The Fuzzy Blog

The Booze play R&B like the Brits used to circa Rolling Stones, Faces, etc.  Like any great band that nods to the past, these Atlanta boys def put their own spin on things.  They have toured the US (including an opening slot on a recent OK Go tour) and have a west coast tour and SXSW gigs coming up.  ”At Maximum Volume” comes out in March on Underrated Records and the band will be supporting with tour dates with the Biters.

Listen to “Hit Me Where It Hurts”.

What does Country Mice front-man Jason Rueger have in common with less than 300 people in the US?  Growing up in Beattie, that’s ruralest of rural Kansas. On a farm of course, that was passed down through three generations of his family and old enough to be on the Pony Express route. “Family, friends, and working the land gave us a good wholesome life”. Walking dirt road paths, working and living off the land, squinting his eyes at the sun, but with headphones on, it is not the bucolic atmosphere but music that most inspires him.  At an early age, Rueger sets his sights for something different than the surrounding dirt and milo that stung his eyes and cut his hands. Breaking away from the close-knit ties of friends and family, Rueger moves east, not to Nashville, where you might expect a country boy to venture, but to Brooklyn.  It doesn’t take long to hook up with fellow Midwest transplants Ben Bullington (guitar) and Kurt Kuehn (drums) as they all quickly band together, finding comfort in their shared sense of displacement.  Eventually, as the trio becomes more assimilated to their new surroundings, they recruit upstate New Yorker Mike Feldman (bass).  As Country Mice, they rally together to craft apocalyptic ballads through amplifier hazes that thicken into funnel clouds, drums that stomp-clap sedately before the storm peaks, and bass tones that thicken the bloodstream. Rueger draws on his small town rearing with sophistication beyond the ordinarily romantic and reductive Americana troubadour, and his songwriting is anything but dime a dozen. Strong traces of Neil Young and Wilco are mixed into modern experimental guitar sounds that any fan of mid-90’sSonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. will love. Living and gigging in Brooklyn, Country Mice begin to fully develop their sound, which becomes by influenced the other hardworking bands of Brooklyn’s fast-paced scene. With the release of two 7” singles and a limited edition cassette on Brooklyn-based indie labels, Country Mice embarked on several national US tours, recorded and recently released a Daytrotter Session, played CMJ and is heading to and touring around SXSW.  
For the spring, they will unleash a new single “Festival” on March 28 and their debut album Twister on June 7th, a record that sonically chisels through the calloused shell of glossy rock & roll to find the dissonant live wire beneath and play it for all its worth. It tells a tale of strained memory: the hardships, joys, and love of growing up in a small town in the Midwest, with the hopes and dreams of traveling the world – a record for every kid seeing the big world from his small bedroom window.

Singer and Songwriter, Jesse Macht, has recently completed “LOVE IS ANOTHER DRUG”, his debut EP set for release in early 2011. Recorded in Los Angeles, Jesse’s hometown, Love is Another Drug was produced by multi-instrumentalist Aaron Tap (Matt Nathanson). It will be available on ITUNES and AMAZON and includes the title track “Love is Another Drug”, as well as “New Vaccine”, and “Now I Know”. A former member of buzz band Burn Down the Mission, Jesse music has appeared on numerous television shows and films.

Influenced by songwriters such as Jon Brion, Glen Hansard, Gram Parsons, Neil Young, Billy Joel, John Lennon, and James Taylor, Jesse’s music aspires to follow a long tradition of introspection through the art of song. His songwriting has been likened to that of Glenn Phillips, Elliot Smith and Stephen Jenkins.

Pandit is Lance Smith from Lumberton, TX. After many years of playing in various projects, he decided to go solo in mid 2009. With the right equipment in hand, a locker full of songs, and a strong determination, Lance released his debut, selt titled EP during January 2010, to rave reviews. 

Pandit also released a 17 track Demo record December 23, 2010. You can download it for free at: http://www.mediafire.com/?u61580iw9a4h41a

“Eternity Spin” LP will be released February 22, 2011 on Lefse/Waaga Records, Juno Beach Records and Wonder Beard http://www.facebook.com/musicpandit /

Listen to “Artichoke” by Pandit

Diamond Doves was formed in 2010 by longtime friends and musical collaborators Nick Kinsey, Brigham Brough and Wyndham Garnett. They met as kids and began a friendship and musical partnership that eventually brought them around the world playing and recording with Elvis Perkins, known collectively as Elvis Perkins in Dearland. Apart from their experience with Elvis, the three have performed as “Dearland Horns,” (Wyndham on trombone, Brigham on saxophone and Nick on clarinet) and have played with many of todays most celebrated bands including My Morning Jacket, Bon Iver, Dr. Dog, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Okkervil River, and others.

Listen to “Is There Any Hope?”

Rising from the Brooklyn underground is Dynasty Electric, a band with an explosive live show and a unique sound weaving elements of electronic, punk, pop and psychedelic rock.

The band is fronted by the powerful and seductive vocals of Jenny Electrik and backed by the densely layered production multi-instrumentation and songwriting of Seth Misterka. Their retro-futuristic pop sound falls somewhere between Blondie, Goldfrapp, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Jefferson Airplane. Also setting them apart is Jenny’s use of the theremin, which creates electrical sound vibrations, adding a truly unusual element to their performances.

In 2009, they caught the attention of hip-hop mogul Damon Dash who paired the group with producer Ski Beatz (Jay-Z, Camp Lo, Curren$y), who infused his signature beats into their electro-pop tracks. Recorded in the culturally and musically diverse Woodstock, NY, the end result is Golden Arrows, due to be released in spring 2011 on Dash’s BluRoc Records. The album’s title track and first single features the lyrical stylings of Mr. Lif and Jenny’s ethereal vocals floating above the rattling bassline. Songs like “Radiation” and “Spell of Time” reflect a gritty punk sensibility, while the dance floor-ready “Box of Light” shimmers with pulsating energy.

“Working with Ski Beatz was really amazing,” Seth recalls. “We just had a great creative chemistry right off the bat.  As soon as we got together we just kept spinning out song after song.  Ski is like a zen master in the studio, and we learned so much from working with him.” 

The band came to life in 2003, the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Misterka, whose varied career has seen him working with everyone from jazz experimentalists Anthony Braxton, William Parker, and Jonathan Zorn to indie rockers Hot Chip, Shy Child, and The Fever. Jenny Electrik was originally recruited on bass but quickly became the lead vocalist and co-songwriter. Drawing from such varied influences as the Beatles, Bjork and Miles Davis, the pair released the album Black Box in 2004, touring around America, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan and appearing on Much Music and MTV. They returned to the studio in 2008 for the EP Burningand the single “Electric Love,” which featured Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on drums. In 2010, drummer Shimon Hikri was added to the lineup.

To date, Dynasty Electric has brought their colorful stage performance to the Burning Man Festival, SXSW, Summerfest, CMJ, BAM’s Sounds Like Brooklyn Festival, The Brooklyn Museum, Dewey Beach Music Festival, as well as an opening spot for legendary rockers The Meat Puppets on a US tour.

With Golden Arrows, Dynasty Electric continues their genre-defying evolution, bringing their danceable message of peace and love to an even wider audience.

Listen to “Golden Arrows”

Five O’Clock Heroes are a New Wave influenced rock group currently based in New York City. Singer, Antony Ellis, is originally from Northampton in the UK. They first formed in 2003, and to date have released five singles and two albums, Bend to the Breaks and Speak Your Language. The band will be releasing their third record (and first proper American release), “Different Times”, on February 15th, 2011. Filter Magazine debuted the new album’s first single “Rough Boys” in September.

Signed in the UK to their own label Glaze Records and in Europe and Japan to PIAS, the band have received critical acclaim from the likes of NME, Drowned In Sound and musicOMH.com.
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The band cite the likes of Elvis Costello, The Police, Joe Jackson and Dexys Midnight Runnersas major influences, and have made a name for themselves, particularly in the UK, through charismatic and energetic live performances. Support slots with The Rakes, Brendan Benson,The Bravery, The Paddingtons, Jet and Albert Hammond, Jr. have ensured their music has reached a considerable audience.

Listen to “City of Lights”. 

The Heavenly States are Ted Nesseth, Jeremy Gagon, Genevieve Gagon and Masanori Mark Christianson. A Minnesota lefty born of humble means, frontman/lyricist Ted Nesseth plays his guitar upside down and backwards because he taught himself to play on his friends’ guitars. Not wanting to wait to learn how to play straight ensured that he’d have an inexorable ticket to a certain kind of sound that was well-suited to the punk Minneapolis scene he came up in. From there, his impatience and sponge-like nature has led him to produce a range of music. A surprising, wired, sometimess livid, comedic improvisateur, Ted delivers memorable and unexpected evenings.

Jeremy Gagon, drummer/instrumentalist, grew up in an offbeat, highly edited version of the “military family” in Virginia and Georgia. He leapt from Van Halen to jazz in his teens and became a student of music, philosophy and horror, studying with Ed Soph, Henry Okstel and Ron Fink at the University of North Texas. With a flexible and adaptive style he drives as much as he rides The Heavenly States song.

Genevieve Gagon, lyricist/instrumentalist is a pop ascetic who abandoned virtuosity for the thrill of sketching unsentimental songs in coal. A student of music and letters at various institutions across the land including two highschools and seven universities, she collected a number of degrees before the well ran dry.

Masanori Mark Christianson, bass/instrumentalist is the most recent member of the band and the one the others were waiting for. Cordial and approachable, a visual artist and amateur chef, he provides the plate on which The Heavenly States are served. A Japanese-Korean immigrant raised in the same southeastern Minnesota town as his Mexican-American bandmate, he often muses with Ted that they ended up together, contributing to a project that was once unimaginable.

The band has toured the USA, Australia, the UK, Egypt and were the first rock band to play Libya. They have recorded two full-length albums entitled The Heavenly States s/t and Black Comet, as well as the 3-song single King Epiphany I, II and Monument. Also released, a 7-inch single with Coldplay and The Postal Service, several Australian b-sides and the ep Elephants from Ants under the moniker Fluke Starbucker.

The band has collaborated with artists and filmmakers in Milwaukee, Minneapolis and the San Francisco bay area to produce music videos for the songs “Pretty Life”, “Car Wash” and “My Friends”, and a video for “The Pale” is in the works.

The Heavenly States have made news and garnered features in Newsweek, The Washington Post, Billboard, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, Reuters, Alternative Press, the Daily Telegraph (London), the Guardian (London) and others. Their travels and adventures are documented in interviews by NPR’s All Things Considered, NBC11 News in San Francisco and Reuters (Libya, Tunisia, London).

Listen to “Model Son”. 

The Head Set came together like so many bands do – one guy screws around with a four track and puts together a bunch of songs. He shows his brother, who plays drums and happens to know a couple other dudes who mostly play Stevie Wonder songs but are up for a lark. Next thing you know, proper rehearsals are underway and everyone’s looking around thinking, “Yeah, I like this, this’ll work.”

Starting a band in New York is strange. On the one hand, there are lots of places to perform, and people take their rock & roll pretty seriously. On the other hand, rehearsal space is hard to find, and one winds up spending a lot of time with these “man with a van” types who clearly have a death wish and are always listening to Celtic Frost cassettes. Which is pretty awesome, actually.

So The Head Set played around New York a bunch, recorded an EP that Steve Lamacq and others toyed around with, survived a hilariously inept showcase at the Viper Room, etc. They made an full-length album called ‘Way Past Used’ with their friend Nic Hard, recording out in Connecticut at a studio The Pixies used to use. Along the way they performed with a lot of great bands like Ted Leo, Editors, & Sonic Youth.

The Head Set admires David Bowie, U2, and The Police, among many others, and rely mostly on Jordan’s melodic instincts and a really strong rhythm section. With a full album of new material ready for release in early 2011, The Head Set hopes to follow in the footsteps of their various influences. 

Listen to “Hollywood”.

Somewhere out east, pretty much as east as you can go without leaving this isle, is the Southwold coast. A mystifying place…equal parts picturesque seaside town and desolate, barren frontier – largely determined by how kind the weather is feeling. Amongst the eccentric shoreline, raging waves and shiny pier is a beach hut offering respite from the chill wind – the sort that gives you earache. And it’s in this beach hut, that you’ll often find songwriter Matthew P and his makeshift recording studio. That is, when he’s not surfing the, well, ‘challenging’ waves of the Southwold coast, or helping construct the local nature reserve. It was from this beach hut, that Matthew very recently put the finishing touches to his debut release the ‘Swimming’ EP. 

Listen to “The Breakfast Song”.