TRANSPHORIA

David Bagsby is a name most prog listeners should know but probably don't, and is the kind of musician that won't be appreciated or even recognized for years, maybe decades. But that's okay; he's been making great stuff for a long time, prolifically self-releasing it through his own Kansas-based company and guesting on all sorts of cool projects from Ron Jarzombek's Spastic Ink to joint efforts with friend Kurt Rongey. A sort of postmodern mad scientist with enough ideas & vision to fill up a lifetime, Bagsby tends to do what Zappa might've done had he not gotten so big, and tickles the funnybone with a neat mix of humor and dead serious compositional journeys. And thanks to guys like Fred Trafton over at the GEPR, David Bagsby has been getting some much deserved notice in Prog circles.

This, his 1999 release Transphoria, is a good starting place for the proghead who may be understandably wary of dropping some bucks on Bagsby's brand of art music. After several emails with Mr. Bagsby, I learned almost everything here is produced on keys as on the huge, scorching opener 'Esotericity' followed-up perfectly with 7-minute 'AVN'. Bagsby's work is that of a man dying to create but barely knowing where to begin, so overwhelmed by his own skill and muses that it's all he can do to sit down and play it without being crushed by an insatiable lust for all of musical history. But somehow he gets it done, and this CD is one of his best.

'Lyra' and 'Vista del Mars' are slow and probably unnecessary but the New Agey title cut redeems, dealing out killer Prog stylings evoking Keith Emerson, Frank Zappa, and of course Raymond Scott. Epic 14-minute 'Where Reason Stops' centers the album around Bagsby's highly eclectic style and brings together the full gamut of his influences from Electronic to Fusion, New Age to Old World, Prog to Pop, and 'Stranglefsky' ends on a bit of jazz meets syn-phonette.

Fellow midwesterner Wilhelm Murg says of Bagsby, "He creates a tightly woven schizophrenic blend of experimental art and pop culture that developed in isolation out here in the plains. The images of Caruso visiting the oilfields, Bob Wills playing Hawaiian music in the shadows of our gothic, art deco cityscape, Gary Busey hot rodding across town on Route 66, and Oral Roberts having visions of a 900 foot Jesus, are all summed up in Bagsby's compositions."