Artist Information
Biography
It really wasn't too long ago when LA's shoe-gazing music scene was quietly interrupted to make way for a fresh, new sound that began to make Hollywood hipsters rethink their evening attire. Tucked away in the ever so modest Lava Lounge (R.I.P.), LA's newest band was making waves that reminded heavy footed scenesters that music can also make you dance. Soon after playing their first gig, the No-DJ-No-Laptop-No-Drum-Machine dance party, known simply as Casxio, (pronounced ka-see-oh) woke up to a review in the LA Alternative comparing them to Sly & the Family Stone and heralding a new dawn in dance music.
Flash forward a year and a half: jam-packed clubs wherever they play and enough local press buzz to make you not want to listen.
Relax. You don't have to believe the hype to dig what's happening here.
Start by checking out "Seventeen". A buttery-soft falsetto confesses:
"Only seventeen / But my love is for real" against a CHIC backbeat and Radiohead-y, fake choir voices. It only takes about ten seconds to understand that there's a simple, virginal sweetness at the Casxio core. And that there's really nothing to be mad at.
The voice belongs to French-born bassist Lucas Guerin, who spent three years alone in a Downtown L.A. loft refining love songs and arranging all the parts on a 4-track. Through mutual friends, he discovered professional dancer-turned guitarist, Eric Saez, and, after much wooing, convinced Zach Schrock he was the only man who could strongly lay down the beat. Classically trained pianist Andrea Choe joined the fold last summer, just as Casxio began to find an audience -- and a new sound....
We're hearing giant steps from the skinny-legged sprints of the Talking Heads, to the meat and potatoes clav-rock of "Innervisions".
Bass lines recall a day when Paul and Michael sang about girls and "cool" could be spelled with a "k". A broken record rhythm section steady-rocks as changes slip by unnoticed, almost deadlocked in a strange Philip-Glass-ghetto-funk. Voices ask sweetly and sadly dozens of times, "Can you smell that sweet love in the air?" And the audience in Silverlake all of a sudden seems to look very awake.
Maybe it's the brand new take on a familiar funk that’s turning heads...
... or maybe it's because Los Angeles just spit up something it can be proud of.
Instrumentation
Lucas - Bass/Vox
Eric Saez - Guitar
Zach Schrock- Drums
Andrea Choe - Keys
Discography
Video
Photo Gallery
-
lucas
-
eric
-
andrea
-
zach
-
felicephotography.com
Download print quality (high-res) version -
felicephotography.com
-
@ Spaceland
-
Viper Room
Press
-
LA Times
[+ Show ]
"Los Angeles' Casxio has proven itself a little bit more than just the latest band to jump into the ...
-
URB Magazine
"The tunes are a fresh-as-heck and high-pitched nod to classic Prince and Talking Heads."
-
Classical Geek Theatre
[+ Show ]
"Singer / bassist Lucas Guerin is, in this humble blogger's estimation, one of the five best frontme...
-
Read Mezzanine
[+ Show ]
"It's not often a live band can whip up as healthy as dance floor (especially in Los Angeles) as the...
-
Indie Schmarm
"They always put on a great show"
Setlist
We usually do 30-40 minute sets although we could do longer if necessary. We have one cover. It's called "Calling You" and it's an obscure song from a movie called "Bagdhad Cafe" and we funk it out. It's not a cover that most people recognize. We usually play about 10 songs and it might look something like this:
Dance
Calling You
All My Love
Seventeen
Boiling Point
Where Were You
Anticipation
Counting Squares
My Book
Broken Kiss
Lose Control (If we need a longer set)
