BOWERY ELECTRIC

The album 'LUSHLIFE' is now available and includes the single 'Freedom Fighter'.

"The layers upon layers of guitar, strings, beats, synths beneath Martha SchwendenerÕs sublime vocals are so perfectly put down itÕs frightening. As disorientating as a hall of mirrors in a power cut, and utterly seductively glorious." - Fly magazine.

***** Review...
Dubby, electronic urban noir from New York Three years on from their excellent second album (Beat), Lushlife sees Brooklyn-based duo Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener pushing deeper into their spacious, hypnotic sonics. ItÕs hard to tell whether the instruments are real or sampled, but who cares? Tracks like Soul City and Deep Blue prove that computer-created music doesn't have to be cold. Drawing heavily on hip-hop - but eschewing its macho aesthetic - Martha's enigmatic, breathy vocals nuzzle gently in the spaces between jagged beats, scratchy sample and melancholic layers of strings. The overall sense of edgy menace is nicely balanced out by the inclusion of the lighter, dancier Freedom Fighter - the single off the album, featuring radical black sixties activist Bobby Seal on the sleeve - which blossoms up out of a Nick Drake riff (from Bryter Later's 'Introduction'). Powerful stuff, elegantly executed. Paul Johnson - Uncut, May 2000

See the FREEDOM FIGHTER video - PLAY

The Fear Of Flying video is in the VIDEO LIBRARY

To play the videos you need a Real Audio G2 player. Download it from here

BEAT

 
- Beat
- Empty Words
- Without Stopping
- Under The Sun
- Fear Of Flying
- Looped
- Black Light
- Inside Out
- Coming Down
- Postscript
- Low Density
MARTHA SCHWENDENER bass, keyboards, vocals

LAWRENCE CHANDLER programming, guitar, keyboards, vocals

Bowery Electric released their eponymous debut LP through Chicago's independent and idiosyncratic Kranky label in late 1995. Kranky's track record as home to Labradford, Jessamine and a veritable who's who of "post-rock" pioneers may have given rise to a few preconceptions about the nature of the record - but "Slow Thrills" - a 10 minute long track mixing washes / eruptions of electric drone guitar, dub-inspired bass and plaintive vocals over a downtempo hip-hop beat - dismissed them rapidly. Clearly, here was a band with trails of their own to blaze.

For Beat, the second LP, Bowery Electric have found even more inspiration in hip-hop and electronic music. As a result, they have modified their approach to composition and recording - completely abandoning traditional "rock" techniques in favour of building tracks from sampling and sequencing while still using analogue instruments (and stacks of well-worn vinyl) as sound sources, manipulating them through a combination of analogue and digital signal processing and technologies.

As a result, their prismatic swathes of sound are more varied, more complex than before, veering almost imperceptibly between the lush and the eerie even within the same track - yet retaining a strong sense of economy. Like a full body massage, the overall effect is cumulative rather than dramatic - but with its subterranean kickdrums, echoplexed bass, shimmering guitar loops and smouldering vocals, Beat is never less than fascinating.
VERTIGO

 
- Fear Of Flying
- Fear Of Flying (Chasm)
- Black Light (Osymyso)
- Without Stopping (Witchman)
- Coming Down (Immersion)
- Black Light (Dunderhead)
- Empty Words (Twisted Science)
- Fear Of Flying (Third Eye Foundation)
- Elementary Particles (Main)
Link to Bowery Electric site