The Bowery Presents

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Liars
official website
myspace
Liars have never been a band comfortable with staying in one place for very long. Geographically, personally and
most of all musically, each successive album that they release comes with a new agenda, a new heritage, a new
set of reference points and a new way of thinking about music.
So, after the multimedia multi-tasking of 2006's 'Drum's Not Dead' – each track of which came accompanied with
three exclusive short films - Liars have returned with their most stripped-back and direct album yet. Simply titled
'Liars', their 4th full-length (recorded in Berlin and LA and mixed in London by Erasure and Depeche Mode
producer Gareth Jones) abandons the thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The
Mud' of old in favour of a set of the band's most conventional and powerful songs yet – although as a band with a
reputation forged on thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud', Liars' recent
career swerve is a delightfully surprising as ever.
6" 6' Australian singer Angus Andrew explains the methodology behind this new approach: "It was a bit of a
reaction to what we'd gone through in the creative process – I think that in the past we always felt like we
needed to give our albums a concept. But this time we felt like we'd earned the right not to explain everything all
the time or give the songs an overarching theme."
"I think that we also wanted to make sure that we weren't diverting the listener's interest away from the music
with hi-falutin' titles," continues Andrew. "People end up finding more to talk and think about in those words than
they do in the actual music itself. This time we wanted to avoid that and not have any external influences on
people's perception in terms of titles or weird artwork. Everything is very straightforward this time. The speed of
production was doubled compared to our previous albums, so in a way it offered us less time to talk about
things."
Angus, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross - who has played drums with the band since the departure of original
rhythm section Pat Nature and Ron Albertson after the band's first album, 2001's 'They Threw Us All In A Trench
And Put A Monument On Top' - decided not to overanalyse the process of making their music.
"We aimed to make songs that weren't going to require a concept. We decided to work really quickly and not talk
about what we were doing too much. Aaron and I wanted to write songs that spoke for themselves in a more
visceral way – like when you're a teenager and things really mean a lot for you in a song. We wanted to write
songs that reminded us a little of what it was like to be a teenager – so pretty much the only preparation we did
was going back and listening to the bands we liked when we were kids, stuff like OMD, The Cure and Siouxsie
And The Banshees."
Although Andrew and former microbiologist Aaron Hemphill met in LA (where Andrew studied photography at art
school), after a stay in New York the band relocated to Berlin as a base for European touring. Hemphill and Gross
returned to LA soon after Drum's Not Dead but Andrew stayed on in the German capital, where the bulk of 'Liars'
was recorded at Planet Roc (sic) studios, a former East German radio studio built in the 1950s by Bauhaus
architect Franz Ehrlich. After working on their songs separately in Germany and the US, Liars convened at Planet
Roc for a fortnight in spanning New Year's Eve 2006/2007 to stitch together their ideas.
"Planet Roc was built as a broadcast facility for radio and is in the old East Berlin so it has this strange communist
vibe about it – but it feels liberating to use it for the kind of means we're using it for. But the best thing about it
is that it has loads of different sized rooms and corners to record in – we ended up recording a drum pattern in a
stairwell."
"Sometimes we had two rooms – I'd be working on one room and Aaron would be next door in the next room
working on his stuff. It can be quite frightening, but Aaron and I have worked together for ten years and we trust
each other, even though sometimes we work in total opposition to each other. Like for this record our interests
were different sonically: we were both writing songs about freedom and teenage melodrama, but I was interested
in the bass and Aaron was more into the high-end trebly stuff."
The band weren't balancing their interests alone, however: a friend of Andrew's from Australia, Jeremy Glover,
played bass and helped record the album. "Jeremy understood where we were coming from and helped to craft
the songs in the studio to help us find that visceral edge we were searching for. We wanted to make a record that
would have the same impact on people as hearing, like, the Ramones for the first time did on us."
Their quest to connect on a more visceral level has succeeded. Unlike, say, 2004's 'They Were Wrong, So We
Drowned', which boasted a fractured narrative based on accounts of the Salem Witch Trials, 'Liars' is a set of
songs only connected by the fact that no other band around could make music like this. From the demonic
football chant of 'Clear Island', to 'Freak Out''s industrial Beach Boys loveliness, the metal-flavoured birth rite of
'Cycle Time' or 'Houseclouds''s no-fi electro shuffle, this is an album that manages to balance the old,
experimentally-minded Liars with an excitingly insidious new pop edge.
"Every record you learn a lot about what you can do" says Angus, who moved back to LA after completing the
album. "With this one we've gone another step towards making music. When we started the band was more like
a means of expression. Now it feels like we're gaining control of a medium a bit more. I feel I know at least in
some sense about how to connect with people now. Before it was a bit more like an experiment, a stab in the
dark."
The experiment has been an unqualified success. By getting back to basics with 'Liars'' the band are going back
to the future.
Fol Chen
myspace
A Transmission from Fol Chen:

"You know that mysterious black object that the creepy family is staring at on the cover of Led Zeppelin's "Presence" album? Fol Chen sound like that. But we don't sound like Led Zeppelin. (We actually do a little.) Instead, we sound like Prince with Amon Duul II and a children's religious revival, not to mention Hot Chip, Pink Floyd, Gwen Stefani, Pere Ubu, Danielson Famile, Scritti Politti, Boards of Canada, The Blow, and Pulp. (Mostly.) We are using secret powers and the guidance of legendary DJ Donna Donna to combat our nemesis, John Shade. We are cryptic and joyful and we would like you to dance."
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