Ether Switch

What brings me such confidence in the sophmore Ether Switch album, now in its final stages of production, is that finally, finally, I have a CD in my hands that actually reflects what Ed and I have been aspiring to create ever since we started collaborating back in 2001. 11 songs of unadulterated DIY alt-rock without any of the condescension or self-consciousness of bands in our vein--that is, if we fit in any particular vein, or capillary for that matter.

If you've ever written and recorded an album, you'd know it's hard. Good art is not natural. You can't expect it to be. That's why one has to consistently work at it for so long a time. One has to build up experience, good and bad. I started playing music and working with Ed when I was 12. He was 22 at the time, and I guess you could say he was learning me the ropes. We've been doing it for a little less than 6 years now: just writing music, trying to get it out there. I still have my early post-grunge work, on cassette (Ed has been working off a Tascam Portastudio 8-track since he was my age, and whatever library I have of my practically pre-pubescent work is dwarfed by the shelves of demos he's been producing since he was God-knows-how-young), which we made back before I was even in high school. Of course--it's evolved since then. We've started several bands. Aquarius Chain, predecessor to Ether Switch, played a couple of shows on the Island at the regular places (Downtown, V.P. South), to little success, but, I was shocked on several occaisions to find people to whom I had no affilation burning mix CDs which included a few of our home recorded tracks. Something, apparently, was working out, although the band itself did not.

After our guitarist left us, we decided to not let that get in the way of our work, and the next scheduled practice date was the official birthday of Ether Switch. I switched over from bass to guitar (my first love, although I'm one to get funky with the 4-string on occaision) and Ed kept on banging on his skins, being the super-talented drummer he is. To fill in for rhythm, we bought a sampler and synth for bass, and dubbed it Pele (programmable electronic low end--cheesy, no?) Within 3 months, we wrote and self-produced 100 shrinkwrapped copies of our debut self-titled CD. People responded well, although I was quick to let go of it get back to writing. I wasn't quite satisfied. Listening to it wasn't satiating for me, so we headed back to the drawing board. We wrote new tunes, played some shows, including a brief tour of local Jewish Community Centers and a cool stint at a Borders Books in Westbury--that was a particularly nice show, an "Evening with Ether Switch" of sorts. The last few months have been spent in tireless investment of our energies in our latest work "Elegy." This would be no rush job, I told myself, and it wasn't. Everything was tracked meticulously, and then tracked again for good measure. And it paid off. I'm hoping to get it out by late September. To note, although everything is homemade, including the production, the recording, the artwork, we assure you, with the utmost credibility (we've done crappy CD-Rs and print-out flyers, as well as the aforementioned 8-track tape demos--we know how to distinguish between releases that are lazily thrown together, commonly dubbed lo-fi to compensate, and a work that is actually well-constructed and thought-out despite its budget) it does not sound or look like it came straight from the basement. I have no apprehensions, however, in admitting that Ether Switch, in fact, comes straight from the basement.

So we're ready to promote, play some shows, get ourselves out there. Years in the making, Ether Switch is not some raggedy pair of novices. Ether Switch doesn't have to wear dress shirts and sport mod haircuts to pretend that we're good. Ether Switch is real, "the realest thing since 9/11," although perhaps a bit less devastating to the American psyche. Only a bit.
--Doug Bleek

(And how do we sound, you ask? I don't know if it helps, but the best comparison I can give is Nirvana, if Cobain were a composite of himself, Paul Banks, and Brian Molko, and aspired to play like John Frusciante. Oh yeah, and with Tommy Lee on drums.)