NATIONAL EYE 'THE METER GLOWS'
Release Date: November 18th, 2003
Feel Records recording artists National Eye are ready to unveil "The Meter
Glows", the debut full-length from this Philadelphia-by-way-of-Colorado outfit.
"The Meter Glows", which will be released November 18, 2003, was engineered
and produced by National Eye at their home studio. They brought in esteemed producer Thom Monahan, from the Pernice Brothers, to mix the record. Monahan's credits range from Silver Jews and J. Mascis to Beachwood
Sparks.
National Eye's sound, in a nutshell: an optic clang, a color swarm of repetition and dissonance and harmony which transfigures its descriptions of distorted memory and lumbering beasts (human and otherwise) into a movie minefield of vivid pathos pop.
"The Meter Glows" exemplifies all those adjectives to a tee.
Take, for example, the love theme of "Friday Afternoon Theem". It careens into an oddly subdued electric storm of nerve-noise, whereas, "Big Animals" is a wire orchestra stomping a myth-laden plain. "Dracula's Always with Me" is a mellow folk song containing secret clues to the main character's rapid moral dissolution.
Then on "Corridor", a song about a pregnant girl who dies, the band makes you tremble and cry in fright while you think of the new beginnings that may occur for the girl as she goes to a better place.
The album also includes some happy endings, including "Spies", an edge-of-your-seat thriller that won't leave you in tears.
If the band were to sum it up, they would exclaim, "We make weird music that
roughly falls into the category of rock-related music (see also folk-rock, post-rock, math-rock, geography-rock, bed-rock). That is to say, we don't play jazz, and we wouldn't even if we knew how".
The history of National Eye goes back to when they all went to college together in Colorado. Future Eye members Jeff Love, Doug Kirby, Richard Flom, and William Baggott moved into a house where they discovered that another roommate (named Pat) had brought with him a 4-track cassette tape recorder. The guys began an obsession with recording that has endured ever since.
Delving into "archaeological field tapings", the group of friends experimented with various unconventional techniques that would characterize their sound years later as National Eye. Amid this frenzy of collegiate noise making, they began playing with Gianmarco Cilli, who was later inducted as a full-on member of the group, handling guitar, drums, vocals, and bass.
After college was done, they moved out to Philadelphia and lost the plot for a while. Working under the deliberately anonymous-sounding (and terrible) name The Project Project, they recorded and played around, learning a lot, but not really doing "their thing".
It was only after two years of tears and frustration that the group said "to heck with it", dumped the Project Project moniker, and started recording stuff that brought back the thrill of those early days of ignorant exploration.
However, this time around they found that they were reasonably good musicians, so the songs ended up not merely bedroom tinkering, but crafted, fully textured (if still oddball) recordings.
Eschewing such excruciating crud as press kits and bios and pictures, they sent the fruits of their labors (twenty songs on two conceptually contiguous CDs) to various record labels, one of which was the New York-based indie Feel Records, home to Eye-favorites the Capitol Years. The wise gents at Feel took one listen to the National Eye music, said, "That's it!" and set the wheels in motion to snap up the witless band before anybody else did.
The result, as you now know, is "The Meter Glows". Constant touring and plenty of mayhem are sure to follow its release. Play it loud, play it a lot, and live in the music. It is the only way National Eye wants it.
For more information contact Alex Steininger @ In Music We Trust PR -
503-557-9661, alex@inmusicwetrust.com or Feel Records at 212.726.3614, copafeel@feelrecords.com
Release Date: November 18th, 2003
Feel Records recording artists National Eye are ready to unveil "The Meter
Glows", the debut full-length from this Philadelphia-by-way-of-Colorado outfit.
"The Meter Glows", which will be released November 18, 2003, was engineered
and produced by National Eye at their home studio. They brought in esteemed producer Thom Monahan, from the Pernice Brothers, to mix the record. Monahan's credits range from Silver Jews and J. Mascis to Beachwood
Sparks.
National Eye's sound, in a nutshell: an optic clang, a color swarm of repetition and dissonance and harmony which transfigures its descriptions of distorted memory and lumbering beasts (human and otherwise) into a movie minefield of vivid pathos pop.
"The Meter Glows" exemplifies all those adjectives to a tee.
Take, for example, the love theme of "Friday Afternoon Theem". It careens into an oddly subdued electric storm of nerve-noise, whereas, "Big Animals" is a wire orchestra stomping a myth-laden plain. "Dracula's Always with Me" is a mellow folk song containing secret clues to the main character's rapid moral dissolution.
Then on "Corridor", a song about a pregnant girl who dies, the band makes you tremble and cry in fright while you think of the new beginnings that may occur for the girl as she goes to a better place.
The album also includes some happy endings, including "Spies", an edge-of-your-seat thriller that won't leave you in tears.
If the band were to sum it up, they would exclaim, "We make weird music that
roughly falls into the category of rock-related music (see also folk-rock, post-rock, math-rock, geography-rock, bed-rock). That is to say, we don't play jazz, and we wouldn't even if we knew how".
The history of National Eye goes back to when they all went to college together in Colorado. Future Eye members Jeff Love, Doug Kirby, Richard Flom, and William Baggott moved into a house where they discovered that another roommate (named Pat) had brought with him a 4-track cassette tape recorder. The guys began an obsession with recording that has endured ever since.
Delving into "archaeological field tapings", the group of friends experimented with various unconventional techniques that would characterize their sound years later as National Eye. Amid this frenzy of collegiate noise making, they began playing with Gianmarco Cilli, who was later inducted as a full-on member of the group, handling guitar, drums, vocals, and bass.
After college was done, they moved out to Philadelphia and lost the plot for a while. Working under the deliberately anonymous-sounding (and terrible) name The Project Project, they recorded and played around, learning a lot, but not really doing "their thing".
It was only after two years of tears and frustration that the group said "to heck with it", dumped the Project Project moniker, and started recording stuff that brought back the thrill of those early days of ignorant exploration.
However, this time around they found that they were reasonably good musicians, so the songs ended up not merely bedroom tinkering, but crafted, fully textured (if still oddball) recordings.
Eschewing such excruciating crud as press kits and bios and pictures, they sent the fruits of their labors (twenty songs on two conceptually contiguous CDs) to various record labels, one of which was the New York-based indie Feel Records, home to Eye-favorites the Capitol Years. The wise gents at Feel took one listen to the National Eye music, said, "That's it!" and set the wheels in motion to snap up the witless band before anybody else did.
The result, as you now know, is "The Meter Glows". Constant touring and plenty of mayhem are sure to follow its release. Play it loud, play it a lot, and live in the music. It is the only way National Eye wants it.
For more information contact Alex Steininger @ In Music We Trust PR -
503-557-9661, alex@inmusicwetrust.com or Feel Records at 212.726.3614, copafeel@feelrecords.com
