The New Deal (band)
Encyclopedia
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. With a drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
mer (Darren Shearer), bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
ist (Dan Kurtz, now playing with Dragonette
Dragonette
Dragonette is a Canadian electropop group active since 2005. Dragonette consists of singer-songwriter Martina Sorbara, bassist and producer Dan Kurtz and drummer Joel Stouffer....
), and keyboard player (Jamie Shields
Jamie Shields (musician)
Jamie Shields is a professional keyboard player and founding member of The New Deal. He is also a partner in Studiocat, a company that writes music for television and film...
), the music incorporates many elements of modern electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
, which they have branded live progressive breakbeat house
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
.
The band formed in 1998 after a friendly, impromptu jam session they had at the Toronto venue the Comfort Zone. Upon listening to a recording of the show, they were transfixed by how much it sounded like a DJ mix. They subsequently released the jam session as their first album, This Is Live.
The band was without a name prior to the release of This Is Live. Jamie Shields, whose previous band One Step Beyond had wrapped up recently, indicated that the band hadn't settled on a name. At one point, they were calling themselves "Reprise". The New Deal stuck shortly afterwards.
Originally billing themselves as an acid jazz
Acid jazz
Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop, particularly looped beats. It developed in the UK over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance: jazz-funk musicians such as Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd and Grant Green are...
group, they soon found themselves swept up into the emerging musical genre of livetronica
Livetronica
Livetronica, a portmanteau of the words live and electronica, is a sub-genre of the jam band movement that blends such musical styles as rock, jazz, funk, and electronica. It consists primarily of instrumental music. The terms "Jamtronica" and "Trance fusion" are also used to refer to this style of...
. The drumming of Shearer often resembles the simplicity of a drum machine
Drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums or other percussion instruments. They are used in a variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music...
, while still tastefully complementing the accompanying music. Interestingly, Shields never loops a keyboard track and always plays everything live, even if a pattern is to be repeated. Thanks to the widespread sharing of bootleg
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
versions of their early live shows, a national buzz ensued and within two years, and they signed a major label contract with Jive Electro.
The promotion with Jive proved disappointing, and the band fell short of a highly-anticipated crossover. None the less, they continued to tour, developing their fanbase. They released several more live shows on a label they created, Sound+Light Records, and produced two studio releases in 2003: Please Be Seated and Gone Gone Gone. In 2004, after a year-long hiatus, The New Deal toured several cities, often playing to crowds of 800 or more demonstrating the continued devotion of their fans.
The band continued to tour, and over 200 recorded shows have been made available at the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
and etree
Etree
etree, or electronic tree, is a music community created in the summer of 1998 for the online trading of live concerts. etree pioneered the standards for distributing lossless audio on the net and only permits its users to distribute the music of artists that allow the free taping and trading of...
for downloading. In recent years, seeing the band live has been difficult as concerts have become sporadic. Only a few recent concerts have been made available because of difficulties accommodating "tapers" and obtaining soundboard recordings.
On April 8, 2011 an e-mail was sent out stating The New Deal would be breaking up in 2011. According to the e-mail the band feels "We have come to a point where the time and commitment that it takes to maintain our band at its best is no longer possible.". A summer and fall tour is being planned to end off the 12 year career.
Recordings
- THIS IS LIVE (19991999 in music-Events:*January 7**After eight years of marriage, Rod Stewart and supermodel wife Rachel Hunter announce their separation.**Paul McCartney attends the first of his stepdaughter Heather's first housewares collection in Georgia....
) - The New DealThe New Deal (album)The New Deal is a live album released by the Canadian electronic music trio The New Deal in 2001. The bulk of the album was recorded at performances in Atlanta GA, Ithaca NY, Northampton MA, and Montreal PQ, though it was sculpted into a larger piece in the studio.The album was nominated for...
(20012001 in musicSee also:* 2001 in music Record labels established in 2001-Events:*January 1**Comeback of Guns N' Roses in House of Blues**Hum disbands.*January 17 – Bass player Jason Newsted leaves Metallica after 14 years with the band....
) - ReceiverReceiver-Technology:* The listening device part of a telephone** The handset that sometimes contains the above device** The headset that can also contain the above device.* Audio-Visual receiver* Digital media receiver...
(2001) - LIVE:NYC O5.31.02 / 06.01.02 (20022002 in musicThis is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 2002.-Events:*February 3 – U2 perform during the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXVI...
) - LIVE:PORTLAND ME 12.17.99 / GUELPH ON 04.05.00 (REISSUE) (20022002 in musicThis is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 2002.-Events:*February 3 – U2 perform during the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXVI...
) - Gone Gone Gone (20032003 in music-January:* January – following an investigation by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and London detectives, police raids in England and the Netherlands recover nearly 500 original Beatles studio tapes, recorded during the Let It Be sessions. Five people are arrested...
) - Please Be Seated EPExtended playAn EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
(2003) - Live: Late Night 8.27.05 (2006)
- Live: Toronto 7.16.09 (2009)
External links
- Official Site
- The New Deal collection at the Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
's live music archive - Interview with Dan Kurtz on TheWaster.com