Eisele, 29, and his band mates, synth player and vocalist Liz Reboyras, 27, and bassist Gabo Rodriguez, 27, all hail from Puerto Rico and currently call Bushwick home. As indicated by 2010′s The Longing, the group’s debut LP, the band revels in brooding echoes of electric sound with hard beats and soft vocals. Much of this sound profile comes from the brain of Eisele, who started Kordan as a solo project. The name Kordan has its roots in a computer language and was intended to embody "something from the future but ancient, and not male, not female, kind of androgynous," Eisele says. "But I never checked it on Google, and when I did, there’s this prime minister from Iran called Ali Kordan who’s like a super corrupt guy."

Eisele got into music as a child, taking piano lessons at a local music store before opting for self-teaching. "Slowly I fell into classical music, and I stayed in that dungeon for like seven years," he says. But he broke out when he turned 18 and started attending college at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. It was also around this time that Eisele got an introduction to Puerto Rico’s burgeoning rave scene at a club called Asylum, which Reboyras remembers as consistently being "dark and sweaty and packed with people." The first time Eisele stepped into the club, he was immediately blown away by the sounds he heard, "kind of hip-hop but electronic and from the future. And then this weird bass music, which was drum and bass."

The experience inspired Eisele to start creating his own drum-and-bass-style tunes on his laptop. He and a friend even released some of this music under the name Fission on U.K. labels in the early 2000s, but he dropped off of the project as he got more involved with school. He continued to hop around the local music scene though, which is how he met Reboyras and Rodriguez, who were also students at the university.

On a quest to meet girls, Eisele started to explore Puerto Rico’s indie rock scene.

"I was coming off my drum-and-bass, I’m-a-robot stage," he says, and he quickly realized that "maybe the Japanese robot makeup from the future might not be so attractive." He toned down his look and started attending Reboyras and her friend’s weekly record-spinning party called Random. He and Reboyras hit it off and took in a viewing of An Inconvenient Truth, but the courtship was short lived, as Eisele was about to move to New Jersey to start a Ph.D. program in global affairs at Rutgers.

After Eisele shipped off to Jersey, Reboyras finished school and moved to San Francisco for two years, but the pair kept in touch. "We became sort of like longdistance best friends," Reboyras says. Eisele left Rutgers due to funding problems and relocated to Brooklyn, where he continued to work on music. One day in 2008, he got a message on his MySpace from the manager of the band Cut Copy, asking if he would be interested in joining the band on tour. He jumped at the chance and asked members of French Horn Rebellion and Savoir Adore to join him as the live version of Kordan. The lineup worked for the one tour, but Eisele would soon require more permanent members in his band.

Eisele released the Kordan EP, Fantasy Nation, in the summer of 2009. Members of Brooklyn surf-pop group The Drums got their hands on it and invited Eisele to open for them on a string of New York shows. "And I was like, ‘Yeah, awesome! But I don’t have a band. How do I do this?’" he says. It was then that he turned to Reboyras and Rodriguez, now both living in New York, for help. The trio became official and put out its debut, The Longing, in fall 2010. That album, said to depict a love story in 2036, was inspired by the opening line of William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk science-fiction book titled Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." The next album, planned for fall 2011, will move away from images of dystopian Tokyo and into the forest. "The second album has something to do with a big German forest and psychedelics and a tribe from the future and plants becoming conscious and importing their knowledge from the nature world," Eisele says excitedly. "So brace yourselves," Reboyras says, laughing, "for something very unique for the second album."

–
Kordan
Jan. 12, Glasslands, 289 Kent Ave. (betw. S. 1st & S. 2nd Sts.),
Brooklyn, 718-599- 1450; 8, $7.

“I was like, ‘Yes! He hasn’t logged on for like three months. He’s done!’” Body Language is the electro-dance music project of Young, 28, Grant Wheeler, 27, Angelica Bess, 24, and Ian Chang, 22. The band is now Brooklyn-based, but it all began in Hartford, Conn., in 2001. Young and Wheeler met as music students at the University of Hartford. They began living together as sophomores in 2002 and still share an apartment to this day. “I was 14 when you guys started rooming together,” Chang interjects. “Don’t say that,” Wheeler says between bites of a sandwich at Papa Lima on Bedford Avenue. “It makes me feel old.”

Young and Wheeler’s shared appreciation for electronic music and computer-based recording software sparked their musical collaboration. Their first projects revolved around one main goal: “To figure out how to make the weirdest music we possibly could,” Wheeler says. But that guiding principle changed once the duo started hosting a weekly party at a Hartford dive bar called Vegas Boulevard. The guys began writing more dance-oriented music because they needed something to play at the Vegas sets. Young and Wheeler also started thinking about adding vocals to their songs. For that, they turned to Bess, a past collaborator and fellow Hartford student whom they met in 2006.

Bess, Young and Wheeler moved to Brooklyn in 2008 and released their first EP, Speaks, in 2009 on the Ghostly International offshoot Moodgadget Records. That same year, they enlisted Chang, a jazz performance major at New York University, to energize their show with live drumming.

Body Language finished its latest EP, Social Studies, in March 2010. But when the band members went to shop it around, they didn’t have any takers. “Labels didn’t know what to do with it,” Wheeler says. “We just write way too many genres of music.” Electronic music comprises the core of Body Language’s sound, but the band’s influences range from soul to garage rock and everything in between. Though the group settled on self-releasing the EP for free online in October 2010, it still views the label-shopping experience as helpful. “After getting all those comments, we went back and narrowed our scope a bit,” Young says.

But one thing the band won’t be cutting during any revisions is its incorporation of a pop music style, something they learned from their friend Michael Angelakos of Passion Pit. Young and Wheeler met Passion Pit in Hartford. “We went to a show of theirs,” Wheeler says. “It was probably their fourth show. They played for about 20 kids at a VFW.” At the time, Young and Wheeler had just produced an album with one of Angelakos’ friends. Angelakos liked what he heard and decided to move into the guys’ Brooklyn apartment for a month in 2008 to work on some tracks for his own band’s Manners LP. The shared housing gave Young and Wheeler the chance to watch Angelakos in action. “Working with him was pretty influential,” Young says. “That was when the element of pop was really introduced into our stuff.”

It was also around this time that Angelakos started getting courted by labels and lawyers, as well as phone calls from Rick Rubin. “It was a very intense month,” Young says. “We were like ‘Man, is New York always going to be like this?’”

>> Body Language Dec. 20, Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave. (at N. 11th St.), Brooklyn, 718-963-3369; 8, $5.

It is 8 p.m. on the first night of CMJ, and showcases have already invaded The Delancey. The stage in the low-lit, low ceilinged basement has been reserved for indie pop and psych acts. On it, Cristi Jo, 26, and Jessica Zambri, 28, along with their two live-show members, arrange drums, pedals, synthesizers and keyboards. Though the cranky sound guy gives limited chances for mic checks, the two petite brunette sisters still smile and thank him politely. But when the lights dim, the smiles disappear, replaced by serious, focused expressions that signify show time.

The band, known as Zambri, launches into a short set of dark synth-led sounds. Cristi Jo and Jessica take turns standing center and singing lead, alternating microphones that cast varying effects on their voices. These big pop-like vocals are what keep the music from sinking into depression, as the sisters take lines like “Prince of darkness/ Getting me a mess/ and turned me to stone” and pair them with catchy, singable melodies. For all of the haunting clanging on stage, the Zambris keep it light.

Sitting on a bench in front of Joe’s coffee shop in the West Village a few days earlier, Cristi Jo and Jessica appear much more carefree than their brooding tunes suggest. They alternate telling the story of their band’s formation, which began when they were growing up on Long Island. The girls are the youngest in an Italian family of six kids, and their public singing debut took place at an older sibling’s wedding. “Our first gig together was in front of a crowd of 400 people,” Jessica recalls. The pair started to write songs as 3rd and 5th graders, respectively. After high school ended, both Zambris took classes at Berklee College of Music in Boston before deciding to move to New York City in 2003.

The sisters plugged away at their music, using computer programs to record material. The time eventually came when Cristi Jo and Jessica needed to pin a title to their project. For this, they turned to their family for ideas. It was their father who suggested that they name the group Zambri. When Jessica asked why, her dad, in his thick Brooklyn accent, responded, “Out of respect for the family.”

At first, Cristi Jo and Jessica decided to add more band members to Zambri. But after releasing the group’s debut EP, Bang for Changes, in October 2009, they realized that they felt more comfortable as a creative duo. Other players do still make appearances in the live show, including Seth Kasper on drums and Will Spitz on keyboards, in addition to “sheet metal,” says Cristi Jo.

The Zambris also contribute to the live show’s instrumentation, swapping keyboard duties. But their voices are their other instruments, which they alter through various microphone settings. Manipulation of the voice was a key element in the group’s latest collection of songs, all of which began with vocal parts. These tracks will appear on Zambri’s upcoming album, which has no official release date or title as of yet. “We’ll have to run it by a family vote,” Cristi Jo says.

They will also have to take a vote on visuals. Some of the group’s more recent promotional photos have featured Cristi Jo and Jessica with objects covering their mouths. When asked to explain the reasoning behind this, Jessica points to her sister. “Go go for it, Cris,” she says. “That was all you.”

“I had these [hair]clips that looked like a mouth to me,” Cristi Jo says. During a photo shoot with their friend Stephen Biebel, they decided to explore this visual concept, which was meant to symbolize the illumination of the voice. “So we thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll do the clip-mouth idea,’” Cristi Jo says. “It seemed a little bit not human to me,” she says, “like a creature.”

“It did the trick,” Jessica says. “I definitely felt like a creature.”

Zambri, Nov. 3, Pianos, 158 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-505-3733; 8, $8.

The gloomy post-punk band’s magnetic frontwoman carries a reputation of being a fearsome live performer. But to talk to her, Alushaj is laidback and personable, the kind of woman who can even explain her experience as a print model with a bit of charming selfdeprecation. “I guess I have an interesting look about me,” she laughs. Her down-to-earth attitude is perhaps a credit to her having spent most of her life outside of New York City. Back in Sydney, Alushaj learned to play piano and bass guitar as a kid, but her interests moved more toward music production as a teen. She spent time tinkering with her own songs on Pro Tools and sharing the results with friends, but the idea of being in a legitimate band was never in her mind until she left Australia.

Alushaj moved to New York to take a job as an international fashion and music correspondent for Vice Australia. After relocating, most of her initial involvement with the music scene centered more on writing about it than on being a part of it. She and a friend began their own quarterly Web zine called The Pop Manifesto, with the intention of “writing about artists who are usually considered too small to cover.” But Alushaj’s role in music would soon change thanks to her newfound friendship with Phillip Aceto.

Aceto and Alushaj met through mutual friends and bonded over a shared love of the bands Suede and Pulp. “We both realized we were into the same music when we were kids,” Alushaj says. The two began playing music together, and it was during these jam sessions that Alushaj got the idea to move from being a bassist to a vocalist. “[Aceto] was the one who said, ‘You know, you can actually sing,’” she says. The duo eventually decided to flesh out its lineup by adding Dossantos, Westgate and Aceto’s sister, Christina, a classically trained pianist.

The five bandmembers had no grand thematic plan in mind for their music, but they did want to create something darker and “heavier in style” that emphasized the sounds of drum and bass. With the sound solidified, and a debut show at Cake Shop in the works, it was time to choose a name. They settled on

Apache Beat, which was the title of a song written by Aceto and Dossantos for their former band. The moniker might have been speedily selected out of necessity, but it has become a fitting name for a group that prides itself on a beefy rhythm section.

In the two-and-a-half years since Apache Beat played its first live performance, the band has already gone on tour in the U.K. with School of Seven Bells, in the States with The Gossip and released a few singles. And in the last year, the band logged time recording its first full-length album, Last Chants, due out Oct. 5. The album contains 12 tracks written with the intention of pairing pop vocals with an interesting instrumental underbelly, explains Alushaj. “We tried to make it both intricate and simple.” The band cut five songs originally recorded for the LP, and Alushaj says that she and the rest of Apache Beat might turn those leftovers into an EP at a later date. Until then, listeners can check out Last Chants and get their live fix of the group when the band plays two CMJ shows later this month.

>> Apache Beat Oct. 16, Cameo Gallery, 93 N. 6th St. (betw. Berry St. & Wythe Ave.), Brooklyn, no phone; 8, $TBA.

Houck, 30, grew up under the influence of “whatever was on the radio,” in addition to the old country and folk records of his parents. He got his first electric guitar when he was 14 and quickly began writing his own songs. Houck played in some bands with friends, but he always gravitated toward solo performance. He hit the road when he was 19 and started playing shows in coffeehouses. Around this time, he also put out his first unofficial recording, Hipolit, under the name Fillup Shack, a moniker he adapted more out of modesty than for mystery. “[I was] too shy to release something under my own name,” he admits.

But Houck eventually found his confidence and expressed this growth by changing his project’s name to Phosphorescent, a word describing something that emits light. Houck identifies the title as “a goal to strive for,” he says. “It’s a beautiful word and has a lot of heft behind it.” As Phosphorescent, Houck released his first LP, A Hundred Times or More, in 2003, followed by Aw Come Aw Wry in 2005. Then in 2007, Houck put out the quietly intimate Pride and started to gain the attention he deserved. He toured Pride extensively and decided afterward to take a break from his own music. Rather than jump into writing an album of all new material, Houck turned to the songs of one of his childhood idols, Willie Nelson. The 11 tracks on To Willie, released in 2009, “are some of my all-time favorite songs,” Houck says. Houck did the tunes justice, maintaining the classic country feeling while inserting his own casual cool. His album received critical praise, but it also garnered a hat-tip from Nelson himself. It is on this topic that Houck cannot help but be enthusiastic. “He called me up,” Houck says, in as close to a gushing manner as you’re going to get from him. “[Nelson] was as complimentary as he could be.”

Houck returned to his own music on this year’s Here’s To Taking It Easy, which saw his songwriting change shape in the aftermath of To Willie. “It was definitely a conscious choice to make a quoteunquote straightforward album,” Houck says. In an effort to make music with a “classic rock or straight-down-the-middle” feeling, Houck enlisted the help of fellow musicians who brought pedal steel and piano to the mix. This resulted in an honest album that focuses on simple, lived-in melodies and uses uncomplicated lyrics to express complicated feelings. No track does this better than the Coney Island-centric “Mermaid Parade,” a song that documents the actions of a man in New York and his ex-wife in Los Angeles. Houck hesitates to elaborate on the inspiration behind the slowly strolling number, only to say that the song developed out of “some biographical stuff and also a conscious desire to write a narrative.” But while he remains mum on the relationship details, it seems safe to assume that the line, “There were naked women dancing in the Mermaid Parade,” is at least one part of the song that came from firsthand experience.

>> PHOSPHORESCENT July 4, Hudson River Park, Pier 54 at West 14th Street, www.riverrocksnyc. com; 6, Free.

ALEX FRANKEL AND Nick Millhiser of Holy Ghost! fit the profile of your typical Brooklyn musicians. They have a practice space off of the Montrose L stop, enjoy a good American Spirit or 12 and take pride in their hefty collection of instruments. They do have one small quirk though: These two are honest-to-God, by-way-of-nowhere, born-and-raised New Yorkers. But this doesn’t mean that they judge transplants. In fact, Millhiser and Frankel agree that outof-towners absolutely have the potential to call themselves New Yorkers, too—as long as they follow certain guidelines. “You’re allowed to complain a lot,” Frankel says. “You’re just not allowed to complain about bullshit,” Millhiser adds, like the summer heat, the winter cold and how much it costs to live here. It also helps if you get mugged at least once. As Millhiser advises, “You just need to embrace the glory that is New York.”

Millhiser and Frankel grew up in Manhattan and met as second graders at a small school on the Upper West Side. Like a lot of kids, they both took music lessons— piano for Frankel and drums for Millhiser— and played in bands from an early age. But being a young musician in New York City in the early ’90s as opposed to anywhere else in the United States had its distinct advantages. Many of the area’s music venues hosted all ages events and Sunday matinees, which meant that “you could really be in a band at 13 and play shows,” Millhiser says.

By the time they were 14, Millhiser, Frankel and friends had started a hiphop outfit called Automato, which signed to Capitol Records while the group’s members were still in high school. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and Tim Goldsworthy, co-founders of the DFA label, were brought in to produce Automato’s debut album, released in 2004. Although the band eventually fizzled, Frankel and Millhiser maintained a strong relationship with DFA. The guys, then in their early twenties, started practicing as a keyboard-and-drums duo and were invited to record and play live with the label’s other bands. “They kept us involved,” Frankel says. “And encouraged us to sort of keep working on music,” adds Millhiser.

Murphy, Goldsworthy and the other musicians at DFA also introduced Frankel and Millhiser to more dance- and discobased music that heavily influenced the shape of the Holy Ghost! sound. With the green light from Murphy, the group released its debut single, “Hold On,” in late 2007 on DFA. The single led Frankel and Millhiser to rack up gigs as DJs and remixers, while they plotted out their debut album. They did these DJ sets for almost two years, but during that time, they never once performed their own music as a live band. But now, with the debut EP Static on the Wire out just this week, Holy Ghost! is finally taking its songs to the stage when the band opens for LCD Soundsystem for four shows at Terminal 5. Frankel and Millhiser did manage to sneak in a warm-up show this weekend, but this does not remove the pressure that comes with playing some of your first live shows in front of a 3,000-person crowd. “I can deal with me personally being embarrassed,” Frankel says. “It’s more we don’t want to fucking embarrass James and Nancy and Pat [of LCD Soundsystem].”

Frankel predicts that after the first show at Terminal 5, instead of swigging champagne, he and Millhiser “will be very upset and, you know, probably talking very soberly about what went wrong.” He admits that their seriousness in preparing for these shows might make them seem a tad neurotic. But what else would you expect from a couple of New Yorkers?

>>HOLY GHOST! May 20 through 23, Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th St. (at 11th Ave.), 212-260-4700; 8, $35.

Don’t fuck it up: Holy Ghost!

The pleasant surprise that is ArpLine officially formed in 2007, but the band was already in the works back in 2006 when De Rosa met Tyndall in New York through a mutual friend. De Rosa, Edsforth and Lithgow had been playing together without a singer for around six months before meeting Tyndall, the only band member not to attend New York University. From there, Tyndall tells me later, “We met up and we played some music and it was cool.”

“Can you sense the passion?” Resnick quips.

The lineup became permanent after Resnick moved in on drums, but the band didn’t rush into figuring out its sound right away. For a while, the group played “paint-by-numbers New York rock,” Edsforth says, wearing its musical influences on its sleeve instead of trying to craft something original.

Tyndall became the group’s primary songwriter, and his computer-based work—along with his bandmates’ tendency to play furiously—dictated the band’s sound as frenetic and synthesizer-centric. “I never really learned to play an instrument,” he says, “but I’ve been a computer user since I was a child.” He paired this electronic music with conceptual and abstract lyrics, which appealed to him because he says he isn’t particularly “good at writing confessional, story-type songs.”

When their sound started coming together as something more unique to the band, the guys began playing shows around New York City as The Kiss Off. None of them liked the name, and they agreed to change it before they ever made an LP, which seemed likely at the end of 2008.Tyndall says they “had a six-month argument about what to change the name to,” eventually settling on ArpLine.

The name came from a title Tyndall gave to a song saved on his computer, which he chose based on a synth line in the track.The band members all think the name is better than The Kiss Off, but none of them seem too thrilled to be called ArpLine either.

“I don’t think anybody really likes it,” Resnick says. After hearing the band name, “No one ever goes, ‘Awesome.’” “My mom’s always still asking me, ‘How’s that band Alpine doing?’”Lithgow says.

The name stuck despite the mixed reviews, and in January 2009,Tyndall went to work emailing “pie-in-the-sky producers” to help with the band’s debut LP. Chris Coady, the Lower East Side-based producer who has worked with Yeah Yeah Yeahs,TV on the Radio and others, wrote back.The band loved working with Coady and finalized four songs with him before running out of money at the beginning of last summer. ArpLine finished the rest of the album itself, releasing the debut LP, Travel Book, as a name-yourown-price deal online this February. And though the album was released just recently, ArpLine already has plans to put out an EP this summer, sharing more of its driving, jittery rhythms and skittering synth lines with the masses. “If [a listener] is into a ‘How did they make that sound’ kind of music,”Tyndall says, “then this is the band for them.”

> ArpLine

Mar. 8, Glasslands, 289 Kent Ave. (at S. 2nd St.), Brooklyn, 718-599-1450; 7:30, $8.

ArpLine live at its Brooklyn Bowl album release show.

When you first arrive in New York City, the rats do not greet you with fruit baskets, the subway routes feel labyrinthian and the only knocks coming from your neighbors are the sounds of their headboards smacking against your walls. It is no surprise, then, that after arriving in New York from Boston in 2004,Todd Goldstein felt depressed. “I think my insides just realigned,” he says.The guitarist, who started out playing in folk, jazz and jam bands and moved to indie rock and power pop groups in college, began experimenting with a sound that was “a lot slower and a lot sadder.” He called his solo project ARMS, his inspiration being a British rapper named EARS. “I liked the idea of a plural body part as the name of your project.” Goldstein, now 27 and living in Williamsburg, wanted ARMS to hit listeners on a deeper emotional level. “I started really thinking about music that cut to the heart of me,” he says. He consciously adopted a singing style that he felt would pair best with his melancholic songs: the croon.The vocal was meant to sound “like a rock ‘n’ roll Chet Baker in my mind,” Goldstein says, though the pitch sliding conjures less Baker and more Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields.The results of his solo work made up the first EP from ARMS, Shitty Little Disco, released in 2006.That year also found Goldstein joining up with Harlem Shakes after “they had just fired their 19th guitarist.”

Despite joining a band, Goldstein continued to find time to work on his solo material. His EP piqued interest at the U.K.

label Melodic, and the label requested that he put together a full-length album.Two years later, in the summer of 2008, Melodic released ARMS’ Kids Aflame, an album of guitar-centered tracks whose bright melodies temper Goldstein’s somber, crooning vocals, creating some thing despairing without throwing listeners into a depression.The album got its proper U.S. release in October 2009 on Gigantic Music, shortly after Harlem Shakes, also on the label, disbanded that September. Goldstein seems reluctant to talk about his former band, only to say that he is unsure whether or not there will ever be a reunion.

Goldstein never viewed being in a band as detracting from his solo work, which he says he can always find time to do. But the end of Harlem Shakes did leave him with even more time to focus on ARMS. No massive touring plans are slated yet, aside from two New York shows and a stop at South by Southwest, but Goldstein looks forward to getting the chance to work with a full band again, since ARMS live will consist of a three-person collective, which he says “evokes something bigger for such a small group.”

–
ARMS
Jan. 23, Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave. (at Havemeyer St.), Brooklyn, 347-529-6696; 7, $10.

Bingham, a Florida native, toured around the country for a few years as a solo performer, armed with a guitar and a gruff and gutsy vocal style, reminiscent of Joan Jett, before looking to turn her solo work into a collaborative effort. In addition to LeMunyan, the band grew to include AJ Annunziata on bass. Both LeMunyan and Annunziata are ex-punk band players, and combining that hardcore background with Bingham’s female vocals “balances out the rage” in the group’s music, LeMunyan says. Clinical Trials also plans to add keyboard player Eric Olsen to the mix—a fairly new plan, as LeMunyan explains that the band and Olsen “just had drinks last night” to talk through the details. If Olsen’s addition to the band goes as intended, LeMunyan says that the band might look to add more “danceable, electro stuff” to its punk-edged mix.

The addition of new sounds not only serves to give the band some variety in its own sound, but also helps to differentiate between Bingham’s solo music and that of Clinical Trials. LeMunyan explains that while the band does still work with building upon some of Bingham’s originally solo songs, Clinical Trials is not just something to be looked at as Bingham’s side project. The band and Bingham as a solo performer are “two different things,” he says, with the songwriting process now extending to all members of the group writing tracks to bring to rehearsals for consideration. Despite intentions of self-releasing a debut EP this fall, as stated on the band’s MySpace page, Clinical Trials has no intention to record or release an album any time soon. “It’ll come out when it comes out,” LeMunyan says, estimating that a release has a better chance of appearing next year.

In lieu of an album release, Clinical Trials is focusing on developing its sound and perfecting its live show, an important task for a group that LeMunyan says considers itself “more of a live band right now.” The band has gained most of its following by playing at house and apartment parties, in addition to gay-friendly events, which LeMunyan credits to Bingham, a lesbian, who did the same as a solo artist. While improving the live show is at the top of the band’s agenda, getting signed to a label sits even further back on the group’s to-do list than recording the EP. “We’re anti-getting signed,” LeMunyan says. “We would just like to turn down record deals.”

Clinical Trials’ other goal is simply to make the experience of coming to see the band fun, something LeMunyan says is missing from a lot of live shows these days. So if you do catch Clinical Trials playing, be aware that the band members “just like to rock and fucking melt faces,” LeMunyan says. You have been warned. C

CLINICAL TRIALS Nov. 7, Loft 73, 73 Washington Ave. (betw. Park & Flushing Aves.), Brooklyn, no phone; 8, $TBA.

NOTE: After New York Press launched its New Music Contest this fall (in conjunction with Sonicbids), Clinical Trials was the band with the biggest fan base (or savviest web marketing skills) to take home the prize, earning them a profile in our Music Issue. Thanks to all of the excellent talent out there; we hope to hear more from you in the future.

Otepka wore earplugs sporadically, sometimes wearing an earplug in one ear to buffer himself against the monitors onstage, sometimes going without them entirely because it was easier to hear himself. During the group’s fifth year together, Otepka noticed that it started to take a full 24 hours for the ringing in his ears, known as tinnitus, to subside after a show, and oftentimes when performing onstage, all he heard was a bunch of “white noise” coming out of his monitors. He read an article in 2004 on ear damage and found that he was experiencing most of the symptoms listed.

“That’s when the flags went up,” Otepka says. His ear pain kept getting worse, and within less than a year after first noticing the symptoms, he had to stop playing and Troubled Hubble broke up. He now plays only acoustic guitar in his quieter solo project, The Heligoats.

Otepka’s story proves what most concertgoers already know: Rock shows are loud, and exposure to loud noises can hurt your ability to hear. Sabrina Vitulano, a doctor of audiology at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, has been an audiologist for 20 years, testing people’s hearing and parts of the ear for signs of damage. Perceived damage, she explains, can come in the form of hearing a ringing in your ears, while physical damage involves your ears’ hair cells. Loud sounds cause hair cells to fold over. Some of the hair cells eventually unfold, but those that do not recover die. Since hair cells do not regenerate, that is when people experience hearing loss.

Vitulano says that rock concerts go beyond the comfortable decibel level that a human ear can tolerate. A decibel level, she explains, though not synonymous with volume, is a “reference to sound,” with 0 decibels being silence, 50 decibels reflecting a normal conversation and 70 decibels being the maximum decibel level human ears can handle without risk of damage. Vitulano estimates that the average rock concert reaches a decibel level of 110 or higher, though decibel level varies depending on where you stand in a venue, with the highest being at the speaker and the lowest being in the back of the room. In addition to actual decibel level, Vitulano says that how often you are exposed to the decibel level also determines whether you will experience hearing loss. The longer you are exposed to high levels at a concert, the higher your risk for hearing loss, which explains why bands that play hundreds of tour dates and stand right by the speakers have a greater chance of hearing damage.

Some venues do set caps on decibel levels, but it has more to do with noise regulations and protecting the sound equipment than safeguarding your ears. While regulated decibel levels might be more comfortable to audiences, the rules can also be restricting for performers. Ollie Cotton, head of audio and a senior mixer at the Apollo Theater for 10 years, does not impose a decibel regulation, allowing a band’s sound engineer to adjust the levels to what sounds best. If the touring sound engineer pushes the level too high in the 1,508-capacity venue, Cotton says the band is “free to ruin [its] own show at [its] own discretion.” Cotton also works as a touring sound engineer, and he knows what it is like to have a venue restrict your sound level, as some venues did to him on a tour with John Legend. “It sucks,” he says. “I can’t say it enough.”

Jeff Neuberger, technical director for Brooklyn’s Bell House and Union Hall, shares Cotton’s philosophy on not imposing decibel regulations on himself or on other traveling sound engineers. Neuberger spends three to four days each week on the sound boards at the Bell House, which has a 425-person capacity in its main room. He says that although there is no decibel meter on the soundboards at the Bell House, when he has checked the decibel levels using an iPhone application, it registers around 104-105 decibels from where he sits in the back of the room. He has encountered sound engineers who mess up the mix, the overall balance of a band’s performance as amplified through the PA system, which are the speakers facing the audience. When that happens, Neuberger says that it’s frustrating because the sound of a show reflects on the venue, and no one in the audience cares about whether the house sound guy or a touring sound engineer mixed the show. But for the most part, he says that sound engineers know how to mix the shows appropriately, and when they do not, they know “when to defer to the house sound guy.”

House sound technicians know what levels work best in a certain venue, but a band’s personal sound engineer
has the benefit of knowing the particulars of a band’s sound. Andrew
Maury is a touring live sound engineer for Ra Ra Riot, and he says that
the band took him on because it got tired of dealing with inhouse sound
technicians who were unfamiliar with the band. Maury barely pays
attention to specific volume numbers when mixing the band’s live show,
relying more on how something sounds, rather than on how loud it is. He
says that he has never in his life been asked by an in-house sound
person to turn up the volume, but he has been asked to turn it down,
most recently by a fellow band. While on tour with Death Cab for Cutie,
the group’s sound engineer suggested that Ra Ra Riot and Cold War Kids,
the two opening bands, have their respective mixes set at lower levels.
Maury was not bothered by the request since he says it made sense to
give the headliner a louder, more theatrical performing advantage and
because it would “save the audience’s ears for Death Cab.”

Maury
saves his own ears at shows by plugging his ears with his fingers for
periods of time or by wearing earplugs. Audiologists like Vitulano
cannot stress the importance of taking this precaution enough, as the
earplugs decrease the decibel level impacting your ear. “[Earplugs]
potentially will save the ear,” she says, assigning the responsibility
for regulating sound not to the sound technicians, but to the audience
members who choose to expose their ears to sounds of that loudness.

Some
audience members have heeded this advice. “I’ve seen more people
wearing earplugs to shows than I’ve ever noticed,” Maury says. Some
bands have started to take the advice to heart as well.

Syd
Butler—the owner of Frenchkiss Records and bass player for Les Savy
Fav— never wore earplugs when he was a 14-year-old kid attending punk
shows. He measured an awesome show by how much his ears rang afterward.
When he did see other people wearing earplugs, he and his friends
thought, “What’s wrong with that nerd?” Butler, now 37, has grown out
of that idea and usually wears at least one earplug to block out the
drum sounds on stage. His acceptance of earplugs evolved from thinking
they were lame, to carrying earplugs “around in little pouches, and
that’s cool,” he says. “But keeping your hearing is always cool.”

Photo by Taxi for Gable via Flickr