PATTERN-SEEKING ANIMALS - Boegehold / Keegan / Leonard / Meros

[MinistroRaven]

PATTERN-SEEKING ANIMALS is the brand new quartet featuring the talents of current & former Spock's Beard members Ted Leonard, Jimmy Keegan & Dave Meros as well as long-time contributing songwriter-producer John Boegehold. The band has signed to InsideOutMusic for the release of their self-titled debut album on July 5th, 2019.
 
Of the musical direction, Boegehold comments: “My goal was to produce music that’s progressive and intricate while keeping things immediate and melodic.  Whether a song is four minutes or ten minutes long, I didn’t want more than a few bars go by without some kind of instrumental or vocal hook.”
 
Originally a vehicle for a few tracks John had been working on in early 2018, he quickly came up with enough music to work towards producing an album. With that in mind, he enlisted the talents of Jimmy Keegan (drums & vocals), Ted Leonard (vocals & guitar) & Dave Meros (bass), with Boegehold handling all the synths. He adds: “Besides live strings on a few songs and a female backing vocalist on another, it was all done between the four of us with Dave and Ted ending up as co-writers on some of the material.”
 
With the band obviously being closely associated with Spock’s Beard, John was conscious of exploring different avenues with Pattern-Seeking Animals, whether it was song structures, vocal arrangements, synth sounds or emotional textures. “Pattern-Seeking Animals was a clean slate so I found myself drawing on a few different musical influences and using some contemporary production ideas and sounds that I probably wouldn’t use with SB for various reasons.”



The album will be released on limited CD digipak, gatefold 2LP + CD & as digital album.

As John notes, as the project came together it quickly became apparent that they would want to take this material out live: “Originally it was intended to be a recording project but as it was coming together we started talking seriously about doing it as a live band. Because of the complexity of a lot of the material, it’ll require an additional musician or two to pull it off live. The plan is to tour as much as possible and to come out with a new album at least once a year. In fact, work on the second album is already well under way.”

Stay tuned for a first taste of music from Pattern-Seeking Animals in the coming weeks!

PATTERN-SEEKING ANIMALS online:
http://PSAnimals1.com 
http://Facebook.com/psanimals1
https://twitter.com/psanimals1
https://www.instagram.com/psanimals1/

INSIDEOUT MUSIC online:
www.insideoutmusic.com
www.youtube.com/InsideOutMusicTV
www.facebook.com/InsideOutMusic
www.twitter.com/InsideOutUSA
www.insideoutmusicshop.com

INSIDEOUTMUSIC Spotify Playlist:
http://spotify.com/progrockessentials

[ProfessorPeart]

As I said in the Beard thread:

Bring It On!

[Mladen]

Having been not too impressed by the last SB album, I don't have high expectations from this. But I'll give it a spin.

[The Letter M]

Given John's explanations of the material (being exploratory and different from SB), I'm excited to hear this one. I've seen so many FB posts from John and Jimmy and Ted about this over the last year and I'm glad to see it's finally coming out!

-Marc.

[RoeDent]

I doubt it's going to be that much different from Spock's, tbh. Most bands who start a side-project like this, despite the best intentions, usually wind up sounding like the parent band. It's bound to. It involves the same people. Good job I like Spock's Beard, so this will essentially be the same as getting a new SB sooner than expected.

"Progressive but melodic". So are Spock's Beard.

[KevShmev]

I can't help but wonder why they didn't just use this material for a new Spock's Beard album since it is two current members, a former member, and a guy who has helped write most of their material over the last 15 years.  Regardless, I am sure it will be good.

[Mladen]

That was also my first thought but I was reluctant to post it right away. I'm glad someone else did, though. If this album turns out to be better than Noise floor, it would probably make me sad that the songs weren't performed by SB.

[KevShmev]

I hear ya. I liked the last two Spock's albums, but didn't love either.

[RoeDent]

I feel the same way about TOP and NF as I feel about DT12. I find them all to be very solid and enjoyable albums, but I find it very hard to find the desire or motivation to listen to them in the first place. There's plenty of other albums by them I'm more likely to choose over those.

[King Postwhore]

I'm interested in hearing Ted a the only guitarist in the band.

[JayOctavarium]

I'm interested in hearing Ted a the only guitarist in the band.

I think this is what really sparks my interest as well. I love SB, and Ted in SB, but this like hearing SB but with different dynamics.

[Elite]

This Boegehold guy wrote most of the last couple of SB albums, right? I always wondered who he was and why he's not in the band.

[RoeDent]

It's like John Helmer with Marillion or Peter Sinfield with King Crimson.

[The Curious Orange]

Hmmm. Wonder why Jimmy left SB and then got involved with this? And if they're looking at an album/tour every year - makes me wonder if SB aren't all but over.

Either way, looking forward to this. SB have been kind of lacking in direction since NDV left, so hopefully this will be a "new sound" for them. Oh, and I like the cover!

[Fritzinger]

I can't help but wonder why they didn't just use this material for a new Spock's Beard album since it is two current members, a former member, and a guy who has helped write most of their material over the last 15 years.  Regardless, I am sure it will be good.

Well, Boegehold wrote like 80% percent of The Oblivion Particle and fans complained about it.

I totally get it. Boegehold is a great composer but never gets the credit he deserves in Spock's Beard. I'm guessing he has a buttload of cool material written and ready and just wanted an own band to record it.

Looking forward to this.

[MinistroRaven]

First single: https://open.spotify.com/album/4OeSukjCITgsmJCOGgIZbL

https://patternseekinganimals.lnk.to/PatternSeekingAnimals

[jingle.boy]

Diggin it.  Will definitely be keeping my eye out for this one.

[RoeDent]

The album will be released on July 5th.

And as usual, Burning Shed come good when it comes to finding out the tracklisting and the lengths:

1) No Burden Left to Carry (9:38)
2) The Same Mistakes Again (5:10)
3) Orphans of the Universe (10:28)
4) No One Ever Died and Made Me King (3:54)
5) Fall Away (4:47)
6) These Are My Things (4:52)
7) We Write the Ghost Stories (3:22)
8) No Land’s Man (5:35)
9) Stars Along the Way (10:20)

https://burningshed.com/store/InsideOutMusic/pattern-seeking-animals_cd

[DTA]

I loved the last two SB albums so this is a no-brainer.

[ProfessorPeart]

Was just running through their Facebook and see that they are already tracking the second album as of a few weeks ago. They aren't kidding around.

[Fritzinger]

Was just running through their Facebook and see that they are already tracking the second album as of a few weeks ago. They aren't kidding around.

Wow. Looks like Boegehold has a lot of stuff written that SB couldn't/didn't want to use.

[Mladen]

We can only speculate how it came to this project, but I feel kinda bad for talking about SB needing to give up on outside writers and write more stuff themselves. They did it with Noise floor and the result wasn't much better, and at the same time, Boegehold maybe felt left out so he needed to make a new project. It's an odd development to which we as fans might have contributed.

[Fritzinger]

What do you mean "the result wasn't much better"? Noise Floor is a cool album!

[King Postwhore]

What do you mean "the result wasn't much better"? Noise Floor is a cool album!

Agreed.  I love that album.

[KevShmev]

Hmmm, wonder why Spock's didn't want to use some of the material he had.

I liked Noise Floor, but it didn't have much of a shelf life for me in my CD player. 

[jingle.boy]

Noise Floor is the first SB album I don't own.  I've only gone back to it a couple of times on Spotify.

[KevShmev]

Noise Floor is the first SB album I don't own.  I've only gone back to it a couple of times on Spotify.

It's good, but nothing special, similar to The Oblivion Particle.  Maybe they spoiled us with the first album with Ted, which was fantastic.

[Kwyjibo]

We can only speculate how it came to this project, but I feel kinda bad for talking about SB needing to give up on outside writers and write more stuff themselves. They did it with Noise floor and the result wasn't much better, and at the same time, Boegehold maybe felt left out so he needed to make a new project. It's an odd development to which we as fans might have contributed.

Boegehold has still two writing credits on Noise Floor, five if you add the Cutting Room Floor disc. Stan Ausmus has two and four (five) songs were solely written by SB members. That's not exactly shutting out outside writers out, least of all John Boegehold.

[Mladen]

I was only focusing on the main disc. Compared to TOP, it does feature more stuff written by the band members, so I had a feeling that was a conscious decision.

[Kwyjibo]

I think TOP is the odd one out there, featuring more songs written by outside writers, mainly Boegehold. All other records since Neal's departure have more evenly distributed writing credits.

[The Letter M]

I think TOP is the odd one out there, featuring more songs written by outside writers, mainly Boegehold. All other records since Neal's departure have more evenly distributed writing credits.

Indeed, TOP is definitely an odd one out, but looking at each album since FE, including special editions and bonus tracks, here's the breakdown of the number of songs where a non-member contributed some sort of writing credit:
FE - 6/10
Octane - 7/11
SB - 7/11
X - 6/8*
BNADS - 8/11*
TOP - 6/9
NF - 7/12
*Counting Neal Morse as a non-member/guest writer

Now, if we are talking strictly Non-SB written, here's the low down:
FE - 0
Octane - 0
SB - 0
X - 0
BNADS - 2
TOP - 6
NF - 5

So yeah, the last three albums have been heavy on the "outside help" but the band still plays it all, and to their liking and sound, so for me, it's still very much SB music, but I'll say that TOP doesn't hold up as well as BNADS or NF have for me, but then again, I haven't listened to it in awhile. I think I'll spin it real soon given that it's coming up in my SB Survivor in a few short weeks!

-Marc.

[Kwyjibo]

I don't have any problems with outside writers, if the end result is good I don't really care who wrote what.

I just don't think that Boegehold formed this band because SB doesn't want his songs anymore, and as shown that isn't even the case.

Maybe he just wants to be more than a songwriter for others and wants to play his own songs.

Aynway, looking forward to this and I'm curious if this will sound that much different from Spock's Beard.

[Fritzinger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl7hYwca0uw

The band has just released a new single: No One Ever Died and Made Me King. John had this to say:

"Dave and I wrote this a while back from the viewpoint of a guy feeling sorry for his lot in life. I love the bass tone he came up with and Ted's guitar tone is classic 70s. Is voodoo-swamp prog a genre?"

[ProfessorPeart]

Started listening to this album today. I understand why the Beard may have turned these down. Not that they are bad, per se, but they aren't quite Beard. I started to realize a few songs in that there wasn't a lot of guitar. The keys/synths and bass are the dominating instruments. Dave has his signature tone, but the guitar seems to be mainly used as an accompaniment here and there.

It's also a fairly chill record, so far. Laid-back Beard, Elevator Beard. I sense this will be a grower record that I will need to be in the right mood for. Still a lot to listen to on this but those are my early impressions.

Mouser handled everything so of course it sounds wonderful sonically.

[jingle.boy]

Damn... I forgot this dropped.  Traveling for work this week (my company's annual conference), so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to give this a go.