BM LINX

The members of BM LINX clearly do not wish to tie themselves down and label themselves as a genre band. Their classic rock vocals and feel good vibe are proof of this. If I had to describe their sound, I would say it’s kind of like the Rolling Stones catapulted into the electronica age – driving beats and guitar riffs peppered with synthesizers, buzzing basslines, and the occasional programmed drum loop.

Of course everyone needs a name for something once it’s even slightly distinguished itself, and so the band’s style was dubbed electro-rock. But the sound that boosted BM LINX to underground stardom and turned the head of UK super producer Alan Moulder is one that these three New York boys are constantly trying to squirm away from. There are portions of the album that take on a bluesy, down-home type feel, and then there are portions where they delve off into alternative 90s melancholia. The fascinating thing is that it seems like a natural progression – an exploration of influences tied together by electronic undertones. A post-modern stew, Black Entertainment plays like an alternation between head-banging rock and moody electronic meditations. Alan Moulder’s task of mixing such an ambitious project made up of theoretically clashing sounds was a thankless one. He cannot get enough credit for massaging BM LINX’s schizophrenic style into something cohesive and complete. This makes for an enjoyable listen. - URB

This is a first for tourdates. What you’re reading was actually intended to be a gig review. It was going to be an album review also. But then we saw BM Linx live.

A bit of background first: The second album by the New York trio dropped on our doormat a couple of months ago. Nobody knew what to make of it, but everybody loved it. The disco-revivalist element in the office saw the band as Daft Punk or Underworld for the indie guitar generation. Those of us on the rockier side of the generic divide heard a fine hard rock band with some sophisticated electronic bells and whistles attached. What everyone could agree on was that all eleven songs on Black Entertainment were gorgeously crafted and shot-through with irresistible lines of melody.

Still, when it was announced that the band would be playing a showcase gig [pictured] at the Monto Water Rats this month, it was hard to guess whether we would be seeing Orbital or Led Zeppelin.

We saw Led Zeppelin.

My God, they rock hard, do the Linx on stage. Those luxuriantly textured album tracks are stripped back to their rocky core and turned all the way up to eleven without sacrificing a single note of Tony Diodore’s memorable tunes.

This is not the tuneful hard rock of, say, Journey - this is raw, hard-riffing underpinned by deep foundations of melody. It blew us away, to be frank. Which is why you’re reading this.

We caught guitarist, singer and songwriter Diodore as his band were due to play a final show at the Camden Barfly before returning home.

It had to be asked: why the disparity between the album and the live sound? “Yeah, we get that a lot,” says Diodore. “It wasn't something we planned, it just happened.

“The songs, for the most part, are written in my apartment in New York, in a little studio I have there. And then when they get brought out on the road they end up getting heavier, more raw, more rock ‘n’ roll. It’s just been part of a natural progression, but it does surprise some people. They come expecting something that’s mostly electronic but what they get is a rock band. I mean, I hope it’s different in a good way, but I can understand why people find it disconcerting.”
It’s a credit to the quality of Diodore’s songwriting, of course, that his music is able to translate in the way it does, but why does it translate, exactly?

“I think it’s because the music is written kind of piecemeal,” he says “I write a bit, then we take it into the studio. I do all the vocals in my apartment - just to save money because real studios are so terribly expensive - but when we get out into a live environment, which is so different to how we record, it just naturally becomes hard rock.

“I think there are places on the album that sound the way we do live: ‘The Outlaw Jimmy Rose’, for example, that’s us live, right there, and ‘Red House Been Empty’ is pretty close too. But anything from our first album sounds very different live.”

That first album is quite a different animal to Black Entertainment. How does Diodore characterise his development as a songwriter and performer?

“The first record is very New Wave, totally electronic,” he explains. “I wrote it as a kind of exercise when I’d just left one band and was feeling pretty disenfranchised and thought ‘to hell with it, I’ll just write a record’. We formed the band after that when I got together with John [bassist Jonathan Murray] and Griff [drummer Andrew Griffiths], so that although I can still write most of the stuff in my apartment, we’re able to bring in these live elements and, bit by bit, we’re moving towards a full-on Led Zeppelin style of recording.”

That might suggest that the natural way for BM Linx to develop would be to eradicate the electronics entirely. Is that the plan?

“No, that'll always be part of the sound, but I’d like to simplify it a bit. But I don’t know… there are so many cool things going on in music right now - there’s a band called Holy Fuck that are doing some really interesting stuff - and there are so many interesting directions to follow that I don’t know what’ll happen next time we record. But I would like to simplify because, y’know, I really like heavy stuff.”

The thoughtful and engaging Diodore is also an inventive lyricist, whose street-level musings bring to mind the spare, idiosyncratically American prose of Raymond Chandler. Or Raymond Carver, for that matter. Listen to the taut opening lines of ‘The Outlaw Jimmy Rose’: ‘Now I know this kid by the name of Jim Rose / Scrawny little punk get drunk break your nose / And he bought himself a gun one day after school / For them Indiana boys that’s just what you do.’

Great riffs, great tunes, great words. Am I gushing here? Better reintroduce an element of that traditional music hack cynicism here: tell me Tony, who the hell listens to this stuff?

“It’s a pretty broad audience, I guess. In New York we get a lot of hipster kids, but we were just in San Antonio where the audience was young but diverse, which is kind of what we want without having to dumb the material down.

“What I thought was cool was when we got a song on Ryan Seacrest’s show on E! News - they played our video about six times, so we got lots of people buying our song ‘Kids On Fire’. But when you log on to iTunes to buy it, it also tells you what other stuff they’ve been buying too, and it was, y’know, Britney Spears and Rihanna. Which we thought was hilarious, but also kinda awesome, because those kind of people aren’t typically exposed to this kind of music very often.”

Perfectly true, of course. But despite citing influences as diverse as Black Sabbath, Daft Punk and acoustic guitar virtuoso Leo Kottke it’s a fair bet that BM Linx’s very particular take on hard rock will be sitting on a lot more iPods in the near future. I bet they’ll be around a lot longer than Rihanna too.

BM Linx aren’t playing anywhere in London for the foreseeable future. Sorry about that - we promise to give you prior warning next time. In the meantime, their album Black Entertainment is out on Craze Factory. We recommend it. A lot. Or had you worked that out for yourselves? - London Tourdates Magazine

So much for preconceived notions. I didn't hold out much hope for the latest release from New York electro-rockers BM LINX. Nothing I have heard from or about the band led me to believe the record would be anything special. I'm happy to report that I couldn't be more wrong.
"Black Entertainment" is a wonderfully eclectic album by a band that's equally adept in multiple genres. There are thumping techno beats in songs such as "Valentine", but BM LINX expand their musical palette on standout tunes "The Outlaw Jimmy Rose" and the '90's-era alternative grunge of set closer "UO Acoustic". First single "Kids On Fire" is another keeper, as are "Red House Been Empty", "White Limousine" and "Defender".
In lesser hands, "Black Entertainment" would sound like a record made by a band that doesn't know what it wants to be. To their credit, BM LINX appear to know exactly what they're doing. And thank goodness for that.

- The Daily News