With so much happening on the local music scene, it can be hard to keep up with the newest groups, latest trends and catchiest sounds. What we need is a listening party.
Here’s the idea: Each week, we’ll pick three local bands to listen to. We’ll link to a location where you can listen to their music for free (either a home page or MySpace-like site), and then ask you to spend a few moments of your time forming an opinion about what you hear. Some may be great, some may be awful — we’ll leave that up to you to decide.
And then? Tell us your thoughts, of course!
As an Xpress reader, this is your chance to play the music reviewer. And if you are in one of the profiled bands, this is your chance to directly respond to criticism.
This week, we’re featuring three distinctly different bands.
First up is Kakistocracy, an Asheville-based quartet specializing in punk, hardcore and thrash. The band has four songs up on their MySpace page, but if you had to listen to just one, we think the track “All Wrong by Resist” gets the point across just dandy.
Next is Come Before Winter, a rather chill group (or perhaps individual) offering almost nothing in the way of background info. With only three short songs on their profile, it shouldn’t take more than a few moments to listen to CBW’s entire catalogue. If you only have time or interest for one, we suggest “Luster.”
And finally, we’d like to hear your thoughts on The Hellblinki Sextet. This overtly theatrical group made their name in Augusta, Ga., but according to their MySpace page, they now call Asheville home. We suggest starting with “It Comes to This.”
Now, it’s your turn. Simply enter your thoughts on the bands and their music in the comment fields below. (Registered users get a bit of a head start, as their posts don’t have to be moderated.)
— Steve Shanafelt, A&E editor
UPDATE: For some reason, our MySpace search for music near Asheville directed us to Come Before Winter. When we looked at the band profile yesterday, it had practically no information on the group’s background, and we assumed them to be local. It turns out, however that they are about as un-local as you can get. Their recently updated profile reveals that Come Before Winter is based in Fresno, Ca. (Even though most of their “friends” are well-known bands from the Asheville and Spartanburg music scenes.) Come Before Winter also appears to have removed the song “Luster” from their MySpace player. We’ve left the link up, but feel free to ignore Come Before Winter when chiming in on this week’s Listening Party. — S.S. 9/6/07
Re: Come Before Winter
Hahaha! Way to research! Why not just list the Smashing Pumpkins? They lived here for 2 weeks, that makes them local, right?!
Supergenius: Fair enough, although I think they probably registered their account using a local zip code, which is why they came up on MySpace’s local music search. Also, if you look at the profile, and you’ll see that they have a lot local musicians as friends (Secret Lives of the Freemasons, Mad Tea Party, By Morning, The Kingsmen Quartet, Fall Of Gomorrah, Promise, Dawn of the Dude, etc.), so they sure seemed local.
It was only when they updated their page with new information and songs yesterday that we found out they weren’t local. Hence the correction. Our bad, though.
So now that we’ve established that, I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on the other two bands’ music.
I’ve heard both of the other bands previously and have seen Helblinki live twice.
I really like “As The Steel Around Us Buckles” by Kakistocracy. Very good and angry punk rock… reminds me of 1983 all over again! As long as they don’t incorporate metal or pop-punk into their sound, they’ll be just fine.
Hellblinki are pretty top notch musicians and people. Like Tom Waits, Violent Femmes and The Residents all rolled into one.