Canvas

Canvas is a recording project formed by Matt Sweitzer and Chris Cobel in 1993. Their current release "Digital Pigeon" debuted in March of 2007. File under "Progressive Power Pop"! Digital Pigeon features 14 tunes, 3 of which are instrumentals, a Saga cover, a Weather Report cover, and a fantastic group of players, including: John Swope, Tom Mattern, Greg Lounsberry, Bruce Smith, Zach Olah, John David Thornton, Brad Cotner, Brian Pierce, Vince Simon, Heather McPherson & Orlando Blanco.

Alan Parsons Project, Camel, Kevin Gilbert, Paul McCartney, Crack The Sky, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Ambrosia, Alice Cooper, Rush, Thin Lizzy, Kansas, Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree, Spock's Beard, Neal Morse, Saga, Toto, Phil Collins, Brand X, The Flower Kings, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Tommy Bolin, Jeff Beck, Return To Forever, Santana, Weather Report

See what some are saying about Digital Pigeon... "Digital Pigeon is the second release from the studio project progressive band Canvas, the brainchild of USA Keyboardist Chris Cobel and guitarist Matt Sweitzer. As usual, they have assembled a very competent cast of supporting artists, creating a top notch production of well crafted progressive pop gems. Canvas picks up musically where The Alan Parsons Project left off in 1980 with "Turn of a Friendly Card". In some ways, that comparison is unfair, because this CD features much more aggressive bass, guitar and keyboard interplay than one would expect from APP. (Perhaps Camel is a better reference point?) Even so, the similarities to APP are too numerous to ignore. The impeccable engineering (for an indie release!!!)... the hook-laden laid-back approach to progressive rock story-telling... The enigmatic lack of a touring calendar... ;-) Digital Pigeon represents a step forward for the band in that it is simultaneously more focused and more adventurous than their double CD debut "Avenues". With a single CD (rather than a double) only the strongest songs made the cut this time. The Canvas sound is augmented by occassional dashes of smoking brass lines to counterbalance the already sizzling flute, subtle keys, soaring guitars and jazzy bass guitar. If light, subtle, intelligent and catchy Progressive Rock is your cup of tea... Digital Pigeon is a wonderful side dish to add to any platter of Monday (morning or afternoon) Progressive Rock listening!" Mark Stephens-Prog Positivity --------------- This is an album I have enjoyed listening to from beginning to end. I had never heard of Canvas before I received Digital Pigeon but it was a nice surprise. Sure the music on Digital Pigeon is more nostalgic than modern. The band that comes to my mind for most of the tracks is the seventies incantation of Camel. At times The Alan Parson's Project could also be mentioned as a reference, but I feel that Camel enthusiasts could really get into Digital Pigeon. Like I wrote in the beginning of my review, all the tracks on Digital Pigeon are good, well performed and produced. The music is nostalgic but remains original. These guys are not copy cats. Some nice, intelligent, well written and composed music indeed. Recommended. Marc-ProgGnosis --------------- The very first time I heard this album there was only one other band I could think of : Steely Dan. Not that the Canvas music comes close to the Fagen and Becker tunes but if I want to handle a certain quality norm based on production, arrangements as well as compositional skills for sure this is brilliant material which gets high marks just like the wonderful, sublime Steely Dan. Contrary to a lot of prog bands, Canvas blends it’s arrangements towards a more accessible endresult immediately scraping all unnecessary solo’s from it’s list. In fact every input is so well balanced it pushes you to the extreme edge of your seat as you get that curious to hear what direction the music is heading. In a way the atmosphere could be described as being a symphonic Umphrey’s McGee should this make any sense. A song like ‘The spectacle’ improvises quite a bit based around a bluesy approach. By adding trumpets to some of their songs, Canvas is able to package their songs into a semi Chuck Mangione feel as they do with the laidback funky ‘Spiders’. The humming voices in the intro and outro of ‘Ghost town’ contain a certain zaniness which we also find in some Focus tracks. To make it even more diverse and difficult to mark, ‘Armchair voyager’ adds this semi-disco like drum pattern over which some super fast fusion guitar melts. ‘Catwalk’ is a catchy powerful statement in which blistering guitar tries to overtake the jazzy trumpets. Tasty keyboards and guitar mingle in ‘Funk shui’ like raindrops which attack your window-pane. Pitty the main colour of Greg Lounsberry’s voice is a little low as CSNY-type vocal harmonies would have done wonders for ‘Lost in transit’ whose mainly acoustic approach switches towards kind of a Happy the Man setting once synths are in play. The experimental nature of the Canvas spectrum comes in sight towards the end of the album with ‘Teen town’ mainly emphasizing on the bass guitar which gets free reign here. All of the band’s skills are condensed in the final track on the album ‘Move the earth’ which delivers rhythmic patterns as well as more vintage prog oriented sidesteps based around the organ. It’s hard to describe “Digital pigeon” under one label as the main quality of Canvas is the diversity. Diversity both in the department of composition and arrangement but also what the choice of instruments is concerned. As far as I know Canvas simply delivers Canvas music. John 'Bo Bo' Bollenberg www.boborocks.be