Ryan Power

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   The Way It's Always Been

   Ryan Power

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Ryan Power

Ryan Power's music does not read as indie rock which basically means white rock at this point (see S/FJ's A Paler Shade Of White if you haven't already); it doesn't read as indie rock which arguably really isn't rock. Not because of cellos or loop pedals or toys or arpeggio-heavy arrangements instead of regular whatever but because of no good-old-American miscegenation.

Ryan's music doesn't read as white but it doesn't exist in some "post-racial" neutral zone either. It mixes like they used to do. It's not "eclectic", it's not "postmodern", it's rock 'n roll, it's hip hop.

Ryan was born with a deep feeling for black music (blues, soul, Hendrix) and the level of soulful nuance he can conjure is so FUNKY the mind blinks alive and a minimal dance twitches into the leg. Of course he's a sensible liberal but this isn't politics, it's feel.

Perhaps ironically, as a reluctant jazz student at the University of New Hampshire in the 90s (fear of a life at the Merrimack gas pump led him to the music program at the state school which he never really enjoyed) he tended toward white jazz (west coast shit, Bill Evans) and dude even liked James Taylor. He's just following his ear; the economical grooves of these white players just appealed to him. Also Brazilian shit big time, more and more Latin American sounds appear in his music, bossa nova lately giving way to outright salsa.

Look, Ryan is just a better musician than most of us and also not a chicken about just liking what he likes regardless of the current fashions which we're getting too fucking old (32) to give the shit about we never did anyway in our better moments. The best of a world of rhythm and harmony (like Lennon or rap his melodies mostly spaceship the maps of the former and latter networks) just comes out, borrowed and changed in new ways you didn't think of.

myspace.com/ryandjjdpower

Agent: Bobby ballisticmissilebooking@gmail.com