Apollo Sunshine - Friday 10.24.2008
w/ Wax Fang
Shall Noise Upon (September 2nd, 2008 Headless Heroes) is the third full-length album from Apollo Sunshine. Recorded during the summer of 2007 in the Catskill Mountains, in a house inhabited by spirits (and next oor to the home of the original Uncle Sam), the album sees multi-instrumentalists Jesse Gallagher, Sam Cohen, and Jeremy Black weaving through a multitude of styles psych-pop, groove-funk, cowboy songs, samba/tropicalia) with assured fluidity and inspiration. This is not a band searching for their sound; they have crafted an wesome mix of original material that celebrates the journey through darkness and light.

Surrendering themselves to the collective head-space and transformative alchemy of Apollo Sunshine and with help from their friend nd co-producer, Quentin Stoltzfus (Mazarin), Shall Noise Upon is an illumination of love in a world of “dangers”- real and false. The CinemaScopic arrangements on the album couldn’t have been realized without recruiting a parade of musical friends including: Drug Rug, dan, Tulsa, Viva Viva, and White Flight. The result is a timely collage of lush instrumentation: drawn from home-made samples and fieldrecordings to singing bowls and jaw harp. The sounds on Shall Noise Upon come together in an impressionist tour of electrified music. lbum-openers “Breeze” and “Singing To The Earth (To Thank Her For You)”, are love-poems to nature and longing, weaving the emotional connection to the world and to each other as one magnetic force, while building and bursting to the sound of cascading autoharp and rippy pedal-steel. “666: The Coming Of The New World Government” likens America today to the fall of Rome around anthemic psych guitar scrawl, propellant percussion, and winding vocal harmonies. Brotherhood Of Death” is a brain-buster from the apocalypse that tells the hallucinatory tale of a man intoxicated by greed and power; followed y “Happiness,” a gorgeous, expansive instrumental, which sounds like an orchestra conducted by Ray Davies. he band is already recreating the depth of these new studio recordings live. That may seem hard to pull off, but for anyone who’s ever seen pollo Sunshine, maniacally switching instruments, producing an extraterrestrial sea of tones, this is where they shine the brightest. Over the ast few years they’ve toured with Apples In Stereo, Dr. Dog, and They Might Be Giants, Toots and the Maytals and performed at Bonnaroo, Langerado, and Sasquatch. This past summer they appeared at the Wakarusa Festival in Lawrence, Kansas and the 2008 Wireless Festival in London. There is an impression you get from an amazing mix, where distinct parts add up to a unified feeling; and with each play, the range of ounds grow more connected to each other. It’s these gifts, “albums” traded among friends that inspired Shall Noise Upon. It will have you believing in love, in a world both dangerous and beautiful.< /p>

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Wax Fang began as one man's basement vision of how rock 'n' roll might sound if it simultaneously existed in the past and future, stopping in the present just long enough to stupefy listeners.

In creating the core of Wax Fang's catalog, Scott Carney dedicated months to overdubbing intricate layers of music for what initially was a solo project in every sense. The resulting album, BLACK & ENDLESS NIGHT, is the sound of a record collection imploding, combining glam-rock, pop, and surf riffs with the dreamy ambience of vintage Brian Eno and David Bowie. Carney then decided to do a little exploding. He found a fierce band in drummer Kevin Ratterman and bassist Jacob Heustis, who took the album's warm precision and blew it apart in all the right ways. With those two providing a deep, resourceful bottom end, Carney was free to indulge in his distinctive, aggressive guitar playing. Following their first US tour in August of 2006, Wax Fang embarked on a more grandiose journey, supporting fellow Louisvillians, My Morning Jacket, on their Fall Tour. Upon their return, they eagerly headed to the famed Ardent Studios in Memphis, TN to begin recording their forthcoming album, LA LA LAND, with engineer Doug Easley.

After spending New Year’s Eve ’07 in style, opening for MMJ at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, Wax Fang entered Ratterman's enchanting studio, The Funeral Home (housed on the 2 nd floor of the family owned and operated funeral home located in a 150 year old building in West Louisville), for their second round of recording. The self-produced LA LA LAND was then mixed with renowned indie producer, Mark Nevers, in Nashville, TN, shortly after being hand picked by Spoon to open for them in the Music City. Spending so much time in Nashville during an age of a struggling music industry provoked the unsigned Wax Fang to preserve their DIY aesthetic by creating their own label, Don't Panic! Records, for the release of their new album. LA LA LAND expands the dense, spacey layers echoed on BLACK & ENDLESS NIGHT into a whole new psychedelic universe. Opening track 'Majestic' finds the band channeling their inner Pink Floyd through delicate sound collages and soaring guitar riffs, held together with the mortar of the Ratterman/ Heustis rhythm section and christened with Carney's vivid lyrics and uncanny form of delivery. The air swells like a swarm of ten thousand bees on 'At Sea.' The thunderous pop of 'The Doctor Will See You Now' unites the noble families of Led Zeppelin and Brain Eno through an unadulterated marriage of sound. The instrumental fury of 'Avant Guardian Angel Dust' bends your mind into an aural oblivion while the warm, acoustic tingle of 'Oh, Recklessness' recalls your coming-of-age. With LA LA LAND, Wax Fang have created music that's instantly familiar and yet vaguely other-worldly — it exists just slightly left of reality, where bar clocks are always 15 minutes slow and the bourbon is endless. It's a world you want to visit. Just don't count on leaving.

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Band Information
Apollo Sunshine
Jesse Gallagher - Guitars, Vocals
Sam Cohen - Bass Guitar, Vocals
Jeremy Black - Drums, Vocals

Wax Fang
Scott Carney - guitar, theremin, vox
Jake Heustis - bass, keys
Kevin Ratterman - drums, scissors, sirens