DESENSITIZED TO INSANITY

WHERE'S THE NINE looks like a relatively plain project name for a collaboration of two colleagues knowing each other for more than 25 years. However - the musical potency is anything but harmless on the other hand. 'Densensitized To Insanity' proves to be an interesting effort based on instrumental fusion and mixed up with a lot of influences from other prog genres. Not peering hard at something like a commercial success - technically brilliant, ambitious as for the implementation and not overproduced though. Barry Connors' drumming is straight and powerful supported by Dean Watson's jazz rock and heavy guitar style and playful diversified keyboards.

Retro symphonic (ELP) and Return To Forever references as a contrast to riffing guitar elements (sometimes near to prog metal) are not only given on A Rather Odd Tribute which serves a fireworks of breaks and turns all in all. It takes some time to capture the whole complexity. There are songs like Half of Eighteen reminding of the hammond infected Niacin style particularly. Nice electric piano sections are interspersed here and there. Lethargic Waltz approves its name only in parts because also performed in a dramatic mood in the same way as the following She's furious. And The Camera Ear finally is even a little bit spaced-out with an aggressive behaviour and weird synths.

It is recommended to listen to this album for more than one or two times to come closer. 'Densensitized To Insanity' deserves recognition because giving variety - a good sample of complexity and virtuosity in the whole with a wide palette of key, guitar and percussion work.

So our just included asset Where's the Nine recently launched their debut Desensitized to Insanity. At first listening I compared the band to Planet X and listening to all the songs again I come to no other conclusion. I can't say they are imitating them but there is obvious similarity in style.

First track A Rather Odd Tribute is a good example for the comparison. Complex rhythms and instrumental contribution changes is typical for this composition. There is some melody line detectable but I can't say melody is the intention of the song. It's obviously challenging music and it will take some listens to get into this one. The next one Moodswings is a little more accessible at least so it seems in the beginning but after half a minute the complexity is there again. And in fact this goes on with the next tracks as well. It's an all instrumental album and I always respect those because they don't have lyrics or vocals to score with. It all depends on the instrumetal compositions and that's not easy if you ask me. But that's the bands choice also of course so they will have to deal with it. I think these guys are doing real fine from what I hear on this release.

Does this mean it's a monotonous album with the same kind of songs ? No way, it's pretty versatile. The music is full of twists and turns, fierce playing on both drums as well as guitar and keyboards and yes, that's coming back in most songs but continuously in a different way. At second listen I'm even more enthusiastic than at first so that's promising and I think it will take a lot more spins of the disk to really get the hang of this fascinating music. And there is also a bit of humor detectable in their songtitles. How about Half of eighteen, Threw the Looking Glass and The Camera Ear ? I mean it's not hilarious, it's subtile and that's why I like it.

I'm even contemplating a 5 star rating here but maybe that's going a little overboard in the end. Well, at least it's close, I think this will be a 4,5 to me and our policy is to give the 5 to the scarce masterpieces and I have always supported that policy so I'm giving 4. So you could say: Where's the Nine ? Here it is: 9 out of 10 for this album !

Highly recommended to fans of Planet X and lovers of modern and stirring jazz rock. For my personal taste it's even better than Planet X due to better compositions and more melody.

"Desensitized to Insanity" is the debut full-length studio album by Canadian jazz-rock/fusion act Where´s the Nine. The album was released through Cyclone Records in 2008. Drummer Barry Conners met the other half of Where´s the Nine Dean Watson (everything else than drums and percussion) in 1979 when he joined Dean Watson´s band AirKraft. Barry Conners was not satisfied with the low income that came from playing in a progressive/jazz-rock band and went on to pursue a more commercially rewarding career. He has played with artists such as Coney Hatch, Lee Aaron and Toronto. 25 years went by without the two of them speaking to each other until they found each other through the internet and then started exchanging ideas. "Desensitized to Insanity" is a product of those ideas.

The music is Instrumental Fusion with both jazz-rock and progressive rock elements. I hear a couple of heavy metal elements too, although the latter is in no way a dominant trait of the music. Artists like Allan Holdsworth, UK, and Planet X are some of the influences I think I hear in the music.

Most songs on the 8 tracks, 57:52 minutes long album are pretty excellent and adventurous compositions and even the closing track "The Camera Ear", which to my ears is a bit too jazz oriented is extremely well performed and composed. "2 Days Left" is one of the highligts of the album with its dark atmosphere and aggressive playing. The drumming on that track is otherworldly. The musicianship is outstanding. Dean Watson who plays both keyboards, guitars, and bass is an extraordinary musician to say the least. He handles all instruments on a virtuosic level. But to my ears the price goes to drummer Barry Connors. What a fantastic musician. Seldom have I heard as varied, challenging, fast, and precise drumming. Being a big metal fan I would really like to hear him play some tech metal. I´m very impressed with his inventive and very powerful drumming.

The sound production took some time to learn to appreciate as it´s a pretty cold and sterile sound, but considering the technical music and the busy and often aggressive playing, the sound production is actually suiting the material pretty well. Upon conclusion "Desensitized to Insanity" is a high quality jazz-rock/fusion release. It´s experimental, performed at a virtuosic level, and there´s some relatively interesting songwriting ideas here and there too. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Remarkeably solid music throughout makes Desensitized to Insanity one of the finds of 2008. This Canadian outfit make very tight progressive rock/fusion instrumental music. There are undeniable King Crimson/Rush influences yet a solid unique tightly arranged setlist which are consistently good songs. Personal highlights would have to be Mood Swings and Half of Eighteen. The drum work can give the ears a serious hammering so add some hefty bass to smoothe out the sounds. Barry Connors ( percussion) and Dean Watson (Keys and guitars) compliment each other exceptionally well, check out the last song The Camera Ear' for good synchronisity between the two. Again a great discovery/introduction. One lowish point is the cover, not very entertaining but that is irrelevant in the big scheme of things. Don't miss out on listening to this great album. Four healthy stars.

Someone I did not know on this site invited me to write something about this album. He must have thought I was Canadian too. I'm a freeking Dutchman! But OK... I gave this record a trie, you can listen to it for free on their website.

I seriously do not like the artwork here. This is no inventation for a record like this! A black cover with the title in white would have been better. This mistake gives an perspective on the album as a whole. These musicians are very good! They play symphonic/progressive rock with jazz influences. The style is to be put between UK and Return to Forever. The band has only two members: one does keyboard and guitars, the other is the rytmic basis of the band. But what's the problem then?

The recording sounds a bit cheap. I wished bands in these days had the same oppertuneties as some talented bands in the '70 had. My advice for WHERE'S THE NINE would be: Find a guitarist and a bassplayer and a good place to play and record this album in a live session withoud public. This would get us rid of the static sound. The music wouldn't only be technically very good but it would also live!

Band like WHERE'S THE NINE give me the feeling that if they recorded the whole during a Pink Floyd-like live amplification set it would have been a four-to-five star performance and recording. The band has got talent to play different and difficult songs that also have a somewhat mysterious vibe.

So... Good musicianship, dissapointing recording. But also: potential! In the future this could become a serious act if a complete band is formed around these two very inspiring musicans! So.. three stars for now, but a positive feeling abound the name of this band. I will remember!

You know, with so many new bands coming, they could be mediocre ones or bands that did not start on the right note. Add to that this album's cover and I started listening (their album is free) thinking that it is just another band. Luckily in this case, the debut is quite solid and shows potential of a very good band. This is an instrumental album with emphasis on instrument interactions and tempo changes. The guitar and the keyboards are sometimes improvisational in nature, and sometimes riff-oriented or carefully written. The rhythm section is excellent, thanks to the drummer. However, the album doesn't work on all levels, but considering it is a debut, is expected. For example, the production can sometimes feel cold or clinical, which is not really the kind of production you should have in a jam-heavy jazzy album. This band needs a live-atmosphere. I also can imagine how much a good singer could bring to the mix, as long as the instrumentals keep taking a large role in the music, tho it is not necessary as the band is good enough instrumentally to keep the interest of the listener.

A Rather Odd Tribute starts the album dazzlingly with fast runs. After its intro, it gives you a mid tempo main theme on the electric guitar until they decide to jam in a very jazzy manner (reminding of a less virtuosic, yet more accessible Mahavishnu Orchestra). Not everything works: an unexciting distorted guitar riff hurts the song.

Mood Swings is one of my favorites here, with a rhythmic distorted guitar riff that combines well with the synthesizer runs. It also features more somber moments in which the drummer, who is given plenty of room, creates a nice atmosphere. The song title would give you an idea of this song sounds like, but luckily coherence is achieved.

half of Eighteen is another longer tune and is as good as the opener. The soft, yet busy, drum groove in the beginning is especially worthy of mention. Instruments slowly join in and the song starts having changes during the middle of the tune, where the synthesizer takes the spotlight. Unfortunately, some passages and keyboard tones are not to my tastes.

Threw the Looking Glass has the keyboardist player's best moments (using electric piano) and every now and then an inspired hard rock riff pops up.

2 Days left is where I start having problems with this album. While it has some good passages (the guitar riff halfway through the song), there is a very irritating drum-oriented riff that is used several times. I also do not like some of the keyboard tones here: one bein the one in the middle part of Half of Eighteen and another is a very dated and quirky synthesizer tone.

Lethargic Waltz alternates heavy moments with somber ones, both being keyboard-oriented. After a while, you'll get some inspired jams. The first one is a more laid back synthesizer solo with excellent lively bass. The second one is heavy and has hammond organs. The last one features a guitar solo and some intricate instrumental passages.

She's Furious is obviously more energetic and riff-driven, with excellent drumming throughout the song. However, It is not fast-paced all the way through. In fact, this is the most diverse track in the album and is full of twists.

The Camera Ear is proggy, dynamic, and rhythmically complex. But in the intro, it brings the synthesizer tone that i complained about in two previous tracks. I also find it anti-climatic for the album.

So, in the end, some tracks work better than others. This band has serious chops, and I know they have the talent to release a superior album to this. I suggest that they have a more organic/livelier sound production, tell the keyboard player to be a bit more careful with synthesizer tone choices, and make sure the drummer keeps taking as large of a role as in this album.

Last year, like some other Prog Archives Collaborators, I received a Private Message in the Prog Archives Forums asking me to listen to this album in a website (cyclonerecords.ca/releases/wheresthenine-desensitizedtoinsanity.htm, which is owned by the record label which has this band and others signed as recording artists). So, I listened to this album and I found interesting things on it.

That website says that drummer Barry Connors was a member of a Canadian Rock band called Conney Hatch in the eighties. I think that I listened to this band at least once in the FM Radio stations of my city, but I can´t remember anything about this band now. But it is really a suprise to find that Connors is a very good drummer and that now he plays very complicated and precise drum parts in this album. The other member of the band, keyboard player-guitarist Dean Watson is also a very good musician, and both knew each other after playing in a band years ago. As I read in that website (more or less as I remember now), both composed the instrumental music in this album in an unusual way: both live in separate cities in Canada and they used the web to send their parts. First, Connors sent to Watson his recorded rhythm ideas and Connors sent him his recorded keyboards-guitars parts. Later they recorded this album together. I think that they used the modern computer recording technology available in a recording studio (and I also know that some of this recording computer software even can print the recorded music in scores). I also think that Connors had to send the drum parts written in scores to Watson, because maybe it could be very difficult to compose the keyboards-guitars parts by only listening to the recorded parts. The parts played by both musicians have a lot of interaction and precision, so I think that it could be the only way to compose the musical pieces in that unusual way.

The musical style from this band is really hard to be defined as only "Jazz Rock Fusion". Yes, the album has this style of music as the main ingredient, but I also could listen to several influences taken from bands like: Bruford, U.K. (in some keyboard atmospheres), Return to Forever, King Crimson (from the good line-ups of the late sixties-seventies), Jeff Beck (as a Fusion guitarist in the mid-seventies), Billy Cobham, Jean-Luc Ponty (from the seventies), ELP (particularly in track 1), and even Rush in some parts. Some parts are heavier and I think that they also have some influences from Heavy Prog Rock bands. The musical pieces also have very good solos, and some "Retro" sounds, particularly in the keyboard solos, because I think that there is a lot of influence from keyboard players like Jan Hammer. I don`t write this to criticize this band as lacking in originality, because nobody can escape from some influences from previous bands. The music has a lot of originality in all this mixture, and it is even "dark" in some places. I think that the titles of the musical pieces have some humour, like "She´s Furious" (I really could imagine an angry woman shouting only by listening to the music!), "Threw the Looking Glass" (not titled "Through the Looking Glass", as one could expect), "Lethargic Waltz" (a bit monotonous as the title could suggest, but it is not pllayed like a waltz, I think) and "The Camera Ear" (not titled as "The Camera Eye", an old Rush song). Even the cover design has some humour: two men (maybe the musicians, I don`t know!) photographed using straitjackets in an asylum! Maybe the cover concept was done this way to give the idea of some humour and that the musicians don`t take themselves very seriously. But this cover design is the only thing that, as public image for a predominantly Jazz-Rock Fusion band in style, could confuse some people and made them think that this band is more a Heavy Rock band than a Jazz-Rock Fusion band. Anyway, this album is very good, despite the songs are similar, with heavy and difficult drums and keyboards which sometimes are not very easy to be "processed" by the listener by only listening to them once, and in some parts the album is so heavy and dense that the listener is sometimes a bit tired. But anyway, this band is really very good and deserves to be listened with interest. I think that many fans of the Jazz-Rock Fusion musical style, the Prog Rock style and even from the Heavy Prog Rock style could like this album. It sounds like it was done with a lot of care and work. A four stars rating from me for this album.

A debut instrumental album with pulsating grooves and everchanging time signatures

It's amazing how you discover new prog and in this case I actually received a Private Message at the PA forum stating: "I would like to bring your attention to a new release that I think you will like based on your previous tastes. Where's the Nine is a Canadian instrumental prog rock/fusion who have just released their debut album, "Desensitized to Insanity". You can hear the entire album here. If you are inspired, I would appreciate you giving the album a review". Two years later I returned to this website and listened to the album again. Time for a review on a new band. Immediately there is a sense that the band are borrowing heavily the influences of Yes, ELP, early Rush and U.K. among others. There are some nice melodies and very accomplished guitar work on these tracks.

'A Rather Odd Tribute' consists of a melodic guitar riff and heavy handed Hammond. Barry Connors is a precise drummer with jazz influences, and he is joined by the musicianship of Dean Watson the guitarist, keyboardist and general noise maker. A great sound is achieved and I am very drawn to the frenetic keyboards in particular.

'Mood Swings' is a 6 minute ambient piece of music focussing on sustained keyboard chords and an angular guitar passage akin to Fripp's style of perhaps Lifeson. The guitars are multilayered although only one musician is playing these, plus keyboards. I am in awe that musicians can play like this.

'Half Of Eighteen' is a 9 minute slow paced melancholy piece. The hi hat cymbal work is gentle and the approach is minimalism for a while. The keys sound like violins, calm and serene, until the pace quickens, threatening to break out into a loud crescendo. The guitar solo is divine and perfectly timed as I was being lulled to sleep. This is very emotional music, at times a bit like Visual Cliff's early instrumental albums. The keyboard chimes in as the time sig changes and staccato stabs sound very much like ELP's 'Tarkus'. I love it when the keys take off at this point, and then it slows again with a sustained pad and an odd time sig with heavy guitar notes locks in. The song changes again at the end into a slower track. A real highlight of the album.

'Threw The Looking Glass' focuses on innovative guitar lead breaks and keyboard trade offs. The duelling instruments work well together, although we know this is the same musician of course, Watson is duelling with himself in some aspects. The quiet section is very jazzy and I like that electric piano sound with the violin type pads. A jagged guitar riff cranks along with the pads. In a sense the music becomes repetitious and hypnotic, the drums are sporadic and timed well with the frenetic playing.

'2 Days Left' begins with drums and keyboards emitting short blasts of energetic riffs that stop and start. Again I am reminded of ELP, the intro to 'Pictures at an Exhibition, especially. I like the cool funky sound of the keys on this, a bit like Pink Floyd's 'On The Run'. The tension in the time sig is astonishing. The frenetic keyboards continue overlayed with many instruments. Soon a distorted guitar riff with fractured metrical shifts chugs along and a divine keyboard pad with sustained chords adds to the atmosphere. A wonderful piece of music and one of my favourites from the album.

'Lethargic Waltz' is a dynamic tune with menacing bottom end chords. There is a meandering progression, infinitely patient and foreboding. The Hammond sound is quite disarming and provides a strong resonance. The piano is a feature too played with virtuoso precision, and the complex music is taken up a notch when the chaotic bassline locks in and the keyboard solo takes over sounding like an electric guitar. The Hammond pounds down as the texture becomes darker and there is an off kilter time sig, the tempo blazes away and then settles into a swing time feel as a lead guitar soars over with hammer ons, speed picking and squealing harmonics. There is even a glockenspiel effect at the end. One of the highlights of the album.

'She's Furious' has a strange time sig that misses consecutive beats, and the sound is heavier with a myriad of high speed notes picked on guitar. Then a guitar solo with some complex licks is heard over a new time shift. This fades as a keyboard pad swells in and a bizarre fractured keyboard plays. A new riff locks in and gives way for a beautiful keyboard solo, similar to how Petrucci plays with his continuum keyboard. The polyrhythms continue until a blazing crescendo ends it abruptly.

'The Camera Ear' may be the answer to Rush's 'The Camera Eye' but only in name alone as this is way different. It's all keyboards at the intro, until the angular guitar riff is unleashed. The keyboard notes are bent in different directions and then a heavy distorted guitar riff chugs as the keyboard provides the dynamics of sound. An electric guitar solo and keyboard solo are to follow in different time sigs. These passage are sublime. The piano provides a transition to the next section; a bass solo lays down the rhythm and than a choppy organ blasts out chunky motifs.

In conclusion, 'Desensitised To Sanity' by Where's The Nine is a pleasant listening experience featuring pulsating grooves and everchanging time signatures; the musicianship of the two musicians is very inspiring, and they have somehow produced an instrumental album that is replete with retro influences and yet refreshingly original and modern. 3.5 stars. (rounded off to 4)

WHERE'S THE NINE is a duo consisting of our own Dean Watson (guitars / keyboards) and Barry Connors (drums). If your familiar with Dean's solo albums you will know what to expect here, although I would say this isn't in the same league. Barry Connors played with CONEY HATCH back in the eighties and they were a band I was not only a big fan of but i've seen them live as well.

"A Rather Odd Tribute" sounds great when it picks up 2 1/2 minutes. A calm 4 minutes then it builds. It's heavier before 7 minutes. Nice. A cool ending with that phone call. "Mood Swings" is drums and a variety of keyboards throughout. Some ripping guitar 6 minutes in. "Half Of Eighteen" opens with piano. Drums lead after 2 minutes with background synths. Guitar 4 minutes in as drums continue. "Threw The Looking Glass" is heavy with background synths. A change before 1 1/2 minutes as the guitar solos. It's heavy again late to end it.

"2 Days Left" features piano then the drums take over. it builds then turns heavy after 2 1/2 minutes. Guitar to the fore as it trades off with the keyboards. It settles before 5 1/2 minutes then it kicks in again. "Lethargic Waltz" is different. It's all over the place really. Not a big fan of this one. "She's Furious" is heavy with synths playing over top after 2 minutes. It picks up before 4 minutes. It calms down before 5 1/2 minutes. Great sound when it turns heavy. It settles again late. "The Camera Ear" is no doubt a RUSH reference and like the album cover it made me smile. Some nice contrasts in this one.

A good album that pales when compared to Watson's solo records. Still it's kind of cool to hear this record.