Barry Cleveland

Barry Cleveland Bio:

Barry Cleveland's guitar playing incorporates elements from diverse sources (psychedelia, progressive rock, ambient, electronic, jazz, funk, and a host of "world" music styles) and combines them with unusual sounds created using unorthodox playing techniques and electronic processing.

Cleveland released his first commercial album on Larry Fast's Audion Recording Company label in 1986. Mythos combined layers of guitar with Bob Stohl and Kat Epple's woodwinds, synthesizers, and light percussion; and Michael Masley's otherworldly bowhammer cymbalom. The CD received glowing reviews in Option, Jazziz, Stereo Review and CD Review, and was chosen as one of the 25 Best New Age CDs in the 1987 Stereo Review Compact Disc Buyer's Guide (in the company of such other "new age" recordings as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon).

Voluntary Dreaming , released on Scarlet Records in 1989, also met with critical acclaim. The music had an electronic edge�Cleveland played samplers and synths in addition to electric and acoustic guitars-but also encroached upon "world music" territory with the addition of Michael Pluznick's African and Middle Eastern percussion. Michael Masley's bowhammer cymbalom, and Robert Powell's pedal steel guitar, added exotic harmonic and melodic touches.

During the '90s Cleveland began a parallel career in journalism. Between 1996 and 2002 he worked in various editorial capacities and wrote dozens of articles and product reviews for Mix, Electronic Musician, and Onstage magazines. In mid-2002 he joined the staff of Guitar Player magazine, where he continues to serve as an associate editor. Cleveland's first book, Creative Music Production: Joe Meek's Bold Techniques , was published by MixBooks (artistpro.com) in the Fall of 2001.

The '90s were a busy time musically as well. Cleveland performed with the improvisational quintet Cloud Chamber, a group that included multi-instrumentalist Michael Masley, bassist Michael Manring, cellist Dan Reiter, and percussionist Joe Venegoni. Cloud Chamber performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area over a period of several years, and released its critically acclaimed Dark Matter CD (produced by Cleveland) in 1998. During this time Cleveland also recorded material that would eventually appear on Volcano and Memory & Imagination .

Volcano is an explosive mixture of African and Afro-Haitian rhythms and progressive, jazz, ambient, and world music elements, featuring Michael Manring (bass), Michael Pluznick (percussion), Norbert Stachel (winds/reeds/EWI), Michael Masley (cymbalom/original instruments), and a host of other extraordinary artists. The 2-CD Memory & Imagination features the very best of Cleveland�s critically acclaimed Voluntary Dreaming and Mythos albums on one disc, and nine loop-based improvisational guitar and percussion compositions on the other.