NEXT PERFORMANCE: Saturnday September 20th @ High Mayhem Festival, Santa Fe NM

THE ATOMIC BOMB AUDITION

Alee Karim – guitar/vox,
Brian Gleeson – drums/vox,
Jason Hoopes – bass/vox,
The Norman Conquest – electronics/vox

“Through engulfing the cosmos, you hath simply wrought your self.” ¬-Fr. Agriesti

With roots set in the convergent space between doom metal, film music, and apocalyptic comedy, The Atomic Bomb Audition has fashioned its own expansive voice. The Bay Area quartet constructs deafeningly loud yet meticulously detailed sound worlds using a film director’s sense of scene, each element chosen to serve the whole. The sound is a 21st Century post-metal amalgam of myriad elements: excoriating guitars, haunting bowed contrabass, Moog synth trickery, thunderous percussion mosaics, feedback melodicisms, dulcet gamelan, and moon-governed anthemic crescendos among much else. With pieces clocking in from ten to twenty minutes, the band elaborates a wide arc of deliberate sonic architecture through theme and variation rather than indulging in exploratory jams. Sounding at times like Neurosis interpreting The Cure’s Disintegration, their artistic touchstones include The Melvins, Mulholland Dr., Bohren und der Club of Gore, Jerry Goldsmith, Bill Hicks, Brian Eno, and Pink Floyd’s Animals. Like these artists, The Atomic Bomb Audition does not restrict itself in using the appropriate means to weave a specific and emotionally resonant structure with a populist bent.

Their 2nd full-length album, Light Will Remain, is an immense work that represents the band at a creative apex. The album is an evocative document of the art of memory and the evolving significance of events through time. The desire to illuminate and darken aspects of our psychic apparatus based on the indeterminate verity of belief and sense drives this collection of narratives. Peaks of crushing psychedelic metal are buried under ebbs of seasick chords and gently whirring vibraphone. A stoic black hole guitar and bass maw repels celestial debris of processed percussion and voice towards the horizon. The band forges sound like aural filmmakers evoking waves of synaesthetic images. To paraphrase David Lynch, only adherence to the clear vision of an original idea dictates the true form of a work of art.

Formed in 2004, The Atomic Bomb Audition has performed in clubs, warehouses, galleries, co-ops, and colleges in the Bay Area and throughout the Western Seaboard. They have shared stages with a host of ungodly talents including Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), GIRTH, Gregg Kowalsky, Barn Owl, Lesbian, Wah Wah Exit Wound, Jesse Quattro (Secret Chiefs 3), Dysrhythmia, Aspects of Physics, New Thrill Parade, SEAN, Two Ton Boa, and Diminished Men among others. They have collaborated live and on record with Braden Diotte (Tarantula Hawk), Jesse Quattro, avant-garde percussionist Shayna Dunkelman, and folk singer Erika Pipkin. The band has completed several tours of the West Coast, recently completing a tour of the Pacific Northwest in August in support of Light Will Remain. In September, the band will play dates in the Southwest culminating with the High Mayhem Music Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
- August 2008 Oakland, California

HAPPENINGS:

"Light Will Remain" has been mastered by Leif Shakelford, and the album is in it's final form for the world to ingest. The album is available for sale through this site. Also, you may listen to the album on our Sonorous Recordings page. Our first album "Eleven Theatres" contiues to get good reviews, though our maturation as a band has gone even farther. See our "literature" page for reviews. "Eleven Theatres" is available for sale through this site via PayPal or at Aquarius Records in San Francisco, or by contacting us. (Visit Sonorous Recordings for samples). Below you can read some excerpts of reactions to Eleven Theatres and for full reviews see our
Literature & Discourse page.

The Silent Ballet review of Eleven Theatres

"...This album is one to be played loud, and constantly. What strikes me the most is the maturity they show at such an early stage in their career; I had to offer countless reminders to myself that this is their first effort. With a second album on the way that seems to match the performance of Eleven Theatres, The Atomic Bomb Audition have the skills to establish themselves as leaders of this scene if they play their cards right." - Sammy Bennaoui

SF Bay Guardian review of Eleven Theatres

"Noted egotist Morrissey once carped to his audience that there are too many bands these days, clogging the world's collective psychic space. While it's probably true that fledgling rock groups must annually create a mountain of plastic to rival Mount Tam, once in a while a record appears that's so engaging that all the shrink wrap seems worth it. Eleven Theatres, by Atomic Bomb Audition, is one such effort... With seemingly boundless sonic ingenuity, Eleven Theatres unfolds as a vivid, sensuous document so full of pleasant surprises that it's not hard to imagine the Atomic Bomb Audition sharing a bill with Laurie Anderson, Tortoise, Shellac, or hell, Morrissey." - Nathan Baker


Review of Eleven Theatres by Aquarius Records.

"This is one awesomely confusing record. We weren't sure what to expect, but it definitely wasn't this. Bursts of grinding downtuned death metal give way to shuffling jazzy lounge music, mathy riffing morphs into prog rock workouts which give way to simple dreampop strumming. There's Super spacious slowcore, reverbed guitars and shuffling jazz drums, weird underwater melodies and funereal horns... and Pell Mell style instrumental almost surf rock with total "Wipeout" drums.
It's all a little overwhelming, and confusing, but in a good way. And unlike a lot of genre jumping outfits, none of these disparate sounds, and impossible mash ups sound at all forced. In fact, the band has such a deft hand with arrangements, that when you're listening to Eleven Theaters, it's hard to imagine that any band would NOT combine all of these styles and genres.... Maybe these guys are mostly a metal band, but it's really hard to tell. Especially after taking this all in. Definitely mind expanding, and certainly mostly for those with a very wide range of tastes, but like we said, it's hard not to love this record, every part of it, from the dreamy to the heavy, from the dark and dangerous to the goofy and absurd. Really cool."

WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR SHOWS AND OTHER PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNTIES.
FOR BOOKING, PLEASE
CONTACT US.

 

Light Will Remain CD: $10


Eleven Theatres CD: $8

 


UPCOMING PERFORMANCES:

FECHA SPACE LOCATION

COHORTS

       
20 SEPTEMBER 2008 HIGH MAYHEM FESTIVAL Santa Fe, NM The Late Severa Wires, and others
       



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