scott reiter is a criminally underexposed synthesist and sound engineer. he lurks in the studio, crafting sounds in headphones for hours. when he's been onstage, he's generally behind stacks of synthesizers and rack gear, or on the side, doing monitor mixing for some of the biggest names in music. in the past, i've hired him to mix live sound for dream into dust shows.
scott is as elusive as his playing style. he almost always plays keyboards with one hand while the other is changing his sound or tweaking an effect box. he's constantly pushing the envelope of what a piece of gear can do or what a sound can be. what's more amazing is that often he does this in a melodic way.
the best way to capture scott is either while he's jamming with a band, or just letting him go off on his own, and recording without telling him. he's certainly capable of writing great musical parts, but left to his own devices, he is like no other keyboardist i've ever heard.
although he did use a digital/sample keyboard on the new album, scott's weapons of choice are often his korg ms-10 or sequential circuits prophet-5. sometimes he ran these through an adrenalinn to add an extra layer of madness.
as a result, scott's musical voice is probably most dominant on the new album's 5 instrumental pieces. his textures morph from one sound into another, creating soundworlds and then changing the landscape around you. however, several brilliant snippets also became part of other songs throughout the album. the ghostly chorus rhythm in "suspended in fear"; the plaintive wails, sputtering glitches, and epic strings in "end of memory"; lush synthetic washes in "flowers of destruction". he aslo wrote the basis for the intro of "so beautiful and so dangerous", and was the strongest voice in cutting additional section out of "counterfeit" to make it leaner and meaner.
scott's musicality is a huge supportive factor in the album. he may not step out to the front of the stage much, but his musical presence looms so large, you'd definitely miss it if it wasn't there.
to hear scott's amazing sounds, pre-order so beautiful and so dangerous until march 29th using paypal here.
1 comment:
Scott is a close friend and coworker of mine. You pretty much nailed it except you failed to mention two things. One is his sense of humor which is just razor sharp. Try winning a war of words with that guy! Two is his height and very long arms. Both come in handy as an engineer and a keyboard player... Great post following...
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