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THE STEVE HUNTER BAND - Dig My Garden

Birdland Records is proud to announce the release of 'Dig My Garden', the stunning new album by the Steve Hunter Band.

Steve Hunter is a virtuoso bassist, prolific composer, and band leader. While living extensively overseas Hunter established an enviable international career playing with Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Ulf Wakenius, Jon Mark and Bobby Previte's 'Bitches Brew Project' and has appeared on around fifty albums.

In Australia, Hunter has played and recorded with many of the countries greatest musicians and has won, or been a final nominee, for several major Australian music awards for compositions released on his and other artists' albums.
 ‘Dig My Garden' is Steve Hunter's eighth album as leader. Much of the music was written over a ten month period spent living in Andalusia, Spain. Joining Hunter are James Muller (electric, acoustic guitar) and Matt McMahon (keys) both of whom have both been in Steve's bands for the last eight years, and James Hauptmann (drums, percussion, cajon) who has been in the band for the last three years.

While Dig My Garden features 8 new Hunter compositions, the music is more than a group playing his music and following instructions. Steve strives for the music to reflect the composition and playing styles of the band, writing for and encouraging the input of the individual musicians to create something much more than the sum of its parts.
"I like to write in all different kinds of ways; from very structured and notated through to sketches with virtually nothing on the music page. Consequently the music is carried on the strength of the 'voices' of the players rather than on a singular idiomatic compositional style." Steve

All players make outstanding contributions to Steve's music with a particularly amazing guitar solo on Cazador from James Muller. To all this Hunter provides cohesion, his warm, full and authoritative bass providing a clear voice of direction, giving foundation and grounding for the adventurous music that has grown from the roots and influences of Miles Davis, Weather Report and Chick Corea. Hunter's bass solo improvisations are famous and always an anticipated joy. 'Poema del Bajo' is no exception. "The solo bass piece 'Poema del Bajo' is one of twenty solo bass pieces and my favourite one to play at the time of recording 'Dig My Garden', so I thought I'd record it as a little interlude along with the band pieces."

"My albums as leader have all been quite different to each other: ranging from quartets and septets, to my nine piece horn band 'Nine Lives', to an album of vocal songs featuring several different singers, to purely solo bass on my 1994 album 'Night People'." "I've always had an idea for an album's title in the past, but months went by before I came up with 'Dig My Garden'. I hang out in my garden a lot; I sometimes compose and practice my bass there and talk on the telephone while I enjoy checking out my passion fruit vines and lime tree and the rainbow lorikeets and blue headed wrens. The title could have several connotations but primarily I see it as a simple invitation."

In keeping with the "Spanish" feel, "Dig my Garden" was mastered in Argentina by acclaimed mastering engineer Andres Mayo.

THE STEVE HUNTER BAND - Dig My Garden is available through Birdland Records, and distributed by Creative Vibes

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