12Rods
They blend the good old guitar rock of the past and the mysterious electronic art of the future.
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All around the musical world, a cultural battle rages between the good old guitar rock of the past and the mysterious electronic art of the future.
Meanwhile....... in a quiet mid-western city, a trio of musical blood brothers is looking ahead to creating the perfect synthesis of those two enticing forms. The group is 12RODS, who recently caused a musical upheaval in Minneapolis with their uncanny
blend of ambient pop arrangement and visceral, old-fashioned bass-guitar drum attack. It was the power of their live shows and the self-produced EP, gay?, which led
12RODS to become one of the first U.S. artists signed to V2 Records. The UK's NME on gay?" it's damned rare that you get the urge to applaud after individual album tracks." And Alternative Press stated, "the hybrid somehow works.'
Their sound is slightly futuristic, yet echoes a time when pop music drew its emotional power from inherent strengths and expressive possibilities, rather than the attitudes and extras added on post-fact. "We are extremely conscious of the subconscious," says I2RODS drummer Christopher McGuire. "We play to the person who is most aware, and try to get off on that. We like to discover what it is about a certain guitar chords or a bass note that just makes you go, 'ahhhh'."
Split Personalities is a stunning, full length display of the unusual talents of l2RODS. Engineered by Ev and produced by the band themselves, the album was recorded in their Minneapolis warehouse-turned recording studio. Six of the album's tracks were mixed by Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade (who have mixed recordings for Radiohead, The Mighty Mightly Bosstones, The Cure and many others). The band mixed the album's remaining four tracks.
Not only musically adventurous, Split Personalities is also lyrically rich and sometimes provocative. Many of its songs touch on post-adolescent struggles and deep emotional conflicts. "Make-Out Music, " says composer Ryan Olcott, "is every social outcast's fantasy revenge on the school bully." I Wish You Were a Girl is about the barrier that separates heterosexuals from homosexuals. "I had a close friend who was gay and I was not," explains Ryan. "Neither of us could take that next step." Split Personality, on a lighter note, explores analog and digital recording philosophies (and the band espouses a hybrid of the two). "Among musicians, this argument becomes as heated as a religious dispute," comments Ryan.
The l2RODS story begins near Cincinnati, where Ryan and Ev's father is a jazz professor and their mother is a pianist. Ev went on to study music performance and audio engineering at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore (majoring in saxophone). Following school, Ev relocated to Minneapolis.
Younger brother Ryan followed Ev to Minneapolis as soon as possible. Ryan in turn persuaded childhood friend Christopher McGuire to abandon numerous steady gigs and drum teaching jobs to move to Minneapolis. McGuire's own parents were also musicians, constantly on the hotel tour circuit (Christopher was born on a break between gigs).
Once situated, the group set about creating their own (modest) modern-rock model of a creative playground. They had a strong vision and self-managerial drive: Ev handled engineering and recording duties, while the gregarious McGuire was a natural for the phone-calling and managerial networking. That left Ryan primarily to deal with composing and arranging songs, crafting lyrics that express the power of artistic escape from the nerdy purgatory of youth.
Ryan is at the center of a gripping, unpredictable, yet meticulously tight, live show, made continually interesting by his array of guitar effects and sound treatments. The show is augmented by Christopher McGuire's powerfull visual and sonic presence on drums. 12RODS' musical command, synergy and creative courage earned them the honor of Best New Band of 1996 by local critics and connoisseurs in the Minneapolis weekly music bible, City Pages.
Recalls MeGuire, "There was a show we did once where we finished with a really slow song ("Half the Fun"). When it ended, there was a minute and a half of total silence, and it didn't break until I got up from the drums. The fact that you can physically do that to someone is what's so cool about music. It's like witchcraft or something."
After six years together, 12RODS have created their own little world of sound, from which they hope to affect the larger world in the not-too-distant future. "People give us the title of 'art-rock', which I guess is understandable," says Ryan. "True, we do use synthesizers," he feigns horror, "but we're just a little sick of guitar rock. It's been done right too many times. People will always rock, but we're not only rock and roll people."
Adds Ev, "There was guitar rock of the '70's and there was guitar rock of the '90's. It's the same concept but at the same time, it advanced a bit. In twenty more years it will
probably all happen again. In this decade, there seemed to be a conceptual formula derived from four or five artists who really did it well, but I haven't seen much that seems significantly different from that. I'd rather try to do our own thing."Contact
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