Glen Scott - Without Vertigo

<BODY TEXT='#000000' BGCOLOR='#FFFFFF'>  <pre> Glen Scott Without Vertigo Release Date: 04/20/1999 Product#: GS1 1 - Heaven 2 - Without Vertigo 3 - My World 4 - Wet Supermodel 5 - Valentine Maloy 6 - A Piece Of My Heart 7 - Easy 8 - It's Alright 9 - Delusions Of Grandeur 10 - Cold Flame 11 - The Way I Feel 12 - My Protection 13 - Superstar </pre> Without Vertigo is an apt title for Glen Scott's ambitious 550 Music debut. Scott effortlessly walks a musical tightrope between the trendy sounds of polyglot London and classic, early Seventies-style American soul; between machine-driven rhythms and the simple strumming of an acoustic guitar; between tunes that bend down toward the very earthy and tracks that reach up to the very heavenly. For Scott, this all comes naturally because, in his life as well as his music, he's deftly managed a balancing act between cultures, sounds, and influences.<p> Born in London in 1973, Glen Scott is the son of a school teacher mother and a Pentecostal preacher father, Jamaican émigrés committed to good education and maintaining a strong faith. At his dad's church, where gospel and island music fueled the services, nine-year old Scott was offered his first crack at the spotlight. When the congregation's teenage organist suddenly quit, the elder Scott offered Glen and his brother the chance to take over the newly abandoned Hammond organ. Neither of them really knew how to play*the organ just looked cool*but the young Scott managed to outrace his brother to the instrument and claim it as his own.<p> Thus a musical career was born. Though Scott has evolved a very personal style since then, his work bears the mark of his gospel training: He brings a church-bred soulfulness to even his most secular tunes, and the ability to convey an uplifting message in all his work.<p> When he was a teenager, Glen's family moved to suburban London, a short distance but a far cry from the world in which he was raised. His parents continued working and ministering in the city; when Scott started getting into some scrapes with the law, his father urged him to get involved with a reggae-gospel band his fellow churchgoers had formed.<p> So Glen found himself living a sort of double life, with school days in the predominantly white suburbs and nights rehearsing in multiracial East London. Although playing Bob Marley covers retrofitted with gospel lyrics wasn't quite his calling, Scott became a road-worthy pro at a tender age, with a gift for vocal harmonies to augment his growing keyboard chops. By age 15, he had his own gear*a Hammond organ, an amp, and a drum machine*and had started to write his own tunes. Scott is fond of early Seventies American r&b: timeless sounds from slightly before his time, ranging from Donny Hathaway and Bill Withers to Parliament/Funkadelic and Cameo. But he's also eager to name-check artists as far afield from the worlds of soul, reggae, and gospel as Crosby, Stills, & Nash and the Beach Boys. For him it's all about the harmonies. Glen can go off about Pet Sounds with the same enthusiasm he brings to a tale about the day he and his brother first discovered a very used copy of One Nation Under A Groove at a local record shop. Glen's musical adventurousness and genre-be-damned approach shows throughout Without Vertigo. He acknowledges no boundaries of nationality or race in his music and successfully blends the modern European, classic American, and Caribbean sounds that have shaped his work. It's the sort of colorblind creativity that has distinguished great artists from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton in the late Sixties to Prince and Talking Heads in the early Eighties.<p> Scott wasn't an overnight success on his own, but sharp ears throughout London got hip to the young performer's gifts through his made-in-my-flat tapes and solo gigs at intimate clubs like Ronnie Scott's and the Jazz Cafe. His career moved onto a faster track in 1997 after he was introduced to Swedish producer and guitarist Martin Terefe, who had recently come to London to expand his own career beyond his homeland. Scott and Terefe were instant soulmates as well as collaborators. Scott bet his savings on a studio space where they worked on the tracks that would become Without Vertigo. Finding the space was a significant enough turning point that Scott immortalized that morning in "Valentine Malloy," a lovely, Beatlesque track named after the doorman of the building they had stumbled upon.<p> Glen has managed to keep Without Vertigo a fairly homegrown affair, reflecting where he's come from: the apartments, clubs, rehearsal rooms, and churches where he'd honed his craft. In fact, the two most delectable pop tracks on the album, "Heaven" and "It's Alright," were re-corded in Scott's London flat. Given his unfettered attitude, Scott can employ drum-and-bass rhythms on the playfully sexy "Wet Super-model," then croon over a string sec-tion on "A Piece Of My Heart." In his lyrics, he doesn't so much wrestle with the spirit over the flesh as celebrate them both; worldly pleasures seem to inspire loftier thoughts. Glen Scott is an artist poised to gain the world, but, as evidenced by Without Vertigo, he's not about to lose his soul.  <HR align='center' width='50%'> <B>Your browser does not support frames!</B><BR><BR> Some of the features on this site require a frames-capable browser, since much of the functionality would be impossible without frames. For best results, we recommend that you download <A HREF='http://home.netscape.com/comprod/mirror/client_download.html' TARGET='_top'>the newest version of Netscape</A> now.<P> <A HREF='http://home.netscape.com/comprod/mirror/client_download.html' TARGET='_top'><IMG SRC='http://home.netscape.com/comprod/mirror/images/now30_button.gif' ALT='Download Netscape 3.0' WIDTH='88' HEIGHT='31' BORDER='0'></A><BR CLEAR='ALL'><P> <B>AOL Users:</B> You must be running AOL 2.5 or later for Windows to use Netscape (Keyword: UPGRADE). You will also need to download and install WINSOCK.DLL (Keyword: WINSOCK). 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