"Why make music ?

"Why make music ? Because cicadas, turtles, birds, loons, dolphins, whales, wolves, waterfalls, trees, forests, oceans, the wind, the sun, the planets, cosmic winds, and even the Universe all do, it is a communal bond which unites all things."
Stephen Rivera

LOOK OUT ! - A NEW PROG BIG BANG IS COMING , AND THIS IS WAY BEYOND A THEORY!!


	STEVE MCANDREW
	STEPHEN RIVERA
	ROD CHAPPELL
	MIKE KOSACEK

	STEVE MCANDREW Hi friends from Steve (The Bald one)! I am glad you made it here. Here is a bit of background about me! Firstly, I must tell you that I am currently the happiest I have ever been in my musical life. This is due to the explosion of musical output that has occurred over the last year and the wonderful people that I have met through this wonderful medium of the internet. It all started when I stumbled across a musical collaboration site called Collaboration Central (www.artistcollaboration.com) while doing a search in Google for something totally unrelated to music!! I registered on that site and placed a response in a thread where someone was looking for someone to post the guitar solo from Led Zeppelin's The Rover that you can hear at www.the-pleasuredome.com/sounds/The_Rover.mp3. After recording the guitar solo I semi-jokingly (or should that read semi-seriously) suggested that I wouldn't mind giving the vocals a go as well. This was met with "If you can make it sound anything like Robert Plant then you are welcome to sing it" to which I smiled, because I CAN sing like Percy of the Plant!! From the success of that musical project resulted an explosion of requests to do vocals on a myriad of further collaborative projects and if you wish, you can actually check out all my posts at the Collaboration Central site by check all the posts made by Pleasuredome.. One thing led to another and after a few months I was approached by the remarkable Nick Testa (from Chicago US of A) who asked if I would like to try singing a song he was involved in called AintTV, a riff-rock style song with a great hook. I recorded the vocals (with my old SM58 dynamic mic from my gigging days I remember!) and sent them to him. This has resulted in the set-up of an internet band called Aint TV and you can read more about that project at www.ainttv.com. Nick then wrote and presented more songs, some of which I then wrote the lyrics for as well as singing! And we are well on the way to the completion of the first album! I also upgraded my trusty old SM58 for a Studio Electronics SE2200A condenser mic, and with that came a huge leap in the quality of my vocal recordings. As you've realised, I was never one to cut a long story short! A short time after I did The Rover, the genius Stephen Rivera heard it and on liking what he heard; asked if I would be interested in singing for his band Azureth. I submitted my audition for Stephen's wonderful composition Searching, which I have to admit to being one of my favourite songs. Unfortunately, although my audition vocal was fine, the band were also looking for a bass player at the same time and I was pipped at the post by Rod, a prog rock singer/bass player who covered both bases. Although clearly disappointed to have lost out, I realised that you can't win them all!!!!! Things however move on and we arrive at the here and now! Stephen and I again crossed paths and our conversation resulted in the foundation and subsequent growth of this golden nugget of a project........COSMIC SINGULARITY! This partnership is the stuff of what dreams are made of, and I am immensely privileged to be working with the amazing Stephen Rivera! Thanks Stephen for the opportunity for the melding of both our musical creativity. It is a pleasure to work with someone as musically talented as you bro! Stephen and I are absolutely immersed in the creation of this first (of many we hope) progressive rock album FIRST STEPS for you, that we hope will take you on our journey into the cosmos and beyond. I am (and I'm sure that you will be!) absolutely blown away by Stephen's dynamism, as he just creates and creates and creates such remarkably complex and inspiring material. His creations take me on a journey to where I can fully express my inner self, somewhere that is intangible and almost spiritual! The counterpoint to that however and the only negative aspect, is that when it comes to my guitar parts, his chord progressions make me have to work my butt off min7+9...what!? Dim 14th on a -17th root second inversion!!!!!!!!!!!!!???? Ha-ha! Seriously guys, I love this project and I think and sincerely hope that all of you will too! I have an expansive musical background and would seriously suggest that if you want to find out more, you visit the biography page on my own site at www.the-pleasuredome.com! I do warn you however that it is War and Peace. You may also find out more musical pursuits that I have been involved in at Nick Testa's collaboration site at http://www.musicianscollaboration.com. Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing you around and hope that we meet up again real soon. Yours Steve (The Dome)
	STEPHEN RIVERA Location: West Palm Beach, Florida, USA. Zodiac Sign: Pisces. Instruments: Yamaha Digital Grand Piano, Arp 2600, Alesis QS6, MiniMoog, Doepfer Modular analog synths. Other/Previous Bands: The Above, Deep Blue Soul, Bob Price, Azure Crystal, Stuey Blue(Current), Azureth, Binary Spirals(current). Musical Background: 7 years private piano study, majored in Music Composition, studied 3 years with Alan Mason(Carnegie Hall concert pianist). Musical Influences: Chopin, Bach, Ravel, Rachmaninov, Debussy, ELP, YES, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Kansas, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa. Favorite Keyboard players: Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, Patrick Moraz, Vladimir Horowitz, Art Tatum, Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Chick Corea, Jordan Rudess. Some favorite "new" Prog Artists: Cairo, Transatlantic, The Flower Kings, Jordan Rudess. Some favorite Movies: Frank Herbert's Dune(1983 version), Contact. Some favorite Books: BioCosm-James Garner, The Alchemist-Coelho, Star Maker-Stapledon. Latest Books read: Fabric Of The Cosmos - Brian Greene, Parallel Worlds - Michio Kaku, PHP Phrasebook - Wenz, PHP and MySQL - O'Reilly. Personal Philosophy: When you follow your dreams, the Universe conspires to open all doors.
	ROD CHAPPELL Bass Guitar Acoustic & Classical Guitars Backing Vocals With LightSpeed: Other/Previous Bands:ZON, Lightspeed, Vehicle Musical Background: Started playing guitar at age 12. Started bass at 15. Started keyboards at 18. Been singing all my life Musical Influences: Beatles, Yes, Pink Floyd Lazarus Favorite Bass players: Chris Squire and Tony Levin Some favorite "new" Prog Artists: Spock's Beard, Flower Kings, Transatlantic, Combination Head Some favorite Movies: The Secret, Galaxy Quest, Mystery Men, The Point Some favorite Books: The Secret, Lord of the Rings, technical manuals Latest Books read: The Secret, What the Bleep do we Know? Personal Philosophy: We become what we think about the most...alter your thoughts and you alter your life.
	MIKE KOSACEK I live in the Austin, TX area (aka "Live Music Capital of the World") and I have 25+ years of experience playing live as well as studio recording playing many styles of music including rock, blues, jazz, reggae, and country. I have played live and/or recorded with artists such as: Johnny Apollo and the Saturn Seven, Steve Alexander, Johnny Reverb and Dream House, The Blades, The Sibling Rivals, Timmy and the Timebombs, Murry Woods and Tangled Blue, Junior Medlow, The Lords of Love (with Jesse Taylor), Black Coffee, Natalie Zoe, Memphis Train, Joanna Howerton, L.A. Jones and the Blues Messengers, The Doc Hogan Band, The DellTones, Malachi, Elliott Fikes and Soul Serenade, Derral Gleason, HitnRun (formerly The Baby Boomers), Alibi, the River City Jazz Group and many more. With these bands, I've gotten to share the stage with bands such as Bobby Blue Bland, Storyville, the Booze Weasels (Joe Ely's band), and Human Rights (ex-Bad Brains singer H.R.). Prior to all of this, yeah I was a band geek too, and I played snare drum in high school and college level marching (corps-style) bands. My style tends to steer toward the side of "less is more" or "groove" drumming (unless requested otherwise of course). I will listen to the song and attempt to compose a part that makes it feel good. I'm easy to work with and will do my best to find the exact sound and feel you are looking for. I produced two Alibi CDs (Live at the Roadhouse & Live in Austin) using Pro Tools to mix and master the CD. I also just completed my own solo CD (with my own original compositions) as well as working with a few other local recording projects, bands and singer/songwriters.