Guy Babylon: Babylon Bleu – surely not a one off?
Sometimes you find an artist (Guy Babylon in this case) who you just wish would release more music as you know they are so capable of producing great stuff. Keyboard Magazine in the late eighties used to run readers songs competitions. If you were an unsigned artist you could submit a song or tune to the competition. They would release the winning track on ‘fexi-disc’ (gasp!) which, to be fair, was fairly adventurous at the time as it still cost a lot of cash to produce music on proper vinyl etc or CD, which at that time as only a few years old. Kudos to Keyboard Magazine for trying. (it was good mag in those days – now it is a small pile off …erm…advertising.)
The winner of the competition was a bloke called Guy Babylon with a track called Babylon Bleu.
The track was an awesome demonstration of a progressive instrumental track. With some very adventurous sounds (for that time) and some great playing Babylon, in less than 3 minutes, takes you through a range of musical motifs sounding like a true 5 member prog band.
You can hear the track on a download at KVR Audio Forums along with most of the other Keyboard Mag flexi disc release – some great stuff there!
With organs, sampled voices and an excellent synth/sampled guitar (expertly played) Babylon shows how to really rock on keyboards. The track has great riffs, great programming, super funky piano and organ and very neat playing – especially the Jan Hammer like pseudo-guitar. A truly awesome piece of music. I wish I could get a modern digitally produced and mastered version of it. Guy, my cash is waiting!
The irony is that is the only piece of music I could ever find from Guy Babylon despite years of searching. He has been part of the Elton John gigging band for many years but doesn’t seem to release any of his own music. A real shame since (in my opinion) we really lack keyboard playing standard bearers.
He does have his own fab website at www.guybabylonfan.net website but is mostly dedicated to touring with Elton John and other session stuff he has done. C’mon Guy write a few solo albums and let us hear what you can really do with today with modern recording technology.
OMG! Haven’t heard Babylon Bleu in years. A true magnum opus and a mini-symphony. This has been on my Winamp repeat for days now. The more you listen the more you hear and appreciate the beauty of the composition, technical ability, and (more interesting to me) the HUGE range of musical influences and intuition: blues, classical, rock, jazz, funk, techno…it’s all there, and every individual instrument (synthesized, of course) sounds like it’s played like an expert in their field AFAIC (although, to me, the drums/percussion are a little derivative and uninspired in places. Let’s have a little more Neil Peart-like material in some sections;-)).
It’s one thing to master one musical genre and execute one or a few pieces competently and convincingly to a discerning ear, but to encompass countless musical genres, soundscapes and emotions in just under than 5 mins, craft the piece together with seamless key changes and musical styles and sounds, get all the phrasing absolutely perfect, arrange EVERYTHING, AND make it sound natural, spontaneous and fun all at the same time is just…well; it’s that elusive pot of gold at the end of every creative musician’s rainbow.
Imho, all “proper” musicians should have this as one of their benchmarks if they aspire to the mantle of Complete Composer.
Oh, and didn’t he say that he just knocked it up in a couple of hours for a bit of fun? Yeah Guy, bring on the solo albums!
Thx so much for this BJ
Drat, the mp3 links were taken down! I wanted to find this track again. Incidentally, the “guitar” tones on this track were from a Hohner Clavinet that had been outfitted with a whammy bar, IIRC it could only bend pitch upward. The article had a pic of Babylon in his studio posing with the whammy’d Clav. I’d love to hear this tune again, it was indeed killer.
I agree with just about everything that has been said here. I haven’t heard the song in years and would LOVE to hear it again… Especially now in light of his untimely death. That song was very influential to me in that it proved to me that average guys could be rock stars too. That might sound a little cliche but I think anyone who heard the song and knows the story would understand what I’m saying. It was a great tune…
If you loved Babylon Bleu, check out Guy’s Las Vegas Twister video, you can find it on Vimeo at http://www.vimeo.com/5391353
Sadly, Guy passed away on Sept. 2. He was a musical genius and the most humble man.
Babylon Bleu is really a beautiful song. Sad news, surely Guy was an enlightened person. I lost my vinyl of keyboard magazine , but I will rediscover this song.
For those who loved Babylon Bleu, you can now download The Best of Guy Babylon on iTunes, including a remix of Babylon Bleu and nine other Guy Babylon compositions. I believe there will be more coming out as well. Guy will definitely live on through his music, what a talent.