"Your attention please, please yell if you are paying attention," says the automated voice on track five of the Blue Man Group's second album, The Complex.
The Blue Man Group has everyone's attention. Critically acclaimed as innovators of rock, art, performance and song, founders Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton are expanding their empire.
Their second album release also marks the beginning of a nationwide tour and Albuquerque is one stop on a long list of tour dates. The Blue Man Group will be performing at the Journal Pavilion this Saturday. Tracey Bonham and Venus Hum will open the show and contribute to the Blue Man Group's set.
Production designer Marc Brickman will also be lending his talent to the complete show that is a Blue Man performance. Brickman is behind elaborate concerts such as Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney and Genesis and, according to a press release, will be combining elements of performance art, rave culture and rock on this tour.
On the release of The Complex, the Blue Man Group invited an eclectic assortment of big and small names to participate in the sound - a sound that is completely homegrown from original compositions to handmade instruments. Names like Dave Matthews, Josh Haden, Esthero, Gavin Rossdale, Bonham, Venus Hum and Dan the Automator appear on the album's dust jacket.
The new album makes a distinctive jump into a more traditional pop song format. The assortment of tambours, pioneering use of loops and intricate rhythms keep the ultimately simple chord progressions interesting. The best tracks on The Complex and, ironically, the only non-superstars-vocals tracks are "Above," "Time to start," "Your Attention" and "Exhibit 13." These tracks are truer to the former Blue Man sound.
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In an artist statement signed by founders Wink, Goldman and Stanton, they write, "We began to write lyrics and build songs around them. We stuck to the themes and ideas that have been present in all Blue Man work: urban isolation, the cultural mask, group experience, tribalism and sensory overload."
So how do you classify this ensemble of painted blue men, kind of alien, kind of inert, who produce distinctly ethereal sounds with instruments created from the kind of parts you could find at Home Depot?
The Blue Man Group got its start in the underground performance art scene in New York and as the venues increased in size so did the instruments, custom-made from PVC pipe.
Often called experimental performance art, the Blue Man Group's performances are definitely in this vein. In an interview with Beth Massa, editor of Amazon.com, the Blue Man Group spoke about performance art and its place in the artistic community.
"We think the idea of art in the mode of performance is very promising," Wink said. "Somewhere along the way in the 20th century a lot of this conceptual art just got so obtuse and pretentious and intellectual; it's another example of many ways culture got too complex for its own good."
Undercutting the more intensely artistic aspects of the Blue Man performance and always striving to make themselves accessible and interesting in more than an intellectual way, the group slices up the performance with an odd humor.
"We envision the Blue Men kind of coming into our world and taking something familiar, manipulating it and turning it into something else," Wink said.
And that something else, this time around, is an arena-rock-style show complete with star power.
For more information on the Blue Man Group go to www.blueman.com and for tickets go to www.tickets.com.
