Bio
Peter Sax, Noam Schatz, and Ben Sterling are Mobius Band. Their new album is
called Heaven.
The group started in earnest when they moved together to a small rural town
in Western Massachusetts called Shutesbury (pop 1,800). Cradled in the
Pioneer Valley and bracketed by college kids and semi-retired alternative
rock stars, Mobius Band woodshedded for several years, rarely venturing out
of New England until 2004, when Ben and Peter moved to Brooklyn¹s quiet
Carroll Gardens neighborhood.
There, the group picked up momentum, releasing their debut album, The Loving
Sound of Static (Ghostly 2005) and embarking on a non-stop touring regimen,
notching over 150 shows, including tours with neighborhood confederates The
National and trans-Atlantic friends like Editors and Tom Vek. What at first
seems like a mixed bag of associates (noir indie rock; junk-shop
electronica) actually provides a rough triangulation of what Mobius Band is
about: pop hooks grounded in experimentation, subtle musicianship, and a
taste for ruminative lyrics.
Hence we find ourselves in Heaven, a self-directed effort recorded in both
studios and homes with some engineering help from band friends Emery Dobyns
(Antony and The Johnsons, Battles) and newcomer Eric Spring. It was written
and recorded over an extended 19-month span, during which the band's lives
were considerably more taxing than their recording schedule. A father passed
away suddenly on the cusp of the group's first national tour. A longtime
girlfriend ran off with an old friend. The stresses of New York life were
amplified by the inescapable drama of a life on the road, draining the band
emotionally and financially.
"Why do we make the choices we make?" asks Ben, when discussing the
circumstances fueling the album. "Don't we know how unbelievably ill-advised
most of those choices are? But we make these decisions as if we were."
Heaven revolves around repeating motifs decoding the secret language of
ex-lovers, the betrayals of quote-unquote friends. It¹s melodies are more
dynamic, its themes more direct. Where their previous album still grappled
with post-collegiate anxiety, here there are larger questions of control,
bewilderment, and loss. "Darling I can't get the stain out of my head," Ben
sings on 'Leave the Keys In the Door.' On 'Tie a Tie,' we hear the stop-start refrain "I
see people change / I see people stay the same," and are left with the
overwhelming impression that day-to-day life with friends and lovers is as
precarious and as dangerous as anything we might fret about in the wider
world.
Musically, the album pulses, crackles, and hums. Though Mobius Band has
always alternated between a desire to make pop songs and an interest in
experimental textures, Heaven¹s sound is marked by Noam¹s new obsession
'circuit bent' keyboards.
Inspired by a chance encounter in Minneapolis, Noam took to deliberately
short-circuiting the innards of toy keyboards, turning them into bizarre
machines capable of incredibly sophisticated and impossible-to-duplicate
sounds. While Peter and Ben crafted Heaven¹s songs in the band's Brooklyn
rehearsal space, Noam the one member of the band who remained in rural
Massachussets spent many months in isolation, alternating between an
extensive rewiring and renovation of his old country house, and long hours
in the attic begoggled, soldering gun in hand, tinkering with fifteen flea
market-ready Casio keyboards salvaged from yard sales. At a time when anyone
with a laptop has a wealth of pre-fab electronic noises at their disposal,
Heaven's sound is a tribute to Noam's dedicated approach and sui generis
sonic research.
How does it all add up? Mobius Band creates songs that seem, at first, like something you’d hear on the radio, but they insinuate themselves in the manner of something more complex. They are circuit bent pop songs.
So, welcome to Heaven. Some believe it's where you go when you die if you’re lucky and good. For others, it’s a refuge available to all. No one can prove it exists, but we ask that you have faith, believe.
Discography
Heaven (2007)
CD - $12.00
The Loving Sounds of Static (Ghostly International 2005)
CD - $12.00
City vs Country (Ghostly International 2005)
CDEP - $8.75