Shout Out Out Out Out

please see attached. - CMJ

CMJ weekly cover
Q Magazine
Billboard
various reviews - various

CMJ 2006, thecjm.ca:
"Shout Out Out Out Out: OH. MY. GOD. These guys put on one of the best shows I have ever seen. 2 drummers, 4 other dudes rotating between keyboards and bass(es), an old school drum machine, and a lead singer addicted to his vocorder. They were amazing, fun, energetic, and impossible to not dance to. It's as if Soul Sonic Force was reborn in Edmonton. I think the best way to describe them is to say that when Daft Punk said they were making an electronica rock record, it should have sounded like the Outs and not like the bland crap it ended up being. These boys kept me dancing until 2 in the a.m. I think I'm ready to crown them the new Rock'n'Rollah Ayatollah."

Vancouver Province, Edmonton Journal:
"Shout Out Out Out Out: This Edmonton sextet's ridiculously danceable no wave sound even had the Austin PD officer at the Alberta BBQ getting his groove on. Are they Canada's best unsigned act?"

CMW 2006, Chartattack.com:
Canadian Music Week report card score 97/100
“If all dance music was this good, everyone would be listening to dance music and nothing else. Ever.”

Exclaim! Magazine:
"Anyone who missed this Edmonton collective's set should kick themselves long and hard. The robotic-voiced, dual drum, multi-bass and keyboard-infused disco punk band absolutely killed. Imagine the post-punk electroclash thud of Trans Am and the '80s dance pop of Trans X rolled into one orgiastic ball of energy and you start to get the idea."

SEE Magazine:
"...you’d have to be a truly spiritless, puppy-kicking, monster to be unmoved by the joyful display that is Shout Out Out Out Out."

2005, Now Magazine:
"SHOUT OUT OUT OUT OUT - Edmonton six-piece crafts the illest, most danceable shit this side of James Murphy.... The wicked live party boasts two drummers, three basses, sloppy keyboards, robot vocals and three cowbells. Like Daft Punk playing at Tony Iommi's house." - Various 2005-2006

By Michael Lopez in CD Preview
Thursday, Mar. 5 2009 @ 7:17AM

It's just barely March and I already have a solid pick for my favorite album of the year. Animal Collective gave us Merriweather Post Pavilion and I fawned over it. It's a solid offering, scaling back the Baltimore act's weirdness to produce some very catchy tunes. But I got a tip a few weeks ago to check out Edmonton punk/electro group Shout Out Out Out Out. They are insanely unique and rather odd, employing four bass players, two drummers, and plenty of synthesizers. What comes forth is a funky, Canadian take on dance-punk. The band is known for its legendary live shows. But pay no mind to how they actually do it, because Shout Out Out Out Out's sound is bigger and funkier than anything I've heard all year. Reintegration Time, their second LP, is, hands down, my favorite album of 2009.

Canadian music can be a fickle beast, especially when it isn't out of Toronto or Montreal. The fact that Shout Out Out Out Out is from Edmonton makes their music all the more incredible, because Toronto or Montreal usually claim all the relevant Canadian talent (Arcade Fire, Chromeo, Fucked Up, Broken Social Scene, Metric, Stars). Whatever it is, the members of Shout Out Out Out Out can channel into their music from their chilly Edmo (as the kids call it) confines is okay by me. Their sound is a mix between eight-minute prog-rock freakout jams, aborted !!! songs and vocoder-heavy indie rock (yes, someone outside of hip-hop finally found a tolerable way to use the vocoder). Whatever it is got into these white dudes' heads, I'm buying it. They have got me to throw away my conventions when it comes to praising a band for making such enjoyable music. I am usually not one for a song over 5-6 minutes, especially if that song is instrumental. But Shout Out Out Out Out (I hate typing their name as much as you hate reading it) has other ideas for what convention should be. Their songs range from no shorter than 5 and a half minutes to over 10 minutes long - and I love every minute of it. Having two drummers is a gimmick usually reserved for a shitty industrial bands, but Shout Out Out Out Out rely on this dual percussion to give their electro-punk its bite and unique grooves.

The band asks both Cadence Weapon and label mates San Serac to add some guest vocals to two of the better songs on the album ("Coming Home" and "One Plus Two Plus Three"). Edmo rapper Cadence Weapon may very well have the best part of the album when he starts howling the line "We do acid!" on the track "Coming Home," infusing the album with a dark, powerful energy that the previous three tracks failed to achieve. The song is overflowing with dancefloor ready grooves, which no doubt adds to the band's already mythical, legendary stage reputation. The latter half of the album continues on this journey on into "One Plus Two Plus Three," featuring the vocals of one-man disco outfit San Serac. The track's thumping bass is met with Serac's aching, desperate vocals about simple arithmetic, segueing on into the trippy, funked out synths provided by head honcho Nik Kozub. The eighth song on Reintegration Time, "Remind Me in Dark Times," is by far the best song on the album. It combines everything Shout Out Out Out Out does so very well into one 9-minute absolute club banger. The drums keep the time while bass layers pour all over the song, setting up creepy, eerie vocoder lyrics - all while battling staccato synths and even more slaptastic, funky bass, thrown in for damn good measure.

What more can I say about this album that hasn't already been done? I may be too far in the forest to see the trees, but I have no qualms about regarding Shout Out Out Out Out's effort as my favorite of 2009 thus far. It is still early, but it will take a hell of an effort to knock these Edmo dudes from the top of my list. They embody everything I normally despise in a band (dumb name, more than one drummer, vocoder, white dudes playing eight-minute long instrumental songs) but they manage to absolutely murder the effort on their sophomore album.

Reintegration Time is out now in Canada on NRMLS WLCM. It will be released in the U.S. on May 5.

Check out the songs "Bad Choices," "Guilt Trips Sink Ships," "Coming Home" and "In The End It's Your Friends" all from Reintegration Time at the band's MySpace. - Phoenix New Times

New Sounds: Shout Out Out Out Out

Eden Munro / eden@vueweekly.com

If Shout Out Out Out Out’s first album, Not Saying/Just Saying, rose up out of Edmonton’s boom times, an ideal soundtrack for a generation surrounded by money and yet still swimming in debt, then the band’s new one, Reintegration Time, is a fitting followup, coming as it does when the freeflowing coin of the past few years has slowed to a trickle.
Right from the record’s opening there’s a sense that it’s going to take more work to make it through this album than it did the previous one. That’s very much because SO4 has avoided turning Not Saying/Just Saying into a blueprint for future efforts.

The opening track of Reintegration Time, “Run,” fades in from a distance, its beat propulsive but cloaked in a new darkness that unfolds slowly as a welcoming bass line enters, leading into some majestic chords that soar across the tune. “Run” builds slowly, its shifting dynamics and sounds almost imperceptible at times, until they’ve taken over and legs are moving and heads bobbing in time. By the time that first track has ended, it feels as though it’s miles removed from where it began, and yet still only the introduction to something more.

What that is, exactly, is a trip that covers a shadowy version of the electronica soundscape that SO4 is at home in, moving through eminently danceable tunes like the bouncing “Guilt Trips Sink Ships” and the trance-inducing “Bad Choices,” as well as “Coming Home,” a hypnotic and aggressive collaboration with Cadence Weapon and some crazy prog-dance-rock on “How Do I Maintain” parts one and two.

Part of what makes Reintegration Time work so well is the refusal to rush anything, giving each piece the space it needs to breathe, rising and subsiding as it moves along towards what seems an inevitable conclusion in the title track. But it’s really the final three songs, “Remind Me in Dark Times,” “In the End It’s Your Friends” and “Reintegration Time,” that provide a climax and resolution to the record.

After the smoothness of the SO4/San Serac collaboration “One Plus Two Plus Three,” “Remind Me in Dark Times” begins with a forceful bass, joined by a series of synths seemingly blown in on an apocalyptic wind that leaves plenty of space for the uneasy feeling that pervades the track until it becomes more forceful as the number of notes rise during the chorus, laying back again afterwards.

After nine minutes, “Remind Me in Dark Times” recedes back into the bass, clearing the path for “In the End It’s Your Friends,” its chorus of “In the end it’s your friends that’ll fuck you over” a warning on the surface but a veritable call to arms for the band and likeminded souls bubbling underneath.

Finally, there is “Reintegration Time”; like the album opener, the closing number is an instrumental structured as a crescendo, but when it finally gives away it devolves into a distant whisper, releasing into nothingness over nearly five minutes it’s the sort of closer that leaves one breathless, acting as the perfect culmination to a remarkably whole record. V

Shout Out Out Out Out
Reintegration Time
(Normals Welcome) - Vue Weekly

Shout Out Out Out Out's frontman Nik Kozub waves his left fingers around, showing off burn marks on two of them.

"I was probably lit on fire six times," he sighs.

He's talking about the Edmonton synth-bass-drum band's first and fiery video, "Coming Home," directed by Steven Hope.

With the help of a special effects crew -- and an Aliens-style flame-thrower -- the six Shout Outs and their gear erupt into a giant inferno as Edmonton rap hero Cadence Weapon watches.

But Kozub's blisters have nothing to do with the 17-hour shoot. The vocoderist was smeared with a layer of what he describes as cold toothpaste. Fire-retardant gunk.

"No one was hurt, no injuries," he says.

"I came home (from the shoot) and burnt my knuckles on the toaster oven. What a loser, hey? Like I need some special effects guy following me around whenever I want to make a pita pizza. It's pretty symbolic of my life."

Switching roles -- from one of Canada's electro visionaries to ordinary Joe -- isn't always easy for Kozub or the rest of his bandmates.

After four years and thousands of kilometres on the road with Shout Out Out Out Out -- including gigs at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore, Maryland, and stops at New York's hip CMJ Marathon -- he's still no closer to balancing his two lives. His attempts -- and subsequent frustration -- are two of the themes of the group's second album, Reintegration Time, available Tuesday on Normals Welcome Records.

"It's the same thing for anyone who has a five-day work week and your entire world is a cubicle," he says. "How do you figure out to be normal after that and get into a social situation and decompress?"

The first single, "Coming Home," featuring spacey squelches and Cadence Weapon's "We do acid!" cries, tries to answer those questions. So does "One Plus Two Plus Three," starring Maryland vocalist/electro artist San Serac.

Or maybe not. "I think he might be dissing us," laughs Kozub. "It's hard to tell what he's on about."

"Remind Me In Dark Times" is much more straightforward. Think of it as a sympathetic shoulder for the times you lose interest in the very things you thought you loved -- your job, your band, your city.

"It has a negative theme, but I think of it as a rallying point," says Jason Troock, one of Shout Out Out Out Out's four bassists/synth players. "It's an acknowledgment that things aren't going well but we have control over this ship, so let's get it going in the way we want it."

As it turns out, "Remind Me In Dark Times" is a perfect fit for the album. Roiling with sinister burbles, phaser-like fire, Kozub's roboticized vocals, and the dual percussion of Clint Frazier and Gravy, Reintegration Time feels more like a safety valve -- helping to release the pressures of life.

Yet it's not filled with the same abandon as the band's Juno-nominated debut. Not Saying/Just Saying, released in 2006, was punctuated with hip-shaking, four-string, party-time grooves -- provided by Will Zimmerman and Lyle Bell -- but their latest is much more atmospheric, largely propelled by analog synths, particularly Kozub's Minimoog Voyager synthesizer.

"What we're bringing to the table is not the popular status quo," he says. "There's a trend toward a lot of hard bangers and I think we're pretty unified in our decision not to go that route. We wanted to try to do something with substance. We wanted to make something that people like and that can last."

Canadian tour dates include:

March 5, Calgary

March 27, Victoria

March 28, Vancouver

April 21, Saskatoon

April 22, Winnipeg

April 25, Toronto

April 29, Ottawa

April 30, Montreal - Dose

“One of the best Canadian releases of the summer.” NNNN - 2006, Now Magazine, Toronto

When you work at a music magazine, dozens of CDs per day show up in the mail - even more in electronic form in your email inbox. It's work to sort through them all, and more work to listen carefully to each to decide who you should cover, so the occupational hazard is that the very thing that makes this your dream job - being around great music and the latest technology - can begin to burn you out.

That's why we're delighted when we come across something that reminds us why this is our dream job. Something like Reintegration Time, the sophomore album from Edmonton, Alberta synth rockers Shout Out Out Out Out. Soaring harmonies sung entirely by vocoder are the signature here, and though the sound of a vocoder, not to mention that of the underlying analog pads and basses, is "retro" by definition, the band scuplts that sound so creatively and musically that any possibility of cutesy-throwback vibe is nipped in the bud. In fact, they seem to avoid any of the sonic posturing that too often permeates dance, trance, techno, and electro. Instead, this is just plain good music, performed in an electronic medium.

I've said the following about records before, and it's always been because I really, really mean it: Rabid fans of the genre will have no problem getting behind Reintegration Time, but it's also the exact album you should run out and buy if you think you don't like techno.

Highly recommended - and of course, look for a full interview with the band in the June issue!
-Stephen Fortner, Executive Editor - Keyboard Magazine

“Shout Out Out Out seemed to genuinely come out of nowhere and become the talk of the town by Saturday night once their show at Lit was upon us. They were a pure, unadulterated dance party, from all accounts…for one week, they were on the lips of every scenehead and tastemaker worth their weight in technorati rank.” - CMJ 2006, gothamist. net

Shout Out Out Out Out - "Sometimes less is more, but when it comes to Edmonton, Canada's Shout Out Out Out Out, more is never enough! Folks from NYC to Austin couldn't get enough of this six-piece that includes two drummers rocking clear Vistalite kits, four bass players, a ridiculous assortment of synths, vocoders, cowbells and samplers, plus one drum pad that goes "BEW!" Kicking out "volatilelectricodebtrock" since 2004, Shout Out x4 has used geographical isolation to nurture. "It can get so cold [in Edmonton]. . .we have nothing to do but stay indoors and be creative, collaborate," says producer-bassist Nik Kozub. That community sense infuses the band's debut full-length, 'Not Saying/Just Saying', masking day-to-day reality with prismatic filter funk." -TW - URB Magazine, 2007

“Shout Out Out Out seemed to genuinely come out of nowhere and become the talk of the town by Saturday night once their show at Lit was upon us. They were a pure, unadulterated dance party, from all accounts…for one week, they were on the lips of every scenehead and tastemaker worth their weight in technorati rank.” - CMJ 2006, gothamist. net