McGrath has fused together numerous influences from punk, no wave, glam, postpunk, art rock and experimental pop to form these sometimes-gritty, sometimes-scary, sometimes-bleak sounds. Two floor toms (one treated, one normal), a snare, an Alesis SR-16 drum machine, a Boss SP 202 sampler, a Fender Jazzmaster, a borrowed bass and other “sundry electronics” are in use here. This is side one, track one.
You can purchase the digital of The Slow Fade @ atmatm.bandcamp.com right now for a mere $3, or for $2 dollars more you can preorder the “good old fashioned analog high bias tape” which should ship on or around November 21st. If you absolutely can’t wait for the 21st, then you can get one a few days early when ATM plays Death by Audio with Parts & Labor (details below).
And if you have not heard ATM‘s first 7″ you should really remedy that, d/l the A-Side, “Always On Time From Now On”… here. Plus, you can grab the B-Side at the bottom of this post.
I recently heard that Parts & Labor are going on an “extended hiatus”. Here is their statement regarding the hiatus…
Dear friends,
This January, Parts & Labor turns 10 years old. We’re planning a string of celebratory shows, in which we play selected material from all of our full length albums, leading up to a big 10th anniversary blow out on February 24th, 2012.
Following these performances, we’re going to take an extended hiatus. We feel incredibly fortunate having had a decade of amazing experiences — making records and new friends, performing with so many killer musicians and artists. But it’s time for each of us to focus on personal projects for a while. We’re all going to continue to make music through other endeavors.
We’d like to thank everyone who’s supported us, bought our albums, seen us live, offered us a floor to sleep on. We love y’all. As a token of our esteem, we’re giving away a final song called “No Nostalgia (featuring Todd Bailey and Where’s The Party At)”, which was recorded during the Receivers sessions, but suddenly seems all too prescient.
I don’t know about you, but when I heard the epic “Fractured Skies” for the first time I swear my brain melted. I had to find out who was playing, and I needed to hear more of it. This song restored my faith in punk rock. I hope it does the same for you.
Noah and Rick of YVETTE sent us these answers to our questions in this next installment of the q and also a series.
q: What is the last song you (really) heard?
n: A while back I happened on Tristan Perich‘s 1-Bit Symphony. It’s a battery, a microchip, a couple switches, a volume knob, and a headphone jack simply wired together and mounted in a jewel case. The idea of it is pretty wild – that you can participate in the listening experience and that this body of work is contained on one tiny chip in a little CD case. Also, I’m really feeling this remix my friend Alex, who goes by Young Life, made of Katy Perry’s “E.T.” It’s basically just a slowed down version of the song that makes Katy sound like Brian McKnight in drag. And it’s got a really nasty beat.
n: I’ve been getting back into seltzer lately… Or whiskey and seltzer?
r: I’ve always been into seltzer but people are always trying to rip off my style so I’m probably going to switch it up to some orange-flavored San Pellegrino.
q: What is your favorite band to see live?
n: Not sure I have a stand-out favorite, but I recently saw Man Forever (Kid Millions‘ project) as just a duo: it was Kid and Ryan from Tall Firs and one snare drum, that’s it. They just flammed, paradiddled, and rolled all over that drum for at least half an hour without stopping. In fact, I think the sound guy kind of had to signal to them to stop. Everyone in the room was in a trance. I started hearing things that I’m not sure were actually there. Oh and I almost forgot to include one of my favorite bands to see live, Gowns (rip)!!! So, so good live.
q: What is your favorite venue (in NYC, if applicable)?
r: For us it’s more about the quality of the show than anything else, but Death By Audio has always felt a little like home base to me. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve played there the most or that the audience has always been good but I feel most comfortable there. Also, Edan‘s got the souped-up P.A. sounding awesome, so that helps.
n: Totally agree with Rick. Silent Barn, Bruar Falls, and Cakeshop are other quality places where I like to play and/or see shows.
q: What piece(s) of culture are you really really excited about right now?
n: Not that I want to give it more attention than it’s already received, but I’m mildly fascinated with the “news”, put forth by evangelist network Family Radio, that apparently the end of the world is nearer than we thought. According to them, the End Time will happen on May 21st, 2011. Bummer if they’re right. Actually, I’ll be so pissed if they are right because we’ve put so much work into this tour coming up that it would suck if the apocalypse got in the way. But they’ve predicted it to happen before and it hasn’t, so… On a more serious note, I really love photographer Stephan Tillmans‘ Luminant Point Arrays collection. It’s incredibly minimal and so beautiful. If we could use that stuff for album cover art, I would…
q: Anything we should know about your latest project (whatever that might be)?
n: Biggest item on our plate right now is the tour we have coming up at the end of the month. We’ll be rolling down the East coast, up through parts of the Midwest, then past the Great Lakes region and into Pennsylvania on our loop back home. We’re incredibly psyched. In the meantime, some friends have been remixing the songs from our 7″ and they’re coming out awesome. The latest is from SF bros Clipd Beaks and it rules. And when we come back from tour, we’ll be playing some more NYC shows. Just confirmed a Northside Festival show for June 17th with Milk Music and we’ll be playing a benefit show on July 1st for a non-profit called The Emancipation Network, and that will be with a bigger-name band that we cannot yet announce.
r: After the tour our sights will be set on writing and recording, since we have a bunch of new songs and there are more in the works. Hopefully another release will be materializing soon.
And be sure to check out the rest of the q and also a series… here.
If you haven’t done it already, make sure you check out the other monthly mixes.
Also, If you want to download all the individual tracks in this post, you should probably think about installing the DownThemAll! or FlashGot Firefox extensions.
q: What is your favorite venue in NYC (if applicable)?
a: Most comfortable is at DBA, but Cake Shop is not without its charms.
q: OK, President Obama appoints you as the first Secretary of Culture, to whom do you give your first grant?
a: Myself, so that I can start up a record label and put out numerous different projects I think are underrated, and maybe help push out some of the stuff that’s massively overrated.
q: Anything we should know about your latest project (whatever that might be)?
a: We’re currently working a new album that will be released (hopefully) later this year on Kanine. It’s starting to take shape and it’s kinda weirding me out a little bit. I’m not really sure how to explain what it sounds like so far, but I’m more than a bit surprised by some of the directions and sounds. Emily even plays guitar on some of the new ones.
Here are a couple tracks from Grooms latest LP, Rejoicer.
Grooms are on Facebook.
Grooms has a blogspot.
Death By Audio Records page is here.
Insound page is here.
Amazon MP3 page is here.
eMusic page is here.
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