Emmett Frisbee – Sound Paintings


“Emmett Frisbee used to travel the country entering Hoagy Carmichael look-alike contests. He was never a winner, though once he was one of the ten finalists.

Discouraged, penniless and having turned vegetarian, Emmett decided one Thanksgiving over his bowl of cold oatmeal to make music his career. Life took an immediate upward swing. Today, Emmett Frisbee owns a tuned piano and two pairs of shoes. He is the father of two children and doubles on sax.

Though he plays a gig here and there, mostly for House-of-Toast Fast Food Restuarant closings, Emmmett whiled away most of the summer fashioning this totally ridiculous collection of absurd sounds, hoping to pawn it off to his friends under the guise of an ‘album’.

It IS original, no doubt about it. Every cluster of chords, run of notes, refreshing pauses (if only there were more…) and chains of melodies poured from the creative cranium of one Emmett Frisbee. However it is still unclear why he chose to originally title this album The Best of Gladys Knight and the Pips. The album has been retitled Sound Paintings.” – Donna Tabor. Sound Paintings album notes.

Conceived by “Pedestrian Saxophonist,” Emmett Frisbee of Pittsburgh, and “soon to be a major film”, Sound Paintings is pretty much everything you could possibly want from a 1980 soundtrack to an avant garde movie that exists only in the head of it’s author. Bugged out fusion, field recordings of trains and typewriters, intense synth experiments, solo lounge piano and an almost keytar-ish tribute to jimi hendrix (!!). He’s even backed by a pretty formidable band of pittsburgh sessioners including Larry McGee & Kenny Blake.

Frisbee has his own very informative website that features a history of his involvement in the local music scene, advice on rabbit breeding, and pictures of Frisbee in an elf suit.

Emitt Frisbee promo flyer (Thanks, Carlos!)

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