Upcoming shows!

The Gabriel Construct’s live lineup has merged with Chapman Stick/U8 Touch Guitar player Matt Tate’s Pavlov3, essentially becoming one band with two leaders. We have a number of shows coming up.

Upcoming shows

-Pavlov3 @ Progtoberfest II on Saturday October 22, 2pm (Facebook) (Tickets)
We will be playing on the same day as many legends, including Mike Keneally and Trey Gunn. We couldn’t be more excited!

-The Gabriel Construct opening for Kayo Dot at Cobra Lounge! Sunday 10/23, 8PM (Facebook) (Tickets)

-Both bands @ Harding House Halloween Festival. Saturday October 29, 4pm (Facebook)
We will be playing alongside some of the best local Chicago bands, including a light sleeper, Origin of Animal, and Lovely Little Girls.

-Pavlov3 opening for Renaissance at Arcada Theater, St Charles, IL! Saturday 11/12, 8pm (Facebook) (Tickets)

-Pavlov3 opening for Felix Martin at Cobra Lounge! Sunday 11/13, 8pm (Facebook) (Tickets)

-Both bands @ Q-Bar in Darien, IL on Saturday November 18 at 8pm (Facebook)
This will be TGC’s first show outside of Chicago, and we’ll be playing alongside our friends in Legacy Black, who will be playing their first show ever!

-The Gabriel Construct headlining at Martyrs, Chicago, IL on December 12 (with The Phantom Broadcast and Conflux) (Facebook) (Tickets)

-Pavlov3 opening for Sons of Ra album release party @ Reggies Music Joint, Friday December 16 at 7pm (Facebook) (Tickets)

I am also working on a sheet music book for Pavlov3, which I imagine will be the second sheet music book ever for Chapman Stick and U8 Touch guitar. And on that note, the Stick Men drum book is complete and you can check out a bonus score and track from their new record here.

TGC @ Beat Kitchen, 9/7/16

9.7ig_tgc

We will be playing a show at Beat Kitchen at 9PM on Wednesday September 7, 2016 with Gushing Cloud, Pavlov(3) and The Four Three. Bill Banks, Sophia Uddin, Thor Bremer and will be playing in both TGC and Matt Tate’s newly reconfigured Pavlov(3). We first played with Pavlov last October at Martyrs. I’m excited to finally share the stage with Matt!

The Four Three is trombonist Mike Hagedorn’s new trio with Alex Perkolup and Jeff Goulet, and this will be their second show (go check out their first one on Wednesday!). All three of them are members of Lovely Little Girls and Hot Garbage, and have been known to play with Cheer-Accident.

Gushing Cloud is the electronic solo project of saxophonist/bass player Cory Bengtsen (also of Lovely Little Girls and sometimes Cheer-Accident). This will be the first GC show in 2 years. Witness the madness below and I think you’ll be as excited to see this as I am:

Buy Tickets ($8)
Facebook Event

Footage from three first shows

Here is the first half of the first TGC show ever:

The video features performances of Arrival in a Distant Land, Retreat Underground, Subway Dwellers, and the first part of Fear of Humanity. Take a look at the full setlist, or check out an excerpt from Sacha Mullin’s opening set.

Here is a video of the song ‘Sun Dies’ from the show Sophia and I played with CHEER-ACCIDENT on June 19 (also featuring Sacha Mullin and Dante Kester, and also at Martyrs’):

Setlist – Sophia and I also performed on ‘Language Is’ and ‘Rockabilly’, and Sophia made an appearance on ‘Ice Cream and Lies’.

And here is some footage of a cover of the So Weird song ‘Questions’ from the first show I played as a sideman for Sacha (June 13th at The Burlington – setlist):

Logical Phalluses

band photo with name

Logical Phalluses are the demented, sex-crazed alter-ego of The Gabriel Construct. Inspired by John Waters, John Cage, John Christ, John Zorn, John Cale, John Butler, John Tavener, John Frusciante, John Wetton, Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Mr. Bungle, and Tronald Dumpf.

Lineup: see the lineup for Spinning Webs, plus Alex Ellsworth (cello)

‘Pyrorapture’ written by Skull Fist
‘Fred & Ethel’, ‘A Vacation in Your Spleen’ and artwork created by Blood Mask
Recorded and produced by Gabriel Riccio except:
Drums & percussion arranged, recorded and mixed by Travis Orbin
Piano on Pyro & F&E recorded by Jeremy Goody at Megasonic Studios
Mixed and Mastered by William Wells at Eeyore’s Lair

Drum tracking video:

Drum charts:
Pyrorapture – Drum Set | Percussion
Fred & Ethel – Drum Set | Percussion

OUR FIRST LIVE SHOW!

Martyrs_02

The Gabriel Construct will be playing our first live show on October 5, 2015 at Martyrs Live in Chicago, IL (8PM). We will be appearing alongside tapping player Matt Tate’s band Pavlov and singer Sacha Mullin’s solo outfit. TGC’s lineup will be as follows:

Gabriel Riccio – Vocals, keys
Sophia Uddin – Violin, vocals
Jeff Siegfried – Sax, vocals
Sacha Mullin – Vocals, keys
Bill Banks – Guitar
Dante Kester – Bass
Thor Bremer – Drums

Bill Banks and I will also be appearing in Sacha Mullin’s band, so give his solo album a listen before coming out. We hope to see you there!

Buy Tickets ($7)

The current state of things

I apologize for the long silence. I think it’s about time for some news. Here is the current studio lineup of The Gabriel Construct:

Gabriel Riccio: Vocals, Electric Keyboards
Ben Rachbach: Acoustic Piano
Jeffrey Siegfried: Saxophones
Sophia Uddin: Violin
Greg Loman: Guitar
Tom Murphy: Bass
Travis Orbin: Drums

Ever since just before Interior City came out, we’ve been very slowly recording a new TGC record. The working title is ‘Spinning Webs’, but that is subject to change, as I haven’t written any lyrics yet. This time around, all of the drums are being tracked out of Travis’s home studio and the bulk of the other instruments are being recorded with Gabriel’s home studio. We’ve been taking our time on this record, so it may still be quite a while before it comes out. I apologize for the long wait – thank you all for your patience and support!

Travis, Tom and Sophia are all returning from the Interior City lineup. As for the new additions, Greg is a fantastic guitar player who plays with The Funk Ark, in addition to teaching music to wounded veterans with Musicorps to help them rehabilitate. Jeff is a saxophone graduate student from Northwestern University. Ben is an old friend of mine who helped me bring some of the music on Interior City and the upcoming record to life for the first time when we were in college – it seemed only natural to have him return for this record.

In addition to new TGC material, we’ve also been recording a number of side projects, mostly of a more lighthearted nature. Tracks from two of these projects are currently in the mastering phase, so you will hear them soon! They will be a good indicator of what to expect from this group of players and from our new home-oriented production approach.

I’ve decided to announce this now since I’m also currently assembling a live lineup for TGC, and I didn’t want to create any confusion by announcing both lineups simultaneously. Jeff and Sophia will also appear in the live lineup, but the rest of the players will be new!

Take a look inside Interior City’s full score!


I use traditional drum notation in my scores, but Travis Orbin’s drum set transcriptions are written in his own special guitar pro notation. A legend can be found at the top of his transcription of Pixieprog (one of his solo tunes). If you’d prefer to view his version of the notation, you can find it below:
Ranting Prophet
Fear of Humanity
My Alien Father
Retreat Underground
Subway Dwellers
Defense Highway
Inner Sanctum
Curing Somatization

10. Curing Somatization

View Travis Orbin’s drum tracking video for ‘Curing Somatization’:

Read the lyrics to ‘Curing Somatization’.

Gabriel’s Notes: Here we are – the final song from Interior City, and the most intense and relentless song I’ve ever written. I think it is best to let this song speak for itself, so I won’t say too much about it. This was a tough one that put strain on almost everyone involved, thanks to the difficulty of writing a satisfying closer, time constraints, the difficulty of playing the song, technical errors, and the sheer number of layers. Despite the huge amount of material that ended up in the song, quite a bit was cut along the way. Every song on the album is reprised here, though some are much more obvious than others.  I also lifted a rhythm from Messiaen.

I was probably a bit manic while writing this – there are 7 pages of lyrics, and there are almost always multiple texts being sung/spoken at once, often with their own 2-4 part harmonies. I’d write a complete vocal arrangement for a section and decide it wasn’t good enough – but instead of deleting it, I’d turn it down until it was a background detail and write new parts on top of it. I then re-recorded ALL of it in the studio, usually with doublings, resulting in around 60 vocal tracks (including some screams by Travis) and a total of 200+ tracks in the session. Here’s a glimpse of that insanity:

Travis’s Notes: The final and (appropriately) most intense video in the ‘Interior City’ series is “Curing Somatization”. This tune is probably within the top ten hardest I’ve ever tracked, mostly due to time constraints. Gabe didn’t finish the demo until about two weeks before we hit the studio, and between writing parts and rehearsing the rest of the album it was a pretty close shave!

The cymbal setup is the same as “Retreat Underground”, although with my ‘stack’ instead of a splash and a 20″ MDM ride on the right side.

I included a few seconds of “Languishing in Lower Chakras” to try to convey the absolutely devastating segue between both tunes. However, the full effect is best achieved by listening to the entire song, of course.

I also contributed some guest vocals (screaming/yelling), which was a blast. The opening scream is Gabe and myself together in the live room, holding one mic and screaming into it simultaneously. There’s some scattered stuff from 4:30 – 5:17 too.

I’m not gonna bother with notes or highlighting sections – just watch this monstrosity of a piece and enjoy. ‘Interior City’ is one of my favorite sessions ever and I urge you all to purchase the album if you enjoy these session vids. Thank you, Gabe!

Full drum set transcription
Tempo = 90 BPM
Tempo change (1:26) = 100 BPM
Tempo change (5:17 – 5:19) = ‘linear decrease’ to 90 BPM until the drums finish

9. Languishing in Lower Chakras

This track depicts the time the main character spends in the chamber of eternal sleep that he entered in Inner Sanctum. The keyboard parts for this ambient track were entirely improvised, and I liked my demo version so much that I ended up using it on the final record instead of trying to recreate it. This song features reprises of the “choruses” of Inner Sanctum and Arrival in a Distant Land. It includes field recordings from an inner city Philadelphia first grade classroom with a substitute teacher, a high school graduation, the river before a storm, and more, in addition to many processed public domain speeches.

Because it was a home recording, there is no footage of the sessions for this song. Instead, I’ve created a new dark ambient track based around piano improvisation. This off-the-cuff improvisation was performed on an out of tune practice room piano at the University of Pittsburgh into a laptop microphone, but I ended up liking how it came out (sound quality aside), so I turned it into a lo-fi ambient track. Check out the track below: