Drab Majesty - Careless

In the smoggy orange light of a new millennium, the young Deb Demure would take the bus, once a week, from his home in crumbling Hollywood to his grandmother’s apartment, nestled in the pastel pristineness of Beverly Hills. During these visits, Deb couldn’t help but notice the disconnect between the glow of his grandmother’s temple, and the downtrodden, alienated figures that populated the seats of the mass transit that took him there. Week after week, he would observe these characters: fading B-movie starlets, leisure-suited alcoholics, aging transgender prostitutes, and forgotten civil servants. But one fateful commute home, as the twilight waned to the purple Los Angeles night, he realized these figures were not as lost as they appeared – there was a nobility in their failure, reflective of the dignity of the city’s vanishing golden era. They were survivors, in need of a voice: a spokesperson for every color of hope and hopelessness, transcendent of gender and time; Drab Majesty became Deb’s musical podium for this undertaking.

Raised in a music-centric household, Deb would find the time to teach himself to play his father’s right-handed guitar upside down and left-handed; an unorthodox fashion from where his earliest understanding of chords and harmony were conceived. Exploring the bins of discarded vinyl in his neighborhood thrift stores, his toolkit expanded with the subterranean sonic gems of the recent past. Influences range from the virtuosic arpeggiated guitar work of Felt’s Maurice Deebank and the grittier pop progressions of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s Chris Reed as well as Steve Severin from Siouxsie and The Banshees. He also studied the harmonic oscillations and utilization of the occult power of vibratory frequency present in New Age sounds of Greek artist, IASOS. In terms of orchestration, he consciously culls from the seaside maximalism of Martin Dupont and mechanized grooves of early Depeche Mode. Like a dualistic pendulum, his vocals swing from a preistly baritone to a choir boy’s falsetto reflecting the sepulchral ambiance of church visits with his grandmother.

Currently the drummer for Los Angeles lo-fi rock ensemble Marriages and having honed an unorthodox home recording style, Deb sources his sounds from a repository of “mid-fi” synthesizers and other lesser-quality instruments. Following the release of his debut cassette EP, “UNARIAN DANCES”, he also shared a split 12″ with synth pop forefathers, Eleven Pond. During the Spring of 2015, Drab Majesty signed with Dais Records and released his first single, Unknown to the I, as a introduction for his first initial foray into the album format, romantically titled Careless.

Written over the course of 2 years, “Careless” is a compendium of songs that have outlasted a malicious burglary of his studio, his struggles with substance addiction, and most recently, the death of his beloved grandmother.

Listen here and order here.

Posted on August 18th, 2015 under Releases, ,

Sightings - Amusers and Puzzlers

After the release of their well-received ninth studio album, Terribly Well, and their successful month long European tour in 2013, Sightings did the unexpected and quietly disbanded without notice or explanation. More than 15 years in the trenches and making a mess throughout New York City, the band made more of a polarizing impact to formalized underground music that most of their peers. Sightings would have been a national treasure if the whole country was laid to waste in Armageddon.

During the sessions that birthed Terribly Well, a complimentary album was recorded in tandem which, while not intended to be their final statement, produced the jaded epilogue from the mouth of experimental rock’s most lasting monolith. Amusers and Puzzlers is the schizophrenic culmination of their brand of damaged rock. Isolated noise patterns shifted from Mark Morgan’s unorthodox guitar patterns sewn up from his nervous, scattered vocal phrasing. Richard Hoffman’s stampede-like momentum on bass slammed against Jon Lockie’s drum triggers made the past couple decades crash into itself.

Listen here and order here.

Posted on July 13th, 2015 under Releases, ,

Drab Majesty - Unknown to the I

In the smoggy orange light of a new millennium, the young Deb Demure would take the bus, once a week, from his home in crumbling Hollywood to his grandmother’s apartment, nestled in the pastel pristineness of Beverly Hills. During these visits, Deb couldn’t help but notice the disconnect between the glow of his grandmother’s temple, and the downtrodden, alienated figures that populated the seats of the mass transit that took him there. Week after week, he would observe these characters: fading B-movie starlets, leisure-suited alcoholics, aging transgender prostitutes, and forgotten civil servants. But one fateful commute home, as the twilight waned to the purple Los Angeles night, he realized these figures were not as lost as they appeared – there was a nobility in their failure, reflective of the dignity of the city’s vanishing golden era. They were survivors, in need of a voice: a spokesperson for every color of hope and hopelessness, transcendent of gender and time; Drab Majesty became Deb’s musical podium for this undertaking.

Raised in a music-centric household, Deb would find the time to teach himself to play his father’s right-handed guitar upside down and left-handed; an unorthodox fashion from where his earliest understanding of chords and harmony were conceived. Exploring the bins of discarded vinyl in his neighborhood thrift stores, his toolkit expanded with the subterranean sonic gems of the recent past. Influences range from the virtuosic arpeggiated guitar work of Felt’s Maurice Deebank and the grittier pop progressions of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s Chris Reed as well as Steve Severin from Siouxsie and The Banshees. He also studied the harmonic oscillations and utilization of the occult power of vibratory frequency present in New Age sounds of Greek artist, IASOS. In terms of orchestration, he consciously culls from the seaside maximalism of Martin Dupont and mechanized grooves of early Depeche Mode. Like a dualistic pendulum, his vocals swing from a preistly baritone to a choir boy’s falsetto reflecting the sepulchral ambiance of church visits with his grandmother.

Currently the drummer for Los Angeles lo-fi rock ensemble Marriages and having honed an unorthodox home recording style, Deb sources his sounds from a repository of “mid-fi” synthesizers and other lesser-quality instruments. Following the release of his debut cassette EP, “UNARIAN DANCES”, he also shared a split 12″ with synth pop forefathers, Eleven Pond.

Listen here and order here.

Posted on May 31st, 2015 under Releases, ,

Them Are Us Too - Remain

Emerging quietly from the California bay area through their limited edition demos and intimate performances over the last two years, Them Are Us Too have gained a cult following within independent music circles as a young, new take on the revered “4AD sound” of dreamy goth-pop anthems. With a nod to 80’s shoegaze sensibilities, Them Are Us Too creates songs about tragedy and loves-lost that draws devoted listeners to their nostalgic and innocent sound. Kennedy Ashlyn Wenning’s vocals have been repeatedly compared to Kate Bush, Harriet Wheeler, and Elizabeth Fraser, with a pitch-perfect octave range carrying songs gracefully between optimistic joy down to undisturbed melancholia – all within one moment of verse. Guitarist Cash Askew paints a layered and complex backdrop using signature reverberation and washes of stringed ambient tones, akin to Robin Guthrie, Ronny Moorings and Kevin Shields.

Perfectly executed songwriting with effortless simplicity and vernal drive, Them Are Us Too’s debut album, Remain, rivals the comparative magic behind the early 4AD catalog and zeitgeist of early Creation Records. Massive, seraphic sound and heartbreaking nostalgia crafted into 8 songs of uncompromising and immaculately orchestrated beauty. At only 21 years of age for both members, Them Are Us Too mask their irrepressible youth underneath their limitless imagination and unparalleled talent, dedicating themselves fully to their uncanny musical creation.

The debut album “Remain” on Dais Records was recorded and produced by Joshua Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv, Nine Inch Nails, Sons of Magdalene).

Listen here and order here.

Posted on May 9th, 2015 under Releases, ,

Martial Canterel - Gyors, Lassu

Since his first live performances in 2002, Sean McBride, aka Martial Canterel (who also performs as half of the duo Xeno & Oaklander), has crafted his electronic sound in a peculiar intersection between avant-garde and pop. Merging the influences of the first wave of relatively unknown minimal electronic bands in northern Europe, and seminal industrial noise bands such as Throbbing Gristle and SPK, with the smoothly stylish songcraft of early British New Wave, Martial Canterel records and performs using analogue synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines exclusively, molding electricity to fix the action of music creation in substance. The mastery of his composition technique, a second nature of harmonic complexity, along with a unique talent for melodies, enables him to manufacture gems of extreme noise pop, making use of all its unexpected ingredients.

Gyors, Lassù marks an important milestone in the evolution of Martial Canterel‘s music, progressing far beyond the cages of “minimal synth” and embracing the noisier qualities of its sound with a renewed urgency, a kind of thickness embodied in multiple layers using only eurorack, Serge and Roland 100 modular systems at his disposal and flushing out the entire session in one take. Sine waves are rendered into walls of guitar-like noise on songs like “And I Thought”, while the stretching out and liquifaction of what were once very precise pointillistic staccato synth arpeggios are marshaled into layers of violent bliss on “Gyors/Lassù”. The analogue labor and the density of sound highlight the character of continuous performance of the music, where the intertwining of the artist and his work is profoundly material in its quality. As in a modern embodiment of the potter’s wheel…the hands, the texture of clay, with ceramic material. Translated lyrically and conceptually, music performance is for time what travel represents in space, and Gyors/Lassù is the sonic rendering of McBride’s wanderings between Hungary (“Bulvàr”, “Budapest II”) and the South of Italy (“Teano”), between vibrant rhythmic structures and melancholic instrumentals, balancing its bodily intensity with abstract experimentation against the regression of the modern listener.

Listen here and order here.

Posted on December 26th, 2014 under Releases, ,