MP3: “Bedroom Anthem”

With their new full-length, Shutter Release, Lymbyc Systym’s Jared and Michael Bell are redefining what it means to be an instrumental band. The brothers make music that sings through you, and their impossibly personal vividly intimate melodies are the product of a lifetime of making music together. Seamlessly blending precision precise pop hooks, grandiose orchestration and experimental structures, their anthemic songs get straight to the point and leave the listener breathless. Their music resonates with our most personal experiences, and inevitably, our stories become the lyrics.

Shutter Release showcases Lymbyc Systym at its best and solidifies the brothers’ presence as a polyphonic wall of sound. For their acclaimed live show, Jared and Michael, side-by-side, dominate their instruments in effortless synchronicity. This energetic dynamism dynamic energy holds true in pervades the ten expertly crafted songs on Shutter Release the album.

With the brothers Bell now living apart in Brooklyn and Austin, the writing process for Shutter Release began with inspired late night conversations. Melodies and rhythms were sung to one another over the phone. These audio sketches, like the faded photograph on the album’s cover, were passed back and forth until these vibrant images came into focus.

Recorded to analog tape during the dead of an East coast winter, the brothers harnessed the full capacity of the studio. Organs, vibraphone, analog synthesizers, banjo, vintage tape echo, African percussion, toy piano and eight-bit modules adorn the album. Drum programming was based on an organic approach, with samples taken from found sounds, manipulated gongs and variety of household trinkets. Once the solid core of Jared’s high-energy melodic layering and Mike’s uncontainable beats were locked in place, the brothers called upon an array of talented close friends to lend a hand. Their rich, new complement of strings, horns, lap steel and guitar pushes the music into explosive new territory.

Lymbyc Systym’s compositional versatility and mastery of dynamics are in full force on Shutter Release. Guitar laden “Ghost Clock” conjures the ominous, energizing spirit of My Bloody Valentine combined with the melodic intricacy of Tortoise. The triumphant “Bedroom Anthem” lulls us in with tranquil intertwining banjo and glockenspiel before culminating in a jubilant, horn-heavy crescendo. The resulting sound resembles a chance meeting between Jon Brion and Broken Social Scene. In contrast, the ethereal textures on tracks like “Kubrick” add an intimate, spatial warmth to the record that evokes the subtleties of Stars of the Lid.

Shutter Release showcases the meticulously refined textures of Lymbyc Systym’s studio prowess without compromising the raw, captivating energy of their live show. With this release, the Bell brothers push the boundaries of wordless music into uncharted territory, proving that the genre is alive and thriving.

· Lymbyc Systym has toured with Broken Social Scene, The Books, Crystal Castles, The Album Leaf, Her Space Holiday and This Will Destroy You.
· Shutter Release was mixed by John Congleton (Modest Mouse, St. Vincent, Explosions in the Sky, Black Mountain, etc.)
· Shutter Release features instrumental contributions from members of This Will Destroy You, Balmorhea and Slow Six.
· Lymbyc Systym will tour the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Japan to promote Shutter Release.

LYMBYC SYSTYM

01/07 Seattle, WA High Dive *
01/08 Portland, OR Mississippi Studios *
01/09 San Francisco, CA Cafe Du Nord *
01/10 Los Angeles, CA Bootleg Theater *#
01/11 San Diego, CA Che Cafe *
01/12 Tucson, AZ Plush *
01/13 Tempe, AZ Sail Inn *
01/15 Austin, TX Emo’s $
01/16 Houston, TX Rudyard’s

* = w/ Helios
# = w/ The One AM Radio
$ = w/ This Will Destroy You

Lymbyc Systym
Shutter Release
(Mush)
Street Date: Nov. 3, 2008

1. Trichromatic
2. Ghost Clock
3. Interiors
4. Bedroom Anthem
5. Kubrick
6. Contemporary Art
7. T-Ball
8. Shutter Release
9. Teddy
10. Late Night Classic

LYMBYC SYSTYM LINKS:
MySpace: myspace.com/thelymbycsystym

Band site: lymbycsystym.com

Press Materials: mushrecords.com/artist/LymbycSystym

VIDEO: “These Hands” & “January Twenty Something” dir. by Ben Barnes

A year and a half after releasing the acclaimed Alopecia LP, WHY? returns with their fourth album, Eskimo Snow (released Sept. 22, 2009). The two records are each other’s perfect foil: While last year’s release found Yoni Wolf and the gang delivering a tight set of intricate rhymes, live loops, slurred hooks and acerbic wit, Eskimo Snow offers a sung, sobering take on mortality that unfurls in lush waves of Americana and pop-infused psych-folk. Pre-mixed in Nashville by Lambchop’s Mark Nevers (Silver Jews, Bonnie Prince Billy, Calexico) and worked over by Alopecia engineer Eli Crews, this album is WHY?’s most live-sounding yet - a shadowy and sprawling piece as intimate in subject matter as it is handsome in timbre.

WHY? actually recorded Eskimo Snow at the same time as Alopecia, at Minneapolis’ Third Ear studio, with Fog’s Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson rounding out a live quintet. The vision for two separate albums emerged on a snowed-in night after a hot toddy or two. If Alopecia, however inexplicably, maintains a summery tone, then Eskimo Snow captures the bite and resignation associated with the Midwestern winters that these Cincinnati boys grew up with.

“These Hands” opens the album up rich and with deliberate pacing, Doug matching Yoni word-for-word (you’ll find no vocal overdubs here) and the rhythm section operating under heavy reverb. Vibraphone likewise duets with piano, windy wordless vocals fly around the atmosphere, and wet footsteps soon carry us to “January Twenty Something.” Here, you’re in the room with WHY?, listening to the bass rattle the drums and the drums rattle the vibes. Amid this folksy grandness, the whole crew sings for the chorus, bending their harmony into a gorgeously warped drawl. Next, “Against Me” brings the album’s brightest moment yet: a crescendo of bells that eventually dips into an aural whirlpool while Yoni spins picturesque observations like a countrified Dylan.

Across Eskimo Snow, Yoni weighs his ability to create a legacy against life’s transience. On the luxe, pedal-steel-drenched “Even The Good Wood Gone,” he transposes himself with a mummy in a museum, begging, “No flash photography,” drawing a line from the dubious promise of fame to the brittleness of antiquity. For “Into The Shadows Of My Embrace,” he explores sex and decay while the track vacillates between a live wall-of-sound and spare church organ passages. “One Rose” is gentler, sporting a Western stride and dark piano hits whose echoing blackness mimics Yoni’s wistful poems. Toward the song’s end, the chorus of Alopecia’s “A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under” makes a stormy reprise.

Most impressively, this record presents a band uninhibited, but evermore accomplished at imbuing sound with mood. “On Rose Walk, Insomniac” rolls forth on a tempestuous din, Josiah drumming hard through the chorus, where Yoni’s voice sounds like its running through a Leslie speaker. “Berkeley By Hearseback” comes in so soft, the guitar tones feel like waves of grain next to the splashy cymbals and that Jim James-worthy cowboy croon ricocheting through the background. “This Blackest Purse” weaves a melancholy that shirks dourness for a curious smile. And when the titular song brings the album to a hushed close, Eskimo Snow’s place in the narrative becomes clear. Rather than spit at death or threaten it with suicide, Yoni stops bucking against the inevitable. In the process, the band discovers a rich place that the rest of us can happily live within.

WHY?
Eskimo Snow
(Anticon)
Sept. 22, 2009

1. These Hands
2. January Twenty Something
3. Against Me
4. Even The Good Wood Gone
5. Into The Shadows of My Embrace
6. One Rose
7. On Rose Walk, Insomniac
8. Berkeley By Hearseback
9. This Blackest Purse
10. Eskimo Snow

WHY? LINKS:

Myspace: myspace.com/whyanticon

Press materials

STREAM: Grizzly Bear - “Cheerleader” (Neon Indian Remixes)

An elusive new project from composer Alan Palomo. Neon Indian delivers equal parts synthetic nostalgia, Dreampop lullabies, and grinding guitar noise to create something eerier than the sum of its parts. Forged after a hazy winter gathering in Texas, this initial batch of tracks were the result of field recordings, record samples, a collection of bizarre synth sounds. Soliciting the visual acrobatics of Video artist Alicia Scardetta, this project is setting out to be a multimedia maelstrom. Orbiting around the themes of drug induced heartbreak, weary afternoons, and lost chances, this music provides a lush soundtrack to the deadbeat exploits of teenage ennui. Neon Indian’s bedroom ballads have already forged Psychic Chasms, the debut full-length. They’ve been compared to New Order, Future Bible Heroes, and most recently said to sound like a saw-wave cutting a Doobie Brother’s song in half. Expect much racket to be had from this fresh-faced crew.

NEON INDIAN

11/27 Austin, TX Stubb’s
12/15 New York, NY Mercury Lounge
12/16 New York, NY Mercury Lounge
12/17 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Bowl

Neon Indian
Psychic Chasms
(Lefse)
Street date: Oct. 13, 2009

1. (AM)
2. Deadbeat Summer
3. Laughing Gas
4. Terminally Chill
5. (If I knew, I’d tell you)
6. 6669 (i dont know if you know)
7. Should have taken acid with you
8. Mind, Drips
9. Psychic Chasms
10. Local Joke
11. Ephemeral Artery
12. 7000 (reprise)

NEON INDIAN LINKS:

MySpace - myspace.com/neonindian
Label Page - lefserecords.com

MP3: “Here’s a Star (Neon Indian Remix)”

MP3: “Here’s a Star” (album version)

The Silent League is a difficult band to trace. Formed in 2004 in Brooklyn by Justin Russo (at the time, keyboardist for Mercury Rev during the classic Deserter’s Songs / All is Dream era), The Silent League may sometimes appear like an on-again/off-again relationship between a collective of musicians interested only in periodically making records, playing shows, and disappearing again. This may be true. While nobody in New York ever seems quite sure whether or not the band still exists (their second record, Of Stars And Other Somebodies was never even released in N. America, and is due for re-release), the name carries weight all over the city. Lay tracks through the past 5-6 years’ worth of new music (take Arcade Fire, Beirut, St. Vincent, Stars Like Fleas, Bishop Allen…) and you’re going to run over more than a handful of people who began with or spent time creating music under the name The Silent League…many of them still do, you just don’t know it. “We don’t really care about maintaining a place in the industry. There is enough noise in the world and everyone has other work to busy themselves with”, says Russo, “we try to keep it new, detached…we make music when we think we have something to say that isn’t already being said”.

NEW ALBUM
The Silent League is releasing a new record, it’s third, in Feb 2010, ..…but you’ve always been the caretaker. This time with the idiosyncratic producer, and band-member, Shannon Fields at the helm (founder and producer of the unclassifiable Brooklyn collective Stars Like Fleas, and whose musical credits include Helado Negro, Miho Hatori, Doveman, and many projects that ignore rock and pop altogether), the band spent time at various upstate farmhouse studios with recording and mixing engineer D. James Goodwin (Scary Mansion, The Bravery) crafting a somewhat different record. More explicit is the group’s affection for the soft rock and artrock power ballads of the 70s (the group initially bonded over a common love of ELO, Todd Rundgren, Roxy Music and Bread), but the moodier and more unhinged qualities that have always been subtexts in the band’s music have been pushed forward. It is an evocative, jarring, sometimes disturbing and densely woven record that seems nearly to ignore contemporary indierock but which sounds very little like its antecedents or any obvious contemporary reference points. Rather than chasing the endlessly tiresome “reinvention of rock”, The Silent League, with one foot in sterling songcraft and the other in the Brooklyn diaspora, has sculpted stunningly fresh new music with the decapitated pieces of rock’s MOR family tree.

THE PAST
For a band that disappears for long stretches of time and has never properly toured, browsing The Silent League’s prior press clippings and live show history will show a band that has always held fascination by its peers. The prior two records have been praised by The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, NME, Q, Mojo, Uncut, Rolling Stone, Spin, The New York Times, Village Voice, Blender, Salon.com, etc). The Silent League has performed live supporting a broad range of artists, including Interpol, Los Campesinos!, Echo & The Bunnymen, Bloc Party, Le Loup, Patrick Wolf, Jens Lekman, The National, Sufjan Stevens, Rufus Wainwright, Bear in Heaven, etc.

SOME PRAISE FOR OF STARS AND OTHER SOMEBODIES:

[4/5] “bewitching, lush, orchestral beauty…will leave you craving more” The Guardian

“a sweeping masterpiece” Rough Trade

THE SILENT LEAGUE

01/16 New York, NY Blender Theater at Gramercy

The Silent League
…but you’ve always been the caretaker
(Something In Construction)
Street Date: Jan. 26, 2010

Disc One:

1. Egg-Shaped
2. When Stars Attack!!!
3. Yours Truly, 2095
4. Little i
5. There Is A Caretaker In The Woods
6. Sleeper
7. Here’s A Star
8. Dayplanner
9. The Ohio Winter Conventioners
10. Rules of Disengagement
11. I Go
12. But You’ve Always Been The Pilot
13. Resignation Studies
14. Final Chapter Meeting
15. How and Why our Dads Lost The War

Disc Two (Bonus Disc):

1. Here’s a Star (Neon Indian Remix)
2. Dayplanner (Instrumental)
3. Kings and Queens (In-studio version)
4. Can’t Get It Out of My Head (ELO Cover)
5. Final Chapter Meeting (Instrumental)
6. Here’s a Star (Prequel Mix)
7. Here’s a Star (Helado Negro Remix)
8. No One (Alicia Keys cover)
9. Let It Roll (live)
10. Time (live)

THE SILENT LEAGUE LINKS:
MySpace

Press Materials