LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
Brooklyn’s The Lisps express an invaluable sense of camaraderie. Members César Alvarez, Sammy Tunis, Jeremy Hoevenaar, and Eric Farber were full of playful sarcasm, laughter, and affection before a recent rehearsal at Farber’s Fort Greene apartment, where they described to JM.com their band’s development. Originally a group with an old timey sound, their years together have brought them unexpected creative projects, including an indie rock musical and a drum set adorned with found objects.

JM.com: I read that your lineup has changed a bit over the years. How did the four of you here now get together, and how did you start out?

Sammy: César and I met about eleven years ago in college. After we graduated, we dated for a long time, and then we started a band together.

Eric: I met César in, like, 1996 or 1997. My first memory of him is I threw a party at my parents’ house. It was a pool party. They went away for the weekend, and César didn’t bring a bathing suit, but he went naked, which was cool. But then we had this jam session in our basement, and my friend had left the room and had dropped his bass off on the ground. And César was like, “Oh cool, the bass! I’ll play the bass.” And he was playing the bass naked, and my buddy walked back in the room and he got really upset. That’s my earliest memory of César.
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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC

Stripped down to a two-piece after years together in other bands, Eliot Krimsky and Mike Johnson are Brooklyn’s Glass Ghost. Their debut album, this year’s Idol Omen, has media and music fans alike naming them as the next big thing - a quirky backdrop of synthesizers and drums with friendly, ethereal falsetto vocals and narrative lyrics. Singer Krimsky talked to JezebelMusic.com about the duo’s history and the inspiration for the imaginative songs that are quickly gaining this band attention.

JM.com: You both worked in two previous bands together, Best of Boston and Flying. Has your history made it easier to work together now? How so?

Eliot: Having a history together has definitely been a great thing. We have been able to build off of the years of experience of playing with each other. I feel lucky for having the opportunity to do that with Mike. We know each other’s playing so well now, that it feels really easy and comfortable to play with each other. We have been able to share what worked and didn’t work about our past bands and put that knowledge into this one. We have also been able to build up a trust together through the years.

JM.com: What led to your decision to collaborate together and form Glass Ghost? Why did you decide to limit your instrumentation to keyboards and drums?

Eliot: We both just wanted to play with each other after Flying broke up, so we started playing in Mike’s room, and it felt so good. It felt really healthy to be playing every day, and we both realized we needed it for our sanity. There was a point when we were playing duo where it felt complete with just drums and keyboards. The more we played duo, the more interested we were in using the space of a small band to make big sounds. Once we realized we could make really big sounds, we started to really embrace the duo.
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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
Since 2005, Limbs have been gracing Brooklyn with artful music that resists easy labels. Members Jeff Stultz, Oisin O’Brien, and Tommy Orza, who are currently recording their fifth release with fellow bandmate Chris Pressler, recently met up with JezebelMusic.com to discuss the ways their wide-ranging backgrounds help them produce a unique sound. See them perform live at JezebelMusic.com’s Feature Show on December 10.

JM.com: How and when did you guys meet? What drew you together musically?

Jeff: Osh and I met because we went to college together here in New York. Chris went to another school in the city with a friend of mine and I met him through a group of kids there. Tommy has been a comrade for a while now and we knew he was a great musician from other bands, so things finally came together this fall and now we’re a four-piece.
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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC

Collin Ruffino and David Gross of Brooklyn duo Home Video are longtime friends, originally from New Orleans, who mold electronic sounds and vocals into dark, ambient pop songs. They recently sat down with JM.com writer Raj Mallikarjuna in their Park Slope home studio to discuss the evolution of their music, their influences and their live shows. You can check out Home Video tonight at JezebelMusic.com’s November Feature Show. 

JM.com: I read that you two met in high school art class and came from different musical backgrounds. How did you guys connect over music? Did you start writing music right away together?

David: Not right away. [To Collin] I remember your little Walkman in art class. He played me a tape of something he was working on with another friend of ours, Paul, and it kind of blew me away, and I got really interested in getting involved with that kind of thing.

JM.com: And one of you guys has a classical music background, right?

David: Yeah, that’s me.

JM.com: What did you play?

David: Piano.

JM.com: Piano. And what kind of music was he making that made you decide to work together?

David: Um, how would you describe it?

Collin: I guess at the time it was influenced by trip-hop stuff mostly, like Portishead and Massive Attack. I don’t know at that time actually if it was. It was trying to be that stuff but it couldn’t be there. It was almost ambient with beats.

David: And really awesome chord progressions and stuff.

Collin: It was sort of like rock but in a different way, that he hadn’t heard.

David: Beats. There were beats.
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LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ The Delancey
October 20, 2009 | Graydon

Los Angeles-based Graydon is keeping the classic sound of the four-piece rock band alive and fresh. Graydon performed an energetic set of ’60s-influenced blues-rock at Tuesday night’s CMJ Showcase at the Delancey. As Ryan Dilmore’s acoustic guitar intro on “Typical of You” opened the set, Matt Miller’s wry, bluesy vocals and electric guitar solo drove the song. Drummer Matt Lucich and bassist Erik Kertes formed a tight rock and roll rhythm section that was tastefully moderate in activity and allowed Miller to take the lead onstage.

Though his solos are technically advanced, Miller manages to avoid the cheesiness typical of modern blues electric guitar solos. He is able to pull them off partially because each member of Graydon possesses a sincere stage presence that prevents the band from sounding overly polished. Each derives his strong presence from a previously established background in the music scene; Dilmore is a singer-songwriter, Kertes previously toured with Lenka, and Lucich toured with major acts like Queen Drake, Paula Cole, and Pat Monahan from Train.
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HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…
My most enlightening, awe-struck moment of musical inspiration during my teenage years involved hearing “Psycho Killer” on the radio. Inarguably, the song is greatness at its purest. For me, Talking Heads’ abstract lyrics, minimal instrumental parts, and distinctive style changed my perspective on artistic intention, relaying the “less is more” mantra music teachers often preach. Pushing technical showmanship aside for a greater piece of music, drummer Chris Frantz was especially notable in taking this approach.

Talking Heads didn’t just have a rhythm section – they were a rhythm section. Their songs are like logical yet inventive collections of rhythmic cells played by each contributing instrument. Even David Byrne’s singing usually had a more rhythmic than melodic quality to it, often repeating the same note during verses. Their music was, however, especially enlivened by Frantz’s drum set. Frantz was the unwavering, steady backbone that fueled the Heads’ unrelenting energy. His beats were often basic, but quirky and a notable part of the band’s overall sound.
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HOLY MUSICIAN, BATMAN…

photo by Nan Na Hvass

The subtle yet explosively bare piano musings of Rune Mølgaard, keyboardist for the Danish electronic band Efterklang, grabbed my attention while I listened to the five-member group recently. Efterklang produces a large, experimental post-rock sound that possesses elements of classical music in its composition and instrumentation. Mølgaard’s minimalist approach to the piano, bred from modern classical roots, can come as a breathtaking surprise during Efterklang’s grand collages of sound, or serve as the sonic brilliance in their simpler songs.

I’m drawn to Efterklang’s music for its dramatic character. Dark masterpieces like “Maison de Réflexion” or “Horseback Tenors” resemble film music, evoking romantic images of battle or travel through remote landscapes. Throughout their most recent record, 2007’s Parades, it’s Mølgaard’s simple, organic piano that grounds the listener after dense passages of strings, brass, electronic sounds, synth, harmonizing voices, and heavy percussion. In the album’s opening track, “Polygyne,” a reverberating single-note piano part breaks an intensifying build of percussion, cacophonous saxophones, and atmospheric noise, replacing the saxophones’ melody while the noise scatters and harmonized vocals pierce through. As the vocals die out, the last several seconds of the song showcase a repeating arpeggiated piano chord. Similarly, “Mimeo” follows the complex “Horseback Tenors” and retains its dark mood, but it’s contrastingly simplistic with its two-note piano solo. In “Illuminant,” the organic sound of piano brings a nice contrast to the ambient effect created by the atmospheric vocals and sustaining synth sounds. And as “Maison de Réflexion” progresses from intensity to a subdued middle section, sparse, single notes in the piano emphasize the contrast.
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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC

Photo by Katelyn Roof

Brooklyn-based band The Depreciation Guild have brought back two late 80s artifacts: reverberating synth-pop and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Using guitars and a Famicon (the 8-bit sound chip from the NES), they create innovative, energetic dreamscapes, a novel combination of shoegaze and chip-tune music.

The band’s first incarnation was in 2005, when members Kurt Feldman and Akira Hashizume started experimenting with the Famicon as the source for their lush synth sounds and intricate, heavy drum beats. They released their first EP, entitled Nautilus, in 2006 on chip-tune label, 8-Bit Peoples. The next year, the band’s lineup and instrumentation changed considerably: Hashizume left, and twin brothers Anton and Christoph Hochheim joined and brought live drums and guitar with them, respectively.
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