Electro Group

Beautifully melodic indie-dream-pop goes toe-to-toe with wall-of-noise sonic dissonance.
Ethereal vocals are woven into a tapestry of distortion and catchy pop wizardry. Reminiscent of "Loveless" and "You Made Me Realise" -era My Bloody Valentine, this trio takes the late 80's shoegazer sound a step into the future with driving, off-timed drumming (think more recent Unwound), and electronic loops, moog and surrealistic samples mixed into the layers. Falsetto vocals and intermittent guitar jangles tip a hat towards the solo albums of Syd Barrett. Seriously gorgeous music from Northern California's new noise pop kings.

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REVIEWS/INTERVIEWS

Slide the Needle interview


Electro Group (Written for Sacramento News and Review)

Version 1:
The following is a series of notes taken recently during a three-hour span of time with the band Electro Group while on a whirlwind promotional tour, in a luxurious suite in a posh 40+ story hotel owned by the Moonies overlooking Central Park West in New York City. While I was there, a fabulous array of tragic, anorexic teen models primped and lounged and faked congeniality but their general vibe was heavy boredom. One asked if I’d like a shrimp cocktail. Oh, no thanks. She sighed a breath of relief as if she had just backed herself out of the 12 Tests of Hercules and took another long, long drag off of her black Sherman to celebrate. On the floor to my right, resplended in what appeared to be crushed silk pajamas, (he wouldn’t actually let me touch the material) Tim from Electro Group silently sat lotus-styled on an oversized pillow, occasionally plucking the sitar he was holding. Their drummer Matt was on my immediate left, smoking a cigar the size of a bratwurst while watching the Kings getting their asses kicked in the last game of the series.

"Either way," he informs me, keeping his eyes fixed to the screen, "I clean up shop on this game."

"How do you do that?" I asked.

He just laughed and kept watching.

And in the sunken bar area, Ian was reading a Wall Street Journal and cursing. One of the malnourished urchins was huddled close to him and made a pouting face every time he swore. He cut a quick glance over to his empty tumbler sitting on a glass table.

"Hey! Hey! Let’s keep that Johnnie Walker flowin’, o.k.?"

She nodded her head.

"I said, "O.K ?" !"

"Yes!" she darted back defensively.

"Well…all right then." He glared at her as she quickly snatched up the glass, then with a quick flick of his wrists he straightened out the newspaper and went back to his litany of vulgarities.

This is Electro Group.


Version 2:
Electro Group is a monsoon that regularly wipes out low-lying farmlands in Southeast Asia. Electro Group is a brand of really strong cough syrup that you can only get across the Rio Grande. Electro Group knows the inherent power of electricity. Electro Group is cotton candy served on an Exacto knife. And Electro Group is the precise point where pop and noise are smeared into a blur of melting shapes and translucent colors .

Rewind the tape 10 years, back to Graham Cracker Cyclone, one of only a pawful of local bands that were influenced by the British "shoegazing" movement. In essence, they were Sacramento’s version of Lush or Ride. After their demise in 1993, bassist Ian Hernandez and guitarist Tim Jacobson, collaborated with a few people, like the 6’ 5" Yes fan who was in the Air Force and insisted playing an electric drum set pre-programmed with guitar sounds.

"We were thinking of a good way of kicking him out of the band and then he got shipped to Turkey." Tim laughed, still relieved.

Then there was Dave, the bad drinker, who stole the master tapes of their studio recording and never gave them back, before evaporating into the ether. But most every story has a happy ending and this one comes in the form of drummer Matt Hull, who joined in 1996, to fill in the vacant rhythm slot. Well, kinda.

"I’d only been playing drums for three months and I sucked." he explaned.

"He was dating my sister." Tim deadpans, detailing their first meeting. Everyone cracks up.

They went through a number of incarnations under a few different nom de plume: Lime, Geneva’s Pattern, Lux Clone and Electrolux before settling in on the intriguingly simple Electro Group. A couple of other names that didn’t make the cut were The Rum Crooks and Michael Jordan’s Dad.

And lo and behold, they congealed their strengths and started to develop a signature sound, combining the rich, warm feedback of My Bloody Valentine and Flying Saucer Attack with the euphoric pop hooks of any number of the bands on the Creation label like Biff Bam Pow, Jazz Butcher, The Pastels and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Tim sings in a plaintive, honest voice that sounds like he’s singing about something a lot more important than it actually is.

"Lyrics are like nothing. I don’t listen to other people’s lyrics. There’s only one or two songs that I even know the lyrics to the whole song. The one song I can think of is a Roy Orbison song, but there’s still a couple words I’m still not sure of." answered Tim, who admits that most of the lyrics haven’t even been written down yet. It’s more about the texture of the syllables, the cadence of the words, than literal meaning.

They’re first album should be out as soon as early fall on the groovy Omnibus label. It may or may not be called Carl Lewis is the Fastest Man Alive or Naked Rage. Add to this their two 45’s and they have started an impeccable body of work that is getting quite a bit of attention from college stations from all over the Northern hemisphere.

Whether recreating classic moments of Van Halen videos for a recent photo shoot, or Tim turning his 9-year-old brother to the monolithic pleasures of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid or Ian waxing nostalgic over the Cure’s Pornography album and one-time local heroes, Crash & Britany, they infuse everything with a lysergic logic and a razor sharp sense of humor. Electro Group can cuddle and crush, swoon and splay and rock and roll.

This is Electro Group.