So Many Bands

'Light Speed' is the first single from Twin Atlantic mini-album Vivarium (released on September 14th). The four-piece band hails from Glasgow, UK. This is apparent through vocalist, Sam McTrusty's Scottish accent when he sings. The rawness in his delivery of the lyrics adds more intensity to the already fierceness of this song. The band only gives listeners a short time to prepare before they immediately cut straight to the furious bass and guitar-driven melody.

Currently the band is touring around the UK with Canterbury. Shortly afterwards, they will be heading to the US for thier first tour in the states with fellow bands, The Fall Of Troy and Envy On The Coast, including a stop at South by Southwest Music Festival.

Originally posted at Amped Reviews.

I have a new blog for Accent as part of my editor position. This blog (which is currently nameless) is going to be featuring bands and musicians that have current or former ACC students. Here's my first interview for the blog with The Paper Shapes.

I've known Jason Bearden since his days in the former band, Consider the Source. He recommended I checked out his new band, The Paper Shapes.

Maybe it was my tiredness of the same formulaic, predictable indie music I had been covering for the past year or maybe it was what I needed to perk me up that morning, but once I heard this aggressively melodic post-punk band on the bus ride to class, I was instantly hooked. Either way, this band has my attention.

The Paper Shapes were formally known as the band Prom Nite, but after noticing the new direction the music was taking, the five guys decided to start completely fresh. A new band name and a new genre. This band is pretty new to the music scene. However, I'm sure there are fans out there who feels just like I did and are ready to embrace their refreshing vigorous sound.

But hearing the album isn't enough. This band is definitely one that needs to be seen live. One memorable time I caught one of their shows was during Transmission's Free Week at Red 7. The temperature at the outside stage was a freezing 17 degrees that night, but that didn't stop the band from performing with as much as energy as they would have given if they played on the inside stage. In fact, the guys claim to this day that that was their best show they've had so far.

I had a chance to sit with the band during one of their practice sessions at Music Lab. It was that night I learned that vocalist, Aaron Pearson-Jordan is a currently student at ACC as well as that guitarist, Hector Guerra, is a former student.

At this meeting, the band chatted with me about how the band got together, the recording of the EP they are currently working on and why there is a guy in the band that just works the lighting during the shows.

Click here to read the rest at Accent.

Campus News Briefs for the first issue of Accent:

New semester of Austin Java Lit Gatherings starts this month

Gospel Extravaganza to be held at Eastview

Student Life wins International Gold Award for ad campaign

Former mayor, Reps, speak at CSPS welcome back event

Noyce Scholarship offers $31,000 for math and science

Then I wrote a short recap of Welcome Week.

Welcome week offers help and s’more

For Austin Vida, I wrote an in-depth profile on local artist, Alonso Reyes.

Painting for the future; local artist Reyes on his risqué oil paintings

photo by Jorge Solares

Spoon has been one of Austin’s hometown heroes for years. After vocalist Britt Daniel initially teamed up with drummer Jim Eno in 1993, the band quickly started earning critical praise from press and music fans for their easily accessible hybrid of indie and post-punk rock.

Spoon achieved commercial success as songs from their 2005 album, Gimme Fiction, provided the soundtrack to a variety of movies and TV shows. The involvement with popular TV shows like The O.C. and Veronica Mars, and movies such as 17 Again and Cloverfield attracted even more aficionados to Spoon’s minimalistic rock.

Click here to read the rest at Accent.

It made me sad when I read that The States played their last show this past Thursday. Especially since I couldn't be there.

I met this Brooklyn band during South by Southwest in 2006. I happened to walk into one of those free night show because I wasn't sure what time the band I wanted to see was performing. Luckily for me, The States was already onstage. Even though I only caught the last songs from their set, I instantly became a fan.

After their show, they started striking up conversations with the crowd and handed out free demos from their record that was released at the time. I saw this as my chance to introduce myself and ask for an interview. They were game and the rest is history.

I kept up with this band through the years, catching them every time they played in Austin. They even contributed a track for one of my compilations. I have all the albums and recently I wrote a review for the newest one “We Are the Erasers” for Accent, which you can read here.

So farewell guys, I'll miss ya and your shenanigans. However, don't fret. Turns out Chris Snyder, the vocalist/guitarist, has been working on a little project called “ThreeSixFive Project.” His goal is to write, record and post a song every day for a year.

You can check out his progress here.

Now to share with you the last interview I ever did with The States during 2009's South by Southwest's Music Festival.

Introduce yourself and what do you play in the band.

Chris: We're the States. We're from Brooklyn. My name's Chris.

Joe: I'm Joe.

Pete: Peter.

How's South by Southwest treating you so far?

Chris: Friendly as hell. Hot. Wonderful weather. Hot wonderful women. Yeah, it's been great.

Pete: Beer, food, barbeque, sleep, sleep.

Chris: Yeah, it's great. It's our 3rd time down and probably the best one of the ones that we've been so.

Did you tour on the way over here? How did that go?

Joe: It was great. We drove first to Nashville. We did our last record over there with Chris Grainger and just did our mastering, final mixing session with them. That record got mastered like a day after we left so we played a show and finalized the record. All of it. Everything's done so third record's in the bag and we went to where?

Pete: Mobile, Alabama. We got to meet some of our fans down there from the internet. Came to see us for the first time.

Joe: The interwebs.

Pete: Then we drove to New Orleans and that was vacation day.

Chris: St. Patrick's Day.

Pete: St. Patrick's Day and so we went to a St. Patrick's Day parade. Got to see the sights. Eat the eats. Drink the drinks. Stayed in a scary hotel.

Joe: Yeah, it was a crack house. It was awful.

Pete: It was prostitution, cross dressers, roaches, rats, the whole thing. And then from there, drove down here.

Chris: That's right.

Pete: Across here, I guess. Got to see the Mississippi. Was that Mississippi we went through? Where'd we go through?

Chris: *shakes head*

Pete: That was all Louisiana all the way across, I guess.

Chris: Yeah I think so.

Pete: We've been here since Wednesday night. Played a show Thursday.

Chris: Yes and two today. That's it.

Pete: It's been great.

Have you seen any good bands since you've been here?

Chris: Birds and Batteries from San Francisco. We're sort of like friends of friends and it was way across the river and it was really awesome. I can't describe it but it's really awesome. I think they should have a website if you google it. Birds and Batteries.

Joe: I think it's birdsandbatteries.com

Chris: That's likely yes.

Joe: And then Planeside. We saw our friends from Planeside down here and a bunch of other people we've bumped along the way.

Chris: We stopped in Nashville with a group called Luna Halo who are from Nashville. Great guys. Awesome band. We saw them probably two or three times. So far so all good. All good shows.

Joe: It's great.

So when do you think the album will come out?

Joe: Don't know. Right now we're figuring out our next six months. We're going to try to see if somebody's going to pick it up and pay for it or we're going to do it ourselves. That'll be decided in the next three months probably. Then our back up plan is to do U.S. touring by the end of early summer, late spring.

Chris: Long story short though. Record will probably be out at the end of this year. It'll certainty be available online very shortly. A month. Maybe a month. Yeah, we're excited about it.

Joe: We're going to leak it. We're going to leak it all.

Chris: Yes. We're going to leak our own record.

How do you feel the music has changed since Pete took over the bass?

Chris: Well, I don't know if it was because Pete took over the bass or the direction we were moving anyway, or some combination of the two, it's probably that but the music is more band music now. It was very produced before the last record, the last time we talked to you. And this one, we really wanted to focus on three guys in a room. I mean, trios are special for a reason and so we were trying to focus on that. I think that came across. It's got a lot of space in the record. It's not shock full of stuff.

Joe: Extra stuff. It's basically us playing in a room together and that's really what we went for. Pete is really good at seeing the fat in parts and taking it out and helping the groove of the beat and the groove of the song flow. So it was something we were never able to do before. Just like look at something as it doesn't need all this shit to be in the song. Pete was the catalyst to help everything kind of move along in a better direction.

Pete: It's kind of like same band, different process. More or less. It still sounds like The States. It was just a different way to get there.

Yeah, it's kind of simplified but not really. I don't know how to explain it.

Chris: The last record, we just couldn't play all the stuff live. There was just three guitar parts all the time. It doesn't really make sense. I mean, it was fun to do and we liked obviously our record, but we wanted to do things that we could play together. And yeah, that does mean that it's simpler but it also means that the essence is more pure.

Pete: Definitely more of a spiritual record. At least it felt like for me. The way we collaborated was very personal. Where I know where the last two records kind of came from, this felt like it was like therapy for me. Some of the content Chris talks about kind of hits me in certain ways. Almost like I'm outside of it but within it. This record just took me to a different place than anything I've ever been in.

Every year before South by Southwest, I take time out to sit down and sort through all the bands I have befriended on MySpace, visit various websites such as www.showlistaustin.com and Red Gorilla Festival, and make a calendar of all the free shows I want to see.

This normally follows with me printing out this list so that I have a schedule of where I need to be during the week, but of course, when the week finally rolls around, this schedule ends up staying in my bag.

While I did catch some bands that were originally on this schedule, the majority of bands I saw this year were discovered as I was walking down Sixth Street and was intrigued by what I heard. So, without further ado, here is a list of bands not on my schedule, but that I was fortunate enough to see.

Click here to read the rest at Accent.

Emo's Lounge
603 Red River St.

Emo's definitely lives up to its reputation during SXSW and I don't blame them. What other venues provide great lines every day of the week for all ages? I especially like the Emo's Lounge shows. They mainly showcase local bands that are trying to get their name out but have great potential. It's a great place to check out those hidden gems people will be talking about in a couple of years.

Click here to read the rest at Accent.

Here's a review I did for Frantic Clam's album Anatomica. Tyler Groover from the blog TwoGroove asked if I could give him my 2 cents and here you go.

Yes, I liked this album. But you gotta read the review to find out why.

Click here to read the review at Suite101.

I interviewed Casxio in the back alley of Barcelona after their SXSW showcase. Sitting on amps, the guys and gal gave me an insite on the recording process for the upcoming album and the story behind this band.

Click here to read more previous articles about Casxio.

First off, how is South by Southwest treating ya so far?

Lucas: It's been good so far. It's like a big party of course and it's all a blur so far to tell you the truth.

Eric: It's good. We're out of LA and we're playing music in Texas in front of a lot of Texans and people from all over the world. So that's the best part about it is that people that we've been talking to like yourself and some people from New York and even England are coming out and they can see the show in person. so that's the best part about it.

And I saw Perez Hilton in the audience. He was standing behind me so that was kind of cool.

Eric: Actually Andrea's been talking with him because we played a show last week in LA. We opened for Yelle. Perez came out and introduced Yelle so she emailed him and they've been talking about it. We're going to go to his party later and everything. Talk about celeb gossip.

How are people responding to your shows so far? The music is kind of different than what's out there.

Lucas: Yeah, it is. Sometimes it takes a second or a couple of songs for them to really give a response that we want, but eventually we get that response. It's been positive at this point.

Eric: It takes one drunk guy dancing on the floor to open it up for everyone.

Lucas: That's right.

All: Jordan.

And you mentioned Phil's producing your album.

Eric: Yeah, Phil's producing and helping us out with the sound while we're here in Austin. Then he's helping us record all our new tracks and everything.

Lucas: Yeah, we're recording in his studio, Hanger 1018, in downtown LA. Amazing studio.

So you're currently recording right now?

Lucas: Yeah. We're aiming for the end of this year for the release of the first Casxio album.

Eric: Christmas. It's actually going to be our first Hanukkah album.

Ok and how did this band come about? How did ya form?

Lucas: We formed about two years ago. I basically recruited these folks to my band. They were more than happy to do so, I guess, because they're still here.

Andrea: We were playing pool and then he came over. He saw my keyboard and that was it. That was the beginning.

Lucas: Yeah and Eric here came from New York. Came down here and didn't know exactly what to do with himself. He was slumming it. Slumming it. Living under a bridge somewhere.

Eric: And Lucas saved my life.

Lucas: And I saved his life. I did. Gave mouth to mouth.

Ok. I'm sure you get asked this a lot but the meaning behind the name.

Lucas: You know, that's a tough one. Because there is no meaning behind the name. It's just a cool sounding name.

Eric: It's a word that was kind of out there but the point is to put that music, that sound like you said you don't hear it too much and brand that name with that sound.

Andrea: I just think it sounds sexy.

Lucas: I think so too. I think it sounds sexy.

Andrea: It does. It really does.

Lucas: And I think that's why I like it.

It matches the music.

Eric: Exactly.

Lucas: Yeah, absolutely.

Now we're going to have fun. If you were a superhero and could have any superpower, what would it be?

Lucas: Did we talk about this?

Eric: I think we did? I think we did this once.

Andrea: I feel it's a question too.

Lucas: Wow, I think we've answered this before. I don't remember what I answered. If I could be a superhero, I would want to be able to fly one inch off of the ground. That's probably it.

Eric: Just hover?

Lucas: I'd just like to hover one inch off the ground but be able to control where I'd go. Not like I'm hovering and you push me and I float away, but I want to be able to control that. I think that'd be really kind of cool. It'll look like I had those skating shoes on all the time, but I wouldn't need to go out and buy them so I'll be saving money.

Eric: Teleportation.

Andrea: Ok my turn. I would like to change little things on a cellular level with my eyes so I can like shape shift things with my mind.

Eric: Dr. Manhattan?

Andrea: Yes. But you know what though, I could also cure cancer if I did that. Like I could look at it and would change the cells in my mind and be like “oh, your tumor is gone.”

Lucas: That's amazing.

Eric: I think you would be Jesus if you could do that. You could turn water into wine and shit.

Andrea: I'm choosing my super power.

All right, what's next for you after South by Southwest?

Lucas: We have a few shows lined up in LA. One in Spaceland. I dunno. We're working on it. The main priority right now is working on the album. Yeah, so just working hard with that.

Eric: Yeah, we'll be playing shows in LA. Just building on what we're building on in LA and getting ready for that album.

Andrea: Dance party Casxio. Dance party 2009.

Eric: We're looking for a pet DJ. Right?

Andrea: She said what are we going to do? That's what we're going to do.

Anything you wanna add?

Lucas: Work hard. Study. Graduate. Go on to bigger and better things.

Andrea: And don't do drugs.

Lucas: Oh yeah and don't do drugs. Drugs are bad. Yeah, that's about it.

It is no joke. Murdocks will be releasing a new album "Roar" on April 1, 2008, three years after the previous release "Surrenderender". Murdocks, consisting of vocalist/guitarist Franklin Morris and two newly inducted members, bassist Kyle Robarge and drummer David T. Jones, has shared the stage with various bands such as My Chemical Romance, and What Made Milwaukee Famous.

Click here to read the rest at Accent.