''Audio'' is the debut studio album by

Blue Man Group Blue Man Group is an American performance art company formed in New York City in 1987. It is known for its stage productions that incorporate many kinds of music and art, both popular and obscure. Its performers, known as Blue Men, have their ...

, released on December 7, 1999, through

Virgin Records Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...

. It was nominated for the

Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album The Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album (previously: Best Pop Instrumental Album) is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording arti ...

. This album was released in two versions: a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

with 5.1-channel versions of the music in both

DVD-Video DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVDs. DVD-Video was the dominant consumer home video format in most of the world in the 2000s. As of 2024, it competes with the high-definition Blu-ray Disc, while both rece ...

(using

Dolby Digital Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3 (see below), is the name for a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, it is lossy compression (except for Dolby Tr ...

) and

DVD-Audio DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format. The ...

formats (one on each side) and a CD with a 2-channel

stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...

mix of each track. A behind-the-scenes video of the album is viewable on a promotional 2000

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

known as ''Audio Video''. This is also included as a bonus on the Audio 5.1 Surround Sound DVD.

Reception

Heather Phares of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

rated ''Audio'' three out of five stars, stating that it "reflects over a decade's worth of musical and theatrical innovation". Although she mentioned that "the spectacle of the group playing its sculptural, surreal-looking instruments is absent from the album", she concluded her review by calling it "an album that proves the Blue Man Group is as innovative in the studio as it is onstage".

Track listing

Personnel

* Producer – Todd Perlmutter * Engineer – Andrew Schneider * Mastered by –

Bob Ludwig Robert Carl Ludwig (born December 11, 1944), is a retired American mastering engineer. He mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists, including Led Zeppeli ...

* Mixed by – Mike Fraser

Blue Man Group

* Phil Stanton – performer: air poles, extension cord bull roarer, ribbon crasher; percussion: drumbone, tubulum, mid-octave PVC, backpack tubulum, dumpster; drums: utne, drum wall, Phil drum;

cimbalom The cimbalom, cimbal (; ) or concert cimbalom is a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box on legs with metal strings stretched across its top and a damping pedal underneath. It was designed and created by József Schunda, V. ...

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion instrument, percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a Membranophone, membrane called a drumhead, ...

* Matt Goldman – performer: air poles, ribbon crasher; percussion: low-octave PVC, drumbone, backpack PVC, dumpster; cimbalom, bass (upside down; gong (shaker); drums: utne * Chris Wink – performer: air poles; percussion:doppler toms, tubulum, drumbone, high-octave PVC, dumpster, backpack tubulum, piano smasher; cimbalom, shaker (utne); drums: drum wall,

cuíca The cuíca () is a Brazil, Brazilian friction drum with a large pitch range, produced by changing tension on the head of the drum. ''Cuíca'' is Portuguese for the gray four-eyed opossum (''Philander opossum'') which is known for its high-pitch ...

* Larry Heinemann – Chapman Stick, bass guitar, guitar (baritone), cuíca * Ian Pai – drums: drum wall, Phil drum; percussion: aronophonic, quellum grill * Christian Dyas –

zither Zither (; , from the Greek ''cithara'') is a class of stringed instruments. The modern instrument has many strings stretched across a thin, flat body. Zithers are typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the fingers or a ...

, bass guitar, guitar (12-string); electronics:electric dog toy * Todd Perlmutter – percussion, drums:drum kit, left-side double drum kit, drum wall, toy drum, Phil drum

Additional musicians

* Jamie Edwards – performer: air poles (tracks: 1, 4, 14) * Chris Bowen – drums: drum wall (track: 7) * Clem Waldman – drums: drum wall (track: 5) * Cräg Rodriguez – drums: drum wall (track: 7); percussion: dumpster (track: 12) * Jeff Quay – drums: right-side double drum kit (tracks: 2, 4, 7, 8, 12 to 14) & drum wall (tracks: 5 & 13) * Byron Estep – guitar (tracks: 5, 7 & 9) * John Kimbrough – guitar (track: 7) *

Bradford Reed Bradford Reed is an American multi-instrumentalist, experimental luthier, and member of the Avant-garde music, avant-garde band King Missile, King Missile III. In the 1980s he invented the pencilina, a custom made string instrument. Discography ...

– zither (tracks: 2, 4, 8, 13, 14) * David Corter – zither (tracks: 8, 9, 12, 13) * Elvis Lederer – zither (track: 1) & Pressaphonic zither (track: 5) * Jens Fischer – zither (tracks: 2, 4, 6, 11, 13, 14)

Certifications

References

External links

''Audio''
at BlueMan.com (archived) * {{Authority control Blue Man Group albums 1999 debut albums