Apartment 50 - 2009
The Belly of the Whale
The Belly of the Whale was a pop music band from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The idea of the band started in 2003 when singer and keyboard player Libby Landvatter and bass guitar player Nicholas West met each other. Libby wrote songs with crazy classical chord progressions and Nicholas laid down rock sensibilities on top of them. In 2004, the band was officially called Chudda. Chudda went through a drum machine/dance evolution until they decided a fresh start was needed. Nicholas came up with the idea to have a theme for the group. The Belly of the Whale was born.
The Belly of the Whale wanted to «explore the spaces between light and dark». Musically, they were searching for dynamics with the instruments playing off of and contrasting with each other. Lyrically, they experimented with telling stories from all different perspectives.
Nicholas West explained that the idea of The Belly of the Whale came from the American mythologist, writer and lecturer Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. In 1949, Campbell introduced the idea of the monomyth, a word borrowed from James Joyce. The idea is that all myths relatively tell the same story. So the Belly of the Whale moment is when the hero descends into a dark place before being reborn, as Jonah in the Whale, Jesus on the Cross, Buddha facing down the Devil, or Luke Skywalker's descent in The Empire Strikes Back. Every hero must have his journey into hell.
In May 2009, the band created the song Apartment Fifty, based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel.
I suppose that The Belly of the Whale doesn't exist anymore. All internet links to the band on the music websites where they used to present their songs have been closed.
The Belly of the Whale - Apartment 50
The Belly of the Whale
Technical details
Album
None
Musicians
Libby Landvatter - lead vocals, keyboards, comparative literature
John Hawkes - guitars, vocals, psyche
Nicholas West - bass, vocals, anger management
Danny Kopta - drums, robotics
Label
None