ADVANCE: $15
DAY OF SHOW: $18

Audio / Video

About This Event

Minimum Age:

18+

Doors Open:

6:30 PM

Show Time:

7:30 PM

Description:

This is a general admission, standing event. Happy hour from 6:30pm to 7:30pm.

Artists

School of Seven Bells
School Of Seven Bells are back with their third release, Ghostory, out February 28 on Vagrant Records/Ghostly Inernational. The highly-anticipated album finds the band’s lineup has evolved along with the music; formerly a trio, the band is now a duo: guitarist/producer Benjamin Curtis and vocalist Alejandra Deheza.

Recorded in-between tours, Ghostory exemplifies a fervent progression of SVIIB’s growth as artists, preserving the common themes found on their last two releases but exposing them in different fashions. The familiar ethereal and enigmatic tones are omnipresent, surrounded by layers of influences from ’80s pop, shoegaze and ambient electronic sounds. However, Ghostory comes with a story in mind; the tale of a young girl named Lafaye and the ghosts that surround her life.

“Everyone has ghosts”, says Alejandra Deheza; “They’re every love you’ve ever had, every hurt, every betrayal, every heartbreak. They follow you, stay with you.” This detailed storytelling is evident from start to finish on the record, weaving a tale that moves between a fervent synthesized adventure and spacious lyrical euphoria. Tracks like “Love Play” and “Show Me Love” create a hauntingly indelible atmosphere that grab attention with the ambitious wordplay in the center of it all. Surrounding tracks like “Lafaye” and “Scavenger” entice the vibe of previous School of Seven Bells releases with their steadily dance-centric tempo and uplifting melodic progressions. Ghostory flows seamlessly and effortlessly, a result of the shared songwriting process.

“Ghostory is our most collaborative music to date,” describes Benjamin Curtis, “Alley (Alejandra) and I have always written our music together, but always independently and on our own time. We knew we wanted to do something that was more sensual and spontaneous than anything we had ever done before, and that meant writing together in a room, coming up with ideas quickly and immediately reacting to what the other person was doing.” Within Ghostory, the story of both Lafaye’s and the band’s journey will be told.

School Of Seven Bells formed in 2006 as a trio (including Claudia Deheza) and released their debut full-length, Alpinisms, on Ghostly International in 2008. The group’s appeal grew exponentially, with their signature sounds stemming from pieces of electronic subgenres and shoegaze bands before them. By 2010, the group released the critically acclaimed Disconnect From Desire on Ghostly International and Vagrant. Ghostory is truly their defining work, beautifully crafted and haunting, with the story of Lafaye permeating the psyche long after the music stops.
Exitmusic
Sometimes, listening to Exitmusic, it’s hard to tell whether the goosebumps you’re getting are from the parts that are chillingly beautiful and melodic or the ones that are aching and guttural or the ones that are creepily sparse and disembodied. The New York City duo – Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church -- doesn’t care when the chill runs down your spine, they just hope their music provokes some kind of primal feeling. Church explains, “It’s like what Aleksa sings at the end of ‘The Sea’: ‘And you turn your back to life… Oh, sorrow.’ We want our music to confront people in a gentle but powerful way, to make them feel something.”

“To feel human again,” adds Palladino. “To remind people, and even us, to let yourself be vulnerable.” She says that when she’s writing a song, she knows it’s going well when she feels breathless, overwhelmed by what is stirring inside of her. “The songs themselves are slightly abstract, but where they’re coming from emotionally is always very clear to me.”

Church and Palladino started writing together several years ago, when Church moved to New York following a year teaching English in Taiwan and India. “We had a funny dynamic musically, at first,” says Church, who grew up in Winnipeg. “I was listening to things that had elements sonically of what we’re doing now -- Radiohead’s Kid A, that second Sigur Ros album, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Warp Records electronic stuff. But all I had to work with at the time was an acoustic guitar. Meanwhile, Aleksa was recording all these really interesting, odd arrangements on her four-track that would be about a minute long and only have one movement in them, and it sounded more like what I was into than what I was doing.”

Palladino, a New York native, had been writing and recording her own songs since she was in her early teens. She grew up in an artistic family; her grandparents are both painters and her mother is an acclaimed opera singer. Aleksa got her first guitar at age twelve and played it constantly. “When I got the four-track, I got really into layering sounds and playing with what, to me, were shapes. They were music, but they were shapes and angles. I was just committed to sketching, almost. I still wonder if I hadn’t started recording with Devon, if I ever would have finished a song.”

The pair spent pretty much all of their time writing together, but things really began to take shape when they moved to Los Angeles a year later.. “We got a computer and recording software and really started to experiment with it and explore things together,” says Palladino. “That’s when it became a real project.”

They self-released their first collection of songs, The Decline of the West, in 2008. Their sound at the time was described by critics as a union of post-punk and trip hop, with apocalyptic overtones. ‘Dark, brooding and beautiful,’ wrote the UK’s Supersweet Magazine. ‘Radiohead meets Portishead in a living nightmare. Genius then.’’

The couple married that year, exchanging vows at a scenic overlook on Mulholland Drive. They had moved to Los Angeles so that Palladino, who has been acting professionally since fourteen, could be available for work there. But when she was cast in Martin Scorcese’s HBO series Boardwalk Empire as bohemian artist Angela Darmody, Exitmusic were thrilled to be able to move back east. Since returning to New York in 2009, the band -- which currently performs as a four piece, with drummer Dru Prentiss and electronic musician Nicholas Shelestak -- has both honed and expanded their sound, as well as their recording technique. Striking a unique balance between darkness and light, their music builds on a foundation of rhythmic electronics and synthesizers, to arrive at a sound almost operatic in scope. The tracks on the band’s new EP, From Silence, explore themes of loss, both personal and universal, “the destruction of nature and the destruction of our own nature.” Recorded at home in Brooklyn over the course of the past several months, the EP marks Exitmusic’s Secretly Canadian debut.