From 2016-2018 in Chicago, The Gabriel Construct live band had the same lineup as Matt Tate’s Pavlov3 live band. As the story goes, Matt decided to expand his live band from a duo to a full ensemble, fleshing out the arrangements of his material and exploring it in a new context. As he’d helped me assemble the live lineup for TGC, we soon found ourselves in a position where our two bands had nearly identical (and, shortly after, completely identical) live lineups. Effectively, we became the same band playing two different pools of material live under two different names. At a show where we were both on the bill, I suggested that we try fusing together the two piles of material into a single long set, and I created segues between the Pavlov3 and TGC material. Before long, the distinction between between the two groups vanished, and it ceased to matter which name we were playing under – each set featured a mix of songs by me, Matt, and Sophia Uddin, plus an always-evolving collaborative composition based on an initial idea by Bill Banks. We never did find a new name, though Bill liked to call us Plorp behind the scenes.

12/16/2016
We covered King Crimson’s ‘Frame by Frame’ as the opening song of our set at Reggie’s Music Joint, Chicago, IL, at the Sons of Ra CD Release Show on December 16, 2016. I was working on the THRAK Score book at the time, and we felt it was time to actually perform a King Crimson song! I thought it would be fitting to share our second and final performance of the song in honor of the upcoming BEAT tour. You can, of course, find a full transcription of this song in The Discipline Era Transcriptions (Order at: US / International), which I transcribed and Matt Tate proofread – but that score was unfinished at the time of this performance. Later on in the night, Matt also joined Sons of Ra for a cover of ‘Red’.

Lineup L to R:
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals
Angelo Zaigirdar – Bass
Sophia Uddin – Violin, Vocals
Wendell Lowe II – Drums
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Bill Banks – Guitar

3/28/2018
Next up, here’s the beginning of a set this combined band played at Subterranean basement in Chicago (alongside Cleric., Imelda Marcos of Chicago, and Anthony Freemont’s Garden Solutions) on 3/26/18. We opened with my song ‘Arrival in a Distant Land’ then smoothly segued right into Matt’s instrumental piece ‘Singularity’. Both of these pieces left quite a lot of open space for improvisation. We then seamlessly moved into our big collaborative composition, but I’m not ready to unveil that one just yet.

Lineup L to R:
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals
Angelo Zaigirdar – 6-String Bass, Guitar
Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Nick Tate – Drums
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Bill Banks – Guitar

4/5/2018
Lastly, here is another video of that same duo of songs from a few weeks later, this time at Empty Bottle Chicago, alongside Imelda Marcos of Chicago and Puke In The Icetray, on 4/15/18:

Lineup L to R:
Matt Tate – U8 Touch Guitar
Nick Tate – Drums
Sophia Uddin – Viper 7-String Electric Violin
Bill Banks – Guitar
Gabriel Riccio – Keyboards, Vocals

That’s the last of the archival content I had planned for now. Thank you to everyone who followed along!