BrandsForBands

Pink Frost (formerly called Apteka) is Adam Lukas, Dino Balocchi, Jesse Hozeny, and Dave Narey. We are from Chicago. We play rock music. We like large kick drums, tube amplification, and face melting. Thanks.

Said the Gramophone - "If The Clientele were a punk band: people prone to fistfights with their brothers, with flicking light-switches til they break. If snowstorms shed sparks or cicadas caught fire. If you longed so much for something that you could never sleep again. Or if all your friends started playing electric guitars at once."

Chicago Reader- "With its chiming guitar, churning rhythms, expansive atmospherics, and keening, melodic vocals, the song presses the same buttons as classic Ride. I expect good things from this band, and soon."

Devil Has the Best Tuna Blog- "Their Smashing Pumpkins like twist on the late 80s Oxford based shoegazers Swervedriver and Ride takes me back to those halcyon days when staring at your shoes through a matted mop of hair whilst furiously bashing your guitars to create a Tsunami of sound was the sound of the future. Sign them now or regret at your leisure."

FutureSounds/Tankfarm label- "Apteka are building their reputation in the Midwest through a wall of sound and Jane's Addiction type fury."

Pasta Primavera- "This four piece band from Chicago has captured the 1990s sound of Smashing Pumpkins in a bottle and is using it will. Watch out."

Kordan is a group of musicians led by Arthur Eisele (guitars, vocals). Current members also include Gabo Rodriguez (bass), Liz Reboyras (synth, vocals), and Jake Chudnow (drums). They live in Brooklyn, New York City.

"Sifting through traces of quantum universes, Kordan find the lush textures, pulsating beats, and somber melodies that they use to project dreams of bleak, dismal cities in a holographic future. But just below this mournful atmosphere there is also flicker of energy, like one of those cities is slowly flickering back on after a blackout. Lumines- cent synths build on scratchy guitars and the electricity of the city finally rushes back on.

Arthur, Liz, and Gabo emerged from the vibrant rave and indie rock scenes in Puerto Rico during the early 2000s. After different stints found them in different parts of the US, the trio converged in Brooklyn. Together again, they began to fuse an electro glint and a shoegaze murk, and thus forged Kordan.

In the fall of 2008, Cut Copy heard the band's songs and chose Kordan as an opening act on their North American tour, taking them through Minneapolis, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, and back to New York City. In the summer of 2009 Kordan released their demo recordings as the Fantasy Nation EP, garner- ing critical acclaim from Filter, Jezebel, and Oh My Rockness, among others. The debut release heralded Kordan's aural world, tinged by futuristic visions and Japanese street culture. The following autumn months saw Kordan playing a CMJ showcase and shows in New York City, including opening for The Drums and The Mary Onettes. They have also brought their sonic influences to other bands, having done remixes for ZAZA and The Delta Mirror."

"The Carnivores' keyboardist, Caitlin Lang, is classically trained in piano, but on "If I'm Ancient" (Double Phantom), the group's appealingly messy second album, she sounds equally trained in punk barking. On the breatless "Parent's Attic," she's petulant, and on the riveting garage-rock number "Summer Shades," she's sweetly shrieking. Ms. Lang shares vocal duties with the guitarist Nathaniel Higgins, who sings drily, and the bassist Philip Frobos, whose bright tone anchors the band's songs, which have become more digressive and dirtier since it released it's first album, "All Night Dead U.S.A." (The band also includes the drummer Ross Politi.) That album had a tropical undercurrent in the mode of early Vampire Weekend or Abe Vigoda. It's here, too, on songs like "Cause She Never Stops," which could be the soundtrack for a chase scene on surfboards. "Georgia Power Company" has it, too, but also shows the band's development, drowning it beneath a woozy psychedelic haze." - The New York Times 

"...this is as solid as playing it safe gets, and it doesn't actually play it all that safe-- who else in garage rock is doing this sort of breakdown?" - Pitchfork Media

From the bluesy swagger of the album opener "Hollywood Hollows" to the soaring, Washington Irving inspired anthem "Equestrian," it is evident that MIRRORS, the debut full length from U.S. Royalty, is an album of grand scope and range. It is a document of exploration and discovery. Songs kindle a spectrum of locales as the band laces a thread of longing and movement throughout the entire album to create a cinematic experience. MIRRORS is a cohesive and unified collection.

"With this record we wanted to present a body of work, a complete thought," says singer John Thornley. To achieve this, the band wrote and rewrote songs for a year, demoing and dissecting while on the road and at home. John continues, "Because we traveled for about a year and a half before we recorded the album, there is definitely a travel vibe to the record "

In March 2010, the band teamed up with engineer Gus Oberg (The Strokes, Albert Hammond Jr., Bloc Party) and Justin Long to begin recording the album. While in the studio, as a vision of the album began to come into focus, old songs were dropped in favor of new songs being written. The band recently released the first single off the album, "Equestrian," and set a release date for the debut album, January 25th 2011.

Shared experiences, traveling and playing together, informed the writing process as did a steady intake of Kubrick, Godard, McCarthy, and Spaghetti Westerns. The sun-bleached Ennio Morricone soundtracks factored heavily into the scope and range of MIRRORS as the band channeled the sense of epic drama his most memorable pieces evoke – those timeless studies in tension and release.

U.S. Royalty formed in 2008 in Washington, D.C. Built around the lifelong musical collaboration of brothers John and Paul Thornley, vocals/piano and guitar, respectively, and rounded out by Jacob Michael (bass), and Luke Adams (drums), the group has refined and expanded their collective vision since their earliest practices spent shivering around a single heater while ensconced in an abandoned trailer in rural Maryland.? ?While the band had a collection of demos recorded mainly to book gigs they were approached by Brooklyn-based Engine Room Recordings to release a selection of the songs on a 7-inch entitled Midsommar. They have made appearances at SXSW, NXNE, Art Basel and CMJ. They have been featured in Esquire, SPIN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and highlighted on NPR. Their work with Gant Rugger has garnered them attention in the fashion world and created unexpected bridges in the blogosphere, their music has accompanied various web-based promotional films for the label, and the band members will be featured in the Swedish line's upcoming 2011 Spring Collection.

With the release of their debut album, U.S. Royalty delivers on capturing the volatility and explosiveness that define their live performances. While taking cues from the players of old, they treat performances as feverish outpourings of rock 'n roll energy and emotion. For them, there is no reason not to leave it all on the stage every night as a testimony to the music that moves them. U.S. Royalty aims for the grand and the timeless but insists on the raw and the unplanned as they forge their own way in the current musical landscape.

This Lansing, Michigan gang of renegade upstarts has been extremely prolific over the last couple of years, and as the time quickly passes by, even better songs have evolved, as this debut LP will undoubtedly prove. Formed from two sets of brothers, The People's Temple have a certain cohesion that's hard to pin down, yet impossible to resist. Taking the listener even further down the darkened path, they straddle the line between simple garage intentions and certain lysergic after effects, causing these songs to take on a 13th Floor Elevators/Troggs/Black Diamonds vibe that's basically supposed to be impossible to pull off without sounding corny. The dirgey yet sparkling production that rears its head on their debut album here may seem like quite a leap forward (a la the Smith Westerns on their debut LP) to listeners already hooked on their string of 7" singles, but the songwriting shines through remarkably well, and quickly separates them from the pack. With hazy nods to both shoe-gaze and 60s pop/psych interspersed with their own signature sound, they burst through the thickening fog with anthemic precision and unshakable pleasure, as each track revs up and blasts off through the stratosphere, sending waves of chills and reverberation in every direction. Its always exciting when a band creates such a break-though like this, and we're beyond ecstatic to help it take off and rip through the sky.

Earthy Babes are a band from Brooklyn.

Futurebrite is singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Karen Kanan Corrêa's radiant first solo project. Produced and co-written by Josh Grant, mixed by Alex Aldi (Passion Pit), and featuring a small collection of incredible guest musicians (rapper Staf Sharif, drummer Sekou Lumumba of Bedouin Soundclash and 24/7 Spyz, and string players from New York's composer-collective Anti-Social Music), Futurebrite is chimerical, dark, romantic electro-pop. Prior to Futurebrite, Karen led the "dizzyingly addictive" indie trio Demander. After two albums, tours across the US and Europe with the likes of The Hold Steady, New Model Army, and Art Brut, TV song placements and video collaborations, Karen decided to go solo. While writing the songs that will become the first Futurebrite album, Karen toured as bassist for Swedish rocker Moneybrother, played with the composer/performer collective Anti-Social Music, sang on UK artist Gary Go's newest album, and won both an artist residency at the prestigious Millay Colony for the Arts and a spot at the ASCAP Lester Sill Songwriting Workshop in LA.

Band of snowboarders from Salt Lake City. Men of few words.

"These boys are going to make a million dollars." - Tav Falco

Born into a space between the notes of Fleetwood Mac and the words of Sylvia Plath’. Running Red Lights is an indie/folk/rock quartet with members from small towns all across Eastern Canada. As described by Chicago music blog, Direct Current, they are 'a charming mix-up of breezy Fleetwood Mac-styled song-craft with bold strokes of folk, modern Americana and a hint of good old soul vibes'. The band’s first full-length album “There’s A Bluebird In My Heart” was named the 'most eagerly awaited album of 2014' by ROKLINE Magazine. The leading single Mulberry Love was named #1 Song of 2013 by N.Y Blog Given and Taken in Ink and the popularity of the song allowed the band an opportunity to perform on the nationally televised program Canada Am. Since the release of the album the band has been getting sweeping praise from music journalists and bloggers across the world.


RECENT PRESS QUOTES:

This is beautiful, melodic and harmonious stuff with lush instrumentation throughout and for fans of the mighty Fleetwood Mac this is a dream come true. And as for the Americans? Well, they'll just have to start trying harder I think. Bieber doesn't even come close to Running Red Lights'. -Listen with Monger, Jan 20, 2014

'Few songs have captured my attention as quickly and forcefully as 'Mulberry Love'. Since it arrived in my inbox I have not listened to another song. 'Mulberry Love' is the kind of song that makes other songs not matter'. -NY Blog Given and Taken in Ink (#1 Song of 2013)

they've struck gold' -California Blog Music Murmur Jan 14, 2014

Running Red Lights showed last night that they are the complete package. They have the songwriting talent, instrumental proficiency, showmanship, passion and wide appeal to make a really big splash with their upcoming album. Expect big things'-Toronto Rhapcity, March 2013