maudlin of the Well (commonly abbreviated as motW) is an

avant-garde metal Avant-garde metal (also known as avant-metal, experimental metal, and experimental) is a subgenre of heavy metal music loosely defined by use of experimentation and innovative, avant-garde elements, including non-standard and unconventional soun ...

band from Boston, Massachusetts. Their music contains elements from many different genres including

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...

psychedelic rock Psychedelic rock is a rock music Music genre, genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelia, psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound ...

post rock Post Rock may refer to: * Post-rock, a form of experimental rock music * Post Rock (South Georgia) Elsehul (also Paddocks Cove, Else Cove, Elsie Bay, Elsa Bay, Else's Hole, and Else Bay) is a bay along the north coast of South Georgia Island in t ...

art rock Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that generally reflects a challenging or avant-garde approach to rock, or which makes use of modernist, experimental, or unconventional elements. Art rock aspires to elevate rock from entertainment to an art ...

progressive metal Progressive metal (sometimes shortened to prog metal) is a broad :Fusion music genres, fusion music genre melding heavy metal music, heavy metal and progressive rock, combining the loud "aggression" and amplified electric guitar, guitar-driven s ...

doom metal Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other heavy metal genres.K. Kahn-Harris, ''Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge'' ...

death metal Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, feat ...

, and

gothic metal Gothic metal (or goth metal) is a fusion genre combining the aggression of heavy metal with the dark atmospheres of gothic rock. The music of gothic metal is diverse with bands known to adopt the gothic approach to different styles of heavy met ...

, as well as

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It u ...

and

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

. After a five-year hiatus, the band re-united to record their latest album, ''

Part the Second ''Part the Second'' is maudlin of the Well's fourth and most recent album. It was funded by donations from fans, and released for free on the internet in three formats, including a FLAC-encoded 24-bit version. The fans who donated prior to the alb ...

'', which was funded by fan donations and released online May 14,

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

for free.

Biography

maudlin of the Well released three full-length albums before disbanding in 2003. These albums included 1999's ''My Fruit PsychoBells...A Seed Combustible'' and 2001's ''Bath'' and ''Leaving Your Body Map'', these last two made as complementary companion albums. The band had a consistent core membership, which consisted of Jason Byron, Greg Massi, and Toby Driver. Throughout its career a sort of "

revolving door A revolving door typically consists of three or four doors that hang on a central shaft and rotate around a vertical axis within a cylindrical enclosure. Revolving doors are energy efficient as they, acting as an airlock, prevent drafts, thus de ...

" of members and session musicians participated as needed. maudlin's music, lyrics, and atmosphere dealt predominantly with the subject of

astral projection Astral projection (also known as astral travel) is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE) that assumes the existence of a subtle body called an " astral body" through which consciousness can functio ...

. The band described their approach as trying to ''find'' music rather than ''compose'' it. This was done through practicing astral projection and

lucid dream A lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment; however, this is n ...

s, from which they were purportedly able to "bring back" pre-existing music from the

astral plane The astral plane, also called the astral realm or the astral world, is a plane of existence postulated by classical, medieval, oriental, and esoteric philosophies and mystery religions.G.R.S.Mead, ''The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tra ...

(as stated by Toby Driver in the liner notes included with the reissued ''Bath'' and ''Leaving Your Body Map''). In late 2001, the band began working on a fourth studio album. During this time, the band lost several longtime members, changed labels, and ultimately renamed themselves to

Kayo Dot Kayo Dot is an American avant-garde metal group. Formed in 2003 by Toby Driver after the break-up of ''maudlin of the Well'', they released their debut album ''Choirs of the Eye'' on John Zorn's Tzadik Records that same year. Since then, Kayo ...

. This fourth album was later released in 2003 as Kayo Dot's ''Choirs of the Eye''. The Dark Symphonies label re-issued ''Bath'' and ''Leaving Your Body Map'' in 2006 and ''My Fruit PsychoBells...A Seed Combustible'' in 2008, all with bonus tracks consisting of early demos. On June 20th, 2008, Toby Drive
published a blog post
explaining that he had unreleased motW material on his mind and was considering giving community-funding a try in order to have it materialize as a free to download, digital-only release. Driver questioned whether this could be done considering the high cost of production and mastering and the band's relatively small following. A fan of the band, Etienne Dubé, late

of playing

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throughout the following month in an attempt to finance the new material. Dubé documented his progress on his blog, successfully raising $6000 for the project by the end of July 2008. On the band's MySpace page on July 27, 2008, as well a
Driver's blog
it was announced that Dubé's donation allowed them to record a new full-length album, while further fan donations would be going towards hiring orchestral musicians and a possible physical release. According to Driver, only two songs at the time could be considered "100% old motW material", but he would work with "a dozen worthwhile fragments" and expand upon them, with the end result being, in Driver's words, "a hybrid of two different eras of my compositional mind". Recording for the new album started on February 10, 2009, and the album, titled ''

'' was finally released in May 2009. It is available for free download in various file formats (

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

and

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

) o
motW's website
torrent networks, or alternatively, it can be streamed directly from the site. An amalgam of many different musical styles, the new songs share an ethereal quality with previous motW recordings, but are distinctly more mellow than the group's prior releases and contain no death growls. The Finnish label Blood Music later ran a limited CD pressing of ''Part the Second,'' as well as further small runs of the band's previous albums, in 2012. The project has remained inactive since then with the exception of a reunion show in August 2015 at The Stone in New York City, announced by Greg Massi in his podcast on January 2, 2015, as part of a several day celebration of Toby Driver's career.The Stone calendar
for August

Discography

Demos

* ''Through Languid Veins'' - 1996 * ''Sacred Spaces: Second demo, January 1997'' - 1997 * ''Begat of the Haunted Oak: An Acorn'' - 1997 * ''Odes to Darksome Spring'' - 1997 * ''For My Wife'' - 1998

Albums

* '' My Fruit Psychobells...A Seed Combustible'' (1999) * '' Bath'' (2001) * ''

Leaving Your Body Map ''Leaving Your Body Map'' is maudlin of the Well's third album, and was released alongside its companion album ''Bath'' on the Dark Symphonies record label in 2001, shortly before their break-up. Background ''Leaving Your Body Map'' and its sist ...

'' (2001) * ''

'' (2009)

Compilations

* ''The Complete Works'' (2012)

References

External links

* *
Official MySpace Account
* {{Authority control Heavy metal musical groups from Massachusetts American art rock groups Musical groups established in 1996 American avant-garde metal musical groups