Thosquanta - Lovelife.
ARTIST.....: Thosquanta
TITLE......: Lovelife.
LABEL......: 301Studios
URL........: www.thosquanta.com
RIP DATE...: May-14-2006
STORE DATE.: Apr-08-2006
GENRE......: Electronic
QUALITY....: VBR / 44.1Hz / Joint-Stereo
SIZE.......: 77,7 MB
Track Listing:
01 - Kudzu 02:07
02 - These Green Vines 04:17
03 - A Is A 04:17
04 - Bad For Me 04:23
05 - Split Infinitive 04:28
06 - Jaded 04:40
07 - Fingernails 03:35
08 - The Lesser Than 04:44
09 - Lovelife 04:29
10 - Day By Day 03:13
11 - What You Won't 04:05
12 - Random 05:35
─────
49:53 min
Release Notes:
www.myspace.com/thosquanta
www.301studios.net
Alone in his dorm room in the late 1990's, Adam Powell constructed
and refined a new version of his high school solo project, Girl
Next Door. His efforts and creativity resulted in Thosquanta. For
the next few years, Powell went on to write, perform, mix, and
record two albums as this new band, a dark industrial sound with a
slight synthpop edge. After a brief sojourn into pure synthpop,
Adam once again redefined Thosquanta reformed as a dark amalgam of
goth, industrial, rock, and country. While at a Faint concert,
Adam met Jen Plum, a singer and songwriter he quickly recruited
for the new band. He later added ex-Dysrupt bass player Dave
Erickson and guitar player/song writer Nic Heidt of The Eighth Day
to give the new project a full, lush, live feel.
Phoenix is their first album together as the new and improved
version of Thosquanta. Combining a wide variety of influences from
country to goth to industrial, the band has received comparisons
to The Cure, Sister Machine Gun and Sisters of Mercy. And while
the band name may not be easy to pronounce, it's their ability to
write a good pop song mixed with an extremely dark, electronic
edge that has helped them emerge as one of the many artists
grooming the twin cities for the electropunk takeover.
The Inside Pulse: (insidepulse.com)
Evolving from an experimental darkwave project into a full-fledged
industrial noise terror, Thosquanta seeks to please a crowd that
ranges from goth to stompy and all the way into pure metal. Some
would call it industrial, but we don't need labels. Lovelife would
be impossible to describe if we tried to muck it up with
comparative genre associations.
What one gets with Lovelife is the sex-charged vocals of Jen Plum
mixed with those of the dark-and-creaky Adam Powell, both backed
with a mix of shredding guitars and synth chaos (watch that sub-
bass, folks). The energy doesn't let up for the entire album,
creating quite the mood-setter. But while the sounds themselves
are incredible, they tend to blend from one song to the next.
Positives: The title track is the best example of the potential of
Thosquanta; that and "A is A" each create a perfect atmosphere,
contain catchy hooks, and are cohesive units all their own. The
ballad "Random" is a surprise, but definitely the standout track
of the album. The musicianship throughout the disc is top-notch
and there's not a standout "bad" song.
Negatives: While there are songs with great hooks, there are an
equal number without any hooks at all. The tone of the album is
rather even, which then leads the hookless songs to all blend into
a blob of non-memorable muck. When they do it well, they do it
well; when they don't, it's tedious.
Crossbreed:
KMFDM meets Prong meets Sneaker Pimps. Don't break your brain on
that one.
Reason to Buy:
If you're bored by years of similar-sounding industrial music, you
like to hear girls using their best phone-sex voice, or you really
did break your brain on the above.