BrandsForBands

Ben Braden and Sarah Parson began writing and singing music together in the winter of 2009 in Minneapolis, MN. Within a few months they were playing shows in Minneapolis, Chicago and other Midwestern venues, and before summer they had finished recording their first release, the critically praised EP “Everywhere To Go.” Following the release of “Everywhere To Go,” Ben and Sarah headed west, relocating The Lower 48 to Portland, OR. Playing regularly on the West Coast, they developed a more mature sound and wrote a host of new songs. In the summer of 2010, Nicholas Sadler, another Minneapolis native relocated to Portland, and joined the band as percussionist. Soon after The Lower 48 began recording their first full-length album. Titled “Where All Maps End,” this record reveals the band’s collaboration to portray the pain, pleasure and uncertainty of being young and making one’s way in the world. Finding it's strongest influence in music from the 1960’s, "Where All Maps End" will prove The Lower 48 to be a quintessential organic band in the digital age.

On their upcoming fourth release Gone With The Night, Los Angeles gutter rock trio Wake Up Lucid puts it simply: “Give us something real, something we can feel, or get fucked…” This statement resounds as both rejection of fakery and pursuit of honest music, which have remained Wake Up Lucid’s only guidelines for writing and performing throughout the half decade’s worth of their existence. The new album was produced by Icarus Line’s Joe Cardamone at his studio, Valley Recording Co. in Burbank and is being released March 31 on WUL Records.

Gone With The Night is a sampling of the fruits of the group’s determined efforts to develop further as song-writers, offering songs that are much more focused and realized, and diversely dynamic — a departure from the band’s usual m.o. of grit and groove hammered-out at high volumes — while still maintaining the inimitable Wake Up Lucid vibe that has crept around L.A. for the past few years.

Their authenticity and immediacy as writers and performers is rooted in their experience of growing up together in the same extended family—a musical one to boot. After pursuing their respective musical aspirations in other outfits, they formed their own some six years ago, distilling their now matured, ripened abilities into the woozy sound that is Wake Up Lucid.

Early on, cousins Ryan, Ian, and Jamie set up home base at Silverlake Lounge, honing their writing and performance skills in front of one of the most demanding audiences in the world. What resulted was…being offered an album release party, then a residency, followed swiftly by media acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, LA Times, Vice/Noisey, Filter, Nylon, MOKB, KEXP… and plenty of others!

After making repeated rounds in Los Angeles, a few West-Coast tours and a slot on a SXSW Urban Outfitters Series bill, Wake Up Lucid began landing TV placements, with songs being featured on Discovery Channel’s Weed Wars, Carson Daly Show (NBC), Nashville (ABC), and a two-song live performance on AXS.tv. They teamed up with VonZipper Sunglasses providing the soundtracks for several short films and have had their music feaured in Oakley, Patagonia, Hurley, Fox, Quicksilver, Me Undies and Under Armour ads.

Much of their crucial development as a band has been facilitated by Joe Cardamone who has acted as producer and assisted in the fine-tuning of the band’s sound on three releases. Joe has this to say about Wake Up Lucid:

“Each production that I have been a part of with Wake Up Lucid is proving to be exponentially more expansive than the previous. I heard a confidence in their sound this time that was really exciting. Providing them with an environment to take chances has paid off and Gone With The Night is a testament to that. This EP is a warning to what will be coming on the new LP. One of the best bands with guitars in their hands.”

California rock & roll with a 60's tone. A true pearl pulled from the depths of a psychedelic time warp. Powered by a mixture of psychedelia, garage and R&b. Fueled and fronted by a wild man's haunted soul!

Alexi Glickman began performing and releasing music as Sandy's in 2012 after fronting the Botticellis and touring with Little Wings. In Summer of 2014 Thomas Campbell put out Sandy's debut record, Fourth Dementia, via Um Yeah Arts.

On his new EP, Prom, he wraps five melodic gems with layers of vintage tape echo and open ­tuned Stratocaster shimmer for a dreamy late­ summer slow dance. Alexi recalls, “my first memories of music were in these big echoey rooms watching my Dad and his dance company rehearse. I wanted to make an EP that had a presence like that.” Prom features album art by Nat Russell that depicts a lone guitarist playing for a seemingly vast, empty landscape— save for the multitude of glowing stars in the cosmos. It’s a lonely image but also a transcendent one­­ in the same spirit as the opening lines of Chris Bell’s I Am The Cosmos, “Every Night I tell myself I am the cosmos / I am the wind / But that don’t get you back again.”

Lyrically, Prom deals with a similar kind of social desolation— when friends drift away after school or turn their backs on their old friends as they pair off to get married. “Sometimes there’s an openness of spirit that begins to fade in people as they grow older— songs like "Consolidated Identity" are a kind of last dance with that person before they become someone else.” Recorded mostly live to a 1960s Scully 4-track in a house in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California, Prom centers around Alexi’s guitar— an on old Fender, open tuned, echoplexed—reverberating in the old wood panels of the forest dwelling turned recording studio.

Sandy’s band, made of Burton Li (the Botticellis), Nick Aives, (The Range of Light Wilderness, Vetiver), Dave Muller, and Jeremy Black (Apollo Sunshine), blend into one instrument— winding through rich harmonic passages like they were riding a wave.

“I decided to keep two tunes on the EP instrumentals to invite folks to listen to them in a different way. Vocals can sometimes steal the show—when there’s an intricate composition underneath you wonder if anyone notices. I have vocal versions that I’d like to put out someday but I thought opening with an instrumental on each side of the EP was a fun way to welcome folks into this little world.”

A man of few words - Dutch producer making music that sounds like Hudson Mohawke's sampler died in the forest and gave life to fresh, natural, and earnest beats. 

The now mythic trio, We Are Wolves, presents an honest and uncatchable sound; a bit like celestial lightning hitting a sacred mountaintop. Mainly inspired by visual arts, they paint a post-punk landscape, scattered with analog trees. Their primitive approach remains true to their animal of predilection: untamable. Disciples of rock and electronica - it’s at the junction of those two movements that We Are Wolves made their den.

Gal Pals is a drum and guitar duo, originally from Austin, now based in Los Angeles. We write pop songs.

With a powerful, sultry voice that evokes comparisons to artists as diverse as K.T. Tunstall, Girl in a Coma’s Nina Diaz and Ronnie Spector, Emily Bell has made it to the top of the “must see live” list in Austin, Texas. Her debut album In Technicolor was self-released on May 28, and her single "Back to the Way I Was" was picked up by close to 200 national radio stations and video outlets respectively.

Since then, Bell has done two national tours, performed live on the Ron & Fez Show on Sirius XM, the Artie Lang Show, BreakThru Radio, and even got her own day in Austin when the Mayor proclaimed August 22, 2013 “Emily Bell Day.” Interrobang.com ranked Bell No. 1 on its list of the top five artists to watch at SXSW 2013 - after listening to 1,210 tracks from showcasing acts. Her next single, “Hey Baby,” is getting nationwide distribution on the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau compilation, Austin Music, Volume 12. Her debut album features nine cuts that cross tracks laid through Delta blues, ‘60s rock, girl-group glam and Motown power. With John Evans, her producer, co-writer, guitarist and partner, Bell has crafted a “here I am” statement and likes to call it “Technicolor rock ‘n’ soul.” After writing and recording in Raphael Saadiq’s Burbank studio in LA with former members of Tony! Toni! Toné!, Bell returned to her Texas roots. With recent live shows including F1’s Fan Fest, KGSR’s Discovery Series, CMJ, Freedom Over Texas 2013, Michelle Clark’s Sunset Sessions and the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar coming up this December 17, Bell is making waves as one of Austin’s hottest new talents. Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll says “She’ll knock you down, then lick your wounds, burn up the stage and leave you begging for more.” For more information, see www.emilybell.com.

There's only one way to define Jonny Cat's music: timeless. Best-known as the singer and guitarist for San Francisco's most excellent garage stompers Coo Coo Birds, he spends most of his time recording and touring around the world. He composes many different styles of music including rock n roll, blues, jazz, flamenco, world, classical and others. Jonny usually records all the instruments as well on his tracks with guitar, piano, drums, bass, violin, harmonica, sitar, setar, and other strange instruments.

In forming in late 2011, Wildhoney set out to write pop songs with the energy and malcontent of hardcore punk, but without its entrenched masculinity — drawing influences from ‘60s girl groups, ‘80s post punk, indie pop, and shoegaze. The five-piece has since become one of the loudest — and sweetest — bands in its hometown of Baltimore.