Social Vortex started as a collaboration between George Bowles (me), an alumni of SAIC's Sound department in Chicago, IL, and Brett Johnson, Photography, Columbia College. The idea eventually led up to so far about ten different musicians on different recorded projects, this time around hanging out in my living room and jamming through my home stereo and a guitar amp. The group is a collective of musicians from different areas of Chicago who like to make really weird music just for the fun of it. Some of our influence is by 20th century composers and film music, otherwise lots of heavy metal and hard rock, some noisy punk stylings, math and prog rock, hiphop, electronic music, etc, etc etc. Compositions are hasty and unpolished because of the nature of the challenge, but hopefully this means they will be more lifelike and spontaneous in some ways. This year's Social Vortex album consists of two jam sessions on Friday, Feb 15 and Sunday, Feb 17 2008. On Friday we were pretty tanked after being at the bar for a few rounds (and of course getting a few 6 packs for the jam session). So what we recorded was some very bizarre stuff, that had some great moments to it. Scratch that, some epic movements... some of the compositions were actually pretty fantastic once I edited out some of the parts that wouldn't fit onto the cd (and really sucked pretty badly anyway). Trance-like beats meet up with laid back bass grooves and space-fire guitars on "Indoor Karma". And a total freak out jam session featuring 3 totally different types of guitars (acoustic with lesclaypool-like synth slapping), jazz tone, and heavy wah guitar on the track "Deep Winter Blues". Sounds like Meshuggah if they were a jam band trying to re-create John Zorn. Other tracks are pretty much indescribable, almost like futuristic film music. The Friday night session featured one of my original Chicago metalhead drinking buddies, Brett Johnson, and also newer fellow drinker, Kwame Shorter (both of whom attended last year's Chicago Listening Party at Delilah's with me and some of last year's lineup).

The session on Sunday the 17th was quite a bit different. While I did some laptop software chaos on Friday, I pretty much upped the ante here. I controlled the sound design and adjusted paragraphic eq's, changed up samples, and just about anything you can think of using Ableton Live software. What resulted was an extremely loud loud loud yet clear and not too muddy, noisy ass beats and noisescapes. My friend Jeremiah Morales, who I have collaborated with in the past a few years back, stopped by and played the Axiom 37 midicontroller keyboard and drum trigger pad. We recorded the other half of the RPM Challenge record, 'Chicago Winter', in about 50 minutes. I also played bass and some guitar here along with doing sound design and controlling beats, etc.

The album will be a split between Makalu and Social Vortex, tracks 1-9 being the two man group Makalu (check out the three eps, the first 3 releases on my friend's unbelievably awesome online label, http://www.brutalprog.com

The second half of the split album Chicago Winter is the latest incarnation of Social Vortex, both recorded for the rpm challenge to creat an album in a month.

So, it was some fun improv experiences that generated some very interesting material. Enjoy!

Whoever wants to play! In the past, it has included my friends J and Bret and lots of other people (check out http://www.myspace.com/grock) who I didn't get to jam with in Feb. 07...

In this incarnation, members include:

George Bowles - guitar (tracks 1-9, 14), midi controller, bass, programming, percussion, live effects, etc.

Brett Johnson - guitar, tomfoolery (tracks 10-15)

Kwame Shorter - bass, good vibes (tracks 10-14, acoustic on 15)

Jeremiah Morales - midi-controller, percussion (Makalu, tracks 1-9)