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Thursday, 12 August 2010
Season To Risk * New Franklin Panthers * Chiasma
Season To Risk - (Kansas City, MO) Season To Risk is the luckiest band alive. Shortly after getting together at school in 1989, they won a 'Battle of the Bands' which brought them into the studio for the first time. The only copy of the resulting demo tape that was actually mailed out ended up at Red Decibel records in Minneapolis, MN, who as luck would have it, were starting to work in conjunction with Colombia records. Before they knew what hit them, the band was signed to Columbia records, recording more demos at Sony Studios in NYC, and then living in Chicago, IL to record their self-titled first album at Soundworks Studio.
The band spent years constantly touring throughout North America; returning briefly to their hometown of Kansas City, MO for a few days or weeks, sometimes on the road 8 - 10 months out of the year. Odds are high when you spend most of your time driving that vehicles will break down day after day, wheels will fall off or blow-out, drivers will fall asleep, engines (and people) will crack or burst into flames. The van once flipped over on a frozen highway in Minnesota. The 22-foot RV rolled backwards with no brakes down a hill in Seattle. They broke down all over the country, including on the Golden Gate bridge, and left a trail of dead vehicles in their wake.
They lived at Bisi Studios, NYC for the Summer of 1994 recording their second album In a Perfect World. The music was a darker, more complex collection of songs, and the album was received with rave reviews from fans, and puzzled looks from the people at Colombia records. There was no place on the radio for music like this yet, and exactly what category in the music store was this CD supposed to be displayed in? By chance, someone at Sony was looking for a band to play during a scene in the film 'Strange Days' and within days, the band was in Hollywood, playing the song 'Undone' over and over again... For the next year, the band was in a different city every night, which led to total exhaustion by the end of a summer 1995 arena tour with Corrosion of Conformity and Monster Magnet, resulting in the cancellation of their European tour scheduled with CIV for the Winter of 1996. The band was dropped from Columbia records. And bass player Paul Malinowski quit to join the Kansas City band Shiner.
The band quickly took on bass player Josh Newton and got busy writing music. Pooling their resources, they spent most of the next two years building Trainwreck Sound Studios in Kansas City, MO. As floors, walls and ceilings were built, new Season To Risk songs were written, members worked with their other bands, and recording started at Trainwreck, including work by Casket Lottery, The Farewell Bend, Dirtnap, Iron Rite Mangle, Gunfighter and the Pornhuskers. They built their dream studio from the ground up: a 15 x 20 control room, equipped with a 1974 24-channel Auditronics (quadrophonic!) console and a 2-inch tape machine, a 30 x 50 foot tracking room with antique oak floors, and a huge apartment/rehearsal studio upstairs on the second floor. In October 1998, shortly after the studio officially opened to the public, a sudden flash flood of the Missouri river totalled everything in the neighborhood in 15 minutes, destroying the building, their tour RV in the parking lot, their bank account and almost everything else. They're lucky noone was killed. Luck never gives, it only lends. And the river takes. And then Josh Newton was also lost to Shiner.
Fortunately, the third album was finished prior to the flood, and the band was able to wade through the five-foot deep, freezing, flood waters in total darkness out of the building to safety. Unfortunately, they discovered that the album Men Are Monkeys, Robots Win (Thick Records) was printed 'out-of-phase', making the songs sound hollowed-out. The label never re-released the printed CD, but the corrected mix is available on iTunes.
Legendary punk rock drummer/producer Bill Stevenson (Black Flag, Decendents) has always been a friend to Season To Risk, and has brought the band on tour with ALL several times. This led to the recording of the album The Shattering in 2000 with Jason Livermore and Bill Stevenson at the Blasting Room in Ft. Collins, CO, and its release on Owned & Operated records in 2001. The addition of the third and final bass player of S2R, Billy Smith of the band Dirtnap, brought the band full circle. The Shattering album is more diverse than ever, fusing elements from all of the band's previous work and some new experimentation into twelve heavy, melodic songs.
Several tours followed after The Shattering CD release, and the band spent a few years resting, recouping, and regrouping - working on many other projects, musical and otherwise. 1989 - 2009, 20-Year Anniversary.
Luck comes to those who look after it.
New Franklin Panthers - (Lawrence, KS) "Hots dogs are cool" makes the Lawrence.com top records of the year list for 2008.
"The New Franklin Panthers confirm what many rock musicians already suspect: a singer and bass player are virtually extraneous when the guitar and drums are this good."
-John Niccum
Lawrence Journal World"Remember when rock music was fun? You do? Put this record on, then, and prepare yourself for an all-out sonic assault that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, make you pump your fist in the air and play air guitar until your arm hurts, then press play and do it again. There's no posing here, no gimmicks, no polite introductions. The feedback that begins the first track is less of an invitation than it is the beginning of a full-on auditory ass-kicking. This is rock and roll stripped to its base ingredients -- the bones, the blood, the muscle, the teeth -- down to where you can feel it, down to the raw essence of the thing. The blistering, propulsive grooves are woven into a series of melodic movements, each haunted by melancholy and varied in volume and meter, but lashed together by sheer mayhem. Fitch's guitars scream and roar while Jones stokes the furnace with relentless, air-tight pounding. But this record is about more than just the rocking out, there is real artistry here, real melody, real emotion, and real feeling. You can hear the craft in the chaos, and it sets this effort apart. These songs have lives, and they've grown up, as you know if you've heard them as they evolved in the venues in and around Lawrence, Kansas, where the band is located. For me, it comes down to this: three movements, two players, one purpose: tearing the roof completely off with interesting, engaging music. Which they do, with joyous abandon. And didn't I mention fun? These guys are having fun: you can hear it in every track, and the feeling is contagious."
- George McCoy
KANU Radio"new franklin panthers are lawrence's only powerhouse duo....ripping riffs are backed up by (as well as led by) razor sharp rythm in compositionally-comlex but- not- over- processed aural massacre. bring a towel for your pants, you will need it."
- chaungo from the replay
lounge & jackpot music hall - Lawrence,Ks"New Franklin Panthers are a dramatically well-orchestrated assault on the most refined hard rock tendencies in all of us. This duo is connected at the hip with power, ability and just hint of the metal blade of American Rock profundity.One of the best bands at North vs. South two years running."
-Mike McCoy
legendary punkrockcountry Austin via KCMO musical icon"As far as recent local releases go, I’m not sure I have heard anything that more qualifies as an “ode to rock” album as this one by the local guitar-and-drum duo New Franklin Panthers. Hot Dogs Are Cool unearths once again for me that historical conundrum of rock and roll: On one hand, much of the best rock-‘n’-roll ever written sounds the most nonchalant and effortless, while on the other hand there is nothing worse than a rock band that doesn’t take its music serious enough and ends up just posing. The best rock bands straddle this line by finding a way to simultaneously “let go” while still holding on. New Franklin Panthers are on track with this release. It is a humble record with righteous aspirations. Over the course of the three completely instrumental movements (totaling nearly an hour of both live and tracked material), this album basically samples stylistically every rock genre of the last 15 to 20 years into a non-stop onslaught of interwoven parts that use feedback and ambient segues as the link between the compositions. What that means for you is that if you like rock music, there is probably something on this record for you. On Hot Dogs…veteran hard rock guitarist Grant Fitch and drummer Jason Jones gregariously channel the works of bands like STP, Husker Du, AC/DC, Pennywise, Soundgarden, Led Zeppelin, Dinosaur Jr., late works by Sunny Day Real Estate and dare I say, even a bit of Fugazi. The sheer relentlessness of this record could be off-putting to some, but don’t try to wrap your brain too tightly around this music. It’s just good rock-‘n’-roll and it needs some breathing room."
- Wade Kelly
The Lawrencian"New Franklin Panthers are to the pop vernacular as Stravinsky is to the classical music continuum."
-Steve Tulipana
Season to Risk, owner RecordBar, KCMO"New Franklin Panthers is the union of singer/guitarist Grant Fitch (formerly of Paw) and drummer Jason Jones. Beating their instruments into a forsaken sonic oblivion, the duo composes epic instrumental rock that's neither "shoegazey" nor "atmospheric." Instead, it hits you like a ten-ton-brick with brazen hard-rock guitar riffs and lock-tight drum fills. The onstage spectacle is a drunken marvel of a thing that can be both spontaneous and premeditated -- a push/pull dynamic captured on the group's debut magnum opus 'Hot Dogs Are Cool: In III Movements.'"
- Richard Gintowt
lawrence.com“Put on NFP and feel yourself leave your space…one minute you’re sitting in front of the record player with headphones on with your eyes closed, and the next you are on a distorted sonic journey through ringing guitar chords and pounding drums to a rock & roll plateau that today’s bands just take you to anymore. Controlled and out of control, subtle and unleashed….NFP will change you forever.”
-Mark Gardner
A&R Volcom RecordsChiasma - (Houston, TX) Chiasma is an ever-changing yet mostly stable noise-based collective currently residing in Texas. We have a wide variety of sounds and influences. Chiasma is a more realized continuation of the Shocktrauma project began by Tyler, JD, Chris Freed, and a few other friends while living in Kansas in the mid-to-late nineties. Phases of various sounds have come and gone, yet core elements have remained persistent. Sometime in mid-2004, JD and Tyler decided to attempt to house many different sounding elements of noise-based and experimental music in one name and begin to steer this ship with more intention.We strive to envelop the metaphorical and literal connotations of the chiasma into sound; to create a sonic experience of that incredible final moment in the process of pinching off and crossing over; to sense the warm caresses and harsh abrasions of overlapping; for simultaneous and spontaneous creation and exploration of music's effects on consciousness, through rigorous observation and experimental manipulations of sound and environment. Even though accidents happen, they really don't. We feel that all things connect, and the points of those connections is our point of creative contention.
Last Update Wednesday 11 August, 2010
