Thursday, February 6, 2014

Led by son of 14-time Grammy recipient, Mount Pressmore makes music that is as catchy as it is technically masterful.

Austin-based band’s debut album Enjoy already compared to Frank Zappa, Steely Dan, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel.

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Mount Pressmore (L-R): Kris Studebaker, Danny Anderson, Thomas Shaw, Alexei Sefchick. Photo by: Vanessa Reiser Shaw.

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“Their jazz-juiced convolution is gentle, not orotund.  Pretzel logic redux?” – The Big Takeover

“The lineup draws together four highly-skilled players.” – Relix

“It’s virtuosic, but it feels familiar. Zappa fans will hear a little bit of Frank.” – KUTX, Austin

“Called ‘an indie rock Steely Dan’ by more than one pundit, and with good reason.” – BLURT

“Jaw-dropping chops.” – Maximum Ink

“An ideal amount of technicality and accessibility.” – The Aquarian Weekly

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Hear the premiere of “Vice-Presidential Material” by Mount Pressmore via GroundSounds!



[STREAM]: https://soundcloud.com/fanaticpro/mount-pressmore-vice-presidential-material

[DOWNLOAD]: https://soundcloud.com/fanaticpro/mount-pressmore-vice-presidential-material/download

[MP3]: http://www.fanaticpromotion.com/projects/mountpressmore/mp3/mountpressmore-vice-presidential-material.mp3

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See the premiere of the “Trampoline” video by Mount Pressmore via Performer Magazine!

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Already being compared to Frank Zappa (via a feature from Austin’s NPR-affiliate KUTX), Talking Heads, Steely Dan and Peter Gabriel, the “chop-pop” of Austin’s Mount Pressmore is just that:  addictive earworms played with the utmost technical proficiency.

“Music was his religion,” says band leader Thomas Shaw of his father Robert Shaw, the 14-time Grammy winning conductor who brought his son up amid technical exercises, music theory, and classical recitals. “Then I heard Oscar Peterson and I was blown away,” Shaw remembers. He soon found B.B. King, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, and Fela Kuti.

Shaw’s unique musical education liberally colors Enjoy, Mount Pressmore’s debut album.  All of the album’s compositions were charted and performed live by this schooled quartet, which in addition to Shaw, includes fellow New York Collective School of Music classmate, Kris Studebaker, along with bassist Alexei Sefchick and guitarist Danny Anderson, both graduates of Boston’s Berklee School of Music.

“There are three voices at play in the lyric,” Shaw says of “Vice-Presidential Material,” the latest track from "Enjoy" recently premiered by music discovery website GroundSounds. “They are those of the commoner, the candidate, and the fourth estate. The candidate’s refrain, ‘I know what it’s like,’ aspires to solidarity with the commoner; towards the conclusion, the language, rendered perfunctory, reverberates and ends within the echo chamber.”

Shaw continues, saying, “‘Counterfact’ is an invented word, made up for rhyming purposes; a contraction of ‘counterfactual,’ a conditional statement, whose nature would inherently contradict a bold expression thereof. Modal shifts in the bridge and the coda also seek to convey the more conflicted aspects of a political ambition, as well as the fears and anxieties that such a pursuit might engender.”

Enjoy by Mount Pressmore is out now on the band’s own Pressmore Records.  Thomas Shaw of Mount Pressmore is available for interviews.  Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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Mount Pressmore
Enjoy
(Pressmore Records, Out Now)


01. Here We Go
02. The New Regional Branch Manager
03. Dry Land (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3)
04. Trampoline (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3 | VIDEO)
05. A Place in the Sun
06. Vice-Presidential Material (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3)
07. Interchange
08. Dawn, Bingham
09. Agnostic
10. Dakota

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Mount Pressmore Links

INFO : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : BANDCAMP : PRESSMORE RECORDS

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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion

WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : TUMBLR : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : LAST.FM : BLOG : E-MAIL

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Monday, February 3, 2014

“Power pop prog space rock so futuristic it makes you nostalgic for music that hasn't been thought up yet!” – Roctober

Spookey Ruben-led AAA Battery assembles Chicago, San Francisco-based friends for “Year of The Woman” debut LP.

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AAA Battery (L-R): Joe Maydak, Spookey Ruben, Fred Jeske.  Photo credit: Maj Smith.

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“Jenna” is the latest single and video from the debut AAA Battery album Year of The Woman

 



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Grab a download of “Jenna” via an exclusive premiere at Exclaim!

See the premiere of the “Jenna” video exclusively via Pure Volume

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See AAA Battery live in Toronto at Rivoli on March 18th!  Tickets available here.

AAA Battery is the new pop group comprised of Joe Maydak on bass, Fred Jeske on guitar and drums, and Canadian pop hero Spookey Ruben on vocals. All have middle names that begin with the letter “A.”  Following up the album’s first single “Tea Time” (recently premiered via My Old Kentucky Blog), AAA Battery now presents the single and video for “Jenna” which recently premiered via Canada’s largest music paper Exclaim! and Pure Volume respectively.

“Jenna” asks the question “Is social adaptability essential in this day and age?” According to Jeske, “This woman has made a decision to change herself for the sake of the realm, trying to change to fit in, but sacrificing herself on the way. She eventually discovers that the prize is not worth the fight! The consumption of this ‘poison tea’ represents the absorption of the human network’s failures and flaws. All she should have done the entire time was to be herself.”

The song was also recently featured via Magnet Magazine and the Fred Perry Subculture website.

About the video, Jeske adds, “I have always thought of Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ brought into a Retro-Future-Pop format by way of ‘Jenna,’ and I dig the translation of that that we were able to achieve.” An astute AAA Battery fan’s recent online comments seem to indicate the same: “Anyone can do retro. These guys spend just enough time honoring the past to lay the foundation for their futuristic sound.”

With its members located throughout North America, AAA Battery’s addictive power pop could only have formed by chance. Maydak and Jeske had been playing together for years and were already fans of Canadian musician and experimental filmmaker, Spookey Ruben when they asked if him to guest of one of their tracks.  Ruben, known for his underground classic album Modes of Transportation Vol. 1 (TVT Records) and his more recent collaborations with everyone from Esthero to Ariel Pink, was happy to oblige and ultimately went on to join the band and appear on the entire album.

Year of The Woman by AAA Battery is out now.  Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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AAA Battery
Year of The Woman
(Rescord Records – Out Now)


Track Listing:

01. Annee De La Femme
02. Jenna (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3 | VIDEO)
03. Ten Steps Back
04. Tea Time (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3 | VIDEO)
05. Hole
06. Velvet Pants
07. Battleford
08. Verbalize Your Head
09. S.P.A.C.E.
10. Robots in the Sun
11. Calling Out
12. And Then
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AAA Battery Links

INFO : FACEBOOK : TWITTER (BAND) : TWITTER (SPOOKEY) : BANDCAMP : RESCORD RECORDS

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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion

WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : TUMBLR : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : LAST.FM : BLOG : E-MAIL

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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

David Bronson unearths art school footage to illustrate the latest track from his “The Long Lost Story” two-album epic.

Video for NYC-based musician’s “The Lost” hits YouTube as work on follow-up with producer Godfrey Diamond continues.

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David Bronson as photographed by Ben Goldstein

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 See the video for “The Lost” from David Bronson’s The Long Lost


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“Bronson has soaked up all the best parts of ‘70s rock and created his own vibe.  Captivating.” – MAGNET


“‘The Lost’ is a minute-long encapsulation of The Long Lost,” NYC-based musician David Bronson explains of the opening title track from his current album. “And the video is not only a metaphor for what’s happening on the record, but directly references the autobiographical nature of the whole project.”  The clip contains footage that Bronson made almost a decade ago in art school for what was the embryonic version of his two-album epic “The Long Lost Story.”

“The Long Lost Story” isn’t just an imaginative title for Bronson’s collection of Cat Stevens and Harry Chapin-evoking songs that have seen release over the course of 2013.  It’s actually the only way to describe a wealth of material that was so painful for Bronson to make public that he hid the recordings for nearly a decade.  Bronson found catharsis in writing and recording the material at the time, which alludes to a lost relationship, but also to a person who is just quintessentially “lost,” in general.  Regardless of Bronson’s clearing of his emotional decks at the time, the work remained private until 2013.

“It was just too painful to face,” Bronson confesses. The material came to light as two albums, with the louder tunes released as Story in early 2013, and the quieter, acoustic-based prequel The Long Lost following this past fall.  Both albums were produced by Bronson and mixed by Godfrey Diamond (Lou Reed, Sparks, Glen Campbell) and, since their release, have earned the attention of music discovery websites such as Under The Radar, Baeblemusic, American Songwriter, and My Old Kentucky Blog among others.  Bronson has also found welcoming ears in the UK where his work is currently being heralded.

As for revisiting all of this baggage nearly a decade after the fact, Bronson explains, “I suppose it’s unusual to release a record so long after its making, but being so far away from where I was during the writing and recording really emphasizes the documentary aspect of the whole thing for me. I’m very happy that this period of my young life was recorded, and very excited to let it out into the world at long last.”  Bronson has now moved on to new work and is back in the studio (once again with Diamond) completing an all-new full-length.

“Benefitting from Godfrey’s decades of experience, it’s been done in a very different manner than the first two,” Bronson says. “The album is very far along, and sound-wise, it’s a whole different thing; a real evolution from ‘The Long Lost Story.’ Song-wise, it’s a new level of maturity, being that it’s the first music I’ll be putting out that’s contemporaneous with my life.”

When Bronson isn’t writing and recording his solo material, he can be found working as a contributing composer and editor on filmmaker Jennifer Elster’s “The Being Experience.”  The project is an unflinching look at existence, featuring a cast of actors, thinkers, and musicians including Dave Matthews, Moby, Questlove, Rufus Wainwright, and Yoko Ono among many others.

David Bronson’s “The Long Lost Story” (comprised of the albums Story and The Long Lost) is out now.  Bronson is available for interviews.  Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.

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David Bronson
The Long Lost
(S/R – Out Now)


Track Listing:

01. The Lost (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | VIDEO)
02. October
03. Animals (STREAM | DOWNLOAD)
04. Crooked Trails
05. Incompetent Assassin (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3 | VIDEO)
06. Idols
07. Living in Name (STREAM | DOWNLOAD | MP3 | VIDEO)
08. In a Cave
09. Once when I was god
10. One Simple Myth
11. Stay in Touch

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David Bronson
Story
(S/R – Out Now)


Track Listing:

01. The Turns (STREAM | MP3 | VIDEO)
02. Times (STREAM | MP3 | VIDEO | REMIX | REMIX VIDEO)
03. If
04. Easier (VIDEO)
05. The Ones
06. Us (VIDEO)
07. Momentary (STREAM | MP3 | VIDEO | REMIX)
08. Adrift
09. Watch the Sun (October Reprise) (VIDEO)
10. Outside (VIDEO)
11. Unending (Underture)

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David Bronson Links

INFO : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE

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Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion

WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : TUMBLR : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : LAST.FM : BLOG : E-MAIL
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