BOSTON, MA: Friday 5/25/12 @ TT The Bear’s Place w/ Suicide Dolls & Yoga Girls

• 18+
• 8:30 PM
• 10 Brookline Street, Cambridge, MA 02139-4152
• $10
• Tickets: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=4494785
• FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/331885876860883/
• Press: Boston Globe | Boston Phoenix | Ryan’s Smashing Life

http://www.syffal.com/album-review-ribs-british-brains

Russian Blood, the follow up EP to British Brains, is coming May 29th. Lyrics in video description.

Read it here:

http://bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2012/05/03/mixing-business-with-pleasure-mixing-business-with-pleasure/kU699d3kS7qr6UUmqEjlMP/story.html

Chris Oquist and Keith Freund, the guitar/vocals and drums half of local four-piece RIBS, are coming from somewhere a bit more researched than the average new band.

On a recent night out over drinks in Allston, Freund thinks back on an industry conference panelist’s idea of top-down bands versus bottom-up bands.

“A top-down example was like Destiny’s Child,” says Freund. “They were picked out by a label and forced down to the masses through a huge infrastructure of radio and money. Whereas there was this rapper named Bone Crusher who came up out of Atlanta selling mix tapes out of the back of his car, building it for himself.”

Freund stops to ponder the utility of both models, but Oquist doesn’t need much time to decide.

“I’m pretty sure I’d rather be Destiny’s Child than Bone Crusher,” he says with a shrug.

RIBS, a band with a music business sense incubated at Berklee, has deployed its searingly loud music in small doses so far — a single here and there, basically, since 2010 — and Freund sees each song playing off different sides of that dynamic. He notes that songs like last winter’s “Please Don’t Go” worked like regular publicity angles and garnered great local press, while others like “Queen of Hearts” have taken on viral lives of their own on fan-created YouTube videos and Reddit. It’s a solid analytical approach that they’ve adopted toward their work; but time as a band has also taught them the benefits of loosening up and simply rocking out.

Freund woke up at 2 p.m. on this day, caught in the middle of a mix-down binge of “Russian Blood,” the EP they’re set to release with a show at T.T. the Bear’s on May 25. It’s an epic mix of high octane stuff — post-rock/metal scorchers poured into vaguely pop molds with Billy Corgan levels of immodesty. The band puts on a serious light show onstage — over 55 cables need connecting before every set — and this music was built for it.

RIBS is Freund’s first band, assembled during his last semester in school through band-wanted ads that name-checked stylistic touchstones like Muse and Smashing Pumpkins. He ended up with childhood friend Blake Fusilier, a second guitarist in shredding prodigy Justin Tolan (featured in Guitar Player magazine at age 18), and Oquist, who had been drumming in a black metal band.

Oquist came from the school’s music business department and went about things from that mind-set in the beginning — working out a pro-looking Web presence, booking tours, fiddling with schedules for YouTube teasers. Still, a few years on the circuit helped reveal some new truths. Oquist found himself at Boston’s trend-setting Rethink Music conference last week and started to notice the unfortunate focus of lots of upcoming bands.

“Everyone is looking for a silver bullet,” he said. “What can Foursquare do for me? What does Instragram do? Can I be a Pinterest band?” It all seemed pointless, he decided, if everyone stopped paying attention to their own music. But RIBS comes off like a new-fangled hybrid — taking advantage of a well-resourced background and launching a perfectly haywire creative adventure from there.

“Russian Blood” is thoroughly DIY — mixed at Freund’s apartment, recorded in their practice space — but it carries itself like a really big deal. There are cement-grinding atmospherics out of Trent Reznor’s playbook and canyon banshee wails echoed from long-lost U2 anthems. It’s full of the visceral joys of music — the growl in the bass, the gleefully dissonant guitars; concerns that seem far removed from counting online friends and Twitter followers. There are epileptic moments that threaten to rattle apart at every bolted-down connection, bringing to mind ’90s electro-noisers like Braniac. The song designated as the lead single, “Kiss,” is a totally unruly pummeling from off-centered, fuzzed-out bass, and gut-check drums.

Freund says he’s learned to let go a little bit — after two years and a couple mini-tours and even a concussion suffered during one show’s overexcited guitar swapping. But he’s still a fiend for lists — he can pull them up on his iPhone in seconds: lists for three days before the show (make sure the club has a tech rider), lists for a day before the show (make sure Oquist has drum mallets), lists for sound check (put phone in airplane mode). He has lists for lists, and he isn’t giving them up soon.

“Hey, the lists help me worry less,” he says. “It means I can just go out and play when it’s time.”

Drums:

Bass:

Guitar and bass:

Here’s a feature and review of our song “Brains Out” by RockBandAide, a Rock Band video game fan site. Brains Out became available for Rock Band 3 on Xbox 360 last week:

A high-energy slice of rock awesomeness, Brains Out starts out deceptively simple but soon tests the mettle of any band member. Pounding drumbeats, harmonies that hit the stratosphere and a crystal clear guitar riff combine to form a song more than worth a look.

Guitarists will need to be au fait with the mechanics of alt-strumming to truly succeed – there’s an awkward riff that could pose a challenge for those who have mastered the technique. A distortion heavy solo isn’t too difficult but throws the spotlight on the guitarist for a few seconds. Alt-strumming will also come in handy for the chord dominant final sections to the song. This isn’t a guitar focused song but what guitar there is proves satisfying enough. Bass again requires a good deal of alt-strumming but would serve well as a warm-up song.

The kick-pedal skills of your drummer will definitely get a workout (as will the drummer as well) with a rather quick kick-pedal pattern underscoring the main beat. There are no tricky rhythms – just a near constant pounding beat that will have your calf muscles burning at the end. Your arms will also get a fitness wake-up; the stamina-proving ride cymbal tempo is quick enough to build up a sweat.

Vocals and harmonies really shine – the rather odd lyrics juxtaposed with the alt-rock feel to the song lend it a strangely alluring quality. Couple that with an amazing three-part communion of different melodies at the end and you’ve got something that is immediately singable but requires co-ordination aplenty. The lead vocals often jump from low to high in the space of a phrase, so put your strongest vocalist up front for this one.

I’d never heard of the band, album (British Brains) or song before this was released on RBN – evidence of the Aladdin’s Cave of new music that the RBN has turned out to be. For the bargain price of 80 MSP this demands attention!

Sounds like: A dash of Mute Math, a touch of Muse perhaps
Perfect for: Stamina-busting drummers, co-ordinated harmonies

LINK: http://www.rockbandaide.com/15566/rbn-highlights-ribs-free-spirit-barefoot-truth/

Visuals by iBUILDWORLDS.

More on formants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formant

“Brains Out” is now playable on Rock Band 3 for Xbox 360 and can be purchased either from the in-game music store, Live Marketplace on the 360 dashboard, or online from the following link :

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/offers/80000e6b-0000-4000-8000-000045410914

Thanks to Redditor Vince Caccamo for hooking this up and That Authoring Group for transcribing it and putting us in the game!

…and after emerging from recording-mode winter hibernation to play Brighton Music Hall last week, we realized just how much.

So when Moving Mountains asked us to join them on Friday, March 23rd at TT The Bear’s, we couldn’t say no.

Here’s the score:

RIBS with MOVING MOUNTAINS, Ghosthrower, and Foreign Tongues
Friday, March 23
TT The Bear’s Place (map)
Doors at 8:30pm
18+ (!!)

Advance tickets over at TicketWeb.
and…
Join the Facebook event for the show.

If you want to check out Moving Mountains, listen to Once Rendering on Youtube.

• We play FIRST at 9 PM (come early just in case)
• 18+
• Advance tickets: http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0100478184A68023
• FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/284014101648366/
• Absolute Punk: O’Brother / Junius tour writeup