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Psychedelic four-piece La Cerca from Tucson, Arizona emerged in the 1990s - originally under the name Wise Folk Malcontent - and changed its moniker after more than a decade of refining its sound. Helmed by Andrew Gardner, the frontman since day one and one of two remaining founding members alongside guitarist Bill Oberdick, La Cerca haven’t lost a shred of momentum as the band has continued to strengthen its reputation both in and out of the studio over a storied string of releases.
Building on influences from Sonic Youth and The Cure to Bob Dylan and Ride, La Cerca additionally incorporates a desert-infused blend of shoegaze, ambient, twangy pop hooks, and signature dueling guitars. WIth a unique sonic identity, La Cerca has established itself as pioneers of a new breed of psychedelic guitar rock with a diverse and growing global fanbase.
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Dual bass outfit Violenteer is a band that defies easy categorization, creating an innovative brand of intense post-rock that explores themes, textures, and sounds both familiar and totally unique. Drawing on elements of rock, post-punk, doom, industrial, and experimental noise, the music Violenteer creates is both groundbreaking and memorable, creating a singular sound that is wholly their own.
Hailing from the fertile musical heartland of Omaha, Nebraska, informed by numerous local projects, recordings, and national tours, and by time spent jamming in the Portland music scene, band founder Randy Cotton (Ritual Device, Ravine, Ocean Black) joined with his brother and long-time creative collaborator Barry Cotton (Members of the Press) and drummer Eric Ebers (Ritual Device, Ravine, Minne Lussa) to create Violenteer during the spring of 2022. Since that time, the band has played several live shows, sharing the stage with the likes of Voivod, Prong, Mudhoney, Whores, Live Skull, Unsane, Elephant Rifle, FACS, Shiner, Djunah, Brant Bjork, Gay Witch Abortion, Cherubs, and Season To Risk, among others.
Violenteer’s opening for seminal, Kansas City noise rock outfit Season To Risk turned out to be a foundational moment for the band, as the performance caught the attention of STR frontman Steve Tulipana. By the fall of 2022, a collaboration between the Cotton brothers and Tulipana had begun. With the release of their debut EP, Violenteer (December 2024 on independent label Skinsuit Communications), the current lineup consists of the brothers Cotton, drummer Nathan Wolf (Cat Piss, Pagan Athletes, Titus Groaners), and Steve Tulipana on vocals and audio gadgetry.
Both on wax and through their mesmerizing live shows, Violenteer continues to push boundaries and confound labels (both literal and figurative), positing an innovative musical commentary on this often dark, violent, confusing, and sometimes beautiful world. Each song reflects this thoughtful outlook, conjured up as a collage of guitar or synth-like melodic flavorings that are at times brash, at others a soothing melancholy. All the while, the deep-water dual-bass and drum grooves support Tulipana’s soaring, searching, and often eerie vocal expressionistic sketches. The six songs from the band’s self-titled EP reflect this haunting dynamic, as Tulipana overlays the melodic gloom with a lyrical snarl that reflects the creators’ existential exploration of the complex and fatalist reality in which we increasingly find ourselves.
Violenteer possess a musicality and compositional maturity that is undeniable, and the songs act almost as musical movements, fueled by a relentless drive one moment, while other times acting as thoughtful examination of space and timing, expressing as much through the notes as through the margins between. Yet this is not gentle music. This is not a placid sound. Perhaps it is best-described as a moody, sonorous blend of post-rock, post-punk, and noise-rock, humming, buzzing, and throbbing with vital energy and a howl into the ether. It is powerful, arresting, and darkly beautiful, swirling above thefoundational dual-bass thrum. This is the sound, the ethos, of Violenteer.
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Kansas City's Corners of the Sky open the show with their noisey psychedelic garage rock