Audiometry
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Audiometry

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"A few reasons to see Audiometry tonight"

Sounds like:
think Radiohead without less 'god-awful pretentious'. think Explosions in the Sky but more jagged, less pristine. think shorter Godspeed. think Bach. think atonal. think post-Wagner. think 1,000 tons of impending doom about to descend on the pates of one hundred mercenaries. - Staten Island Dump Blog


"Audiometry brings instrumental rock to Staten Island"

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Every Friday night, the guys in Audiometry descend into a cramped practice space on New Dorp Lane. After navigating a maze of cardboard boxes, filing cabinets and ventilation pipes, the band performs a ritual that has been going on-and-off since the mid-'90s.

"That's a box of candy canes from like 1998," says Enrico Arcaro, the wiry-framed guitarist who serves as the band's emotional lightning rod.

The candy canes are not the only holdover.

Audiometry was once known as Infind, a Staten Island collective which performed a melodic strain of hardcore music influenced by bands like Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate. The band was a staple of the hardcore scene on the Island which thrived in the '90s, performing at venues like The Joint in Mariners Harbor and releasing a 7-inch through local imprint Struggle Records. As with many of the musicians from that era, college and careers intervened. Then a chance meeting at a Williamsburg eatery almost a decade later brought the band back together.

"I got an invite to Rico's 30th birthday," says bassist Rob Marinelli, a former Staten Islander who lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. "I hadn't seen him in like eight years. We talked about the band and how much we loved the songs and I said, 'Hey let's just get together and start jammin' again.'"

After some cajoling they got James Federico back behind the drum kit. Federico had been busy studying medicine and playing bass for Seymour Glass -- a band which had once been signed to Carson Daly's fledgling label and appeared twice on his late-night TV show. Audiometry's final addition was keyboardist Joe Grado, who joined the group just as it began tweaking some of its old Infind songs. The band pretty much picked up where it left off, with one glaring omission: No singer.

"Our music is very atmospheric," says Arcaro, who is currently pursuing a graduate degree in composition and music theory at NYU. "We try to channel in our emotions and conjure up images or evoke some mood, then leave it open to interpretation."

Arcaro, who cites both Bach and Henry Rollins as influences, claims the band's songs are written in sections or movements rather than the traditional verse-chorus structure of modern rock bands. And rather than adding a vocalist to the mix, the band is more apt to include more orchestral instruments to the live setting as time goes on. "I'd love to get a bassoonist, horns and some strings," Arcaro says.

"At this point, since we developed so much, I don't think a singer would even fit," says keyboardist Joe Grado, a CSI graduate who currently lives in New Jersey. Grado also notes the limitations and setbacks a vocalist can have. "A lot of times people come up after shows and say, 'Hey where's the singer?' But, if they spend time, they'll see there's a lot more going on."

This was certainly the case during a recent performance at Martini Red in Stapleton. The band, coming off a stellar show in Lower Manhattan, performed its epic instrumentals for an attentive group gathered around the band, semi-circle-style, as the scent of incense filled the back room.

Allying themselves with post-rock groups like Explosions in the Sky and God Speed You Black Emperor, Audiometry's songs build methodically, starting off with soft melodic structures that slowly evolve. The eventual peaks are jarring collisions of cascading guitar riffs, dramatic wall-of-sound melodies and pounding rhythms. At the fore is Marinelli, looming large with an imposing frame as he pounds away at the bass, and the shaggy-haired Arcaro, frantically hunching over his left-handed guitar.

The quartet brings an impressive level of technique to the live show, one that is sometimes lacking in the local scene. Audiometry's Martini Red gig was oddly paired, with the punk group Great Unwashed and faux-surf rockers Captain Ahab and the Sea Crackens. The band is still trying to find its niche among the Island scenesters. "There are bands like The Headlocks that are pretty f---in' raw," Arcaro says about Staten Island's retro-rock all stars, one of the few Island groups he feels a connection with. "Their style is different -- they do it with a good old-fashioned ruckus -- but that same intensity is there."

The band's strongest connection to Staten Island remains the hardcore scene, which has nurtured the members and shaped both their music and their lives. As adults they've managed careers, college, relationships and friendships and now find themselves, oddly enough, in a familiar place.

"There's an emotional impact that Infind had on us that we brought into this band," Arcaro says. "I never thought it would snowball into this level of seriousness, but it did." - Staten Island Live


Discography

Audiometry Live EP -2011
Audiometry - 5 track EP, coming November 2012

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Bio

Audiometry's roots go back to the '90s Staten Island Hardcore scene. Childhood friends Enrico Arcaro (guitar), Rob Marinelli (bass), and James Federico (drums), cut their teeth in the pre-Emo Hardcore band Infind, a band whose intensity and strong emotive patina laid the foundation for Audiometry's sound. After Infind broke up, the three original band members pursued several endeavors, including Federico's stint with the rock group Seymour Glass, Marinelli continuing to play in legendary Staten Island hardcore bands Murdock and Serpico, and Arcaro performing as a sequencer-wielding solo electronic rock artist.

At Enrico's 30th birthday party, Rob and Enrico discussed how much they missed Infind, and decided to reform the group. Shortly thereafter, their singer left the band. The other band members' musical experiences convinced them to become an exclusively instrumental band, and they renamed Infind, Audiometry. Wanting to enrich their sound, they recruited Arcaro's friend from music school, keyboardist Joe Grado. The quartet played throughout New York City, bringing audiences a new sound that mixed influences including Hardcore, Emo, Metal, and Classical. When Grado left the band, Andrew Struck-Marcell joined the group, and added his trained classical composition chops to the creation of Audiometry's newer songs. Having just recorded an EP, Audiometry plans to soon record a full album. Having received much praise for a show in which they accompanied the classic film Metropolis, Audiometry also plans to play more shows with film in the future.