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...
On the heels of From a Compound Eye, Dayton, Ohio resident Robert Pollard's much-lauded first post-Guided By Voices effort, comes Normal Happiness, a stylistic hopscotch-jop from F.A.C.E., but no less coherent, fully-formed, and accomplished. If the idea of Pollard as meticulous song-craftsfman strikes a false note in your head, maybe you need to have your brain tuned. His albums, to go by the available evidence (excluding side-projects and novelty records), are becoming steadily more steady, thematically coherent, and musically lucid, which has a lot to do with exactly three things: 1) his blossoming partnership with producer Todd Tobias; 2) his freedom from the self-imposed shackles of GBV; and 3) his apparent determination to age gracefu...
Uncle Tupelo was an alternative country music group from Belleville, Illinois, active between 1987 and 1994. Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn formed the band after the lead singer of their previous band, The Primitives, left to attend college. The trio recorded three albums for Rockville Records, before signing with Sire Records and expanding to a five-piece. Shortly after the release of the band's major label debut album Anodyne, Farrar announced his decision to leave the band due to a soured relationship with his co-songwriter Tweedy. Uncle Tupelo split on May 1, 1994, after completing a farewell tour. Following the breakup, Farrar formed Son Volt with Heido...
In their few short years as a band, Valencia has achieved a lot. They've opened for Fall Out Boy and All American Rejects, been chased down and signed to Midtown drummer Rob Hitt's record label I Surrender, and been a finalist in SPIN.com's Band of the Year competition. But while that list of achievements is certainly formidable, Valencia's greatest accomplishment has always been their music. The result of the combination of five very different boys from Philadelphia, Valencia is an amalgam of the best- and hookiest- pop rock has to offer. It is exactly those varied backgrounds, personalities and influences that sets Valencia apart from their peers when it comes to songwriting. "Having five different backgrounds in a band can be cha...
Named after the distance from the band’s hometown of Cincinnati to Graceland, 500 MILES TO MEMPHIS plays rowdy, insanely catchy, sometime heartbreaking but always inspiring "country punk" on their debut SUNSHINE IN A SHOT GLASS. These songs are whiskey-soaked in bittersweet lament, but this is definitely not an alcohol-fueled pity party. Rather, it’s the slug of Jack Daniel’s you throw back before crawling on stage to sing your heart out. It’s the glass of liquid courage that dirty barroom brawls and back alley fistfights are brewed from. It’s the bottom of the bottle where fiery, drunken tirades aimed at ex-lovers are unleashed. It’s everything we’ve regretted from the night ...
Rafter Roberts stands no taller than the normal human male… yet his firey red-haired head is filled with the minutiae of music, swirling and churning constantly. Fortunately this leaves little room for fear, of which Rafter has nearly none. His fearlessness has led him to do just about everything he sets his mind to, which of course includes free-for-all rowdy sweatiness, hanky panky and rolling on the stage yelping. Not to mention playing in bands since the age of two, new fatherhood, running a business, goin to shows, building a new studio, makin his own music, recording bands and eating raw… all without going furiously nuts. This is not a bungee-jump kind of fearlessness, rather it is a willingness to move beyond obstacles (mental...
Having grown up in the Dischord-ian punk scene of Washington DC, Nathan Larson spent the '90s as the aggressive lead guitarist in the controversial love-em-or-hate em Shudder to Think. He split the band in '99 and went on to a create highly regarded scores for such films as Boys Don't Cry, Velvet Goldmine, Dirty Pretty Things, Tigerland, Palindromes, The Woodsman, and Little Fish, among others. This was all well and good, but making passive made-to-order music in such tumultuous times left Larson a little cold, and this summer he reckoned it was time to take some direct action. Former and current bands associated with Hot One band members include Shudder To Think, Guided By Voices, Girls Against Boys, The Dambuilders, Those Bastard Souls...
Thea Gilmore writes lyrics that combine awesome poetic grace with a 21st century barbed undercurrent. She delivers razor sharp missives on life, love, sex, death, politics and wars (both personal and global) and all with an achingly-beautiful delivery which melts hearts in an instant. Someone once remarked that Thea is a ‘hellraiser with a voice like honey’ and if you get to meet her you will know what they mean. Barely out of her teenage daze, Thea was being compared to everyone from Joni Mitchell to Ryan Adams and Tom Waits and now, at the tender age of 26, Thea is going to make you think sweet somethings all over again....
The Fix broke up on New Years Day 1982 in San Francisco after a final unscheduled show with the Effigies, Dead Kennedys, Flipper, and Anti-Pasti. (And you're saying to yourself, I wish my band could have broken up like that.) Steve and Mike went on to form Blight with Tesco Vee of The Meatmen. Within a period of 22 odd months or so, The fix came blazing--pillaging your town, exploding and burning fast before you knew what hit you. And it's only now that you remember how awesome 1981 was--or at least blessed now with the hearsay and memories because you couldn't have been there to witness The Fix....
"Forget your age, forget you're clever; The Awkward Stage, it lasts forever". A mantra that serves to remind us that we never truly shed our painfully insecure and ignominiously crushed youth. It is with us always. That boy who had his head dunked in the high school toilet stares back at you as you adjust your tie in the mirror before you head off to work. More than a tinge of that old body image issue is surfacing right now in the fitting rooms of every women's clothing store. The Awkward Stage serves as a musical backdrop for those universal feelings of shame, inadequacy, anger, failure and loneliness. A revenge of sorts in the form of the most intelligent and brilliantly crafted pop songs to come along in quite some time. In a musi...
As anyone who’s lived there can tell you, the Midwest can be an unforgiving place. The winters are freezing, the summers are humid and it’s easy to feel landlocked by the vastness of earth in every direction. Chicago’s Chin Up Chin Up have successfully embodied that feeling with their second full-length, This Harness Can’t Ride Anything; yet as bleak as things may appear, there’s a pervasive feeling of hope inherent in the band’s brand of avant pop which stretches further than the Windy City’s skyline. Chin Up Chin Up (think optimism and perseverance, not exercise) formed in 2001, with the guitars of Jeremy Bolen and Nathan Snydacker. Percussionist Chris Dye, bassist Chris Saathoff and keyboardist Greg Sharp joined shortly ...
Taken from www.samhellmusic.com sam Hell, the individual and the band, came to be in the The West. He was brought up into privilege and opportunity and knew a world with no limitations, where everything could be his if he simply wanted to reach out and take it. Music sought sam out very early and completely eliminated any hope of sam doing anything else. This was not what his parents had planned for him, but his musical focus was largely ignored and even accepted by his parents since it kept him occupied and out of trouble. That would all change if sam decided to form a band and take his love and joy for music outside of himself and to the world at...
We're thieves in the night with honey lips, tease from lands beyond, was it wrong to trade our ways for honeybees.... Hello. We're Scissors For Lefty. We attempt to write songs in order to open or close little chapters of our lives. Documenting little adventures really. Flirting with disaster, reiterating current events, poking fun at love gone wrong, & making love to slang. Yes, that's what we like to do. We've shared the stage with greats such as The Arctic Monkeys, Dirty Pretty Things, The Fiery Furnaces, The 1990's, The Cheat, Lemon Sun, The Situationalists, Grandaddy, Little Wings, Black Heart Procession, I am Spoon Bender, Pedro The Lion, Inner, Rykarda Parasol, Ebb & Flow, The Wildlife, and many, many more. Like other kids in the...
Walk down a hallway in any high school during passing period. If you can survive through the over-populated corridors and stairwells, be sure to notice the kids decked out in full black. Complete with gloomy faces, these punks, Goths, burn-outs, outcasts - whatever you want to call them - all carry with them the same badges of their right to be gloomy. The Misfits, System of a Down, Slipknot, Insane Clown Posy, the big names in pop-punk sewn into their bags and jackets, and always prominent in the line of names is one that feels the most out of place: Nirvana. Yet it is because of Nirvana that those other names are there. The rag-tag group from Seattle threw together everything that was crowding up the underground music scene of the early...
Stardate: Summer 2006. As these words are being written, Kasabian are jetlagged, but happy. Three days ago, they returned from Mexico City, where a disused supermarket full of saucer-eyed devotees treated them like returning heroes. "They even sang along to the keyboards in Processed Beats," exclaims Serge Pizzorno. And then when we did the new stuff. It was..." - Pizzorno is rarely lost for words. When he is though, here's Tom Meighan to pick up the baton - "...legendary. I've never felt a force like it." Can a record be legendary before it has even come out? You might think you know Kasabian. After all, the dissolute Glimmer Twins of the post-Britpop firmament made no secret of their sources on that eponymous first album. A couple of y...
The buzz surrounding the emergence of newly signed Island recording group Under the Influence of Giants will come to a head in mid-May when the southern California band's debut single, "Mama's Room," goes up on iTunes along with three other tracks from their self-titled debut album, due to arrive in stores on August 8th. UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF GIANTS is produced by former Blind Melon members Chris Thorne and Brad Smith. UTIOG "have found their rhythm," declared the Los Angeles Times on its Buzz Bands page last month, citing "the fivesome's energetic live show," as they move to progressively larger venues around the L.A. area. The group heads out with New Orleans electro-alt rock collaboration Mute Math on a 7-city club tour opening at ...
Brooklyn denizens TV on the Radio are set to release Return to Cookie Mountain September 12 and are gearing up for a fall tour that will take their avant-rock from Portland to Philly and all auspicious points in between. A little history for the uninitiated: After forming TV on The Radio, Dave Sitek and Tunde Adebimpe put out the self-released “OK Calculator” in 2003. After gaining members Jaleel Bunton, Kyp Malone, and Gerard Smith, TV on the Radio released 2004’s Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes (Touch and Go) which received that year’s Shortlist Prize (given for the most creative and adventurous album). They won so convincingly, in fact, the award was disbanded when judges realized TVOTR’s opus would assuredly rema...
Swanky and dirty, like the way rock should sound, not all prettified and shiny, BRIGHT LIGHT FEVER adds the seediness and swagger that seems to be missing in music. Like the unshaven hoodlums that populate the London Underground, or more accurately the Placerville, California (known as the hotspot during the "Gold Rush"), these four lads play their rock dangerously with a ne'er do well attitude. And what you have in your hands is the advance to their Stolen Transmission debut Bright Light Fever Presents... "The Evening Owl" whose street date is September 26, 2006. With Joby Ford (The Bronx) in the producer seat and Robert Cheek (Rx Bandits, An Angle, Supermodel Suicide) engineering it, The Evening Owl was recorded at The Hangar in Sacram...
After two years of wood-shedding gigs around the West Coast, and countless songwriting, recording and brainstorming sessions in founding member Greg Eklund's garage recording studio in Los Angeles, the Oohlas have completed their debut album, BEST STOP POP. The self-produced album will arrive in stores September 26th on Stolen Transmission, the label launched this year by Sarah Lewitinn and Rob Stevenson, Island Records Executive Vice President, A&R. Oohlas fans and other insiders snatched up the 100 copies that were minted in 2004 of the band's hand-made independently-released six-song EP. Three of the songs from that EP - "Gone," "Slow Mo Disco," and "The Rapid" - were reprised on a limited edition, handmade run (250 copies) for their...
M. WARD. The name only lacks a couple of 19th century dates underneath and it would resemble an inscription on a Victorian tombstone. Unlike a weatherbeaten marble epitaph, however, there's plenty that's flesh and blood about Matt Ward and his hypnotic fourth LP, Transistor Radio. The highlight of Ward's 2003 in-store performance at San Francisco's Amoeba Records--a gig hastily arranged at the former Haight-Ashbury bowling alley when his Bottom Of The Hill show was canceled due to a fire next door--has totally escaped the notice of the Portland, Oregon-based singer/guitarist. A mom emerges from the sparse crowd, lugs her three-year-old son up front and plops him down at Ward's feet. The kid stands there looking up, wide-eyed and open-mou...
