Division Day - Beartrap Island
ARTIST.....: Division Day
TITLE......: Beartrap Island
LABEL......: n/a
URL........: www.divisionday.com
RIP DATE...: May-02-2006
STORE DATE.: Apr-18-2006
GENRE......: Indie
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 80,2 MB
Track Listing:
01 - Beartrap Island 01:21
02 - Catch Your Death 04:16
03 - Hurricane 04:24
04 - Lights Out 05:20
05 - Hand To The Sound 04:11
06 - To The Woods 04:11
07 - Tigers 04:20
08 - Dayenu 04:41
09 - Colorguard 04:56
10 - Tap-Tap, Click-Click 04:05
11 - Littleblood 05:31
12 - Is It True What They Say? 04:29
─────
51:45 min
Release Notes:
www.myspace.com/divisionday
DIVISION DAY are:
Seb Bailey- Bass/Second Guitar/Second Vocals
Rohner Segnitz- Casio/Keys/Vocals
Ryan Wilson- Guitar
Kevin Lenhart- Drums!
BIOGRAPHY
In the summer of 2001, Division Day moved into a house in the
Santa Cruz woods without ever having played a note together as a
foursome. They turned the master bedroom into a makeshift
recording studio that would see the birth of their first EP.
Featuring Rohner Segnitz (vocals, keyboards), Ryan Wilson
(guitar), Seb Bailey (bass, guitar, vocals), and Kevin Lenhart
(drums), Division Day swings freely between precise arrangement
and reckless abandon, following one song's five-keyboard polyphony
("Hand to the Sound") with a hoe-down of bare-handed cymbal
beating and yelps of pure celebration ("Catch Your Death"). Both
live and in the studio, their performances emphasize an
infectious, visceral enthusiasm, an out and out joy for making
music. This spirit is the common thread running through all
Division Day songs, which have been noted by many to be otherwise
quite different from one another. Comparisons run the gamut from
The Church to The Dismemberment Plan, Doves to Yo La Tengo,
Flaming Lips to Jim O'Rourke; this variability is in truth quite
accurate, reflecting the eclectic influences the band credits for
inspiration (Unwound, African Headcharge, Boards of Canada, and
John Fahey, for example). Division Day's songs are alternately
calm and frantic, characterized at times by dense harmonies and
sultry simplicity ("Colorguard", "Dayenu"), and at others by
dissonant guitars, frenzied rhythms, and vocals whose sheer fervor
barely carries them through the song's end. Match the lyrical
darkness of a more imagistic Leonard Cohen with the furious
drumming of Brendan Canty (Fugazi), the elegant basslines of John
Stirratt (Wilco), and the supple, atmospheric guitar shards of
Nick McCabe (Verve), and you might come close to approximating the
band's sound.
Division Day's 2004 EP, The Mean Way In, was recorded in the
summer of 2003 by Alex Oana (N.E.R.D., Kid Dakota) with assistance
from Scott Solter (John Vanderslice, Spoon, Mountain Goats) at the
all-analog Tiny Telephone studio. Showcasing serpentine melody,
warm keyboard tones, swaths of angular guitar, and tumbling
rhythms, this six-song EP proves a challenging yet consistently
rewarding listen.
In the two and a half years since The Mean Way In, Division Day
finished college, moved to Los Angeles, and began to establish
themselves in the east L.A. music community. They took up
residence in an Eagle Rock rehearsal space, sharing a back yard
with Earlimart's The Ship studio, and played out regularly at
local venues including the Silverlake Lounge, Spaceland, and The
Echo. About a year ago, they began writing songs for what was
intended to be a split EP, but quickly evolved into a bona fide
full-length record. Working again with engineer Scott Solter, the
band made a series of frenzied weekend dashes to San Francisco,
where they tracked and mixed at Solter's 15th Street Studio, The
Bahamas, and Tiny Telephone, again working all in analog. The
result was Beartrap Island, an album that is at once cohesive and
far-flung, spanning a stylistic spectrum from the steady, dub-
inflected grandeur of "Hand To The Sound," to the smoky, heart-
string-tugging twang of "Hurricane", to the manically syncopated,
gleefully vitriolic gallop of "Tigers."
Division Day have toured up and down the West Coast, playing
alongside such bands as Xiu Xiu, We Are Scientists, Minus The
Bear, The Joggers, Cass McCombs, Dredg, The New Amsterdams, and
The Velvet Teen. For the month of March, they performed a coveted
Monday night residency at The Echo in Los Angeles, followed by an
appearance at this year's Noise Pop festival in San Francisco with
The National and a west coast tour to Vancouver and back with San
Francisco's Birdmonster.