Artist description From a review on Audiorevolution.com: The possibility of dance clubs using surround replay systems has been explored experimentally for some years, particularly in the U.K., where clubs in the Midlands started installing Ambisonic surround sound systems in the ‘80s. It’s an incredible idea, and as soon as the venues are ready for it, here’s the music. Studio Voodoo is the brainchild of Gary Mraz, professor of recording technology at California’s Citrus College, and Ted Price (about whom I know nothing). For the last decade or so, they’ve been working on combining ethnic chants and other material with some amazing grooves from the forefront of modern digital technology – and from the sound of this album, some healthy old analog machinery, too. The result is a collection of truly ferocious grooves and a surround extravaganza which, at the very least, will show off your system to great effect, and much more likely will get you on to the floor – especially if you can turn your system up loud. The album leads off with "This Beat is Voodoo," and the surround recording of us leaving the building – by the sound of it, recorded with a Soundfield surround mic or similar – and getting into a car. The engine starts, and we tune around on the radio, some scratchy sounds emerging from center front, until suddenly we encounter what sounds like the Congo pygmies familiar to fans of Deep Forest, accompanied by some truly impressive drum loops and effects. A multitude of other world vocal samples follow over a powerful groove, even including a little Balinese "ketchak," or monkey-chant. The sound continues building. An incredible deep bass note glides down from low to l-o-o-o-w (you need full frequency range for this album), clear and clean. Lively guitars enter, a brass section, the 6:15 train from Paddington (no, I’m lying about this one) – you name it. At its climax, this has absolutely everything going. Sounds fly around the room. Loops enter and leave. And you can’t keep still. An impressive opener. "Fire," the second cut, starts us off in an African jungle. We hear voices around us in Swahili. There’s that descending bass thing again – and we’re off into a frenetic complex organism founded around Stewart Copeland’s remarkable collection of ethnic vocal and drum samples. Dense, two-bar percussive loops characterize this track. Very cool, and one of the seminal tracks on this album. A lot of work went into the sound picture created in this track. A complete change of vibe announces the third number, "Lamentatio." Ominous bells sound as gravelly footsteps cross the surrounds. Pseudo-Gregorian Latin chant and distant plainsong make your hair stand on end, but not half as much as it does when opera diva Michelle Latour comes in, improvising, one would guess, almost 100% of the time and evidently having a whale of a time. The bells and deep bass notes are way cool here, as is Ms. Latour, but perhaps the ultra-dense percussion loops are a bit too intense here to avoid detracting from the track as a whole. "Straight from the Heart," Track Four, is the low point of the album for me, with African chants and languid percussion loops underlying Leroy Barnette’s voiceover. It’s good, but the rest is so much better. "Trancedance" is fun. Someone called Ava takes us on a physical relaxation program, while contradictory drum loops and the voice of Margit Jensen insure we can’t stay still. "Integratron" is one of my favorites, apart from the opening number. It features a long segment sampled from one of the "Ruby" tongue-in-cheek sci-fi radio shows from ZBS media. The latter started out in the mid-‘70s with an incredible radio serial called "The Fourth Tower of Inverness," and have gone on over the intervening years to produce some of the most inventive audio drama on the American continent, including the "Ruby" series and a number of follow-ups to the "Fourth Tower." I don’t think they’ve done a bad show, ever. Check ‘em out at www.zbs.org. Meanwhile, the Voodoo guys take us through a collection of cool sci-fi movie samples, most of which I can’t identify. Eventually a snare and kick drum loop comes in with a bright, "pangy" snare sound, accompanied by some very cool analog (presumably) synth sequences. Nice. "Imagenes de España" changes the mood dramatically once again, with Flamenco guitars from Scott Ray and vocals from Rafael Silva. Castanets, hand claps and more build the feeling until the entry of some great slap bass and ultimately some rather more digital loops and a strong bass part. "Rain" takes us back to Africa again and we participate in a rain dance of some kind, with loping drum loops and voice fragments.

Music Style Electronic, Dance (House, Techno, Jungle, Trance, D&B), World Music

Musical Influences William Orbit, Pink Floyd, Moby

Similar Artists Like Deep Forest on Acid!

Artist History Studio Voodoo (Kozmo Mraz and Ted Price) first recorded as a group in 1988, and finally finsihed an album in 2001! We tried to get together once per year to record a new song. The band was signed to DTS Entertainment in 2000, and completed production of the album in July of that year. "Studio Voodoo" won the 2001 Discus award for Excellence in DVD-Audio production. Voodoo will be releasing a new album in surround sound in late 2002 on DTS Entertainment.

Group Members Ted Price & Gary (Koz) Mraz

Instruments Synths, Drums, Vocals, Guitar

Albums Studio Voodoo (2001)

Press Reviews From a review on DVDangle.com: Dig, if you will, a sonic landscape painted by a combination of tribal drums and vocal chanting, funk, jazz, electronica, flamenco, opera, and just about everything in between. A colorblind collection of music that throws together a mishmash of styles that were never meant to be heard in the same sitting, much less the same song, but mixed in such a way that it just seems right. The result is Studio Voodoo, the eclectic album from producers/keyboardists Gary Mraz and Ted Price, who had the balls to attempt something really different in the new realm of 5.1 music, and the talent to pull it off. The album kicks off with the aptly titled "This is Voodoo," which pretty much sets the stage for the entire experience, even if it isn't the most musically interesting track from the collection. The disc moves on to such highpoints as "Fire," "Imagenes de España," and "Rain," and creates a vast and varied musical journey that is only occasionally bogged down by repetition or mild pretentiousness. In interviews included on the disc, Mraz and Price freely admit that they aren't making music for the masses with Studio Voodoo – the tracks are often strange and esoteric, but if the music grabs you it doesn't let go – you're either hooked or you aren't, and as much as that is true of nearly all music, with something as strange as this, the effect is pushed to the extremes. This isn't intellectual avant-garde, by any means...which is actually a good thing, in my opinion. Avant-garde is rarely synonymous with "fun," and Studio Voodoo is nothing if not fun. Studio Voodoo was the first DTS CD released in the 6.1 ES format, but unlike so many albums remixed for multi-channel, this one was specifically crafted as a surround experience from the get-go...and it shows. Music like this was never intended to be confined to two channels, and the included stereo downmix more than proves this point – listening to the album without the benefit of surround is like watching a Technicolor film in black and white, or drinking flat beer. This disc is what multi-channel music is all about. Now available on DVD-A from DTS, the music is even more open and enveloping when freed from the constraints of compressed audio. Throw in a handful of cool extras and a hidden binaural headphone track, and the disc presents the entire Studio Voodoo experience in all its glory. Audio & Mix: Presented here in 48kHz/24-bit MLP-encoded 5.1 Studio Voodoo is completely alive with an organized and carefully crafted cacophony of disparate beats, vocals, and instrumentation. The first track, "This is Voodoo," begins with the sounds of footsteps quickly descending a set of stairs, with echoes and reverberations realistically creating the real world acoustics. A car door opens, and it's more than obvious that this is a big hunk of Detroit steel, not a Japanese compact. The door slams, and the engine starts, and the low growl and vibrations pour from a confined space, but from every direction. You're in the car, there's no denying it. Then the radio comes on, and a series of quick-cut song samples flows rather thinly from the center channel – but it's really not the center channel, it's a flimsy paper dashboard speaker with one voice coil and a plastic grille. Then the song proper kicks in, and it comes from every direction, but with subtle restraint – the rear channels are there for support, and although they have their place in the mix, there's nothing terribly surprising about the soundfield. But then there's a breakdown, and the true "Dorothy exits her cabin into the world of Oz" moment comes to pass. The body-rocking, butt-shaking techno beats are joined by rhythmic funk guitar and a poppy horn section, and the surround mix explodes to hyper extremes and stays there for much of the rest of the album. The next track, "Fire," takes you out of the urban setting and into the plains of Africa with the ambient sounds of nature and an introduction that consists of conversation in ethnic dialect. The music itself in this track sounds as if someone gave an indigenous African tribe an electronic drum machine and a few thousand milligrams of mescaline. The bass in this track smoothly sweeps from upper-low frequencies down to the limits of human hearing, keeps going to the point that it can only be felt, and then returns for another cycle. Other tracks, such as "Lamentatio" – which can only be described as Gregorian operatic disco – feature a tight, pulsing backbeat that that rumbles from both the massive LFE and the thick main channels. The surround mixing often breaks the rules for traditional music, steering elements into the surrounds for no reason than the fact that it sounds cool, but for Studio Voodoo it totally works, and the overall balance is never really disrupted. Music pours so strongly from all main channels that at times, when there aren't any vocals, it really doesn't matter which way you face – the music would sound just as good if you were hanging upside down and facing to the left. For the most part, the prevailing electronica aspect of the music means that the resolution and clarity isn't really held back by the lack of 96kHz sampling. The album was recorded digitally, so the 48kHz/24-bit reproduction on this disc represents the full potential of the master source, but there are a few spots here and there that would have benefited from the extra resolution, had it been available: the chanting in "Straight from the Heart," the hypnotic vocals of "Trancedance," and the strange el mariachi wailing/Flamenco/'70s porn film guitar mix of "Imagenes de España" to name but a few. Nevertheless, the music is extremely clean (except where intentional noise and scratches have been added), and the recording is exceptionally well-textured and rich. The disc also includes a DTS ES discrete 6.1 track that takes the mix one step further by adding a center surround channel, and although I find that the extra channel offers little advantage over the already cohesive and well-imaged rear soundstage in my setup, certain room configurations and speaker setups will certainly get a boost in the form of smoother panning and more direct center imaging. As far as fidelity goes, the DTS track doesn't fall far behind the MLP 5.1 track, with the exception of a few key characteristics. The smooth descending bass cycle in "Fire" isn't as fluid in the DTS, and makes a noticeable jump a few octaves before the frequency hits its lowest point. Some of the overlapping textures also blend together a bit more in the compressed audio track, but these are really aren't all that significant, so those listeners that don't have full DVD-Audio playback capabilities are still treated to a fine-sounding track. Yet again, we have another DTS DVD-Audio disc that lacks a full uncompressed stereo mix. The two-channel version of the album is presented here in Dolby Digital 2.0, and although this version restores the smooth sweeping progression of bass in "Fire," the compression is just as evident as it is in the DTS track...which isn't bad, really, but there nonetheless. No matter, the music just isn't the same in stereo, so even an uncompressed PCM track would probably be a waste of space... But wait, there's a catch here. The disc actually does contain an uncompressed stereo track of sorts, but it isn't intended for standard playback. The 48kHz/24-bit track was recorded with the Fritz binaural microphone, which simulates the shape of a human head, and is intended for playback only on headphones. The results are striking, and the track is certainly appreciated by someone like me, who grew up in the "headphone generation" of the '70s. Although a bit more noise is evident in this hidden audio track, since the mic was placed in a room with a 6.1 playback system and therefore constitutes a second-generation recording, the music still sounds damn good, and is perfect for late-night listening by those with roommates, spouses, or cranky neighbors. Extras & Highlights: Studio Voodoo goes a bit further than most DVD-Audio releases in the supplemental department, starting with a video interview section with Gary "Koz" Mraz and Ted "Witch Doctor" Price. The first of the two segments, Voodooism: The Making of Studio Voodoo, covers the duo's musical philosophy, the idea of mixing the music for surround instead of stereo, and the creative process for crafting the songs on the album. The eight minute piece also includes brief comments from a few of the supporting musicians and vocalists, as well as 5.1 mixer Mon "Monster" Agranat. Behind the Mask runs six minutes, and goes a bit more into the personal histories of Mraz and Price, as well as the origins of their collaboration. Both pieces are funny and informative, and although they probably won't get much repeat play, they add a nice touch to the disc. There are also three art galleries, which spotlight the work of Neal Doty, John Grieder, and Jagger, and provide one-page write-ups for the the first two. A few of these pieces also serve as a visual accompaniment to the music. The disc also includes the standard promotional DTS Story, which offers a few pages of history and self-backpatting for the company. Easter Egg: To access the Fritz headphone mix mentioned above, navigate to The DTS Story on the main menu and press right to highlight the Studio Voodoo icon. Press enter for a separate headphone tracklist, as well as a page of history and explanation of the format. Menus & Interface: The interface for Studio Voodoo is stylish, and packed with stereo clips from the album. Different samples accompany each different screen, and although there aren't any animated transitions between menus, response time is lightening fast, which is appreciated. With the exception of the hidden headphone mix, all options are labeled clearly, and the aesthetic design is attractive as a whole. Various pieces of static artwork make up the onscreen background for each song, and when the music plays, only small arrows at the bottom right corner of the screen mark navigational choices. My only real beef with the interface is the prominent "DTS MUSIC EXPERIENCE" label that sits atop almost every single screen, and takes away a bit of artistic credibility from an otherwise creative menu system. Come on, guys, we know who put the disc out – is it really necessary to advertise throughout the entire album? This is not unlike the horrible practice of television networks scarring our favorite shows with their constant station identification icon. Why not just go one step further and put commercials between songs? But to be fair, you really don't have to see this constant proselytization – if you have a DVD-Audio player, the music begins playing the default 48/24 audio track upon disc insertion, which means that one only needs to access the menus to check out the artwork and interviews, or to switch to the headphone track. Song & Tracklisting: 1. This Beat is Voodoo 2. Fire 3. Lamentatio 4. Straight from the Heart 5. Trancedance 6. Integratron 7. Imagenes de España 8. Rain 9. Epilogue: Song of Gnos Artists & Technicians: Composed, produced, and recorded by Gary "Koz" Mraz and Ted "Witch Doctor" Price. 5.1 mix by Mon "Monster" Agranat. Additional musicians include Kevin O'Neil, Nick Lewis, Tim Younghans, Josh Young, Doug Reid, Jason Powell, Scott Ray, and Mike Farrell. Vocalists include Makela Lema, Mathenge Wachira, Rwiliriza, Masangu Matondo, Saningo Nsidongi, Michelle Latour, Leroy Barnette, Margit Jensen, and Rafael Silva. Conclusions & Afterthoughts: Studio Voodoo is another successful release from DTS's music division. Like I said, the album certainly isn't for everyone, but it isn't as limited in appeal as most electronica is. And truth be told, I'm not sure you could really classify the work as "electronica," or any other genre, for that matter. Some tracks come off as a cross between The Lion King and Blue Man Group, and others wouldn't sound completely out of place in a disco-era remake of Desperado. But no matter what labels you want to put on it, the music is fun, energetic, and sounds perfect in the 5.1 format. Forget ostentatious crap like Immersion, Studio Voodoo is 5.1 music that you'll actually enjoy listening to. DTS has put together a nice disc for Studio Voodoo that more than does the album justice. The 48/24 MLP 5.1 track may not be leaps and bounds ahead of the DTS version, but there are improvements nonetheless, and this disc presents the music in true studio master quality. It's a shame that the source wasn't recorded in true high-resolution, but for much of the album it wouldn't have made a significant difference. The extras are entertaining, and the Fritz headphone mix is a classy touch. For fans of music that is slightly "out there," but not so obscure as to be kitschy, Studio Voodoo is definitely worth a listen.

Location Los Angeles, CA - USA

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