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:: Release Info:
::
:: Artist......> The December Sound
:: Title.......> Silver Album
:: Label.......> Self Released
:: Genre.......> Indie
:: Rip.Date....> Dec-01-2007
:: Street.Date.> Dec-01-2007
:: Source......> CDDA
:: Quality.....> VBRkbps - Joint-Stereo
:: Play Time...> 63:48 min
::
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:: Track Listing:
::
:: 01. Never
:: 02. No Heaven Like Hell
:: 03. Drone Refusenik
:: 04. Do You in
:: 05. Painkiller
:: 06. Reminder
:: 07. 12
:: 08. Kill Me (Before I Kill You)
:: 09. Maker
:: 10. Il Forte
:: 11. Truth Hurts
:: 12. Tape Tape
:: 13. Not if It's on Your Time
::
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:: Release Notes:
::
:: Zack Sarzana, the December Sound's singer-guitarist, brightens
:: when his band of psychedelic-minded post-punks gets compared to
:: outfits like the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Jesus and Mary
:: Chain, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. But he positively shines
:: when friends and fans tell him that the foursome's self-titled
:: debut also seems to pull from rap and hip-hop's past.
::
:: "Some people have listened to [the album] and told us that it
:: sounds like Eric B. & Rakim - and here we were thinking we were
:: so psychedelic," says Sarzana, laughing over the phone from
:: Brooklyn, where he moved two years ago after spending his first
:: 26 years in Boston. "But that's cool, because that's what I
:: listened to growing up - those guys, the first Public Enemy
:: album, early Beastie Boys, all that stuff. So it's a good
:: fusion."
::
:: Fusion. It's an aesthetic and an approach that Sarzana, 28, has
:: embraced and applied to both the way he listens to and makes
:: music. And it's part of the reason why the December Sound's album
:: - which the band will celebrate with a show at T.T. the Bear's
:: Saturday - sounds so good. The debut veers from cool stealth to
:: chiseled soundscapes to drowsy space-age atmospheres. One moment
:: you're Slowdiving into an ether of echo ("Reminder"); the next
:: you're flanked by beats hard enough for a strobe-lit dance floor
:: ["Kill Me (Before I Kill You)," a track that first appeared on
:: the band's 2005 EP of the same name]. The fuzz-toned guitar
:: assault of "Maker," the album's most brutishly aggressive rocker,
:: sounds like what might happen if Spacemen 3 covered the Stooges -
:: or dosed Iggy's crew with LSD.
::
:: "I tend to listen to so many different types of music, and I try
:: to write in a full spectrum," Sarzana says. "I think there are a
:: lot of different sounds on there."
::
:: Indeed, this is a guy who once described his nascent band to
:: drummer Drew Beaverson as "a lot of explosions and color," which
:: isn't far from accurate. Of course, if Sarzana's summation seemed
:: a tad impressionistic, it may have had something to do with the
:: hallucinogenic mushrooms he had ingested at a party in Jamaica
:: Plain the two attended a few years back. There was a meteor
:: shower scheduled for later that evening, and Sarzana merely
:: wanted to be prepared for the visual spectacle.
::
:: The music of the December Sound - which, in addition to Sarzana
:: and Beaverson, also includes keyboardist-guitarist Jimmy Rossi
:: and bassist Cat Crowley - suggests something of a spectacle
:: itself, maybe even a meteor shower in sound. Earlier this year,
:: the independent music-minded magazine The Big Takeover called the
:: December Sound "perhaps the best unsigned band on the planet
:: right now" - and that was solely on the basis of the group's
:: three self-released EPs.
::
:: That's pretty heady praise for an outfit that made its new album
:: entirely on its own dime, in its own time. And in the case of the
:: December Sound, that was two years after they had expected to
:: finish; the delay was caused by a series of lineup and life
:: changes - Sarzana's finding love, room, and board in Brooklyn,
:: among them.
::
:: Still, Sarzana, modest and easy-going as he is, is unabashedly
:: pleased with the result of the band's hard-won labors. Despite
:: what he characterizes as "an insane process" of writing,
:: recording, mixing, and tweaking to get the album done before
:: year's end, he calls it "a complete success."
::
:: "I'm very proud of it," he says without braggadocio but, rather,
:: sounding like a surprised artisan making an honest assessment of
:: his work. "It was tough because we had something like 30 songs to
:: choose from, but we wanted to put some of the older songs on the
:: back burner and record the new material to document the here and
:: now."
::
:: "We made this music for ourselves and mixed it for ourselves,
:: with all the guitars in the red," he adds. "If we were paying
:: money [to a studio], it probably would have gotten done sooner.
:: But I don't know if that would have been for the better. Who
:: needs another person telling you what to do?"
::
:: www.thedecembersound.com
:: www.myspace.com/thedecembersound
::
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::
:: Buy it if you like it!!
::
::
::
::....................................................................