Austin , Texas is known worldwide for being "The Live Music Capital". One of the largest festivals is the week long South By Southwest (SXSW). Well, to be absolutely truthful, many Austinites are not overly fond of this festival for many reasons. So when I was asked to cover some of the events at this festival I was a bit hesitant.
I am soooo glad that I decided to go to one showcase in particular: Big Daddys Hot Sauce and Idiot Box Effects Showcase at The Lost Well where I was able to catch up with some fantastic bands. I'll be presenting a multi-part series on some of my favorites. If you're looking for something new to add to your music catalog then do yourself a favor and check these out!
I am soooo glad that I decided to go to one showcase in particular: Big Daddys Hot Sauce and Idiot Box Effects Showcase at The Lost Well where I was able to catch up with some fantastic bands. I'll be presenting a multi-part series on some of my favorites. If you're looking for something new to add to your music catalog then do yourself a favor and check these out!
enFOCUS: Welcome to Austin! So how are you finding SXSW?
Pete: We’re liking it! It’s our second time here at SXSW.
enFOCUS: So, you’re here to promote your new album. Tell us a little bit about that.
Pete: We’ve got a new album out on Ripple Music called Sinister Sides. It’s 8 new tracks on a beautiful gate fold LP.
enFOCUS: Are you serious?
Pete: Yes! And the artwork is created by Ruby Ray from San Francisco. We are also featuring Geof O'Keefe of Pentagram. He guests on three of the tracks from the album. We’ve been visiting Texas with Geof and doing shows here with him. So people have been getting a real treat.
enFOCUS: How’s the album been doing?
Pete: We’re liking it! It’s our second time here at SXSW.
enFOCUS: So, you’re here to promote your new album. Tell us a little bit about that.
Pete: We’ve got a new album out on Ripple Music called Sinister Sides. It’s 8 new tracks on a beautiful gate fold LP.
enFOCUS: Are you serious?
Pete: Yes! And the artwork is created by Ruby Ray from San Francisco. We are also featuring Geof O'Keefe of Pentagram. He guests on three of the tracks from the album. We’ve been visiting Texas with Geof and doing shows here with him. So people have been getting a real treat.
enFOCUS: How’s the album been doing?
Pete: It’s been great. It’s been a great lift for us. We’ve gotten some good critical reviews including Decibel Magazine. Most importantly is that we’re happy with it. We ventured a bit away from what we were doing before which was riff driven to more song driven.
Dave: We’re really excited because this album we made for ourselves. We took a long time with this one – longer than we did with the last one. We did what we wanted to. We recorded slowly and didn’t care about release cycles. And we’re so grateful that it’s been so well received. We actually just made the Doom charts at number 2. It’s not often that you get the option of doing something for yourself and having every say “This is really good!” And we’ve been friends for a long time, brothers in Rock, and that really helps with cohesion and making things gel.
enFOCUS: So doing a vinyl record is retro. And that seems to be a trend now in metal. What are your thoughts of where metal is going now?
Alex: Metal is always changing and evolving, but I do see people going back in time and reaching for elements that resonated with them as they grew up and incorporating that into the music that they’re creating. While there is still a new edge to it I think there are some retro pieces that musicians are pulling together. It helps to define the bands in the different sub genres of metal. It’s become very splintered which in a way is really nice because you can find a specific style that speaks to you. But each of those subgenres is based on something from the past. You’re seeing a lot of influence now from the late 60’s: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Rainbow have definitely influenced the Stoner scene. That’s been happening for a long time but I think people are reaching back more than ever now and reconnecting with early Heavy Metal. That music is lasting.
Pete: What’s old is being made new again. Even in some of the recording technology that we used going into the studio at Trakworx in S. San Francisco. We used a 2” analog tape to record our records.
Alex: We’re not necessarily doing it out of a sense of novelty but because a lot of digital technology takes the warmth away from the music. People are finding a lot of the awesome vintage elements and combining them with some of the new digital elements that work well to make something even better.
Pete: That type of music – when you hear it – you can feel it in your soul. True bass, true rock, non-digitized formats. Listeners can tell the difference. And that’s what we’re about: trying to be as authentic as we can to ourselves and to convey Rock in the most favorable way.
Alex: There’s an interesting piece about this intimacy that you have with music. And for many of us that grew up in the era of vinyl, it was all that we had to access the bands. You sat there, and looked at the imagery and read the liner notes and envisioned the band: it created this whole mystique. It required you to be there and be engaged so you could flip it over. It’s an active form of listening that is lacking in digital music. People that still like live music, heavy metal or rock n roll long for that and appreciate that.
Dave: Even in the artwork we used a photographer named Ruby Ray who’s known for shooting Punk bands in the 70s and 80s. She’s now doing this great fractal art that we incorporated into our cover going along with the theme of old/new. So the whole thing from the music to the gate fold vinyl had a lot of love put into it. We thought, “What do we have to lose?” We love music, we love what we do, we’ve been friends for a long time – let’s just put it out there.
Dave: We’re really excited because this album we made for ourselves. We took a long time with this one – longer than we did with the last one. We did what we wanted to. We recorded slowly and didn’t care about release cycles. And we’re so grateful that it’s been so well received. We actually just made the Doom charts at number 2. It’s not often that you get the option of doing something for yourself and having every say “This is really good!” And we’ve been friends for a long time, brothers in Rock, and that really helps with cohesion and making things gel.
enFOCUS: So doing a vinyl record is retro. And that seems to be a trend now in metal. What are your thoughts of where metal is going now?
Alex: Metal is always changing and evolving, but I do see people going back in time and reaching for elements that resonated with them as they grew up and incorporating that into the music that they’re creating. While there is still a new edge to it I think there are some retro pieces that musicians are pulling together. It helps to define the bands in the different sub genres of metal. It’s become very splintered which in a way is really nice because you can find a specific style that speaks to you. But each of those subgenres is based on something from the past. You’re seeing a lot of influence now from the late 60’s: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Rainbow have definitely influenced the Stoner scene. That’s been happening for a long time but I think people are reaching back more than ever now and reconnecting with early Heavy Metal. That music is lasting.
Pete: What’s old is being made new again. Even in some of the recording technology that we used going into the studio at Trakworx in S. San Francisco. We used a 2” analog tape to record our records.
Alex: We’re not necessarily doing it out of a sense of novelty but because a lot of digital technology takes the warmth away from the music. People are finding a lot of the awesome vintage elements and combining them with some of the new digital elements that work well to make something even better.
Pete: That type of music – when you hear it – you can feel it in your soul. True bass, true rock, non-digitized formats. Listeners can tell the difference. And that’s what we’re about: trying to be as authentic as we can to ourselves and to convey Rock in the most favorable way.
Alex: There’s an interesting piece about this intimacy that you have with music. And for many of us that grew up in the era of vinyl, it was all that we had to access the bands. You sat there, and looked at the imagery and read the liner notes and envisioned the band: it created this whole mystique. It required you to be there and be engaged so you could flip it over. It’s an active form of listening that is lacking in digital music. People that still like live music, heavy metal or rock n roll long for that and appreciate that.
Dave: Even in the artwork we used a photographer named Ruby Ray who’s known for shooting Punk bands in the 70s and 80s. She’s now doing this great fractal art that we incorporated into our cover going along with the theme of old/new. So the whole thing from the music to the gate fold vinyl had a lot of love put into it. We thought, “What do we have to lose?” We love music, we love what we do, we’ve been friends for a long time – let’s just put it out there.
Give a listen for yourself: https://ripplemusic.bandcamp.com/album/sinister-sides