ELLIOT KNAPP
Location: Seattle, WA
Genre: Indie Rock / Indie Prog
Hi everyone. We recently learned about Elliot Knapp and are very pleased to announce the release of “Cheap Seats at the Cartesian Theater” – an absolutely unique musical production. ‘Cheap Seats at the Cartesian Theater’ is a concept album that explores the life of the human mind across 22 short song experiments. The album follows Knapp’s lyrical and musical progression further down the rabbit hole of unrelenting individuality as his music becomes more challenging, dense and exciting, boasting a layered full-band electric sound with woodwinds, keys and all kinds of electric guitar. The short song format allows Knapp to deconstruct and re-imagine his innumerable influences in a way that sounds like little else, even in today’s diverse music market. As ‘Cheap Seats’ finds its way into the world, Knapp soldiers on, working to make the leap from “underground” to “obscure” (and maybe even “cult”), with three EPs, a full-length album and another large-scale conceptual album planned for 2013.
Elliot Knapp has been writing songs since he first picked up the guitar at age 15, learning as many great songs as possible and performing them alongside his first original tunes in a local coffee shop in Camas, WA. Life at Whitman College expanded his musical influences as well as his ambitions, and he performed with The Same Old Rock alongside classmates Ian Beck and Arthur Jones from 2003-2005.
2006-7 saw Knapp’s exploration of obscure, underground and “lost” music of the 60′s and 70′s unlock deeper artistic potential and he began to focus on a more experimental style of acoustic music that blended his ever-expanding host of influences into a distinctive style that complemented his evolving songwriting.
After moving to Seattle, vocal cord problems prevented Knapp from fulfilling the promise of his new direction until 2010 and the release of his first solo album ‘In Not-Even-Anything Land,’ a collection of psychedelic, progressive and experimental acoustic songs that reintroduced Knapp as a developed songwriter and performer as well as demonstrating his wide vocal range, formidable guitar abilities, and unwillingness to succumb to popular conventions as the complexity and originality of his compositions and lyrics increased.
2010 and 2011 saw Knapp support his new material with solo shows in Seattle as well as expanding his writing to include a blog focused on critical reviews and essays as well as developing a suitably idiosyncratic poetic style. Unsatisfied with recent live performance experiences and brimming with ideas for his next recording project, Knapp returned to his home studio in September 2011 to write, arrange and demo the concept album he’d been developing since finishing his previous album.
Starting in December, Knapp began recording the album at Cloud City Sound Studios in Portland, OR with Justin Phelps (mastering engineer on ‘In Not-Even-Anything Land’), finishing tracking in May, mixing in July and mastering in August.
You can learn more about Elliot Knapp if you follow any of the links below:
http://elliotknapp.bandcamp.
https://twitter.com/ElliotKnapp
https://www.facebook.com/elliotgknapp