Luz Atomica

LUZ ATOMICA/THE STORMALONGS @ CLINTON'S, MARCH 19TH:

Wednesday nite is alright for precisely nothing, and with the concert area at Clinton's being in the bar's back room, it doesn't have people coming in off the street. While the attendance on the evening was rather mediocre, the music was anything but.

THE STORMALONGS: Indie rock with a warm, fuzzy guitar tone. They played a mix of slow and fast songs, but even at their fastest, they didn't seem particularily aggressive, mainly because their singer sounded a lot like the guy from 54 40.

LUZ ATOMICA: With this being their second-last show, Luz Atomica put on a solid seven-song set, with a crowd-encouraged encore. The mid-paced rockers outnumbered the slow songs this evening, with Steal Baby, One-Eyed Jack and the funky In My Head all included in the set list. The band did slow things down with Storms Over Neptune, before coming back to play one more. The Clinton's crowd wasn't as electric as the one at the CD release party, but hey, when has a Clinton's crowd ever been really riled up?

Be sure to catch Luz Atomica's last ever show at the Cameron House on April 12th! - Too High To Get It Right

http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/localplayer-story.cfm?content=161539

León

Home Games: León and his band Luz Atomica are releasing their debut album at the Cameron House (408 Queen West) tonight (Thursday, January 31).

Nickname: Leno and Cowboy

Position: Guitar and vocals

Teammates: Philip (guitar), Eyal (drums), Kevin (bass)

Rookie Year: Started playing in Chile when he was 14. His first band played in front of pretty aggressive crowds who were known to show their appreciation by moshing and spitting on the musicians.

League: Luz Atomica sound like a herd of elephants storming through the desert on their way to lie down on a bed of flowers.

Special Talents: Learning to skate, with hopes of making it to the shinny big leagues one day.
- NOW Magazine

http://www.spillmagazine.com/cd_reviews3.html

LUZ ATOMICA - LUZ ATOMICA
CD Review
By Andre Skinner

LUZ ATOMICA CD RELEASE:
With Daddy Ashes
January 31 2008 at the Cameron House (408 Queen St. W. Toronto, Ontario)
$5 at the Door
www.myspace.com/luzatomica

From the depths of a sound crafted in the mid to late 60's psychedelic era emerges one of the coolest sounding trip rock bands out of Toronto. They are Luz Atomica. After paying their dues for over 2 years on the Toronto music scene, Luz Atomica have stood the cut throat test of staying relevant and important and have finally release their debut self titled album. An interesting combo of Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd and Danzig come to mind when listening to this disc, Luz Atomica definitely takes you on a journey with sonic landscapes from bluesy rockers like One eyed Jack and Steal Baby! to tripped out ballads like Elastic Time and Perfect Glow. This is a perfect driving album for anyone embarking on a long windy road trip.

One might wonder, what the hell these guys are striving for in a market that seems only interested in hip-hop, bubblegum pop punk and Nickleback, well let me tell you that it's certainly like a breath of fresh air when you hear something so pure and uninterrupted. Luz Atomica love what they do and it shows all over this album, they are not a band of try hards attempting to fit into any trendy scene they're just doing what they love, and as a result they now have an amazing debut CD to their name which I am sure will be turning some heads in the near future.

Check them out at: www.myspace.com/luzatomica - The Spill Magazine (forthcoming)

LUZ ATOMICA - SELF TITLED
by Greg Harris

Until I saw them at the Cameron House on Thursday, my only contact with Luz Atomica came through their Myspace page, and sure enough, their Myspace address is printed right on their debut CD. But this isn’t a rant about Myspace, it’s a rock review, so I must digress.

The band’s self titled album opens with a bluesy rocker in One-Eyed Jack, with a guitar tone that’s been transported directly from the early 70’s. The track’s 5 minutes long, and the vocals don’t kick in for nearly two minutes, when vocalist León sneers “I got my gun, and my dagger too…” This song could definitely be a radio single—back in 1973. But even today, it’s a great piece of fuzzy retro-rock that could possibly become a live sing-along.

Second track Desert Sun perfectly encompasses the band’s slower side. The album booklet has what looks like a speaker cone covered in sand on it, and the back cover shows the band sitting on a large, red, rocky surface, showing their appreciation for the desert. This song is slow and trippy, with plenty of reverb, and the chorus is very psychedelic, sounding like The Beatles on acid. (And no, I’m not talking about Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da…) Toronto is far from the desert, with its humid summer heat, but musically speaking, this tune screams Arizona or Southern Cal.

On third track New World Orbit, the band recreates the feeling of floating in space within the first minute, before the anguished vocals and hard-hitting drums come in. The riff in the bridge is fucking fantastic, and is punctuated by Eyal’s aggressive drumming, before León tells us that it’s only, it’s only part of the new world orbit.

Steal Baby is another straight-ahead rocker like One-Eyed Jack, where León complains that he “ain’t got no money in my pocket, no no no!” The guitar tone this band has is perfect for their style of music, and, like I said before, they woulda been all over classic rock radio if they came around 40 years ago. This is no Wolfmother radio gaga, kiddies. These guys are true retro rock revivalists…

…and also sons of the desert, as they deftly alternate between the faster and slower material without jarring the listener’s senses. At 6 minutes and 41 seconds long, Elastic Time is another great example of the latter, as is River Bed, which kicks off Side 2 of our proverbial LP.

Seventh track In My Head is a bit of a curveball, as it sounds more like The Clash gone reggae than, say, Grand Funk Railroad. This song’s got a prominent funky bass line, which seems to lead, rather than follow, the clean-sounding guitars. While it isn’t my favourite song on the album, I do appreciate Kevin’s bass playing on In My Head, being of the four-stringed persuasion myself. Of course, they bring back the fuzz with the next song, Nation of Procrastination, another one of those coulda-bin-classics, which has a brief bass solo of its own near the end.

The album ends on a slower note with Perfect Glow and the eight-minute, 42-second Storms Over Neptune. The album’s closer reminds me of classic Monster Magnet albums like Superjudge or Dopes to Infinity, which would always end with a long, spacey number with lyrics about space. Storms Over Neptune fits that bill perfectly.

Overall, Luz Atomica’s self titled debut is 56 minutes of stonery goodness. There are a couple songs on Side B (the track listing is split into two columns, which is where I’m getting the sides from) that I might not put on my non-existent iPod, but overall, it was well worth the eight bucks I spent, and should occupy a spot in my CD changer for the next couple weeks, at least.

http://www.toohightogetitright.com/reviews/albums/luzatomica.html - Too High To Get It Right

LUZ ATOMICA/DADDY ASHES @ CAMERON HOUSE, JANUARY 31ST

By Greg Harris

You know, for the longest time, I hated Myspace. I thought that the idea of having cyber-friends was stupid, and ranking your friends seemed like something you'd do back in kindergarten. But I've been warming up to Myspace lately, and that's because I never woulda discovered great bands like Luz Atomica without it. I had never met the guys before, but they put me on the guest list for their CD release party when I offered to write a review. So, here it goes:

DADDY ASHES: For an opening act, they weren't bad at all. A five-piece band that occasionally used keyboards and Radio Canada in their set, playing mellow rock with the occasional heavy chorus. At the midway point, they had their More Than Words moment, where they busted out the accoustic guitar, and their whitewashed singer put away the mic as the rest of the band silently swayed to the music. The rhythm section weren't holding up lighters, though, so they probably won't be hearing from Extreme's lawyers any time soon. They followed that one up with a grungy number that was their best of the nite, and ended things with a slow song that had a couple doomy riffs in it.

LUZ ATOMICA: No doubt about it; this was their CD release party, and it was their nite. It might have been freezing outside, but Luz Atomica were keeping the spirit of the desert alive inside the Cameron House. With their faster stuff sounding like choice cut Fu Manchu and their slower moments reminiscent of desert kings Kyuss or some long lost 1960's psych band, these guys won me over with their trippy, fuzzy stoner rock. Perhaps it's best said en español: ¡Luz Atomica fue muy impresionante!

http://www.toohightogetitright.com/reviews/concerts/jan31.html - Too High To Get It Right