Celebrating stylistic diversity and their unique process of creating a full length, indie recording, multi-instrumentalist Eliot Houser and lead vocalist Kris McCarthy came up with a clever moniker that captures their blissful lack of "pre-planning" and preference to "fly by the nape of their knickers" rather than blueprinting: The Loose Hinges. The Nashville based duo's self-titled 11 track debut draws on an array of musical styles, including chill/techno, Cuban music, rock-n-roll, country and folk.The ironic part of all of this soulful eclecticism is that at any other point in Houser or McCarthy's lives, they would have thought such a musical matchup impossible. A renowned producer who has helmed projects for bands ...
he Current incarnation of the band started in 2004 with a band called Callous, where drummer, Matt “Spyke” Maple; Bassist, Mike Parker; and singer/guitarist, Matt Lee first played together.After some internal differences with the vision of Callous the three of them decided to start a new venture called Echoes Through Chaos (2008-2010). After a short search “ETC” picked up long t...
Insightful and talented beyond measure but humble to his core, singer/songwriter Erez Eisenman says he always wrote songs for himself, rather than thinking “about an imaginary audience, fame or fortune.” After over four years living in China, where he started his first band late into his two year stint in Beijing, the multi-talented singer/songwriter/guitarist moved to New York City, simply looking for musicians to vibe with. Erez is still keeping ...
Formed in the wake of the punk explosion in England, Joy Division became the first band in the post-punk movement by later emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the '80s. Though the group's raw initial sides fit the bill for any punk band, Joy Division later incorporated synthesizers (taboo in the low-tech world of '70s punk) and more haunting melodies, emphasized by the isolated, tortured lyrics of its lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. While the British punk movement shocked the world during the late '70s, Joy Division's quiet storm of musical restraint and emotive power proved to be just as important to independent music in the 1980s....
Black Earth has had a long history in the underground rock n’ roll scene. Starting out as Ving Ra and the Ultrasonic in the fall of 1997, they were San Diego regulars until Ving and founding drummer Shawn Alvear decided to move their act out to Austin Texas, the “Live Music Capital” of the world. Performing as a five piece and enduring several difficult lineup changes, it was decided that the b...and needed to be reshuffled. With Dave Rangel recruited into the ranks, the band was reborn as a three piece named Black Earth. As such, Black Earth has been a hard hitting rock n’ roll staple in Austin ever since. Incorporat...
Singer/songwriter Mike James has his own unique style, which he calls Hippiefolk, which combines an earthy, soulful, acoustic, guitar driven, roots music, with creative vocal melodies, and passionate lyrics from the soul. He sings from the heart about love, life, spirituality, God, and the connections we all experience. He has a powerful spiritual message to deliver to the world, with a little twang. All his music, videos, websites and pictures can be viewed at http://www.reverbnation.com/mikejameshippiefolk He has written, recorded, and self-produced 5 albums. He plays all the instruments that you hear on his recordings. He not only sings and p...
Singer/songwriter Jason Legacy formed Slow Buildings in Northern NJ in 2005, writing and recording their first cd, Good Things Happen, while in grad school. Written, played, engineered, produced and released by himself, the cd was a combination of melodic pop and ‘indie' rock. He recorded another cd, Everything Like This, in 2008, displaying a more confident and aggressive sound. With school finally over, Jason began performing live in 2009 with various line-ups, while finding mainstay lead guitarist Oce Dytioco, who helped shape the band's increasingly electric and dynamic sound. 2010 featured the arrival of newcomer Chris Basile on bass, as well as further gigging around the NY/NJ area. The band was officially c...
Ni Voz Ni Voto, also known by the acronym NvNv and often shortened to Nivoz, is a rock band from Lima, Peru. The band was formed in 1994 and has four members: Claudia Maurtua (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Walter Cobos (guitar), Kenneth Quiroz (bass) and Pepe Pinedo (drums). The band has achieved commercial success in the peruvian underground scene with the release of fourth studio albums; NvNv (2000), No Antisocial (2002), Limbo (2004) and Rockstar Rebelion (2012).The stylistic variety and level of experimentation NvNv's music has ma...
Only in the world of folk music could you imagine the bar staff at one of the liveliest, smokiest and most renowned music pubs in Britain making a space at the end of the bar so that an eight year old child could get the best view of the acts. But that was the experience of Edinburgh singer/songwriter Adam Holmes who now at the age of twenty has been a Celtic Connections Young Traditional Musician finalist, has toured the UK and Europe and in February this year achieved the accolade of a UK BBC Radio 2 Folk Award nomination for Best Newcomer. Hanging out at the ceremony in London with the likes of Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons, Bellowhead, C...
Hailing from Liverpool, Ninetails have a formation story that'd perhaps be more apt were it 1988 and Seattle; they met and hung out over cups of coffee, playing each other their favourite bands from Walkmen to kill time."It was our music taste that brought us together. They had the best iPods and didn't cite the fucking Red Hot Chilli Peppers as an influence. We bonded over Tubelord, decided to jam and the rest is history" says bassist/lyricist Phil when asked about that time. From such an inauspicious start, it's perhaps surprising that Ninetails should have found their trademark sound so easily and apparently painlessly. F...
Formed in 2009, Us Fighting, have been honing their sound continuously culminating in the recording of their debut album, The Hundred Star. Engineered and Produced by Dave Chang (www.davechang.co.uk) in July 2011, Dave managed to capture the sonic detail, soaring melodies and sheer volume of this guitar noise three-piece.Featuring James Cherry on Guitar/Vocals, Anil Mistry on Drums and Greg Lines on Bass, Us Fighting are putting the long lost "alt" back into alt rock, capturing the ears and minds of fans in the UK and beyond. Take late 80's early 90's Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr. and blend it with the sound of Muse's Absolution album and you will be somewhere close. Us Fighting simply do not sound like anyone else out there today a...
Live on Brighton… A band that could very easily be sponsored by eHarmony. And not just because none of the guys can keep a girl friend, but for the fact that all three of these guys met online…. That’s right….. Back in 2009 front man Jeff Fero decided to escape the audio engineering field, and get back to playing, so he went straight to everyone’s favorite site, Craigslist. Drummer Kris Scott had coincidentally posted an add about moving to town and needing a band. But he clearly stated if you had long hair and lived in your moms basement playing guitar more than 6hrs a day, he was not interested. So Jeff got a haircut and moved out so he could contact Kris. It took a year of trying out thi...
What's going on Quazar? Let's start off with some background info. From my understanding you reside in Chicago, but originally hail from Brooklyn, New York. Is that right? WHAT'S GOOD, CARLITO!.....YEAH....KINDA.....I WAS BORN AND LIVED IN MEMPHIS TENNESSEE.THE HOOD, THE PROJECTS, AND THEN A TOWNHOUSE COMMUNITY WHERE I WAS ONE OF ONLY 2 BLACK FAMILIES (Oakshire...Whitehaven). MOVED TO BROOKLYN IN THE 70's....THE HOOD....RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER FROM THE PROJE...
Sad Little Men is the latest emergence from the new music hotbed of Portland, OR. It stemmed from the mind of former saxophonist turned vocalist/multi-intsrumentalist Dusty York, who spent many years releasing recordings from a multitude of artists on his own record label Diatic Records. After five releases of his own he abandoned the saxophone, as well as jazz and the record label, to pursue a career in the indie-pop realm. After a two year hiatus from performing and recording, York teamed up with Los Angeles drummer Justin Roberts and formed Sad Little Men. They quickly recorded their debut ...
Since MxPx’s inception in 1992 in the blue-collar naval town of Bremerton, Washington, the trio—vocalist/bassist Mike Herrera, guitarist Tom Wisniewski and drummer Yuri Ruley—have been mainstays in both the pop-punk and punk-rock scenes thanks to a prolific back catalog and road-warrior mentality. That youthful exuberance and appetite for success can be found all over POKINATCHA, the band’s 1994 Tooth & Nail Records debut release. Bursting with speedy, pit-ready anthems, the disc’s 21 tracks showcased a band with some serious punk-rock chops that still had a knack for melody. True to the band’s punk-rock roots and hard-charged work ethic, their follow-up album hit...
The brainchild of singer/guitarist Kevin Barnes, Of Montreal was among the second wave of bands to emerge from the sprawling Elephant 6 collective. A native of Athens, Georgia, Barnes was inspired to form the euphoric indie pop group in the wake of a broken romance with a woman from Montreal. He signed with Bar/None Records while living in Florida, subsequently moved to Cleveland and Minneapolis in search of compatible bandmates, and finally returned home to collaborate with bassist Bryan Helium (also a member of Athens' Elf Power) and drummer Derek Almstead.Of Montreal's debut album, Cherry Peel, appeared in mid-1997, followed that autumn by an EP entitled The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit's Flower. From the start, the b...
Austra is the brainchild of Canadian born Katie Stelmanis, a unique talent in possession of some seriously evocative vocal stylings who grew up on a diverse musical diet; Puccini, Nine Inch Nails, and the riot-girl greats, just to name a few, having had a significant influence.For the past few years Katie has been a mainstay on the Toronto indie scene, playing in a variety of bands, ho...
Readers beware, there be many horrors of the high seas, but none so wretched as SWASHBUCKLE. Their tale began in the early year of 2005, as Commodore RedRum and Admiral Nobeard ventured off on a quest to pillage and plunder the All-You-Can-Eat Shrimp line at a Red Lobster along the coast of New Jersey, USA. Realizing their mutual love for all things piratical, thrash metal, and surf-n-turf, they commandeered a vessel and set sail to start what would be renowned as one of the fastest, heaviest and most outrageous metal bands to sail the seven seas. Thus, SWASHBUCKLE was born. After completion of their first demo, they scoured the world for a seaworthy crew as vile as themselves. Venturing towards a group of uncharted islan...
Invisible Elephant is the solo project of a UK artist who writes the songs, plays all of the instruments and records the work at home combining found sounds, hazy guitars and spectral vocals. Blending elements of post-rock, shoegaze, psychedelic rock, folk-rock and dream pop he creates an immersive sound that defies simple categorisation. Veering from softly spoken psychedelic folk to ethereal soundscapes to monolithic walls of feedback, it's difficult to pin the sound down to one genre. The indefinable nature of Invisible Elephant's music isn't really surprising given the huge influence it takes from the literary works of Haruki Murakami as well as the diverse array of subtle musical influences from Elliott Smith, Sonic Yo...
Formed in 1998 by frontman Jared Leto and his older brother, 30 Seconds to Mars found success in the 2000s with a mix of post-grunge, screamo, and hard rock. The band gained a modest audience with its debut album, but it was the platinum-selling sophomore effort A Beautiful Lie that officially opened the flood gates in 2005, securing the band a frequent presence on MTV while paving the way for a number of successful tours. By placing all-access passes into 12 copies of the album, the bandmates also showed a savvy appreciation for marketing, which they revisited several years later by putting fans' photographs on the cover of their third album, This Is War. Initially known for his work as an actor (most ...
Deli Magazine:"The Brooklyn based songwriter's alto and his intimate melodies are evocative of Luke Temple's solo records before he started Here We Go Magic, and although the instrumentation, cadence and atmosphere of this material scream "country", Pat's melodies and guitar parts go in the direction of gently reinventing the genre rather than obeying to its exhausted axioms"...
After he left Metallica in 1983, guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine formed the thrash metal quartet Megadeth. Though Megadeth followed the basic blueprint of Metallica's relentless attack, Mustaine's group distinguished themselves from his earlier band by lessening the progressive rock influences, adding an emphasis on instrumental skills, speeding the tempo up slightly, and making the instrumental attack harsher. By streamlining the classic thrash metal approach and making the music more threatening, as well as making the lyrics more nihilistic, Megadeth became one of the leading bands of the genre during the mid- and late '80s. Each album they released went at least gold, and they continually sold out arenas across America, in addition to d...
The Revolving is one Rock n' Rolls newest bands from the heartland of Oklahoma. Known for their hard working attitudes and "wall of sound," this band's live shows have grown increasingly powerful and entertaining. Building from an artistic and positive mind-set, front man Jason Hawkins' songwriting has allowed The Revolving to generate a sound, and style, reminiscent of vintage Rock n' Roll. Add in lead guitarist Greg Bessemer's solo's, David Alston's bass lines and Eddie Mullins' incredibly hard hitting beats, its hard to overlook this band. Since its formation in late 2009, what started in a church, in the back of a run down shopping mall, has grown into an entertaining and memorable Rock n' Roll show. "Of course we want ou...
Tim Lacy left the "cushy"confines of New York City and retreated 100 miles north in Woodstock. A good portion of his career was spent working as a session guitarist and vocalist. "I worked with bands like Thief (w/ Lee Crystal of Joan Jetts Blackhearts), Man Size Habit (W/ Pete Marshall of Iggy Pop), Messenger (W/ Paul Pesco of Madonna, Steve Winwood) and with Producer Paul O'Neill (Trans Siberian Orchestra, Aerosmith) on several recordings. I was in a baby band then, we were signed to Leber-Krebs mgt. Paul was an up and coming Producer. Other than my own band,"Thief",I really didn't ha...
Alanis Morissette was one of the most unlikely stars of the mid-'90s. A former child actress turned dance-pop diva, Morissette later transformed herself into a confessional alternative singer/songwriter in the vein of Liz Phair and Tori Amos. However, she bolstered that formula with enough pop sensibility, slight hip-hop flourishes, and marketing savvy to become a superstar with her third album, Jagged Little Pill.Morissette was born in Ottawa, Canada, and began playing piano and writing songs during her childhood years. She also joined the cast of You Can't Do That on Television, a children's television program. Using money that she earned on the show, Morissette recorded an independent single, "Fate Stay with Me," wh...
THE BLACK STRING THEORY delivers arena-size, emotion-charged indie/rock/alternative with a compelling sense of urgency and a discernible dark edge, infusing piano, rhythmic guitars, drum loops and layers of synths, providing the perfect platform for their powerful and emotive vocal. THE BLACK STRING THEORY was first conceived in July 2009 inspired by what founder and multi-instrumentalist Scott van Dort views as "a quest for self-liberation". A self-titled EP was released in April 2010, mixed by Grammy Award winning engineer, Chris Testa (Jimmy Eat World, Switchfoot, Mat Kearney) and mastered by Tim Young (Editors, Massive Attack, The Clash, Bat For Lashes) at Metropolis Mastering in London, UK. The EP received glowing reviews ...
PowPow is Cate Jackson Roberts and Jason Garcia from beautiful Austin, Texas. Jason had prior musical experience with his band Household Names; Cate was a writer that had never written song lyrics. One day Jason asked Cate to write some lyrics to a tune he had written, and to their surprise, a few months later they had written a handful of songs.The duo will be releasing an EP, "The New Normal", in 2012. Featuring 6 songs, including the first single "Poison Words", the EP was recorded half with the help of (Cardigans engineer and Blondie mixer) Lars Goransson and half at home by Jason Garcia, and was mixed at Jason's home studio.We had a song report done on SoundOut.com, a market research site. Three well-know...
