Elliot Knapp: Cheap Seats at the Cartesian Theater

Seattle based multi-instrumentalist Elliot Knapp built a left-field progressive avant-folk album and called it Cheap Seats at the Cartesian Theater. He played most of the instruments, with a little outside help form friends on acoustic guitar, piano and percussion. It is a concept album about human mind, but don't take it too seriously. The protagonist appears be trapped in a room controlled by "the machine", but the story itself is full of rough drafts and dead ends.

Knapp's wavering vocals are like Kevin Coyne's and the mellower moments of Captain Beefheart. He is not a par with them, however. The album is grab bag of unifinished musical ideas and "kill your darlings" should have been applied to about half of it.

Cheap Seats at the Cartesian Theater is a self-released album. Buy it from his website.

Tracks:

1. An Unsettling Preposition
2. Together on a Train
3. The Knack
4. Turn South
5. Chrysalis (In Three Verses)
6. Adjacent to Not-Really-Anyhow Time
7. I Digress
8. Expedient Means to a Narrows
9. One Tea
10. A Nice Place
11. Homunculus Pierces the Shroud
12. Oh! She's A Woman
13. A Sobering Realization
14. Homunculus Confers with the Projectionist
15. Cheap Seats at the Cartesian Theater
16. Remember/Forget
17. Locked-in
18. Instant Gratification
19. Follow Me Down
20. For Complexity's Sake
21. A House is Not of Loam
22. In Your Dreams

» elliotknapp.com