Intensity

This month's profile is one of the most creative bands in the area, the improvisational group INTENSITY!

The band are set to release its first CD "The Stone of Madness", in the next few weeks.

As is the case with most bands, the CD is a way to satisfy the many requests from fans to have the group's music to listen to after the show. It's also a way for the band to show itself off to the club booking agents.

There's an added difference with INTENSITY!, though. The improvisational nature of the band precludes it from performing the songs exactly the same way show after show.

According to Steve Ross, the group's drummer, "Its a kind of a double-edged thing with doing (the CD). I don't know if we could ever do them recognizably like we did them on the recording. Like if somebody requested something," he added with a laugh. " I don't know if we could do it."

Guitarist Jim McFarlen agreed. "It's a stream of consciousness. And its five streams at one time and you're never going to have five people in the same place again. We can try to recapture the feeling of them and get familiar with the parts but we never really get there again."

Fans of the band don't seem to mind though. One of the enjoyable things about INTENSITY! is that the performers and the audience never know what they are going to hear. The music just seems to fall into place with the musicians feeding off the vibe of the audience and each other.

"You gotta have a lot of trust in the people you're working with", said Pat Ross, who plays percussion. In the spontaneous spirit of the group, the band's instrumentation includes drums and unusual items like saw blades, buckets and PVC pipe as percussion - pretty much anything that the moment calls for.

"We did all the regular band thing for a while but that's not what we want to do anymore," Mr. McFarlen added. "INTENSITY! is just to get up there and find the musical muse that night and go and do what we do that we think we do well. This is an artistic experiment. This is creation in real-time. This is the aural canvas."

Appropriately, "The Stone of Madness" was recorded live in five nights over a two week period at Colorblind Studios in Moline. After some problems with some of the initial tapes, the band turned things over to Dave Ruby of Dr. Dr. Productions in Silvis.

"We just got the raw tapes, listened to them and picked out the parts we liked and just gave them to Dave and said, "Assemble 'em." He got the hand of it and he got it, " said Mr. Rose.

"I love the stuff and listen to it regularly, at least once a week," Mr. Mc Farlen added. "The first song is 28 minutes long and then the second is 20 minutes, divided into four tracks. We decided that if we wanted to make these available in MP3, 28 minutes is a bit long to download." he added. "With the second song, there were four logical sections to the song. Instead of one marathon downloading session, fans can simply download a five-minute section."

Another cool thing about INTENSITY! is that the members are long-time players on the local music scene. The core of the band began playing together in the late '70's and came together with the idea to do improv. music. They jammed every now and then and in the mid '90's started coming together more often.

One of the great things about their playing together so long is they've gained considerable wisdom about making music. They do it because they enjoy it and aren’t out there chasing the ever-elusive recording contract. Which is not to say they don’t plan on following through on some contacts with a record label they made through Mr. Ruby and some other leads they’ve found through the Internet. However, Mr. Rose says the band keeps that goal in perspective.

“But if that didn’t happen, we’d still keep doing it,” he said. “It’s not like you pin you hopes on getting signed by somebody or getting gigs somewhere. And then when that doesn’t happen, the band just goes Kaput. We’ll still be playing in the basement regardless.”

Free-form band is Intense

It’s a sure bet you’ve never seen anything like an INTENSITY! performance. That’s mainly because the members of the band themselves are never sure what’s going to happen at an INTENSITY! performance.

INTENSITY! is a free-form, improv, performance art musical jam group that eschews genres and conventions with the ease and disregard of electricity tearing through the air. And like a lightning strike, its performance can leave equal parts of chaos and beauty in their wake.

“It’s a communal process that joins each individual’s ideas, like brainstorming music composition,” said Jim McFarlen, who plays guitar, e-bow, effects and bells. “It’s only when all the ideas have been joined that one perceives the entire picture or piece of music.”

Intensity has actually been around as an experience for a number of years, being the name tagged on to a semi-regular jam of musicians orbiting around the nucleus of the now-hibernating act Speaking To Animals. In its semi-solid current incarnation as a band, INTENSITY! is made up of Mr. McFarlen; Sergei Czerewko on violin and effects; Steve Rose on percussion, clarinet and tapes; Butch Karn on bass and effects; Pat Ross on percussion, trumpet, penny whistle, flute, harmonica and effects; and a variety of guests on vocals. The band’s musical influences run the gamut from King Crimson to the Residents, from Bach to the Flock.

“There have been times when we’ve discussed how we might want to start a number, but we keep it really general – maybe start with a tape or a thoughtful percussion line and strings,” Mr. McFarlen said. “But there is no plan on what happens next, we just see where it goes. That is the key. Everyone is listening and feeling the energy within the piece and what is happening around them.”

“There is a lot of energy being dissipated,” he added, explaining the band name. “At times, there is often a lot of tension in the music so that it is anything except relaxing. It is intense.”

The group may work on a CD at some point this summer, but its heart remains in playing live.

"There are tomes of rules that dictate what something is,” Mr. McFarlen said. “They often define our lives and give us perspective. Come (to the show) to know that there is a whole other universe of ideas beyond that if you step outside the box. Have some curiosity and come experience something different.”

Sean Leary