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With Planet Rye Co on stage, nothing is held sacred. A studio project kept under wraps by pop-favorites The Alice Rose since 2001, the members of Planet Rye Co have experimented with every sound they can get their hands on, knitting a covert factory of paranormal psychedelic hits along the way. The band’s mood can morph from beautifully strange to uninhibitedly absurd from one song to the next, always seamlessly, and always without warning. Their public debut will feature a cast of characters ready and able to play the first instrument they grab while unveiling plenty of new theatrical surprises. - Live Music Capitol Magazine
The lyrical, smooth-singing Purkeypile leads Austin's sharpest power pop band with keen melodies. - U.S.A. Today
Discography
STRANGE SOUNDS (2001)
GARDENING (2003)
THE DANGLEFERN CHIMNEY (2005)
2005-2006 Singles Collection (2006)
HOUSE ON 3-D HILL (2007)
2007-2008 Singles Collection (2008)
SPOOKY TAPES Vol. 1 (2008)
SPOOKY TAPES Vol. 2 (2009)
A collection of the tracks from aforementioned albums are uploaded as streaming audio on Last FM, and the boys have been interviewed and played on stations like NPR and KUT.
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Bio
With Planet Rye Co on stage, nothing is held sacred. THE ENTIRE CAST SWITCHES INSTRUMENTS AT LEAST 4 TIMES DURING EVERY SHOW, while unveiling comedic & theatrical surprises between songs. All members experiment with every sound they can get their hands on. Most live songs also include a 4-part vocal harmony at some point, as well as a liquid light show and audience experiments.
Planet Rye Co's music has been described as "Psycho-delia" by some and "intoxicatingly honest" by others.
Both are correct.
The sounds speak for themselves, igniting a magical camaraderie among band members both on the stage and in the studio. The stage show, like the record, changes instrumental line-up between the 4 main "cast members," inevitably changing the mood from beautifully strange to uninhibitedly absurd sometimes within a matter of 3 minutes, all the while sounding nothing but groovy.
The project began in the Summer of 2001 and was mostly contained to the studio, until Oct. 10, 2009, when the band debuted in its first live show at the Art Outside 2009 Festival.
"The original purpose for Planet Rye Co was to be able to express this weird thing inside me more than I had been able to before," says founder and multi-instrumentalist, JoDee Purkeypile. In 2002, multi-instrumentalists Sean Crooks and Chris Sensat joined in the experiment. Later, another friend and multi-instrumentalist Brendan Rogers was ritualistically ushered into the ever-expanding band.
Purkeypile adds: "It's been like a rite of passage for all of us, me included. You are initiated in based on how far out of your comfort zone you can travel and allow yourself to be sacrificed to the spirit with us. By approaching a lot of our stuff as experiments in music and human relationships, we've discovered a nerve that perhaps only as musicians we share, but likely that most of society possesses. Fear, happiness, misery, joy; all of them are in the music we make. Nothing is sacred to us. There are two sides to every trip; good, and bad. That doesn't just mean hallucinations. 'Psychedelic' music can be anything, it can sound like anything. It's just a label to categorize our music. Lyrically, our songs can go anywhere. Musically, they can sound however we want. Most of this new-wave of 'psychedelic' bands today don't focus on anything like that. There's a comfort level between the band and its audience, even between the musicians and the music they're creating, that Planet Rye Co doesn't believe in. We write about life or death, good or band things, whatever. It's never mattered to us. That has to do with the fact that psychedelia started here in Austin, and being Texans, our environment is in the music we write."
A collection of some of the band's more interesting recordings are currently being remastered for a Winter 2009 release on Emerald Wood Records, but they are far from living in their own weird past. The mysterious Planet Rye Co are due to begin work on a new record, their 18th collection of songs, this Fall.
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