BANDS « Gigantic Music

BANDS

Birds Of Avalon

Raleigh NC’s BIRDS OF AVALON was formed after guitarists Paul Siler and Cheetie Kumar split from The Cherry Valence to join forces with vocalist, Craig Tilley, and bassist, David Mueller. They soon enlisted Chapel Hill drummer/artist Scott Nurkin and quickly made a name for themselves with relentless touring in support of their ’07 Volcom debut Bazaar Bazaar, 08′s follow-up EP Outer Upper Inner and their final album for Volcom in ’09′s Uncanny Valley.
Having spent the better part of the past three years on the road with the likes of The Racontuers, The Flaming Lips, Black Mountain, The Fucking Champs, Mudhoney, Monotonix, and Ted Leo, BIRDS OF AVALON are road vets – a band’s band with one of the best live rock shows going.

Much of 2010 has been a transistional time for the group. Paul and Cheetie, along with co-owners Steve Popson (Polvo) and Ben Barwick (Ashley Stove), re-opened legendary live venue Kings Barcade. Siler also kept busy booking Raleigh’s inagural and highly successful Hopscotch Music Festival. All this on the heels of the amicable departure of vocalist Craig Tilley afforded the band an opportunity to re-evaluate and evolve their sound with a focus on group harmonies and a freer approach to writing and performing.

The band re-emerge this January 2011 rejuvenated on Portland’s Bladen County Records (the Love Language, Moneybrother, the Builders & the Butchers) with the overdue release of an album completed in early 2009. BIRDS OF AVALON’S forthcoming self-titled release is another analog-only collaboration with Mitch Easter (REM, Wilco, Pavement) at his Fidelitorium Studio. The record builds on the pop-aesthetic of Bazaar Bazaar but blazes new progressive trails while anticipating the psychedelic experimentation of Uncanny Valley. These psych nuggets are certainly poised to gain new fans and impress critics as the band expands beyond its previous 70′s inspired/ post-rock influences and looks to the future with greater abandon. Look for a vinyl release on New York’s Gigantic Music.

Gringo Star

Boiling up from the independent musical cauldron Hotlanta has become, here comes Gringo Star with its follow up to 2008′s critically acclaimed debut, “All Y’all. The band now comes into its own with “Count Yer Lucky Stars, ” a collection of catchy and instantly classic pop music. You won’t be able to stop humming this spate of new and bright tunes, music that lifts the spirit. In this Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley, Deerhunter) produced record, the surge of primordial forces that reveals itself through rock and roll only about every other generation has infected these multi-instrumentalists and the result is an upbeat album of raw energy and positivity. Live, if you can resist the urge to dance, you’ll find your limbs shaking and your toes tapping to a band which has been described as “explosive,” “electrifying,” and “exceptional.” No need for the devices of the main stream musical glitterati who hide lifeless melodies and meaningless lyrics in stage productions and synchronized dancing meant to distract their wide eyed fans; here it’s the music itself – honest and intense. The Gringos, brothers Nicholas and Pete Furgiuele, Pete DeLorenzo and Chris Kaufmann, play each show as if their lives depended on it, and it’s that urgency combined with great song writing, pop beats and skilled harmonies that raise Gringo Star above the cacophonus crowd. These four guys should be literally showered with the same kind of excited stammering and fawning heaped onto the stars of the early days of rock and roll, because they are the new versions of the musicians who were raging around the U.S. night after night, putting it all out there, playing their hearts out, singing until they were hoarse and soaked in sweat, letting the music do their talking. There were once musical movements in this country, but the fracturing and splintering of the music scene stopped new waves from forming and cresting. This is a band which is creating the new standards to usher in the next tsunami. If you have the chance to catch them in a small venue, you better do it while you still can.

Shy Child

Deep, direct, trippy, hopeful, ironic, iconic, confusing, joyful, depressing, nostalgic, timely, fun.

Born in 2000 in New York, Shy Child has pied-pipered the rats through the village of Synth-Driven Rock with panache and grace. Hundreds of huge shows, huge tours, huge songs, and huge props around the world (along with playing with Hot Chip, Muse, Bjork, and a myriad of other notable artists) has put Shy Child on the short list of bands which don’t blow. Having caressed 5 continents with their ill live show, Pete and Nate are somewhat convinced you can do what you love and still not be totally broke. They’ve remixed a lot, and they’ve been remixed a lot. They hate dj’s because they don’t play instruments, but they still kind of want to dj. They’ve also been on a bunch of TV shows. Google it.

Your Youth

Your Youth is a loud alternative band from Brooklyn, started in late 2009 by AJ Wolosenko (guitar, vocals) and Sean Adams (drums), two born-and-bred East Coasters who look like brothers but actually only met at their first band practice. On the strength of a self-produced EP, they signed to Gigantic Music, who re-released the EP, Aloha (including the single “Diamond”), in late 2010.

Both celebrating and subverting pop conventions, the duo mix the sarcastic fury of Public Image Ltd with the crushing riffs of Weezer and the DIY bent of Buzzcocks–kind of like Wipers, if Greg Sage had been stoked in Brooklyn instead of paranoid in Portland, and had learned production from Andy Wallace.

The band draws on all things pop, but goes by a simple credo: keep it simple and turn up the hooks. Well-schooled and certain, they have no fear of big production, which they try to fake as much as possible. It’s lo-fi gone DIY hi-fi.

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