Revolving Doors

Another band with ties to both Madison and Milwaukee will also be celebrating the release of a self-titled album this Saturday: Revolving Doors, who headline a 9 p.m. show at Mad Planet. This instrumental ambient rock trio has posted a couple of tightly composed tracks from the disc on their Myspace site, myspace.com/revolvingdoors, and it's worth putting up with the requisite "unexpected errors" to hear them. "The Sound of Forgetting" is a funeral soundscape in the spirit of Radiohead's post-Kid A efforts until it climaxes with an amp-rattling crescendo, while "My New Favorite Abacus" is a looser cut indebted to Tortoise's glitchy jazz and Explosions in the Sky's most tranquil moments. - Sheperd Express

After the surf craze faded, instrumental rock bands virtually disappeared. At least until recently when bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tristeza and Dub Trio brought lyric-less music back to the (indie) mainstream.

So, when a Milwaukee band like Revolving Doors releases a CD like its new self-titled one, no one is surpised to not hear singing. Well, maybe some people are.

""We get alot of 'why don't you guys have a singer' or 'can I be your singer?' or 'I know this guy, he'd be a great singer' at shows," says keyboard player Robert Berry. "I guess its understandable since, especially these days, the lead singer is such a focal point of almost every popular band that some people just don't know what to do or think or concentrate on when there are three guys on stage and no one is singing. We're aware that not having vocals will automatically turn some people off, but at the same time, we all believe that music, if it's good enough, is more than capable of standing on its own without lyrics."

While you won't hear vocals, Revolving Doors' music speaks for itself and its keyword is variety.

"Turquoise Stopwatch" is energetic riff-based rock. "Monolith" and "The Sound of Forgetting" are more pensive, with an artier vibe. "Time Will Tell" and "Is That It?" are chiming ballads. "My New Favorite Abacus" is mixes a understated dance-y beat with ringing guitars and a melancholy spirit.

"We write as a group," says Berry. "Most songs evolve out of a guitar riff or chord progression and go from there. "We all share the same goal of making exciting music thats a little outside the box, but still listenable and approachable."

The interesting song titles, he says, are found fragments.

"Most songs evolve out of a guitar riff or chord progression and go from there. Song titles are a collection of TV references, descriptive words or phrases that we think kind of describe the music, or just things that we think sound cool."

The songs are just that. While some might spend a while waiting for the singing to kick in, these songs aren't "missing" anything. The have engaging dynamics, memorable melody lines and solid arrangements. Berry likes that instrumentals have a mystery not found in songs with words.

"When you hear a Ryan Adams song, or a Beatles song, or a Wilco song, as great as those songs are, their lyrics give you a pretty good idea of what the writer was thinking when he wrote it and in turn make you feel a certain way," he says. "With instrumental music, I feel like it's up to the listener as to how the song makes them feel. I like giving people that freedom. I think that, if people give it a chance, they'll see that its OK to listen to and enjoy a song without lyrics."

Revolving Doors has been together for about a year and a half, Berry says, adding that all three members -- Berry, guitarist Scott Cannaday and drummer Brad Hawes -- are in other bands.

"Brad and Scott were playing as a duo for a little while, then I came along, after they answered my online ad, which pretty much exactly described the kind of music that they were thinking about making, and we became the three-piece that we are now. We've been polishing and re-working the songs that make up the disc for about a year.

"We've all been in numerous bands before, most recently Brad and Scott were in local band The Mahp, I'm currently in Moonshine Sway, and Brad and Scott are currently in a band called The Projection People. (But) this band is what we're most focused on, and the music that we're currently making most fits with what we all want to be doing."

Revolving Doors officially launches its CD Saturday, Sept. 1 at 9 p.m. at The Mad Planet with The Wildbirds and Marcella. After that, Berry says, the band hopes to take its music on the road.

"We do plan on doing some traveling. We're looking to hook up with some bands from Chicago, Minneapolis, and other Midwest cities to share some shows." - Onmilwaukee.com

Sliding on a frozen lake of ambient sounds, Revolving Doors make instrumentals that could be marketed as New Age music for Indie Rock kids. And I mean that in the best possible sense. The three-piece released its debut album to positive notice this past summer. Fact is, Revolving Doors end up sounding like no one else with their hypnotic swirl of samples, electronics, keys, hovering, fluid guitars and kinetic rhythms. - City Beat (Cincinnati, OH)

Sliding on a frozen lake of ambient sounds, Revolving Doors make instrumentals that could be marketed as New Age music for Indie Rock kids. And I mean that in the best possible sense. The three-piece released its debut album to positive notice this past summer. Fact is, Revolving Doors end up sounding like no one else with their hypnotic swirl of samples, electronics, keys, hovering, fluid guitars and kinetic rhythms. - City Beat (Cincinnati, OH)