Label: Community Music

Booking: Kirk Sommer

Publicity: Rebecca Shapiro

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Alex Ebert (award-winning film composer), Edward Sharpe (platinum-selling hippy), Alexander (indie folk-rapper), Ima Robot (androgynous punk) - it’s all the same dude.

“I’ve always loved just making whatever art came to me, and felt sorry for the paradigm of artistry that constrains the artist to one look, one mode, one sound,” Ebert says. “I never related to that, and as an artist I resented it.” His urge to embrace it all had long conflicted with that artistic golden rule, “to thine own self be true”. Two years ago, while reflecting during a hiatus from Edward Sharpe, that conflict ended.
Ebert realized that he had his own, different, just-as-valuable maxim: “To all thine selves be true."

For two decades, Ebert has created original music in myriad forms, styles, shapes, and sounds. From his earliest days as an emcee to the early-aughts buzz of Ima Robot, to the world-beating heights of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, the critically acclaimed Alexander solo project, the Golden Globe-winning neoclassical film score composition for 2014’s All is Lost, and beyond, Ebert’s ability to lose himself in his art and achieve success is undeniable. Transcending boundary lines in the spirit of self-examination, he has spent the better part of the last few years completing a daunting amount of work, including 4 EPs, a biographical documentary feature film, and culminating with a genre-defying double-album of new material called 5AME! (the significance of the name will be divulged at release).

If there is one defining feature of this opus, it is the facility with which Ebert moves from one vocal delivery to another - from singing to rapping. "Rap is high-volume verbiage, so I felt I had to wait until I had enough on my mind to be able to fill up extended bars with meaningful lyrics," Ebert says. "Over the past two years, the lyrics that began coming to me were highly detailed and descriptive, too much to parse down to a singable phrase or two without losing their
power. That’s when I knew I had to come back to rap."

Those familiar with the pre-Virgin Records output of Ima Robot or his solo song “Truth” may already recognize Ebert’s sing-song mic skills. But before any of that, Ebert began his music career rapping - a group called DVS Minds. Although it was his other bands and projects that eventually took off, his interest in rap never wavered, and the 5AME! double LP, while not easily labeled “hip-hop,” exists in some neighboring beats-and-rhymes-driven universe. Recorded and produced by Ebert in his Piety Studios in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans (where he has lived since 2013), the album is filled with that special kind of ingenuity required when working alone. The trio of singles - “Gold,” “Hands Up,” and “Automatic Youth” released simultaneously in Summer 2019, appropriately set the stage for two albums of music unlike anything you’ve heard before.

“There was liberty in finally realizing that the search for me—for my distinctive voice—was actually an embrace of all my voices,” he says. “And so I embraced more of my past, some of which I had been avoiding, and suddenly I am no longer hiding my different talents for the sake of brand-consistency or associated societal pressures. Fuck a consistent brand, that’s death to me. Suddenly it was my very inconsistency that became my superpower. To put such disparate things out in short order just communicates to myself, and to the world, that I’m not afraid of contextualizing one variety of expression with another.”

Label: Epitaph Records

US Booking: Tom Windish, Christine Cao

UK Booking: David Sullivan Kaplan

Tour Press: Michele Stephens

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The third full-length from L.A. band Bad Suns, Mystic Truth gets its title from a piece of art that vocalist Christo Bowman stumbled upon while visiting London’s Tate Modern on tour. Created by Bruce Nauman in 1967, the neon-and-glass piece spells out a possibly paradoxical statement in blue spiraled cursive: “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths.” “I thought that connected back to the message of the record, which is about finding the extraordinary in very simple things, even though we’re living in a very dark time right now,” says Bowman, whose bandmates include guitarist Ray Libby, bassist Gavin Bennett, and drummer Miles Morris. “Instead of succumbing to that darkness, I think you’ve got to try to hold onto some optimism, and try to uncover those simple miracles so you don’t lose the plot of what’s really important.”

Produced by Dave Sardy (The Head and the Heart, The Black Angels, Oasis), Mystic Truth channels that searching quality into songs with a powerful sense of purpose. In creating the album, Bad Suns recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound and at Sardy’s home studio, building on the melodic brilliance first glimpsed on their debut album Language & Perspective — a 2014 release that hit #24 on the Billboard 200 and led to massive tours supporting Halsey and The Neighbourhood. At the same time, the band amps up the intensity of their 2016 sophomore effort Disappear Here (praised as their “most dynamic and introspective work yet” by Alternative Press), giving way to a more emotionally urgent merging of rock & roll, post-punk, and pop.  

Right from the album-opening “Away We Go,” Bad Suns reveal the timeless sensibilities at the heart of Mystic Truth. With its soaring vocals, majestic piano melodies, and fiery guitar tones, the song unfolds as a brightly anthemic battle cry. “‘Away We Go’ was mostly inspired by us growing up and really being adults for the first time, and trying to make sense of all that,” says Bowman, who co-founded Bad Suns at age 17. “It’s about learning how to make decisions for yourself, and sometimes just going for something and blindly trusting that it’s going to work out.”

While Mystic Truth bears a certain classic simplicity, Bad Suns also infuse the album with its share of sonically surprising moments: the ethereal pop of “A Miracle, A Mile Away,” the melancholy waltz of “Darkness Arrives (And Departs),” the shapeshifting piano balladry of “Starjumper.” Woven with Bowman’s sharply reflective lyrics and finely detailed storytelling, the album also delivers a number of love songs, from the punchy pre-breakup track “The World and I” to the starry-eyed “Love By Mistake” to the starkly tender “Separate Seas.” (“I’ve been in a long-distance relationship since my girlfriend moved to Miami—she works for an airline so she’s always flying,” says Bowman of “Separate Seas.” “That song’s about those nights of staying up and staying on speaker phone with one another till really late, even when there’s nothing to say.”) And on “Hold Your Fire,” Bad Suns offer up a solemn yet cinematic meditation on acceptance. “It’s about a relationship that’s not working out, and it represents that moment when you decide to just accept that it’s over instead of trying to fight,” Bowman says.

Label: Record Collection

Booking: Brian Greenbaum

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Since quietly making his debut album, Break Mirrors, which critics hailed as one of the best albums of 2010, Mills has been consistently busy. He produced the highly acclaimed sophomore album Sound & Color for The Alabama Shakes, which reached #1 on Billboard charts and was nominated for six Grammy’s, winning Best Alternative Album, Best Engineered Album, Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song.   He has worked as a producer with a wide variety of others as well, including ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Sara Watkins, Conor Oberst, Sky Ferreira, and Fiona Apple, with whom he toured extensively in 2013 and 2014.  Currently he is producing upcoming albums for John Legend, Dawes and Laura Marling.

As a session player and sideman he has worked with Beck, Cass McCombs, Jackson Brown, Lucinda Williams, Moses Sumney and Neil Diamond, among others. Rick Rubin and T Bone Burnett frequently call upon his services as a guitarist, and equally enamored is Eric Clapton who recently told Rolling Stone magazine “Blake Mills is the last guitarist I heard that I thought was phenomenal." 

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You’ve heard Chloe Angelides. You might not have realized it, but you definitely have. Since 2014, her songwriting talents and background vocals have been sprinkled across the landscape of R&B, hip-hop, dance, and pop. She’s written songs for Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Nicki Minaj, Yuna and more. But now, it’s time to see Chloe Angelides.

After years spent honing her songwriting skills and giving top tier talent a voice, she’s preparing to speak her own truth as a solo act - and she has a lot to talk about.

But Chloe isn’t stepping into the limelight as a career move; she’s always been an artist at heart. Besotted with music from an early age - particularly harmonic acts such as the Bee Gees, ABBA, Destiny’s Child - Chloe’s talent showed up early. She just wasn’t quite ready to share. “When I was growing up, I would get solos in choir and A Capella groups but I would give them away because it made me so anxious,” she says. “I would shake and sweat. I didn’t like putting myself out there.”

Despite that potentially debilitating physical reaction to being in the spotlight, Chloe did put herself out there. She practiced and hustled, writing songs and posting them on MySpace, connecting with other artists, and flying around the country to work with producers from Atlanta to Nashville to Los Angeles.

She skipped college, choosing instead to move to New York City at the age of 18. “I networked hard - I never stopped,” she adds. “I called up venues like the Bitter End and Rockwood Music Hall to see if I could perform. Putting ads on Craigslist for musicians to work with. I was always hunting cheap rehearsal spaces, things like that.”

A switch to Los Angeles at the age of 21 finally saw Chloe’s hard work pay off. Her demo for a song called “Zipper” found its way to a Warner Records A&R, and Jason Derulo liked it enough to include it on his internationally successful Talk Dirty album. Chloe was subsequently snapped up by Dr. Luke’s publishing company Prescription Songs.

But the years of training and conditioning was always going to lead her back to her original goal, and there’s no better way to find out who you are than going it alone - both personally and professionally. Her intimate, soulful and confessional self-produced upcoming music is a fascinating real time document of that transition.

“I’m excited to show people the music I’ve been making. It’s different than anything I’ve written for other artists.”

Label: Community Music

North America Booking: Kirk Sommer

South America & Australia Booking: Brian Cohen

EU Booking: Nick Cave, Brian Cohen

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Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros is a 10-piece musical ensemble founded in 2007 during the yearlong recording of their first album, Up From Below. Disillusionment with his major label experience with Ima Robot drove founding singer-songwriter Alex Ebert to maintain a DIY recording ethos. "Un-professionalizing professionalism is my profession,” he recently quipped at a show. Considered pioneers of the folk-pop revival, the band's self-produced albums have experienced some popular success (plus one platinum song, "Home").

It is the band's live shows, however, that have seen them celebrated by fans and critics alike. Often likened to "a religious experience," many of their live shows have taken place in unusual venues (cathedrals, circus tents, underground train depots – even off of trains themselves, as seen in their Grammy-winning documentary Big Easy Express). Their shows are performed without set lists and their songs usually undergo spontaneous improvisation, with Ebert spending a portion of the show singing amongst the crowd.  "Our shows give us a chance to break the barriers between ourselves – to 'break the glass ceiling’ as we say."

Since its founding, the band has undergone several iterations.  Most notably, singer Jade Castrinos left the band in 2014. According to lead singer Ebert, this marked a transformation in the band's music.  "We had long been a social experiment first, musicians second.  Over time, though, we were emerging, by virtue of hours spent, into a group of musicians who could really play together. When Jade left, that confirmed our new fate – music first."  

The shift is tangible in the band's 4th studio album. Recording the music almost entirely in one room together in New Orleans, their approach was a far cry from their ramshackle, come-one-come-all production audible on recordings of their previous albums.  "We seem to be done for now with distractions from the music itself, the bones of it," says Ebert. This album also marks the first time that the band has jointly collaborated on a majority of the songwriting.

The band's members are Mark Noseworthy, Orpheo McCord, Josh Collazo, Christian Letts, Nico Aglietti, Seth Ford-Young, Mitchell Yoshida, Christopher Richard, Stewart Cole, and Alex Ebert.

Every one of its members has their own "solo" projects outside of the group. Most recently, Letts and Richard (aka "Crash") released albums and Ebert won a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for All Is Lost.

The band also operates Big Sun, a non-profit focused on funding and developing co-ops and land trusts in urban areas around the world. Their first large-scale project, "Avalon Village," is in Highland Park (within Detroit), Michigan.

Label: Matador Records

North America Booking: Trey Many

Rest of the World Booking: Adele Slater

Publicity: Meghan Helsel

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AN IMPRESSION OF PERFUME GENIUS’ SET MY HEART ON FIRE IMMEDIATELY
By Ocean Vuong
Can disruption be beautiful? Can it, through new ways of embodying joy and power, become a way of thinking and living in a world burning at the edges? Hearing Perfume Genius, one realizes that the answer is not only yes—but that it arrived years ago, when Mike Hadreas, at age 26, decided to take his life and art in to his own hands, his own mouth. In doing so, he recast what we understand as music into a weather of feeling and thinking, one where the body (queer, healing, troubled, wounded, possible and gorgeous) sings itself into its future. When listening to Perfume Genius, a powerful joy courses through me because I know the context of its arrival—the costs are right there in the lyrics, in the velvet and smoky bass and synth that verge on synesthesia, the scores at times a violet and tender heat in the ear. That the songs are made resonant through the body’s triumph is a truth this album makes palpable. As a queer artist, this truth nourishes me, inspires me anew. This is music to both fight and make love to. To be shattered and whole with. If sound is, after all, a negotiation/disruption of time, then in the soft storm of Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, the future is here. Because it was always here. Welcome home.

Perfume Genius is the moniker of artist Mike Hadreas. Hadreas grew up in Seattle, WA and started his music career in 2008. He released his debut album Learning in 2010 via long-time label home Matador, and it instantly caught the attention of critics. “The songs on Hadreas’ full-length debut are eviscerating and naked,” said Pitchfork, “with heartbreaking sentiments and bruised characterizations delivered in a voice that ranges from an ethereal croon to a slightly cracked warble.” These descriptors became the hallmarks of Perfume Genius - Hadreas’ unique ability to convey emotional vulnerability not only lyrically, but with his impressively nuanced vocals.

His following album, Put Your Back N 2 It was released in 2012 and continued to build both his audience and critical acclaim. 2014’s Too Bright, exhibited a massive leap forward in both production and confidence. Co-produced by Adrian Utley of Portishead the album featured the stand-out single, ‘Queen’. The track quickly became a queer anthem and a powerful statement of being. Hadreas performed the song on Late Night with David Letterman.

In 2017, Perfume Genius released the GRAMMY-nominated No Shape, an album that would crystalize his fanbase world-wide and bring mainstream awareness to his art. The record was produced by Blake Mills (Fiona Apple, Alabama Shakes). “If you listen to the four Perfume Genius albums in chronological order, you can hear Hadreas healing himself in real time, moving toward an emancipation that seems, suddenly, to have come to pass,” said The New Yorker. “The center of his music has always been a defiant delicacy- a ragged, affirmative understanding of despair. ‘No Shape’ finds him unexpectedly victorious, his body exalted.” Over the course of the campaign he appeared on multiple late-night television shows and graced the cover of The Fader.

Perfume Genius’ music has played a central role in a number of films and television including The Goldfinch, The Society, 13 Reasons Why, Booksmart and Eighth Grade. He has collaborated with artists including Christine And The Queens, Sharon Van Etten, Weyes Blood, Cate Le Bon, Anna Calvi, King Princess and more. Hadreas has also collaborated with brands like Prada and W Hotels on special projects. His albums have been nominated for a GRAMMY Award and a GLAAD Media Award and have topped numerous Decade-end lists including Billboard’s, Pitchfork’s, Crack’s, Paste’s and more.

Label Contact: info@bignoise.com

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≠
 
America, your ≠ has come home to roost! 
Don’t you recognize it? 
It is exactly the ≠ you ordered.

O, say can you ≠ by the dawn’s early light? Sure you can, because you created this ≠ through your unfounded faith in technology. 

You made it inevitable by giving away your selfhood so freely. 

By your constant and total acquiescence. By choosing 
convenience. That’s why you’re uncomfortable now. You don’t want to admit you like how ≠ looks, how it sounds. That you find it entertaining. That you feel secretly proud. 

Because you know it’s bad for you. If ≠ could laugh, it would. It is laughing. The ≠ is opt-in, duh. Anyway, ≠ is too loud to go back in the box.

If we believed in manifestos, this is what we would say: Discord + choice ≠ inevitable consumer product. The experience ≠ the goal. Culture ≠ commerce. The ≠ is the message.But let’s be real: ≠ feeds off manifesto. Any ≠ once created becomes most concerned with its own survival. That’s evolution. That’s science. Home is where the ≠ is, and it is feeling very homey here, homes.

The trail of ≠ leads right here. Remember how this started? You began trading ≠ back and forth in secret, your own little game, spray painted on the wall, a kind of hyperlocal patois, when you had friends it was your little club, it didn’t feel like the membership dues were that high. No one will miss one more little piece of reality. Break me off a piece of that. Everyone is doing it.

Which is the point. Now there’s hardly anything that’s not ≠ left. Now the ≠ has demands. Lyrics it dares you to unhear. Your ex-friends think it’s uncool to talk about it, except when they’re drunk. Half pride, half guilt.

Street protest against ≠ only makes it fatter; it absorbs dissent, it renders your emotion into entertainment and hands ≠ back to you. The revolution presents itself as ≠ and ≠ presents itself as revolution, but neither is. The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of ≠ being born anew, every second of every day. The joke’s on you! 

Imagine no ≠ I wonder if you can. And yet ≠ holds the seeds of rebirth in the form of its own destruction. When everything is ≠ nothing can be. Which means the poison is probably the antidote. What happens if you push ≠ to its logical conclusion? That’s why we brought you into this project. So dig it:

Sing the song! Make a video of yourself! Elect your drunk friends! Create an account! Wave your ≠ flag high!  

Belief ≠ resistance. Consumption ≠ you. Maybe ≠ is like a mountain and when we get over the hump we roll downhill. Maybe it’s like the universe and when we reach the limits of ≠ it contracts back to a new Big Bang. Maybe ≠ is just the human condition, and all truth and beauty is contained within it. This ≠ is your song, baby. And you’re a human.
Aren’t you?