Muke is the project of Madeline Liebowitz and Luke Kuzava who met in the dorms their freshman year at the University of Oregon. Out of boredom one day they decided to record a song into an iBook and lo and behold, something fresh and new was born out of the disparate influences of each member. Their sound is something like if Lykke Li was backed with acoustic guitar with the “shoegaze rock filter” on high accompanied by toy store percussion. With a sound this cute and strange, it’s only a matter of time before they get some love from Pitchfork.
January 18, 2009
Muke’s "Shutterspeed Lullabies" are an Otherworldly Bedtime Hymn!
January 2, 2009
Exclusive! 10 Questions with Steve Schiltz of Longwave!
10 Questions with Steve Schiltz of Longwave
By: Aaron Z. Lee
I was planning to see NYC indie rock band Longwave at the Mohawk in Buffalo, but in true crappy Central New York weather tradition the show was postponed to the spring due to a huge lake effect storm, but I still got a chance catch up with Longwave’s modest frontman Steve Schiltz and discuss a few things including their current tour and electrifying new album that was #3 on my best of 2008 list.
1.Your new album sounds great. Do you think that RCA is kicking themselves for dropping you?
I don’t know. Probably not yet. give us time.
2. There are a lot of songs about being lonely or reaching out to friends on Secrets Are Sinister. I know you guys wrote the album while you were unsigned, did it feel like the end of the road?
Sure, a little bit. The record deal didn’t really have a lot to with it, though. If the band wasn’t going to make a new record it wouldn’t have been because of RCA dropping us, it would have been because we were tired of it. We always thought we could get another record deal somehow. We just had to see if we still WANTED to do it.
3. There’s a noticeably more aggressive sound to this record, with you guys even incorporating some guitar solos into the songs, how did this come about?
There were always guitar solos here and there, and most of the time they were me. Shannon would always say I should do more. I went out on tour for a while with some other bands and I got into playing my guitar more, so I was ready to do it. I wanted the guitars to be important on this record. I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to do with the sounds, especially with the distortion and fuzz sounds.
4. On There’s a Fire, you and Shannon Ferguson wrote the bass parts and assigned the keyboard parts to new members. Is that how it worked out on Secrets are Sinister?
The record was mostly made by Shannon, Jason, and I. So it was kind of like you are saying, except Morgan did join the band towards the end of the recording. Paul and Jeff, who toured with us on there’s a fire, also played on a song or two. We used some recordings we had done at that time, and they had done a good job, so why not?
5. You guys did most of the work on this album yourselves, how does that compare to the past records you’ve worked on?
We have always been very involved. Shannon and I especially. And every record has had some kind of home/demo recording end up making it to the end. This time we just did MORE of it. It is not the first time we have done it, Shannon recorded our first indie record, “Endsongs”. And we had our friend Pete min mix it. Pete recorded some of THIS record too.
6. Does touring with a new album after so much uncertainty feel like a victory?
YES!
7. How have the crowds been reacting to the new songs in general?
So far so good. I write 12 or 13 song set lists, and people generally shout out a few they want to hear. If we know them, we play them. If we do an encore, we generally end at about 16 or 17 songs. So that is nice. I still write the set lists kinda short in case it feels like the show is going badly…
8. You’re originally from the Rochester, NY area, is there anything about that area that inspired you to go into the music business?
Our drummer Jason is also from Rochester! And I am IN Rochester for the holidays right now! I only knew that I couldn’t stay in Rochester and play music the way I wanted. The guys I wanted to meet just weren’t there. There were people, like Tony Gross at GFI, John Nau who still repairs my amps, the house of guitars guys, and guys in exploding boy, officer friendly, and the dizzy monk guys, who I learned so much from. It was just that after a few years I knew I needed to go to New York. Ironically, Dave Fridmann is from close by. Dave is amazing. There are great people in/near Rochester, I suppose learning from them made me want to keep going. that meant going to New York.
9. Your new album is being released by the Original Signal indie label, how did you guys get hooked up with them?
Our A&R guy now worked on “there’s a fire” at a different company. People shuffle around, and he wound up at this label and they seemed like they really wanted to do it, and wanted to work hard, so here we are!
10. You guys have toured extensively in the past with lots of bands including Spoon, The Strokes, Kasabian and the National. Since it’s the holiday season, do you guys have any great holiday or snow related memories from touring?
Not GREAT memories!! Hmm……I remember rushing to Boston in the snow once to play some NEMO festival or something. I was still booking the band, this was around the time of our first record. Before RCA. Anyhow I booked this show and someone had given me the hard sell, it was big deal, label people there, lots of BS, etc etc. We wound up in a snow storm, and thought we were surely going to miss it. Our drummer Jeremy got behind the wheel and Shannon guided him through all kinds of tricky traffic maneuvers. We somehow made record time! We pulled up 10 minutes before our set time, and the band before us was just playing their last song! We had made it! We loaded our gear down the stairs in the freezing cold, into the middle east downstairs. We parked the van, started setting up the amps, we couldn’t believe how lucky we were. We were awesome! Then we looked out into the crowd. There was no one there. I think that sums up something for us.
Thanks for doing this interview and hopefully I’ll get to see you guys in Buffalo next year!
Thanks for writing about us, Aaron! Come and say hi at the show.
May 18, 2008
The Secret Life of Sofia and Seven Summits
I was fortunate enough to have received a message from Kyle the leader of the Secret Life of Sopfia, who found my page through playing with A Faulty Chromosome and looking up what blogs had written about them. He was also kind enough to compliment my cartoons, which you should also check out.
The Secret Life of Sofia is an indie band from Brooklyn, NY. The lead singer sounds like the best possible medium between Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and Coldplay in that it both soars ala Coldplay and hits with a palpable gravity ala Casiotone. The vocal harmonies fade in and out like celestial choirs and the guitars pluck and chime in a way that is melodically sublime. They’re not just easy listening alternative folk though, they’ve got some great beats and almost shoegaze like guitar effects on some tracks. Get motivated to enjoy a beautiful spring day by sampling their song “Outside”, it’s definitely worth checking out.
March 22, 2008
Oh! Custer
Oh! Custer is a Swedish Shoegaze/Pop band from Sweden. The band formed when Josef and Esbjorn decided to start a band in the summer of 2005 in Lund Sweden. They’ve just recently released their second EP entitled States, which also has the songs from their first EP, Leaves, as bonus tracks.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s something going on in Sweden. Either they’ve replaced the fluoride in the water with some songwriter enhancing drug or the Swedes are genetically engineering a superior race of musicians that will soon take over the world. Which might not be a bad thing considering the quality of their health care… Musings aside, Oh! Custer wields chiming guitars that evoke the best of those moments in between waking and sleeping. That moment of perfect satisfaction before the alarm goes off, and perhaps the 5 minutes after hitting the snooze. The beats are driving but never jarring, the reverb is as soft and gentle as a violin and the vocals calmly replay the events of our days through a hazy projector.
March 8, 2008
Soundpool’s Dichotomies and Dreamland
I get sent a lot of different kinds of music, having run this blog for over a year now and sometimes the things I get are okay, not my cup of tea, or right up my alley. I had an interesting experience yesterday when I opened up my mail and found the NYC five-piece Soundpool’s album Dichotomies and Dreamland. Like usual I opened up the package and started reading the write up on the band. Key words popped out at me, “Shoegaze”, “Girlie Vocals”, “Saturated Guitar”, “Lush Synth Arrangements”, “Driving Dancable Rhythm”, never before has something been sent to me that sounds exactly like what I want to hear. I’ve been getting into Shoegaze, I’ve always loved the synth, and dance beats? Heck yeah.
Upon loading the CD up onto my computer I found that the multi faceted 5-some can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, wafting from driving rock numbers to ethereal soundscapes. This is another contender for album of the year for me and it’s only March. Check them out already.
