Bio: “Saturn Returns” is the first single from Grandchildren, who released their debut album Everlasting on Green Owl in late September. As part of a limited edition series of vinyl releases ... (more)
Bio: “Saturn Returns” is the first single from Grandchildren, who released their debut album Everlasting on Green Owl in late September. As part of a limited edition series of vinyl releases coming from Green Owl the label asked New York’s Runaway to give the group a rework and that’s just what producers Marcos Cabral and Jaques Renault did, pulling the song apart to a dubbed out vocal harmony and building a nu-disco club groove up around it.
Grandchildren’s album, Everlasting, is a culmination of the restlessness of it’s leader Aleks Martray. A sonic collage of the sentimental and the confrontational- the album is a safe haven for multiple realities- fusing tribal beats, frayed electronics, ï¬reside folk melodies, richly-woven orchestral-pop flourishes and even ï¬eld recordings from Martray’s journeys across Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.
“The project began during my nomadic mid-20’s. I was split between Baltimore, Philadelphia, NY, DC, and travels abroad. I think the music is a reflection of a young person processing their own coming of age through constant self inflicted culture shock. The textures of the ï¬nal album span time and space,” he says. “And yet, it comes across as one seamless reality. You can feel the influences but you can’t put your ï¬nger on them.”
During this time Martray’s closest thing to home was a tiny third-floor bedroom in a dilapidated Victorian house in West Philadelphia known as Danger Danger. At the height of its illegal phase, this notorious DIY Ê»venue’ hosted everything from IDM-infused metal (Genghis Tron) to frantic free-jazz (Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra). These eclectic sounds billowed upstairs towards Martray’s makeshift bedroom recording studio, taking what began as a solo experimentation in dizzying new directions.
“The songs evolved through the recording process,” explains Martray, “they were so layered that when I went to play them live, so much had to be sampled. That’s when I realized this wasn’t a solo project. It’s music for a small orchestra.” With that in mind, Martray brought his fellow housemates—a motley crew of instrument-swapping misï¬ts—into the fold one by one. This included drummer Roman Salcic, a Croatian transplant reared on American rock music; jack of all trades Tristan Palazzolo; math-thrash guitarist Adam Katz; bassist/percussionist Russell Brodie; and classical-pianist-turned-synth-slinger John Vogel. Over the course of one daunting year, the group developed Grandchildren’s 10-song album into a live set that’s as seamless and widescreen as the recordings. Grandchildren are touring throughowww.myspace.com/grandchildren (less)
