Viva l’American Death Ray Music 'In The Meantime...' album

Viva l’American Death Ray Music’s long-awaited fourth album, In The Meantime… is as stylistically restless as the members’ rootless lifestyles. Touring extensively in Europe the last few years, singer/guitarist Nick Ray, drummer Jeff Buock, and bassist Harlan T. Bobo currently reside in New York, Austin, and Memphis respectively. Cutting their teeth in acts as diverse as Polyphonic Spree, Reigning Sound, 68 Combeback, American Death Ray, in the first years of the 21st Century, formulated an artful fusion of glam and soul unparalleled on their recordings for Sympathy Record Industry.

Perhaps the best description of that sound comes from Rolling Stone editor David Fricke:
The vocal acid of Lou Reed; Jerry Harrison's churning garage organ in the early Modern Lovers; Andy Mackay's sequined, squealing sax in Roxy music; the crusty fidelity of old Sun 45's. With fun like that, who needs radios?

In The Meantime… is V.L.A.D.R.M.’s first full-length domestic release since 2003’s A New Commotion A Delicate Tension (And The Exquisite Corpse Of Mr. Jimmy). The evolution since their Sympathy period has found the band gradually de-emphasizing the glam and R&B influences and exploring their latent dub, no wave, post-mod, and post-punk tendencies in greater depth. While the fragments that reference these subgenres are readily identifiable, adding the familiar feel of the subcultural classics you’ve never been able to abandon, as always, Viva l’American Death Ray Music, with the other hand groping in the future, struggles to avoid retrotrappings– retaining a sound and general aesthetic that’s beyond category,distinctly their own, and super-soulful.

By far their most abstract, raw, and skeletal effort to date, In the Meantime… plays with space, repetition, and groove, while retaining a rough punkish edge, danceablity, and a catchy popconscious songwriting sensibility. Though you’ll never be able to put your finger on it, try to imagine an obscure intersection of canonical works like Here Come the Warm Jets. Jane from Occupied Europe, Adventure, Unknown Pleasures, and Grotesque (After the Gramme). You can’t? You should. This is your subliminal subterranean favorite album of the year… And a creeping addiction.

Sexy rock chic from Memphis with a touch of Let It Bleed-era Rolling Stones and White Light White
Heat Velvet Underground
- Rolling Stone

Die Band Viva L’American Death Ray Music retten unsere Seelen.
–Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

They should have be the Cutest Band in Seattle. Oh, except they're from Memphis.
- Three Imaginary Girls

Vocalist/guitarist Nick Ray, formerly of 68 Comeback, recently returned from performing at the 2006 All Tomorrows Parties festival at the invitation of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as the vocalist for his other band 100 Eyes (ex-Tallboys). He’s also currently the leader of NYC’s First Twilight Congress (ex-GoGoGo Airheart, Cause for Applause) and plays in The Limes.

Bassist Harlan T. Bobo, whose been touring internationally as a solo artist, recently recorded a critically acclaimed 2006 album entitled Too Much Love for Goner Records. He played with Nick in The Limes.

Drummer/percussionist J ef fr ey Buock, also from a late incarnation of 68 Comeback, was a founding member of Pol yphonic Spr ee and is well known for his virtuosic percussion work with Jan St.Werner from Mous on Mars’ side-project, Lithops .

Biography

Who is VivaL'AmericanDeathRayMusic?

Jeffrey Bouck, drummer/percussionist (Lithopa, Polyphonic Spree), and a designer chef who specializes in cooking in confined spaces. Harlan T. Bobo, bassist (The Limes, Timothy Prudomme), who also cooks, but mainly for himself and occasionally Shawn, is stricken with night blindness yet he still is able to construct mechanical simians and sings at breathlessly low decibels. Nicholas Ray, singer/guitarist (The Limes, Valentines), is graced with the gift to work just about any job, some of which are hard to actually classify as 'jobs' and although he has no discernable experience in the art, he none the less harbors the belief he would make a good shoe maker.

So why do these men with such prodigious and nebulous skills bother to steal away into the dark night after night to play "music" to trodden and often malicious groupings of various size? And why do they gather in living quarters and various "studios" to record there musings as it were" Nicholas states, "we do these things for the large sums of money we receive". But are we glibly to be lead to believe that this gathering of minds is simply for the temporal venture of "moneys".

Possibly, but I believe there is more to this strange case. Come along shall we.

What is VivaL'Amer icanDeathRayMusic?
For this question we shall put aside the obvious ramifications of their elongated and lofty title and their trepanacious and often-shifty social-politico ideas that they align with said title and concentrate on the musical.

First off there appears to be no easily definable method for there music. They make tumbling
attempts at grandiosity while taking awkward stabs at virulent pop. They are magazine collage artists whose finished products are as much murky as they are obvious. They willingly throw themselves into derelict and hopeless improvisational alleyways to emerge relatively unscathed at the other end. They embrace and invite the listener to converse with them and then leave them standing awkwardly alone as they move on to talk to someone they are more acquainted with.
They make music for people who believe they are listening to music of their generation.
They are truly ninjas at play in the fields of the Lord.

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Viva l’American Death Ray Music - In The Meantime...