Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
This band has no press
Discography
1. "The Heat, The Heart" (2007) - 6 song EP.
2. "The Answer is Yes" (2006) - 9 song CD (released as Asher Schranz).
Both are self-made and self-distributed very minimally (under 100).
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
A band that is more erratic than it is any one genre, Standards and Blanks’ music cuts across extremes, shifting suddenly between the intimate and the ostentatious, the calm and the explosive, the restrained and the improvised, the confessional and the sarcastic.
The band shirks traditional pop-song form in favor of something looser, more linear and organic. Many songs are composed in two halves, each with a radically different texture than the other (see: “Everything Meant Exactly What I Thought It Meant”). At its most basic, Standards and Blanks plays guitar music. The songs are projects in layering guitars and creating fullness and then stripping that all away and appreciating the relative minimalism of a single guitar and a single voice.
While the band likes to describe its music as Albert Ayler, Roy Orbison, Jim O'Rourke and Kyp Malone all taking a road trip to Raymond Carver's grave, it's probably more akin to some confused mash-up of Bob Dylan, Destroyer and a heavy dose of nostalgia and sarcasm.
Spearheaded by songwriter Asher Schranz (frontman for The Ready Set, which has opened for Hella and Pattern is Movement, among others), Standards and Blanks is comprised of four recent graduates from Wesleyan University (although Schranz records most of the music himself). While young, all the members are already seasoned live performers. The band is primed to make its New York debut.
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