QUILT

You're wandering deep into some catacombs, ossuaries lined with brightly painted skulls, following some faint noise. You don't know how you got there, but you just have to know what those sounds are and what or who is making them. The deeper you go, the darker it gets, but the louder and more entrancing the chanting and noises become. Just when you think you're hopelessly lost, a light cracks in from some corner revealing the source: tacos.

Listening to Quilt can be like being swept off into a daydream adventure, and they've honed the art quite well with their latest four track 7" EP Agents of Play. Guitars wail back at one another, communicating in some language that you don't know, but understand completely. All three members' voices arise in unison, channeling monks that chant in monasteries far off in the mountains. The first track starts with someone counting off and it's a nice reminder that recording was done completely by the band and label buddies, in the basement of the Butcher Shoppe in Allston.

The Jamaica Plainers are from a few other well-known acts in the area. Shane Butler is from The Good Party, Anna Rochinski's self-titled music is released through the Whitehaus Family Record, and Taylor McVay is also of The Good Party and has played with other locals like MANNERS. The record comes with a zine-style photocopy collage with lyrics and other interesting streams of consciousness, such as the clever secret acronyms such as "Qdoba Understands, I Love Tacos" and "Quietly Unappreciating Inappropriate Lover's Touch."

Quilt's first vinyl release is a nice little journey through the ether. (Breakfast of Champs) - Performer Magazine

Quilt: A trio of two girls and a guy who mix 70’s psychedelia and modern experimentalism, Quilt plays most of their shows in Allston and Jamaica Plain hideaways. Liz Pelly, a music director at WTBU explains, “Their eerie layered girl singer harmonies and lo-fi drones are what intrigued when I first heard Quilt.” - Boston University Quad Magazine

Quilt embodies the antique charm of its namesake and as such has me recalling all sorts of memories that may or may not be real. The song “Commodity Spectre” from its March Appropriation release feels like a lucid stroll through a dream led by faint apparitions from times past (again with the weird memories). But maybe that vagueness of origin is what lends “Commodity Spectre” such a feel of overwhelming authenticity. A stomping baritone lead opens the song, speckled by a hazy guitar line that shimmers and falters, fades to oblivion and bounces back like fireflies in a field. Of the three voices that meander the song, none take a concrete lead, preferring instead to remain as reflections of one another. And the refrain – a loose expansion of the verse – is the affirmation of a fleeting joy, a quick dip into concrete form before a return to the psych void. Dig in and veg out, this one’s a bit of a trip.

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/archive/2010/03/16/phx-sxsw-preview-quilt-commodity-spectre.aspx#ixzz14KshLCXE - The Boston Phoenix

Three part harmonies, drunken melodies, stuff that reminds me of Beta Band and Califone, mixed with the sugary stuff from Montreal circa early 00s. Or just endless tracks of America stretched out on reverb and sticky, catchy hooks.

A quick trip to their Myspace yields a bunch of country-tinged numbers like "All My Friends Are Ghosts" and "Disco Music For Trees" (that's what you get when you invite a banjo for dinner) but the two downloads supplied by dear friend Richard over at Rose Quartz (and now down below, here) lose the blues for some upbeat riffage. - Impose Magazine

3. Quilt
This Allston psychedelic trio adds layers of quirky darkness over folk-fed whimsy, then turns all punk and drone-rock. Also, the band releases its material on cassette. - The Boston Herald

When I ask Jamaica Plain trio Quilt to describe their dream bill, we're forced to upgrade it into a festival. Suddenly, we've got the Urinals alongside Can, Crystal Stilts backing Nick Drake, the Gun Club abutting Soft Machine, the Vibracathedral Orchestra jamming with the Velvet Underground.

Point being, Quilt are an extraordinarily absorbent band, sucking in influences with the indiscriminate thirst of an old rug whose design is indistinguishable from its stains. Drummer and singer Taylor McVay met Quilt's two other multi-instrumental vocalists, Anna Rochinski and Shane Butler, during their time at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts — another forum where they found themselves deluged by disparate influences and expressions, from installation to performance and video.

Four clams will get you a copy of their debut cassette, Yeoman Man Man, a smoky, spooky entree into their work. "Thee Elephants Tusk" takes a stretch of twangy vintage psych and frees its ghosts — it's a fuzzed-out folk incantation with more nervous energy than it (or the cassette) can properly hold. Next month, they're preparing to release a new seven-inch on Breakfast of Champs Records.

As varied and as numerous as the members' individual reference points are, a sticking point in the process is that all three share in the songs — which typically emerge after hours of unhinged jamming and just as much judicious pruning. The result is luminous, unfiltered, haunting psych-folk that teeters among three dangerously creative minds. Call it threedom rock. - The Boston Phoenix

Posts on a social networking website cheekily suggest that the name of the band Quilt could be an acronym for “Quick Unintentional Instances Loving Tacos,’’ “Questions Unresolved in Linguistic Theory,’’ and a few other phrases. But as Quilt’s dazzling, theremin-enhanced set last Sunday at Great Scott made clear, the moniker actually conveys what their music sounds like: a cross-stitched pattern of brightly colored musical materials, some space-rock smooth, some indie-pop rough, others slippery with reverb.
“We love lots of reverb!’’ singer-guitarist Shane Butler gleefully warned the sound man as the band plugged in at the Allston club.
All of which makes Quilt’s next appearance, at tomorrow’s Boston Underground Summit II, a perfect match, according to Butler and his Quilt comrades, singer-guitarist Anna Rochinski and singer-drummer Taylor McVay. The all-ages show — a round-robin-style marathon featuring 10 local bands swapping songs for four or five consecutive hours — will be held at the Temple, a new performance space and soon-to-be recording studio that sits above City Feed and Supply in Jamaica Plain.
“I like seeing a band where you go, What the. . .!?’’ says Butler, who has been independently booking shows around the city for three years. “Like, you heard this folk song, and then it built up into noise, and then it built up into rock. We have a pretty eclectic sound and don’t stick to just one element. So to have a round-robin format, where you have that drastic switch [between bands], will make everything even more interesting.’’

The first Boston Underground Summit, held last fall at the Outside the Lines studio in Medford, was organized by Dan Shea, a promoter who books shows and releases records under his Bodies of Water Arts and Crafts imprint. Shea says he’s happy to be cohosting the second installment (this time with singer-bassist Sam Potrykus) in a new venue closer to home. The round-robin approach worked well the first time, Shea recalls, mostly because no one was quite sure what to expect.

“It’s a collaboration with everything up in the air,’’ says Shea, whose own band, the Needy Visions, performed at the first summit. “Some of these bands know each other, and some are completely foreign to each other. This kind of situation makes a show more than a show. It makes it an event. That’s part of the magic of the thing.’’

Potrykus — whose trio, Lord Jeff, will perform tomorrow — recalled the thrill of playing last fall’s first installment. “The show was over before you knew it,’’ says Potrykus, whose band also has a penchant for the unexpected, as apt to cover a Townes Van Zandt ballad as to explore an open-ended jam. “It’s fun and exciting to hear one song by a different band, one after another, as opposed to a whole set. There’s a sound, and at first you don’t know where it’s coming from. It’s really exciting, like a physical thing; you’re discovering these bands as they appear in different portions of the room. It shakes you up.’’

Quilt’s Rochinski loves sharply shifting dynamics. She hopes tomorrow’s locals-heavy lineup, which features such disparate acts as high-octane garage-rockers Viva Viva and hip-hop artist Theory Engine, will give both the bands and the audience an opportunity to huddle around a communal campfire made of humming amplifiers and inspiring ideas.

“Bringing all these bands together means they can speak to each other,’’ Rochinski says. “It’s like a conversation, a Socratic dialogue.’’

Her bandmate McVay laughs at that heady assessment, and puts it a tad differently. “I think it’s useful to people of our generation who all grew up watching too much Nickelodeon,’’ McVay says. “We all have short attention spans.’’ - The Boston Globe