MOCHA LAB: The Coffee Cellar

Mocha Lab

The Coffee Cellar

© 2006 Paul Shapera (094922576996) (format: CD-R)

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Eclectic Electronica. This is Lo-fi Funky Breakbeat with a songwriter's craftsmanship. A menagarie of breakbeats with a kaleidscope of sounds both dreamy and fuzzy behind conversations and sounds bytes taped at a bohemian coffeeshop.

notes

Mocha Lab is the pseudonym of electronic artist Paul Shapera, who has scored various multimedia theatrical presentations and modern dance projects across the US, as well as produced for an assortment of singers, hip-hop artists and DJs. Paul has lived an a variety of cities including Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Prague, and Belgrade, and currently resides in New York.

His assesment of the making of The Coffee Cellar album is as follows:

"A speeding ticket in Nebraska changed my life.

While working in New York composing and directing an extremely demanding multi-media theater show, a friend and I decided to take a sanity break and drive non-stop to Portland, Oregon in order to spend New Years with some old friends.

On the trip back, somewhere around 4 in the morning, I was pulled over in Nebraska and given a speeding ticket. Upon returning to the unending drama on the East Coast, I promptly forgot about it completely.

Somewhere around a year passed.

Several months after completing the project, I was passing through a college town in Pennsylvania, visiting an old friend who was working at a coffee shop, The Coffee Cellar, a vibrant, decadent, and rather artsy hang out for the student population there.

I was pulled over by the police only to find that due to my failure to pay the parking ticket, my license had been suspended. My car was subsequently impounded, and I was stranded there for a good three weeks sorting it all out. I ended up spending 12 hours a day in the Coffee Cellar, becoming completely sucked in to the roaring social scene that had assembled around the place. I mopped the floor in the mornings, played piano in the evenings, and left only late at night to go drink. The social scene revolving around the place was raging and I became immersed.

Eventually I went out and bought a cheap little hand held tape recorder, and spent several days sticking the tape recorder in people's faces, leaving it unobtrusively on random tables, and collecting a myriad of sound bytes to later put to music.

When I finally returned home I dug through the hours of recordings, saving the usable chunks in smaller sound bites, and for whatever reason categorizing some of them into general themes.

The music was made in a heated and passionate fury, truly one of my better creative bonfires. The bites were pasted into the music in place of sung verses and choruses, and the music surrounding it eclectically looped, played and collaged in whatever grooves struck my fancy.

A few months later I moved to the town, and began one of the most interesting periods of my life, which included remodeling and helping to run the Coffee Cellar, meeting my wife, meeting my closest friend, and switching gears from theater and dance scores to the eclectic electronic sound I’m now known for.

All that has followed afterwards has come as a result of the domino effect started by a speeding ticket one late winter's night in the middle of Nebraska."

reviews

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  • He's my son
    author: Paul's Mom

    Thoughtful, well crafted, versatile, displays talent. The music is the artist!

  • As original and fresh as it gets
    author: the matthew show

    For the music listener who spends hours in search of something they've never heard before, something truly unique, look no further than this disc. This is one of those rare albums that really makes you listen. It transports you into this place, the Coffee Cellar, through stolen moments of conversation and a menagerie of sounds and beats. Mocha Lab does your eavesdropping for you, and creates a musical mood that puts thoughts, ruminations, and ribald jokes in just the right places. But really, any attempt to describe it will fall short. It's truly unlike anything I've ever heard, in its honesty, soul, wit, and wisdom. Give this album a listen, you'll be glad you did.

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