Black Statues
Gig Seeker Pro

Black Statues

| SELF

| SELF
Band Rock Pop

Calendar

Music

Press


This band has no press

Discography

Debut album "Gloss Cannon" available on iTunes

Photos

Bio

Black Statues was formed by Maude Quill and Edward Raison in late 2010 in New York City, as a songwriting duo, with plans to develop backing tracks for a 2-person stage show along the lines of Eurythmics, Chrisma, and Timbuk 3. Maude had moved to NYC from the wilds of rural Washington State about 5 years previously, and had been singing for various bands including Coma Ghost while working as an executive assistant. Edward had moved to NYC from way south of the Mason-Dixon line in 2003, and had played with death-rockers Funeral Crashers for many of the preceding years, while working as a computer programmer and a ringtone technician. After writing and recording demos for all the songs on what would become their debut album "Gloss Cannon," they scrapped the duo idea and spent the next year putting a band together.

After many auditions and several false starts, first on board was Steven Vallone, a mad keyboard scientist who was juggling gigs as an accordion player in a western swing band and as a science and math tutor and grad student. The trio took the songs apart and reconstructed them with the added sophistication and style-morphing ingenuity Steven brought in.
Finding the right drummer proved to be very difficult, so the decision was made to hire a pro. Enter Joe Izzo, a classically-trained orchestral percussionist, also well-schooled in jazz, who made most of his rent playing classic rock cover band gigs on Long Island and in Connecticut roadhouses.

The last piece of the puzzle arrived in the form of Dr. Quincy Lehr, a Columbia PhD in History and a published poet, who had played in high school punk bands with Edward's brother in Oklahoma long ago. While mainly a guitar player, Quincy was intrigued by the idea of playing bass and began laying down some ham-fisted, swaggering, buzzsaw bass lines. The group booked a show at Arlene's Grocery in the East Village, and relentlessly tightened up the set for the next six months. The band played gigs at many NYC venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan, including Lit Lounge, Trash Bar, Fontana's, Xpo929, The Gutter Bar, etc. Edward was in the process of researching studios for cutting the record when he attended a performance at Midtown's famous Iridium jazz club with Earl Slick and Lee Rocker sitting in with Les Paul's backing band. A long-time fan of Mr. Slick's work with David Bowie, John Lennon, and Phantom, Rocker, and Slick, he got the idea in his head that the album needed the Earl Slick touch. Arranging such a thing turned out to require only an email to Earl's manager with a link to a video of the debut gig at Arlene's, asking if Earl would be interested in producing the album.

Soon the band and Mr. Slick were gathered at Paul Antonell's Clubhouse Studio in Rhinebeck, NY, for a grueling, marathon tracking session, which for financial reasons was about 2 days shorter than everyone would have liked. After dumping the tapes into Pro Tools, Edward took the hard drive to his home studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and proceeded to go completely insane for several months. As a freelance computer programmer, he was free to not leave the house until all the editing and overdubs were finished. Then, after a final stem mixdown to tape back at Clubhouse and mastering job by Randy Merrill at Masterdisk Mastering Studio, the album was in the can. NYC painter Ron Leach was approached to paint the cover, and he came up with an amazing visual interpretation of the music.

This brings us up-to-date with the Black Statues. Next up, foisting their strange, baroque, genre-bending brand of post-rock upon the world-at-large.