Main Street West Records the Oracle Session Project

Main Street West Studios is bringing you the best of Philly’s passionate, talented, ready to play musicians as they step out of their usual bands and projects in order to record with the Oracle Sessions.

Each Oracle Session recording features five to eight musicians from various genres, each with a particular ease and talent of musical voice, to record together for one day at Main Street West--located at 52nd street‘s Eris Temple. Each session is then mixed, produced and released the following month for sale at local Philadelphia stores, at MSW’s online store, at performances around the city where participating members of the Oracle Orchestra are playing, and as a subscription for the music afficianado who simply needs to hear the newest sounds and the hottest unsigned talent.

This project has been conceived to bring today’s sounds from the West Philadelphia musical hotbed to you as fast as possible. The musicians chosen for Oracle Sessions have a drive, and immediacy that should be recognized as part of our musical legacy. This legacy extends from the contemporary talent springing into the national “Independent” rock scene, all the way back to when our West Philly was home to the center of all popular musical culture--American Bandstand.

The musical literacy of our 52nd street neighbors has been cultivated by every great touring jazz performer in the past 80 years--EVERYBODY played the strip. To honor that tradition, the Oracle Session is capturing the real-life virtuoso and divas of the current underground scene to show that our passions have not vanished in the face of economic hardship, and an inability of 52nd street venues to attract any large touring acts.
Instead, we now hear sock hop melodies alongside vapid and harsh electronica musings. There is an emerging style that digests jazz, and jam metal, and ambient, and ritualistic punk/prague rhythms to form a historically unique musical landscape.

You can think of it as the Oracle at Philadelphia--Very loosely modeled after the Greek Oracle at Delphi----ancient history, I know---- But in the town of Delphi there were games that preceeded the Olympics, and in these games there were competitions for musical and poetic skills. This was a meeting place for the best hands in the land to gather every so often and trade licks.

Welcome to Oracle 2010. We still trade licks, but our gear has plugs, and we still occasionally play in loin cloth. Needless to say, Each Oracle Session, by the time it is distilled to its finest moments, and edited together is guaranteed the most unique/weirdest 35 to 45 minute musical adventure for your money.