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Boy Crisis

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"american band from united states"

Location: New York, NY

Website: http://www.myspace.com/boycrisis

Bio: Armed with the same combination of hedonism and surreality that saw their heroes George Clinton and David Bowie through the 70s and 80s, Brooklyn ... (more) five piece Boy Crisis are on a mission to make you party your way out of the credit crunch.

Specialising in papercut-sharp lyrics delivered in a pleading Princelike falsetto over sinuous electro p-funk grooves, Boy Crisis are not your average group of skinny-jeaned 20-somethings. Currently all residing within a bracing walk of Brooklyn’s hyper-hip Williamsburg neighbourhood, where their live shows, a surreal but compulsively funky mix of Rick James, Talking Heads and Wyld Stallions, have already gathered them a cult audience. However their blend of post punk indie nouse and sinuous electro funk owes little to any Brooklyn scene and more perhaps to their shared past as students.

Victor Vazquez, Lee Pender, Tal Rozen, Alex Kestner and Owen Roberts all met studying at Wesleyan college, the Conneticut university where the other recent alumni include MGMT, Santogold and Amazing Baby. Resident studio brain Alex started to make music with lead singers Victor and Tal in their senior year in 2005, with the others joining a year later after graduation. Originally aiming for avant garde bossa nova, Boy Crisis soon developed into the current combination of classic soulful pop, part space age roller disco, part 80s-referencing electrofunk homage.

Songs like the driving ‘Dress To Digress’ channel the angular arthouse discoid post punk of Talking Heads and the nonsense cartoon funk of Funkadelic and the Tom Tom Club, while the downtempo sleaze of Seven Years War sound like Wu tang meets LCD Soundsystem, while debut single ‘L’Homme’, produced by the band themselves and mixed by up and coming mixing board luminary Lexxx and featuring the additional vocals Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek is perfect sexed-up electro disco.

Boy Crisis have all the hallmarks of a classic New York band, with a sound that has evolved out of a riot of influences that takes in funk, soul and hip hop next to punk, pop, stoner rock and the best of their current crop of contemporaries. Victor cheerfully reels off without pausing for breath: “Prince, Talking Heads, Rick James, David Bowie, Zapp, Art Of Noise, Japan, Tom Tom Club, Cameo, Arthur Russell, George Duke, Hall and Oates, Sly Stone, Television, Parliament/Funkadelic, Can, Timbaland, Neu!, Kanye, Kraftwerk, MIA., MGMT, Yeasayer, Kool Keith, Ghostface Killah, Biz Markie, Zappa, Stooges, Adam Ant”

Following in the footsteps of Gotham's other similarly high concept disco rock dilletants like Kid Creole, Chic, ESG, Talking Heads and Blondie, Boy Crisis make their own brand of electronic arthouse funk that sounds both smart and sleazy, intelligent and hedonistic. They make bold, stylish, sexy music to make you feel good, to change the world happy happy endorphin at a time. (less)