Snowmine wants you to love. They want you to hurt and heal, scream and emote, consider and reconsider. But most of all they want you to rest your eyes and breath. They’ll be the film score to your beautiful moments. An embrace without conditions. A soft grin in the face of an inevitable, vermilion barbarian. They want you to know that no matter what you need to keep inside-- your secret’s safe with them. Their story offers no glorified mixtapes or dusty two-track recorders. No scene mongering or name-dropping. Snowmine arrives honestly on your doorstep, offering a midnight foray through ups and downs, angers and absolutions, and promises of fresh warm cookies to seal your grin.
The Brooklyn quintet formed from a long bubbling friendship between bassist Jay Goodman, drummer Alex Beckmann, and lead singer/composer Grayson Sanders. Many parties, road trips, and treacherous leaky basements fraught with jam sessions later, they met guitarists Austin Mendenhall and Scott Seelig – two wayfarers from D.C. and Los Angeles. Austin’s eight years of prior touring with DC’s The Ordinary Way, among other projects, and Scott’s deep love for My Bloody Valentine got tossed into the slow cooker, and one year later they collectively removed the lid, revealing a simmering stew honed from their divergent interests into something fiercely unique.
Their bold vessel carries elements of classic afrobeat, electro-acoustic soundscapes, 20th Century Classical orchestrations, and hooks so memorable you’ll be trying to shake the water from your ears. The precision and vigor in the compositions hits you like a hornet wrapped in a ball of silk. The voice gently massages your temples. The tribal influences arrest your body and bring you to your feet.
Entirely self-produced, they pride themselves on their rich, organic textures and precise ability to reproduce it in a live setting. Grayson, the son of an opera singer and oil painter, discovered a voracious appetite for Classical and IDM music at an early age. A zealous disciple of Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartok, Ligeti, Autechre, and everything Bjork, he spent the better part of his adolescent life in a bedroom, hunched over manuscript paper, or staring at a computer screen, trying to unlock the mysteries of the craft. Having resulted in five symphonic premiers, (including a favorably received modern orchestral cover of Bjork’s “Cover Me”), his activity in the classical community has linked the band with some of the brightest classical instrumentalists in NYC. Not only has this filtered into the band’s songs, in the harrowing horns of “Danger in the Snow,”or the 1940s romance-strings of “Beast in Air, Beast in Water,” it has lead to grandiose performances in churches with chamber orchestras, installation art gallery shows, and just about anything in between.
Snowmine recorded their debut LP, Laminate Pet Animal, over two days in the Summer of 2010 at Headgear Recordings with Dave Trumfio. After a month of mixing, they decided to scrap most of it, and spent the next three months re-tracking everything in a musky closet at Grayson’s apartment. They decided to make use of their living space, tracking guitars in bathtubs, and re-amping synths, vibraphones, bells, and vocals in cavernous concrete hallways. Their resulting sound is one of gigantic open spaces you can see and feel.
Shortly after posting a few tracks on Bandcamp in November 2010, a small number of blogs grabbed on, inciting a firestorm of unsolicited write-ups. With vocal comparisons to Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, they aren't complaining. With spontaneous reviews already spanning across the globe, 2011 is sure to be an exciting year. And it makes sense. One spin of the record is enough for even the most weathered of ears to hear something big is in the making.
Snowmine is set to self-release its debut LP Laminate Pet Animal, on May 3, 2011. |
