said. "So once you have that good music- once you can really play well together and be tight- then what? Then what is the thinkg that makes you stand out?"
"I call it crack," he adds, laughing. "The thinkg that people get addicted to."
This Saturday, the band is planning its biggest headlining show to date at Castaways. There'll be extenseive decorations by the band, premieers of new originals in addition to bizarre covers, and a brand new, experimental film by student filmmaker and long time friend of the band Nathan Maxwell Cann.
The silent film splices together found -footage from aged propaganda films, with other 16mm reels salvaged from thrist shops. One of the foun - Ithaca Journal

By Steve Rokitka:

The house behing Ithaca College inhabited by the members of Igor's egg is surely one of the more interesting band houses I've seen. There is, as with every band, the room devoid of furniture but fill of giant set lists, a maze of cables, and thousands of dollars worth of instruments. Further into the bowels of the house, however, amidst dark bedrooms and a bathroom with a library to rival any Barnes & Noble a classically decorated living room sits with a wraparound couch, a tastefully stocked bar, a Hammond organ, and a television set paused in the middle of a game of Mega Man 3.
The band sits in front of clean pressed lace curtains and under a lovely crystal chandelier, and tells me on of the most insane tales I've heard in a long time, the one behind their upcoming CD.
"It's a concept album that tells a story- the first of many that take place in one fictional world. The first story in a nutshell is about a band that ends up, through a series of events, going on a search to discover a "truerness" to music." Adam pauses. " I just made up that word".
I begin to wonder about the loftiness of the task that Igor's Egg is taking under their leathery wing. Concept albums are notoriously difficult to pull off, often marking a sore spot on an artist's career. would the album be a Phish rehash, or perhaps something too derivitive of Dark Side of the Moon for its own good? Perhaps there was something in the water at this house, or a virus passed through a contaminated saxaphone reed?
As the band picks up their instruments, several of them let loose with syllables shouted like Popeye beatboxing on an e.coli-laced spinach induced rage.
"Tuh! Tuh!"
"Nyyyyyyehhh. Eh ha ha!"
Once one of them starts playing, the others' eyes glaze over. they all begin swaying in unison, and as they each begin their part, you see their eyes sharpen to those of someone gazing intensely inward at something.
Together, the group moves with a prog-rock level of synchronicity, like a fock of birds all on the same brown acid. igor's Egg possesses the tightness that can only come with knowing your craft inside and out and backwards, but also the playfulness and creativity that are so often burned out of people who study music intensely. Sitting in front of them, I feel myself being carried along on this twisted journey, and for whatever reason, their bizarre and beautiful music seems to have wrapped itself around my brain stem just right. More, more of the strangeness!
Igor's egg incorporates elements into their live show that no other bands seem to want to mess with. Seven member onstage, live film being played behind them, bizarrely colorful set dressing and synchronized pseudo-dance moves all amount to something with incredible intellectual appeal which still manages to draw you to the dance floor as well as the best jam bands around. Catch the long, strange trip that is Igor's Egg. - Buzz Magazine

You have to hand it to the folks in Igor's Egg -- they certainly have some big ideas.
This week, the Ithaca-based music collective is releasing its first CD, dubbed "The Ultimate Tuh" for reasons that may or may not become clear by the end of this article. Think of the album as the sprawling soundtrack to a science-fiction epic about a garage band, a mad scientist and a journey to alternate dimensions while searching for a way to stop a monster's rampage.
That sounds ambitious enough, but band members see the music as just one building block for a multimedia experience -- Web sites, films, perhaps even video games or books -- set in their fictional world of Amaris.
During a freewheeling conference call with five of the seven Egg-heads, keyboardist Adam Nash and bass player David Rosen explained how the whole concept was born during a 12-hour car ride to Atlanta and hashed out at a small New Jersey diner -- all before the band even existed.
"There are thousands of bands -- especially with MySpace, it's all online and become so diluted," Nash said. "So what would make a band really cool and really different? ... We thought, 'What if we made a storytelling band? And what if it was more than just a group of guys who play the music?'"
Through a network of friends and fellow musicians, others soon joined them in their journey: Elizabeth Cary (violin), Sal Galati (drums), Samuel Henschen (guitar), Jeff Scott (guitar) and Jon West (drums). Together, the music they create is a mad fusion of progressive and psychedelic rock, jazz, classical, Celtic, funk, space jams and whatever else is within arm's reach. A song may start with one person's guitar hook or melody line, but the rest of the crew piles on and adds so much to the original outline that all the tunes on the CD are credited to everyone.
"For me, music has always sounded like a soundtrack to something," Nash said. "... When I write music, I try to make it feel like a beginning, a middle and end -- a narrative with some sort of emotional hook."
Band members' musical rapport -- essential to imposing a sense of order to the proceedings --somehow makes it all comes together.
"Drawing from seven people has made the musical sound different, which I think is important," Rosen said.
So what exactly is "The Ultimate Tuh"? In the story of the album, it's what the heroes (members of a band called the Horsechips) need to save the planet Amaris from destruction. But its precise nature isn't clear, even to the Egg-heads.
"That's up to interpretation," Nash said. "It's the Holy Grail; it's the Mount Doom that you have throw the ring into; it's the thing that destroys the monster."
Heck, he added, it could even be like when Luke Skywalker communed with the Force in "Star Wars." Now there's a story to aspire to, at least in terms of fame and fortune. They just need to find the right people to bring the full story of Amaris to fruition -- but for now, "Tuh" will have to be a good launching pad.
- Chris Kocher