We Will Build treat their Internet fame as a hammock, instead of trying to paw out of the web and set foot on solid land they seem to be content swaying comfortably in this new method of existence. The Internet and technology in general for them has proven to be a wonderful thing. Aside from being on the edge of Internet fame combustion, technology also plays a large role in their music. Synthetic sounds smoothly blend with organic instrumental sounds to create brilliant pop music full of energy and motion. “This is Necessary” is We Will Build’s upcoming release and band members Zach Johnston and Dan Govier are excited about the lack of limitations they’ve imposed upon themselves with both their musical and business...
Even a 'Crap Attack' by We Are Scientists is poignant. The Apollo Theatre in Manchester, is now well entrenched as being a pedestal for up and coming bands en route to music's elite territory. Some bands and artists prior to appearing here, have been known to display the nerves of a soccer player about to tread the hallowed turf of Wembley or the Millennium Stadium for the first time. However, for We Are Scientists' bassist and the artery that circulates their live and oft improvised humour, Chris Cain, it would take more than this to throw him off his stride. For all the recent controversy surrounding the bottle pelting of emo protagonists My Chemical Romance and Panic At The Disco, at the Reading Festival this year, the moustachioed ...
Dan Young - Vocals, GuitarGavin Philips - Vocals, GuitarDavid Blaise - Bass Sean Gasperetti - GuitarThis Providence is currently a four member band from Seattle, Washington. They are now signed on Fuled By Ramen Records, and have toured with various bands such as Paramore, The Starting Line, and The Almost. They just released their self-titled sophomore album. Their hit single, My Beautiful Rescue, is starting to get the band some recognition. Their lyrics are beautiful and the sound they produce is very soothing. This band comes highly recomended if you like bands such as Gatsby's American Dream, Forgive Durden, Paramore, and The Starting Line ...
You, my friend, are as common as a dumpster rat. You’re forgotten like a peanut shell beneath a bar stool. Or, maybe you’re just information, ripped out like a yellow page from a phone-booth book hanging from a chain. The end times sound like a thrill compared to this, the common times. The Era Vulgaris. At least you’re not lonely, ‘cause we’re all in it. And at least it sounds good, ‘cause Queens of the Stone Age are playing it.“It’s actually a reaction to what we think is the era vulgaris. You don’t have time. I already know that. And, so, here we go: Pow, pow, pow, pow, p...
In many ways, a musician is often the product of his environment. The places they live and the friends they keep influence their creativity and define who they are. Such is the case of Chuck E. Weiss. He has been immortalized in song, co-starred with musical legends, and created a stylish scene that included many of rock and roll’s elite. Considered to be the epitome of cool, Weiss is a lot like your estranged uncle who drinks and smokes too much, but with whom you would enjoy sitting back and hearing tales of his journey through rock and roll history. Weiss could tell you how he was well known in musical circles for years because of ...
Taken from www.myspace.com/ignitor The scorching heat of Texas is the perfect crucible in which to create metal not often heard on American shores. Out of this aural forge comes Ignitor, the culmination of over 20 years of experience in metal/extreme music. The band was formed when guitarists Stuart Laurence and Beverly Barrington, bass player Brendon Bigelow, drummer Pat Doyle, and vocalist Erika joined forces in the summer of 2003. Influenced by 80s masters Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Metallica, Ignitors music is a blend of classic true metal with the power of today's greats like Primal Fear, Grave Digger and Brainstorm. Their MiniCD "Take to the Sky" was hi...
The use of superlatives in music is rarely justified, but in the case of Johan, it is an apt way to describe their sound. This is real music...plain and simple. It is popular music elevated to an art form. You can feel it in your bones when you hear Jacco De Greeuw sing. The melodies soar, and the emotions are worn on the sleeve. In an era where "15 minutes" is now considered a milestone of longevity, it's hard to believe that they have been making music for over 10 years, and from their latest effort, THX, they show no signs of slowing down....
THE CASSETTES are Washington D.C.'s premier "vaudeville steam-punk" band. This "Musical Explorers Society" is fronted by Mr. Shelby Cinca, formerly the voice and guitar behind such notable D.C. groups as Frodus and Decahedron. He has also been the man responsible for recording various instantly classic D.C. indie albums such as Dead Meadow's first two full lengths. But don't be fooled into thinking there is any sort of punk/hardcore/post-punk tomfoolery happening here. The sound of The Cassettes strolls lavishly down the Rocky Raccoon/Honey Pie path that some could describe as synth-infused country stomp folk. Joining Shelby in his vision of pushing musical boundaries and expectations is Stephen Guidry on squeezebox and moog, Saadat Awan on...
Described by producer Jason Carmer, as the sound of "a little kid burning ants with a magnifying glass," and self described as "danceable without being 'dancey';", the Starlite Desperation have been gazing transfixed into both the virgin horizon and the abominable slop of rock's forgotten scraps to divine the future and channel armies of spirits since 1996. The Starlite Desperation's mix of powerful rhythms, big guitar licks, and panicked conviction will fascinate you. ...
THIS BLUSH started on the sharps and flats of an organ when three friends from Long Beach, California decided unanimously that there were just too few interesting bands still making music. Towards the tail end of 2004 - Marlaine Reiner, Dustin Roberts, and Lars Stalfors already knew the role they each would play as THIS BLUSH began to take shape. Through the Fall of that year the three locked themselves into a small flat, and emerged with their ideal sound and the firsts of their songs. Aside from the few indie-scene heroes, the music of Long Beach is known on a national level for producing Snoop Dogg, Sublime, and more recently the Mars Volta; behind those acts there was a long-standing indie scene and when THIS BLUSH emerged they made a h...
Once upon a time, there were two sisters named Allison and Catherine Pierce. They were born and raised in a land far, far away, called Birmingham, Alabama. They were home schooled and encouraged by their parents to pursue anything and everything in the arts. Now, the girls flourished in ballet, painting, music, and writing, but they couldn't solve a calculus equation to save their souls. That's okay though, when do you ever use calculus in the real world? Anyway...back to the story... Allison and Catherine soon grew weary of small town living and decided to run away to a magical place called "Nashville" to pursue fame and fortune through song. They packed their bags and vowed never to return (except for the holidays). Aaaah, but fame is an ...
Wires On Fire, a collective of four young men from Los Angeles, have created a name for themselves with the balls-out live set, full of blood, sweat, and saliva. While the chaotic punk rock passion and energy from their acclaimed Homewrecker EP remains, the band has taken steps in a different direction on their new Self-Titled full-length debut. Wires On Fire have created an innovative style with hopes to inspire a new breed of rock and roll for this generation of colorless music. After booking several national and west coast tours on their own (sharing the stage with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Fall, Death From Above 1979, Pretty Girls Make Graves, etc) Wires On Fire stand out from the rock band masses as a unique-perhaps unclassifiable-group. No...
The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore is the culmination of a year of collaborative recording and member bolstering that also yielded the previous cdep, Luck Will Not Save Us from a Jackpot of Nothing, at the halfway mark in the spring of 2005. The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore is characterized by Saxon Shore's lush, intense, melodic brand of instrumental rock. The full-length is a vibrant mix of electronics and acoustic instruments, from the white label 12" sounds of "Marked with Knowledge" to the metallic refrains of "Isolated by the Secret of Your Fellow Men " to the pop sensibilities and hooks of "With a Red Suit You Will Become a Man," all filtered through the expert and artful ears of engineer, producer, and mixer Dave Fridmann (Flaming...
Chicago's Atombombpocketknife (ABPK) is comprised of Che Arthur (guitar), Allison Hollihan (bass), Justin Sinkovich (vocals/guitar), and Matt Espy (drums). They've been perfecting their lush indie rock since the late '90s while making a name for themselves in and around the Midwest. A self-titled 10" was issued on Southern in 1999, but ABPK made their proper debut with 2000's Alpha Sounds. It was a slick and sultry introduction to ABPK and a slew of tours throughout North America, including shows with Man or Astroman?, Pinback, and Judah Johnson established Atombombpocketknife's rising fan base. God Save the ABPK followed in fall 2001. After touring in support of the album, Espy left the band. Sterling drummer Tony Lazzara joined the group ...
Che Arthur is the non-singing lead guitarist of Chicago post-rockers Atombombpocketknife, making his almost entirely solo (everything but the drums, that is) debut with 2004's All of Your Tomorrows Were Decided Today. Where his day gig is much more into lengthy explorations of different instrumental textures, time signatures and loud/soft dynamics, Arthur is a far more straightforward singer/songwriter on his own, essaying ten brief, catchy pop songs in just barely half-an-hour. Arthur is a clearly talented singer/songwriter occasionally capable of greatness. ...
Wilhelm Bohman and Henrik ”Punsch” Johansson first met in their hometown, Skara, in central Sweden, in the late eighties. Three years later Bohman and Punsch moved up north to the capital, Stockholm, to continue their art studies. Here they began building up their studio in earnest. After two years in Stockholm, the restless duo moved abroad: to San Sebastián, in the Basque Country in the north west of Spain. The city was a great source of inspiration, and they took their name, Gros, from one of the city’s neighbourhoods. ”Waves” (FSONE 003) was released in November 2002. In November/December of 2003 Gros began recording their second album ”Radio Islas”, in the Gracia district of Barcelona. Using vintage analogue synths...
When Johanna Wright journeyed to New York from Oregon about nine years ago, she expected to be constantly spattered with paint and has dutifully fulfilled the prophecy. She spends her days making drawings, paintings, and covering large expanses with gesso. Shortly after arriving in New York, Johanna adopted a baritone ukulele (as well as a musical alter-ego named Hanner) and began digging out songs and stories from her heart and brain. She was happy to discover that she could shape a song much like her paintings, with a humorous illustrative quality and a dollop of matter-o-fact sorrow. She attributes the mysterious southern accent she has adopted while singing to countless hours spent listening to Janis Joplin and Judy Henske as a wee l...
Oly's music career started at the age of 2 when she used to write songs for her mother on a toy piano. "[My mom] thought I was just being a little kid, like 'La, la, la,' you know, just singing whatever," Oly recalls, "but then I would sing the same song over and over again and she started to think, 'Wait a minute-that's a song.'" Fast-forward two decades. After playing guitar and bass in indie rock bands throughout her teens and early twenties, Oly returned to working by herself. "Considering I was writing everything like drums and bass and vocals, it just kind of became normal to play alone," she says. When her first guitar, a Danelectro Silvertone, was stolen, Oly was too sad to buy another one, so she turned to the keyboard for ...
Red Eyed Legends formed out of the relocation of Chris Thomson (Circus Lupus, Monorchid, Skull Kontrol) to Chicago. Thomson soon hooked up with Steve Denekas (Countdown, Entertainment), Jason Dummeldinger (Cinco de Gatos, Silverbacks), and Paul Higgins (Evil Three) to form Red Eyed Legends. After some time in the practice space, Red Eyed Legends hit the studio to record The High I Feel When I'm Low EP in summer of 2003. With the release of the EP on Gold Standard Laboratories in 2004, Red Eyed Legends rounded out the lineup with Kiki Yablon of the Dishes. ...
The Brooklyn-based orchestral pop band THE SILENT LEAGUE originated as the solo identity of singer Justin Russo in the late nineties. While a keyboardist with Mercury Rev in support of the critically acclaimed albums "Deserter's Songs" (V2) and "All Is Dream" (V2), Russo secretly stole each available moment in a busy tour schedule to write and record his own fragile and epic LP, "The Orchestra, Sadly, Has Refused". The resulting debut record - hailed as "a masterful blend of sepia-toned chamber pop and sunny-sinister piano balladry" (Bang Magazine), "stellar"and "heavenly" by the Village Voice - features performances from, among others, Sam Fogarino (Interpol) and Sean 'Grasshopper' Mackowiack (Mercury Rev). Blending glockenspiels and tru...
Have appeared recently with Deerhoof, Gang Gang Dance, Man Man, Grizzly Bear, Blevin Blectum, Hrvatski, Black Lights (Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio), Comets On Fire, Excepter, Ex Models, Doveman, Dirty Projectors, Matt & Kim, Greg Davis, and Akron/Family. Stars Like Fleas juggle the disturbing, confrontational, direct, sincere, romantic, and the blatantly contrived, in somewhat improvised song cycles. They have been compared to such far-flung groups as Xiu Xiu, Butch Morris, Animal Collective and Town & Country. Pitchfork calls the music an uninhibited, precognitive glimpse into the workings of the subconscious mind; Stylus described the Fleas as like reading every third page in a psychosexual memoir; fellow travelers, Grizzly Bear called t...
Kent Rayhill, Deb Schimmel, and Jay Rajeck tweak a mad beat as TRS-80. This Chicago electric trio formed in 1997, shaping a sound similar to the likes of Amon Tobin and Boards of Canada. Before signing to Invisible in 2000, they had a 12" and an EP under their belts. TRS-80's first proper album, Manhattan Love Machine, appeared the following summer. Buckup: 01 and Mr. Kickass quickly followed. In 2003, the trio redefined its personal and professional direction. They inked a deal with File 13 and crafted their most ambitiously flossed material yet with the release of Shake Hands with Danger in September. Mystery Crash followed three years later. ...
Based out of Chicago, Voltage is an experimental duo that builds tense, synth-based songs for the knotty-hearted. The jams are instrumental so that one may fully concentrate on the grooves rather than getting side-tracked by some pathetic masturbatory sense of expression. Get confused, then shake it off, man....
Sterling is Chicago’s finest avant-garde instrumental rock quartet. Sterling was founded by the group’s rich background in composition, art and aesthetic. Sterling is well known in Chicago, across the US, and in many parts of Europe for their moody and bombastic soundtrack performances. Their first album Murderer was extremely well received by those that buying it from the band on tour or from the soon-to-disappear Swey Records. Now this beautiful second album features Jim DelFosse’s carefully constructed guitar and striking grand piano compositions, Eric Chaleff’s dark layers of fluid and brooding guitar lines, and Tony Lazzara’s [Atombombpocketknife, ex A-Set] drum kit that flows from absolutely crushing to whispering and fr...
My Majestic Star is Chris Mason (GlassAcre, Chris Mason Implosion) in his post rock studio project form. Shades of ambience flowing into moments of shoegaze rock, turning through melancholic piano arcs treading the path of obscure narrative. No manifesto, no thesis, no all-encompassing mantra. Just open ended experimentation and a feeling that music should be allowed to evolve as an entity of itself. My Majestic Star's 2006 releases, "Ideas Are The Answer" and "Fining" present patchworks of light and shade where rock meets ambience and have es...
OM was formed by Al Cisneros (bass/vocals) and Chris Hakius (drums), both founding members of legendary doom pioneers Sleep. They recorded their debut album Variations on a Theme in 2004. The album was an instant success; heralded as a triumphant return by Mr. Cisneros who had not made any music publicly for many years. The underground popularity of the band lead to exclusive live engagements in London, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. OM spent the fall of 2005 recording their new album - Conference of the Birds. Comprised of two songs that build on OM’s use of cyclical rhythm, riff and vocal intonation, the duo’s new album blends metal, chant, drone, d...
Countless western movies have centered around the theme of a young turk coming into town to try to take down a legendary gunslinger. well, for the past couple of decades, Willie Nelson has turned that imagery on its head, attracting countless younger artists eager to soak up some of his musical mojo and infuse the master\\\'s work with some of their own spirit. Moment of Forever, the latest of these matches made in....well, most likely in an out-of-the-way texas watering hole, matches willie with kenny chesney. the very idea of these seemingly disparate characte...
Chicago is to Pop-Rock as Detroit was to Motown, according to any recent music buff. A new band has emerged from the ever-growing musical sanctuary of the Windy City – The Hush Sound. Revolving around the microphone, Bob Morris, Greta Salpeter, Chris Faller, and Darren Wilson weave their lyrics into rich, imagery-laden stories. Their catchy, dreamlike, folk-influenced waltzes swell with elevating piano and guitar into songs that are equally perfect for bedtime or dancing.After being a band for only three months, The Hush Sound recorded their first full-length album, So Sudden...
Refusing to be satisfied by the familiar, Supersystem has always been ready to destroy a song in order to put it back together again. Hip-hop, electronica, punk rock, so-called “world music” – a little bit of everything has gone into the architecture. This destruct/construct reflex is groomed and refined on the NY/DC quartet’s latest long player, A Million Microphones. The record’s eleven startlingly original tracks are saturated with African-tinged guitar, complex polyrhythms, atmospheric synthesizers, jaunty, funk-fried bass, and infectious beats....
Returning home from tour to no commonly-defined home, Eric Bachmann largely wrote his new album, To The Races, in June and July of 2005 while voluntarily living in the back of his van. Bachmann made the best of the hospitable Northwestern summer by setting up home and shop in his vehicle, and found that living like a makeshift Siddhartha worked well for him: he used the time to craft the unadorned and unapologetically forthright collection of songs that compose his first Saddle Creek release. Whereas Bachmann's 2005 release, Crooked Fingers' Dignity and Shame, was perhaps his most poppy and immediately accessible album, To the Racesis his most sparse and reflective. Stepping out from under the cover of a band name, To The Racesmarks Bach...
