Transparent Heart features Animation in its new and energetic lineup: bandleader Bob Belden went back to his Alma Mater, The University of Texas, to find a new generation of musicians (Pete Clagett on trumpet, Jacob Smith on bass, Roberto Verastegui on keyboards and Matt Young on drums) and thus rejuvenate the band in order to embrace a new story-telling challenge – the history of Manhattan’s last 35 years as seen through his eyes.
From discrimination to isolation to destruction and opposition to gentrification, Transparent Heart is Bob Belden’s ode to his muse. Memory filtered through the adoption of a ruthless technological template and served with an intensity that pairs with that offered by Miles in the early 70’s.
As stated by Bob in an early interview, it is
“…a proto-technological aural narrative of Manhattan as it descends into an urban paranoid police state using a post-electronica template and applying an ‘out for blood’ attitude of the next generation of jazz musicians into a sound that is beyond description and is performed at the most intense level imaginable. Its a biographical look at the city from my perspective of living here 30 years straight in a row through all of the social upheavals that created a visual sound of the city”