New York, a burgeoning blend of cultural arts, opens its eyes, ears, and dance-club doors to Open Door – the eclectic, electric, lushly jazzmatic band that will thrill and chill the deepest club-dwellers.
Ray Grappone, Vicki Bell, and Peter Adams join forces once again to create their second album, So Close To Beautiful. And that it is, as this CD promises to deliver twelve hypnotic tracks to both the underground and pseudo-mainstreamed circuits.
Open Door unlocks itself from any particular genre—but rather fuses together the passions and persuasions of all three creators involved. New York based producer/vocalist/remixer Bell, Los Angeles keyboardist Adams, and all-around rhythm man Grappone combine their talents to generate multi-defining sounds spanning the retro-to-techno spectrum.
I had the opportunity to talk with Ray Grappone about Open Door’s policies – how they’re evolving, revolving and whether they plan on continuing to create neo-soulful sounds.
Tell me a little bit about the three of you…
The main producers in the group are Vicki Bell and Peter Adams. I happen to be a signed musician and co-owner of Hipbone Records and studio. The three of us met here in the NYC area out of doing different productions together. Peter is originally from the Boston area and he’s a great keyboardist and songwriter. He recently moved to Los Angeles and is doing some freelance work there. Vicki Bell is a producer and writer and has been running Hipbone Records for some time now. Basically, I’m a session percussion and drum set player. I grew up in Brooklyn and have played and recorded with many musical theatre productions and performed at the New York State Opera this year.
Since you and Vicki are in NY and Peter is in L.A., how do you collaborate on work?
We get together to produce the sessions — it’s more of collaboration over the airwaves though (laughs) – Peter will lay some things down on the west coast and we’ll do the same here on the east coast and send them back and forth. But actually, this album we did here in New York and mixed it up in Boston.
Europe has been both a good market for you, hasn't it?
Yes. We had a good push over there and produced the first record out in Scotland on a label called Sole Records. The group has done some live touring in Europe and that also went very well. We (Vicki and I) put out a bunch of house records and deep underground material that Europe seemed to pick up quite nicely.
Article comments
1 - Jumpin' Jordan Lee
I say "Yes" to "So Close To Beautiful" by Open Door. Sensual music, inspiring music, universal music -- I take the trip whenever I can. I will not remove it from my car CD player -- I will not! Cannot recommend this CD enough -- to friends, lovers, enemies, politicians, grocers, cabdrivers, et al. Listen for yourself, hear it for the first time and know that you are indeed so close to beautiful that you can almost touch it!