About the Music

The seeds of Nature Trail were sown in the early '90's, when Andy and Dave were regular members of the Hoolhan Gaia band. All the players were biologists with a love of nature, and the music had a very strong spiritual energy drawn from their times spent in wonderful North Queensland reef and rainforest environments.

In 1996, Andy and Dave formed Nature Trail as a duo based around the sounds of acoustic guitar, drums and percussion. The emphasis on natural inspiration was still very strong, and creative improvisation within a latin-style rhythmic framework was the key element of the music at that time. The duo played off and on through '96 to '98.

1999 brought the highly talented West-African musician Mohamed Lamine Bangoura to Townsville. Andy (drums) and Dave (guitar & bass), along with Gray (djembe), formed the core of the rhythm section in Lamine's electric band, Etoiles D'Afrique. The band played to packed crowds in Townsville and Magnetic Island during 1999 and 2000, and presented a great opportunity for the players to study the application of contemporary Afro-latin and Afro-reggae music in a live setting with a true master. Lamine returned to Africa late in 2000, however the core members of the band played several festivals in the Townsville area during 2001 as KASAMA!

It was during 2001 that Andy discussed with all the current players, the possibility of reforming a new and improved Nature Trail, as a means of blending nature-inspired creative improvisation, with the infectious grooves of the Afro-latin music they had played with Etoile's D'Afrique and KASAMA! All were enthusiastic about the idea, so the slow process of writing some new material began, slotted in between the players other musical and work commitments.

The first Nature Trail (mark II) live gigs took place during the latter half of 2002, mainly on Magnetic Island. Late that year, Andy had a chance meeting with his new neighbour Matt Hill (keyboards), who had just arrived in North Queensland from Melbourne and a long stint with the ambient electronica band Amphibian.  The ensuing musical discussion quickly turned to Afro-Latin music, and both players were excited about the prospect of adding Matt's Roland XP-30 (with it's hundreds of sounds!) into the Nature Trail Line up.

The summer of 2002-2003 saw Andy, Gray, Dave and his partner Michelle (vocals), and Matt and his wife Lisa (flute) doing some intense playing and composing up on Olympus Crescent at Magnetic Island. A very special energy was present at the sessions, and the addition of Matt's keyboard sound brought a wonderful depth to the melodies, not to mention a wicked sense of the bizarre in the creative solo sections! In between breaks for surfing and yoga, the band wrote some 15 new pieces which touched on everything from odd-meter funk, island reggae, african voodoo, to light jazz, hip-hop, afro-beat and brazilian street samba! In each work however, the focus was on a spacious approach to melody construction, ample time for groove development, and the freedom for each players musical voice to be heard in the context of improvised solo sections.

Nature Trail played short sets of the new material for the first time at the New Year's Day and Australia Day gigs at the beautiful waterside stage at Picnic Bay, to a very warm response from the gathered crowds!   Michelle danced up a storm and did a great job on the vocals on her original compositions "Black-White" and "One & the Same", adding a fantastic stage front visual appeal to the performance.

Information on the musical pieces

Afro-Medley

There are so many great dance rhythms that come from African music, in widely differing time signatures, yet the deeper you dig into the music, the more similarities you find! What we are trying to do with Afro-Medley is play three of the common rhythmic styles in succession, to illustrate this musical brotherhood. And of course, in the process, create a piece of music with a super hot dance groove!!

This piece starts in 6/4 time, with a heavy bass drum pulse on beats 1 and 4, and an even 4-beat polymetric bass line, which is the foundation of many typical African and Cuban voodoo rhythms. At the end of the 6/4 section, we start bringing all the instruments back to the 4 beat bass polyrythm, which has the effect of switching the feel to the foundation of the second "Yankadi-style" section, giving the impression of an increase in intensity and a change from a straight 6/4 to a faster & swinging 4/4 feel. The Yankadi has a key change and a more active role for the acoustic guitar. Dave plays an authentic African melody he developed while playing with Lamine Bangoura in Etoiles D'Afrique, so this section of the medley has a strong African dance feel, helped in large part by the authentic djembe patterns that Gray layers underneath.

After the second break, we move into the "Makuru" section, where we keep the 4/4 pulse but straighten the feel by playing samba-style 16th note subdivisions. This has the effect of cranking the dance feel and intensity up even higher, sort of like leaving Conakry, only to land in the Carnival in Rio! Matt's keyboard bass-line now moves to a baio style, which is one of the important rhythms brought to Brazil by the African slaves, and Dave lays down a beautiful fast samba on the acoustic guitar. Andy and Gray fill out the rhythm section with a combustible drum kit& conga groove, and the band plays some break figures to allow the drummers to trade 4-bar timbale and djembe solos here to complete the street samba feel! The piece ends with a Batucada style outro.

Andy & Gray "trading 4's" in Afro-Medley

Running

This is a light but up-tempo piece in A minor written by Matt and Dave, which evolved out of a jam where we were working with a little 6-beat polyrhythm called a para-diddle-diddle (RLRRLL - much beloved of drum students) layered over the top of a standard bar of 4/4 time. Michelle worked in some spacious lyrics, describing the feeling of running away from, and then back to a captivating lover......

One and the Same

A bright reggae-fusion tune in A major, with a clear message: "We're one and the same, same blood, it's all red....this is the only earth we've got........stand up sisters, stand up brothers...Unite....Unite!". Simple really!

Sunday 7

This piece is a bit of a homage to the Hammond B3 organ funk-fusion of bands like Medeski, Martin and Wood. A light 4/4 melody line suddenly explodes into a punchy rhodes keyboard section in D minor and 7/4, with a heavy polyrhythmic drum pattern underneath. As we cycle through sections of light 4/4 followed by heavier 7/4, Matt progressively takes the 7/4 keyboard solos further and further out off the time....has to be seen and heard to be believed!!

Room for Life

Andy "found" this one while wandering blissfully through the jungle on Magnetic Island one fine spring morning, looking at the riot of vegetation and marvelling how all the plants seemed to find their own little bit of sunlight, their room for life. This piece has a distinct latin flavour, with the main section in F-major based around the strongly syncopated rhumba clave, and the middle section drawing on a heavy Baio rhythm which is typical of Brazilian music. A dance floor filler!

Afro - Five

More experimental fusion, this time in C-Major.........taking a standard Afro melody like Kassa, which is based around the Son Clave, and stretching it out to 5/4 instead of the usual 4/4........creates some interesting tension but also with a feeling of extra space. We resolve this groove back into a very latin samba in 2/4, to which Matt added the catchy little nursery-rhyme style melody and vocals....." Higher, is where you're gonna be, if you keep on bossing me!"

Sunkissed

This is a very powerful 6/8 groove in D-Flat Minor, with a great break, written by Matt, Dave, Michelle and Lisa, and incorporating the short agbekor bell pattern. The Agbekor rhythm is to 6/8 voodoo grooves, what the clave is to latin grooves; it determines how the rest of the melody and rhythm fits together, and it can be played in forward or reverse directions (our other 6/8 piece, in the start of Afro-medley, uses the more typical long agbekor pattern). This piece uses repeated breaks to build intensity, and we also throw in a drum & percussion solo to give it an authentic African feel, so it is well and truly cooking by the end.

Island Side

"Blue water, blue sky, we're goin' to the Island Side!" This is just a simple happy song about the joys of living in North Queensland and being able to live our lives on the ocean and the beautiful islands that abound here. The piece was written at Orpheus Island by Andy, Dave and Michelle on calm November day in 2002, with the ocean a sheet of pure turquoise all the way from the beach at our feet to Hinchinbrook island in the distance. Dave's D-major guitar melody is pure Afro-Caribbean and a true masterpiece of simple yet powerful melodic arrangement. A light brazilian samba in the percussion section fills ot the flavour.

Black-White

Michelle has such an amazing energy and stage presence up front of the band, yet she is also a talented song-writer, musician and arranger in her own right. This piece is her own composition, and has always been a total favorite with the band and with the audiences we've played to. It has it all, themes of racial equality, sexual equality, layered over a bottom heavy hip-hop-funk groove that absolutely swings! The lyrics are very clever, and a play on the irony that Shell's surname is White, and yet she is "a woman of colour", not white, not black, but somewhere in between, thanks to her pacific islander heritage. As she says so powerfully; "I am who I am, I'm not a colour.....I'm a woman!!". Sisters unite!

Cycles of Nine

Pure foot to the floor, body-wrenching voodoo this one! Andy wrote this after playing lots of 6/8 afro-cuban grooves, and beginning to appreciate the power of the triplets that pervade the rhythms in this style of music. He wondered, "what happens then if you take 3 groups of triplets instead of the usual 2, and create a 9/8 voodoo groove......cycles of threes with in threes......???". The answer is a rhythmic hurricane, a musical exorcism with an extra heavy spiritual kick, supported by Dave's thumping bass lines and Matts off-the-wall keyboard solos! (and you thought the solo in 7 was good???).

As for the Future?? 

The writing and playing process continues and the momentum and enjoyment associated with live performance continues to build! All the musicians are keen to work on polishing the existing material, develop several new pieces that are in the pipeline, and practice the environmentally inspired creative improvisation that has always been a Nature Trail trademark.

In terms of the live performance, the band is itching to extend the gigs out to 2 or 3 sets, to allow the proper space for groove refinery and facilitate the application of extended sections of creative improvisation.

Finally, as musicians and human beings, we offer our inspiration & energy to people everywhere in light of the fact that peace, love, and music are the higher ideals....totally attainable once we put the "self" aside and connect with what is real.....follow Mother Nature's Trail and allow your heart to open and your spirit to expand!

So......come and join us at the next gig.....

..........move to the rhythm of earth tribe music..........

.........remember your connection to the universal energy......

....and start to set yourself free....

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