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SeepeopleS
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The Daily Times, January 2007 PreviewSeepeopleS uses a variety of influences for musical success Diversity is the key to the success of the SeepeopleS sound. The Boston-based band, which performs Wednesday night at Barley's Taproom in Knoxville's Old City, takes the various influences of its individual members and combines them into a tasty cocktail that goes down smooth, slightly fizzy and definitely delicious. It's not easy to classify, but like a good stiff drink, sometimes it's best not to ask what's in it — just enjoy the taste and the afterglow and order another. "I'm often asked to compare the band's sound to another band, but that's not an easy thing for me to do with so many different elements to what's going on," bassist Dan Ingenthron told The Daily Times this week. "All four of us really come from pretty distinct musical approaches. Will (Bradford), the guitarist, is really into dub and reggae and used to be really into a lot of electronic and house type stuff. (Drummer) Tim (Haney) is a big Zappa fiend. I'm the Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones guy, and (keyboardist) Pete Keys is kind of the punkster of the band. "Within the four of those, we each kind of have our own agenda anyway, so it's worked out really well in developing this really kind of unique sound. What we've ended up coming up with pretty much stands on its own. We've pretty much developed our own concept with this huge sound we're putting out, and when we're playing live, it's all about how much more massive we can make the big parts and how much more subtle and understated we can make the quiet parts. "We've been able to do really well with that, and the dynamic ends up affecting the songs themselves in a really good way," Ingenthron added. The band got its start seven years ago after the breakup of Naked Ear recording artists Cosmic Dilemma. Cosmic D members Bradford, Haney and Ingenthron continued on, changing the band's name with SeepeopleS and winning an invite to the CMJ Music Marathon in 2000, where they shared a bill with Cracker. In 2002, the band released its first album under the SeepeopleS moniker, "For the Good of the Nation." Sax player Dana Colley, whose sound defined the rock band Morphine throughout the 1990s, collaborated on two tracks, adding an element of soulfulness to the band's music that reverberates to this day. Colley added his horn to a few tracks on the band's sophomore effort, "The Corn Syrup Conspiracy," released in 2004 after Haney and Ingenthron temporarily left the band. The original members reunited later than year and have been together ever since. The band's sound has both expanded and gotten more focused since the group's inception. On "Corn Syrup Conspiracy," Bradford infused the songs with an ethereal, experimental quality that speaks to his electronica influences; on "Apocalypse Cow Vol. 1" — the band's new album, due out in March — there's a sharper, more pop-rock focus to the songs that reflect Hanby's and Ingenthron's inclusion back into the fold. "On our songs, we work out the arrangements and stuff on the road, then go into the studio with them and start with the live arrangement that we have," Ingenthron said. "Depending on how that sounds on tape and how we're feeling about the song, we might leave it in that organic form, or just start tooling around with it and see what we get. We did that a lot with this new record; it's about half songs we've been playing out on the road for a while and half that were assembled in the studio. "By doing that, we could really try to concentrate shooting off in a different direction with the new record and bringing in a lot of textures and stuff that we can't in a live situation." The guys in SeepeopleS use the studio as a springboard for creating basic building blocks of songs they can expand on in the live setting, and vice versa, Ingenthron said. "Some of the songs are too experimental and they just don't make it to the stage," he said. "Other times, we'll take a song like that and rather than arrange some of the tracks into guitar or keyboard parts, we'll actually run the tracks along with the band and play with them. Like the song 'Butchers' (on the band's Myspace site) — it's got this really busy drum-and-bass beat to it with sitar and all these instruments, so rather than try to cop that live, we'll play along with it, and it ends up working out. That's a pretty huge tune for us." By Steve Wildsmith |
Apocalypse Cow Vol. I