Elementary school teacher turned electro-pop darling Cannonball Jane heads off on a summer tour, sans a notebook.

“Cannonball Jane is the coolest one woman band I’ve heard in a long time. This is what Carole King would sound like if she had a sampler and was really into Francoise Hardy.” – Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre

“…one-woman New York punk-funk project Cannonball Jane lived up to the hype” – New York Magazine

“Cannonball Jane purveys an inventive mishmash of hip hop beats and day-glo ‘60s pop that suggests a female Beck weaned on The Ronettes and The Raincoats.” – Time Out London

School’s out for the summer and so is Sharon Hagopian, aka Cannonball Jane - music teacher by day and underground electro-pop phenomenon by night. When she’s not teaching in her hometown of Bridgeport, CT, she’s out creating a mind-bendingly brilliant mix of hip-hop samples and sixties girl group pop. With summer vacation underway, Hagopian is taking a time-out by launching a northeast tour to promote her latest EP Knees Up!, which features a remix of the hit “Take It To Fantastic” by Adrock of Beastie Boys. Stream the EP HERE.

Sounding more like the work of a throng of music nerds (banned-from-the-academy maverick multi-instrumentalist, recently-diagnosed-schizophrenic drummer, sleeps-in-his-leather-jacket guitarist, typewriter-sampling-avant-garde keyboardist, etc.) the reality is rather different. It’s hard to believe that there's not more than one of her.

Recorded entirely at home, Hagopian’s studio set up of beatboxes, samplers, tambourines, guitars, turntables, piano, synths, various noise gadgets and effects shines through, creating an innovative retro-modern mix, elegant and sweetly beguiling but still rough enough to handle something bigger than a moped. From the Spector-soul of “Take it to Fantastic” and “The Secret Handshake” (MP3) onwards, Knees Up! combines such diverse influences as Run-DMC, The Aislers Set, Solex, The Shangri-La’s, The Go-Go’s, Luscious Jackson and Devo, while remaining fresh, exciting and original at all times.

On top of this is Sharon’s truly pleasing voice polishing off each mini pop masterpiece on Knees Up!. Hagopian has previously taken the Cannonball Jane sound out on the road with support slots for The Go! Team, Gravy Train!!!!, E.S.G. and Le Tigre. This summer she hits the road again – see below for dates.

Cannonball Jane In The Press:
“Sharon Hagopian busts out the most effortlessly funky indie-rock G-slide not on The Go! Team’s new album.” – Spin

“No wonder The Go! Team and Le Tigre are fans of this gal.” – Paste

“…thirsting for more.” – Bust

“Frothy, infectious sampledelica...dreamy doo-wop oohs and aahs with old-school breaks and beats...it could all be a musical car crash, but charm and sassy beats win the day. And to complete this mini-masterpiece's feel good credentials: by day Jane is a music teacher, Miss Hagopian, and she recorded it in her bedroom.” – The Times (UK)

“…a concise summary of her aesthetic: cartoonish hip hop breakbeats, elegant piano chords, twinkling chimes, girl group melodies and a swirl of miscellaneous musical elements that fill out every available space in her songs without weighing down their buoyant grooves. Hagopian comes across as the world's most ideal music educator -- someone endlessly enthusiastic about a wide range of music who's open both to old fashioned instruments and cut-and-paste sample-based compositions “ – Matthew Perpetua, The Associated Press

Cannonball Jane Live:
6/10 – New London, CT @ O’Neill’s Brass Rail
6/12 – New Paltz, NY @ 60 Main w/ Quitzow
6/13 – Danbury, CT @ Heirloom Arts Theatre w/ Palomar
6/14 – Brooklyn, NY @ Galapagos, NYC Popfest
6/17 – New Haven, CT @ Café Nine w/ Quitzow
6/20 – Columbus, OH @ Wholly Craft!
6/21 – Lakewood, OH @ Bela Dubby

Knees Up! Tracklisting:
Stream The EP HERE
Release Date: October 9, 2007

01. Take It To Fantastic
02. Slumber Party
03. Breaker Breaker
04. Take It To Fantastic (Smallstars Remix by Adrock)
05. The Secret Handshake (MP3)
06. Bossa Tug
07. Take It To Fantastic (DJ Downfall Smash Hit Radio Remix)

On The Web:
www.cannonballjane.com
www.myspace.com/cannonballjane
www.myspace.com/gaddycatrecords

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One man wonder band From Bubblegum To Sky creates sugary sweet pop in his new album A Soft Kill, out now.

“…a pop masterpiece…” – Reel Around The Fountain

“While he’s lining his lips with cherry lip gloss, making dope pronouncements, Hernandez’s chorus keep kids hoot–hooting, like Cats exiled on Main Street.” – Magnet

“If you like your music as sweet as candy, then you should definitely give this a listen.” – Punk Planet

“…a plateful of promise, a cool treat for the coming dog days of summer.” – San Francisco Weekly

From Bubblegum To Sky’s Mario Hernandez is back with his highly anticipated third album, A Soft Kill, out this week on LA-based Eenie Meenie Records. The label teamed up with Brown Sound Clothing for a unique approach to releasing A Soft Kill – the album is available as a digital download only or as a limited edition box set containing the album on vinyl LP, a code to access the record as a download, and a limited edition From Bubblegum To Sky t-shirt. For those who still need their music housed on plastic, the first 100 orders will receive a blank CD-R to burn the album to adorned with a one-of-a-kind hand drawn design on each by Hernandez. In addition to traditional music retail outlets, the individually numbered box sets will be for sale at select lifestyle stores throughout the nation making it a true collector’s piece.

More about From Bubblegum To Sky:

PiL, meds, disco, half Mexican, half Japanese, The SOS Band, monster guitar riffs, drinking, more drinking, The dB’s, divorce, death, arrests, cannibalism, no compromises, The Bee Gees, shimmering melodies and stalking. From Bubblegum To Sky ain’t no sunny pop affair – it just sounds like it.

By winter, A Soft Kill, the third full-length album by From Bubblegum To Sky is certain to be considered one of the greatest one-man albums of the year. Only the maturity that comes with brushing against and immersing oneself in the influences mentioned above could bring out an album that is at once ultimately catchy, realistically morose, and expertly played. In a word: fucking relatable.

The one man is Mario Hernandez and he’s been wrestling with a few demons. Hernandez’s previous records Me and Amy and the Two French Boys (Eenie Meenie, 2000) and Nothing Sadder Than Lonely Queen (Eenie Meenie, 2004) certainly hinted at genius – what with the confessional lyrics sung in a helium tinged voice that lights the drapes on fire meeting the hook laden crunch fest that cools ‘em down. With A Soft Kill, Hernandez has crafted a masterpiece. He demurs, stating, “This record is much more inspired – less obvious indie pop, more organic and drunk. It’s an outlet and easily my favorite record.” Ours, too.

A Soft Kill brings to mind the concept of the vices people use to kill themselves slowly. Not a murder, but a soft kill. Feelings we’ve all felt are wrapped in pristine pop melodies, sandpaper-y guitars and a vocal style dictated by the radio programs of second generation pop songs and high voiced singers that Hernandez listened to before departing Japan for America at the age of 12.

As a self-contained pop machine (occasionally joined by bassist Frank Jordan and Keyboardist Bill Evans) Hernandez does the control freak edict of Billy Corgan and Dave Grohl proud on A Soft Kill. No one should be playing drums on a From Bubblegum To Sky record but Hernandez -- this kind of urgency demands the percussive touch of the author, after all! And is he ever keeping time – 11 songs, 30 minutes. It doesn’t get any better.

“I feel like it’s a band, even though it’s just me,” he says. “The things that people are doing to me, or I’m doing to them, or whatever experiences I’m having -- that’s the band. I couldn’t write without those experiences and in a way that’s what a band member does.”

These are the words of the ONE man becoming THE man. When Mario Hernandez is letting it all hang out, you wanna hang out, too.

From Bubblegum To Sky’s A Soft Kill will be released by Eenie Meenie Records as a digital download and vinyl LP only. The vinyl configuration will come packaged with a From Bubblegum To Sky t-shirt designed exclusively by the Brown Sound Clothing Company, available online and in select lifestyle stores. Check out the company that created this exclusive offer HERE. A Soft Kill was recorded at CBS Studios in Oakland, CA on a Tascam one-inch reel-to-reel.

From Bubblegum To Sky Live:
06/13 New York, NY @ Piano’s – NYC Popfest
06/15 Washington, D.C. @ Red and Black Bar
06/19 Brooklyn, NY @ Union Hall

In The Press:
“From Bubblegum To Sky sound as if they’ve enlisted My Bloody Valentine, the London Philharmonic, The Beach Boys, and Ride to help make massively brilliant jangly noisy pop.” – First Coast News

“…what pop sounds like in my little fantasy world.” – There Stands The Glass

“…short, charming, 60’s–licked, “Beatles–esque” seducer, wispy and jangling.” – A Limerick Ox

“...A Soft Kill is chock full of the ABC’s of ice cream indie...” – Advance Copy

A Soft Kill Tracklisting:
Stream The Album HERE
Release Date: 06.03.08

01. The King Of Failed
02. The Flash
03. I Always Fall Apart (MP3)
04. Guest Relations (MP3)
05. Say Goodbye
06. My Je M’apelle
07. A Soft Kill
08. Even The Sunbeams (MP3)
09. Flies On A Jet Plane
10. Captain Tennille
11. Downtown Or Up?

Tools & Hi–Res Photos:
www.fanaticpromotion.com/rosterdetails.php?indexkey=1341

On The Web:
www.youtube.com/user/fbtshellohi
www.myspace.com/frombubblegumtosky
www.eeniemeenie.com
www.myspace.com/eeniemeenierecords
www.brownsoundclothing.com

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Obscure 80s punk collector faves Bum Kon finally releases debut album 25 years after immortal Drunken Sex Sucks EP.

Bum Kon (named after Korean mass murderer Woo Bum Kon) was one of the best punk rock bands in the early ’80s, even if few outside of its Denver home knew it. To those who were familiar – Fanatic’s own Dave Clifford for example, who witnessed the band during his very impressionable pre-teen years -- Bum Kon was the coolest, most intimidating band on the planet, gliding from a blisteringly fast style on par with legends like the Circle Jerks and MDC into equally intense sort of SST art-metal on its later pair of albums. Larry Denning, Mark Thorpe, Erik Oberhausen and Bob McDonald thrashed with more wild abandon than nearly any other band of the now well-documented early underground scene depicted in the popular documentary film American Hardcore.

In 1983, the band recorded its only single, “Drunken Sex Sucks” (released by Local Anesthetic Records and recorded by Bob Ferbrache), which sold through two pressings at the time and now fetches up to $150 on eBay. Five songs appear on the single but twenty more were recorded at the same session and have been unavailable until now. Some of the tracks that did not make the single are arguably better than the ones that did.

Shortly thereafter, the band focused its energy into two albums in an evermore intriguing mixture of Scratch Acid art-rock crossed with Voivod style tech-metal and these recordings were forgotten over the years. The original tapes were found while mastering the Local Anesthetic compilation (also recently released on the Smooch Records label) and now the best hardcore record from ’83 that was never released can finally see the light of day, a mere 25-years after its recording.

The fact that its four-song 7-inch EP on Local Anesthetic Records (the Denver label whose full catalog also recently received deluxe reissue treatment) has remained eminently collectible is testament to the frenzied power of Bum Kon. This album is co-released by MAXIMUMROCKNROLL Records and is guaranteed to please punks both old and new.

Drunken Sex Sucks Tracklisting:
Release Date: April 22nd, 2008
Stream The Album HERE

01. Giving In (MP3)
02. Drunken Sex Sucks (MP3)
03. The Draft
04. Fighting Yourself
05. Nancy Reagan Fashion Show (MP3)
06. Forced Away
07. Visions of Hate
08. I See
09. Wasted Mind
10. Slow Death
11. This Is Art
12. Old Woman
13. Questions
14. Reagan Sucks
15. Locked Away
16. Go Die
17. Signals in My Head
18. Better Than You
19. Bum Kon
20. Gay Rodeo
21. Giving In
22. This Is Art
23. Better Than You
24. Gay Rodeo
25. Visions of Hate

Tools and Hi-Res Photos:
www.fanaticpromotion.com/rosterdetails.php?indexkey=1256

On The Web:
www.smoochrecords.com
www.myspace.com/smoochrecords

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