Terraced Garden -

Terraced Garden was a Canadian art-rock band that made the 1982–84 albums Melody & Menace and Braille, followed in 1988 by Within on their self-operated Melody and Menace Records.

Members: Ian Colvin, Phil Dewhurst, Don Dingwall, Darrell Flint (bass, vocals), Garry Flint, Simon Jacobs, Jody Mitchell, Carl Tafel (guitar, keyboards, bass, glockenspiel, marimba, percussion, vocals), Scott Weber, Peter Weeks

Background

Terraced Garden began in Toronto in early 1981 as a solo studio project for multi-instrumentalist and composer Carl Tafel. Toronto-born Tafel had played guitar in progressive-rock band Ex Libris, where he worked with drummer Peter Weeks and multi-reedist Ian Colvin. He subsequently spent about a year on bass and vocals in a power-trio incarnation of Cardboard Brains, then left the group to concentrate on original material for guitar and keyboards.

Tafel entered the studio with songs accumulated across his earlier band years and enlisted Weeks and Colvin for the first Terraced Garden sessions. He met violinist Simon Jacobs at a party shortly ahead of the recordings and invited him to add violin parts. Tafel completed nine tracks until his recording budget ran out, which suspended work on the project for roughly a year.

Tafel resumed the sessions in 1982 and added pianist Don Dingwall across most of the album. He chose the shorter instrumental “Noise and Haste” for the remaining sessions in place of the eight-minute “Barren Ground,” then brought drummer Phil Dewhurst into the studio for the track. By late 1982, Tafel had completed the nine-song Melody & Menace with Weeks, Dewhurst, Colvin, Jacobs, and Dingwall for release on his Melody and Menace Records label.

Discography: