Tartufi
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Tartufi

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"Tartufi Show Review 9-26-06"

You know you’ve walked into some strange shit when the first opening act generates as much excitement as the headliner. As Tartufi set up, the club was still mostly empty, people clustered along the walls à la a middle school dance. I’d never heard of the duo and apparently few others had. But then a rowful of their friends surged to the front, cheering and whooping TRL-style. Another few people stepped forward tentatively. The local duo launched into their first song and almost instantly, more gaps in the crowd started to fill.

The music brimmed with energy and force. Lynne Angel exorcised her spectral vocals over a driving guitar rhythm. They looped over and over, building a spooky intensity like fifteen ghosts set loose. Brian Gorman, drummer, guitarist and occasional megaphone-shouter, thrashed at his set like it owed him money. He was amazing, attacking the skins with nonstop agility. It all came together as something new: punk and prog and pop crunched together in some vital concoction. I’m not still sure that Tartufi’s kinetic performance can translate on record, but I’m eagerly looking forward to finding out. Their album Us Upon Buildings Upon Us was just released on October 2nd. - Nerd Litter


"Tartufi - More Coffee, Less Sugar"

Tartufi
More Coffee, Less Sugar

Words by Leah Freeman
Photos by Ryan Kitson

A note on Tartufi, before we begin: forget what you thought you knew about them. Tartufi is no more.

I’d enjoyed the EP and full-length album the local indie pop group (started five years ago by singer/guitarists Lynne Angel and Simone Grudzen and joined later by drummer Brian Gorman) had dropped off at the Performer office. Yet their interview began with a disclaimer from Gorman.

“We’ve lost a person, but tripled our sound. We’re more coffee, less sugar now.” Since Grudzen left the band this February to make a documentary film, the remaining two members have rearranged into a prog-rock outfit of epic proportions. They pass around the earplugs and play a new song for me that drives the point home, makes it dinner, and tucks it into bed. Lasting somewhere around twenty-five minutes, the many-layered, ponderous piece does indeed sound nothing like their old pop songs. With fewer lyrics and a constantly forward-moving structure replacing the old verse-verse-bridge-chorus routine – and might I reiterate, clocking in at twenty-five minutes – Tartufi’s got a brand new bag. The band has never been more content with their sound, but at the time of the interview, only two other people in the Bay Area had heard the new material (they played one show in Santa Cruz), so there was no telling what would happen when they made their local debut as a duo on June 22 at Café du Nord.

Both musicians display a note of apprehension when they announce that they’ll no longer play anything from their old catalog. This includes 2004’s Westward Onward EP, followed by the full-length So We Are Alive (Thread Records) and Trouble EP (Acuarela) in 2005. This means that after all these years of work, they will no longer have anything to show for it – until, that is, their second LP comes out locally in September, and nationally in October.

Angel says the transformation “was a killer. I’d just put five years of my life and my art – everything into it. At first I thought, ‘no, I can’t ditch the catalog,’ but then we started on this. There’s no reason to go back and try to recreate what we were as a three-piece. But we have our fans, and I’m very curious to see how they’ll react to it. Whether that’ll be good or bad, I don’t know.”

The overwhelming gist of the conversation points toward the former. Tartufi are still proud of their old music, and might one day revisit some of it, but the newness of the group as a duo is far more interesting to them now.

“There’s also something pathetic and sad about the idea of playing those [old] songs,” Gorman adds. “It’s like breaking up with someone and looking at all the old letters and shit – why wallow?” The thought of such “wallowing,” he continues, “is nowhere near as exciting as what we’re playing now. We get so psyched about the days we get to come into the studio. It’s so much fun to play this stuff – there’s just so much excitement in working on everything. And it may be totally in our heads — but I don’t think so — but there’s a lot of movement right now, and it’s really thrilling to be on the stride. Something big is going to happen, and I don’t know what that means. I’m not talking about a label deal and all that shit. Tartufi is going to progress really quickly. I don’t know how to say it – it’s just this feeling that things are moving in such a way, and it’s only going to get bigger and better.”

Angel interjects into his blissed-out rant to sum it all up in a single, clear phrase. “It’s positive forward movement.”

The duo knows exactly which way that movement is leading them. Without Grudzen’s lighter pop sensibilities to balance out the rock, Angel and Gorman are more focused on a single vision for their sound. As strong as the original lineup was, in all things, there is simply more stability in a group of two than in a trio. Grudzen’s departure, says Gorman, “gave us a chance to reflect on our identity, who we are as a band, really, really, really hard and zero in on what we wanted to do, and it was pretty awesome.” Not to mention that they both now have that much more artistic control: “What I say goes,” he jokes with a maniacal stage laugh.

In all seriousness, they are a laid-back pair. When asked whether they follow the Bay Area tradition of including political messages in their lyrics, he explains that they’d much rather do so through simple actions like riding bicycles. “I don’t think we ever try to tell anyone what to do…we want our music to be more of an escape.” Now that their songs have ditched the poppy structure for a longer, proggier style, escapism is the word of choice.

“Now we’re much more epic, there’s no return. We never go back to another part: it always just keeps moving on through,” he says. The change also means they are looking forward to people not comparing them to the Bangles anymore. As a group with a female vocalist, it - Wes Coast Performer Magazine 9/06 (Cover Story)


""Us Upon Buildings Upon Us" Review"

Now that they're a duo instead of a trio, SF's Tartufi have shifted their focus away from punchy pop hooks and towards a more epic and expansive punk/prog/pop exploration.

Singer and guitarist, Lynne Angel and drummer, Brian Gorman with the help from Tim Green (of The Fucking Champs) have crafted a mathy stew of beauty and noise with vocals that are at times both angelic and damning with turn-on-a-dime changes, majestic sweeps, soft interludes, and only a touch of over-indulgence. The acrobatics that Angel brings doubly to the guitar and her voice have to be seen live to be believed, where they seriously sound like a four piece with a choir. - Aquarius Records


Discography

Westward Onward (Thread Records 2004)
So We Are Alive (Thread Records 2005)
Trouble EP (Acuarela Records 2005)
Us Upon Buildings Upon Us (Thread Records 2006)

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Bio

Tartufi is Brian Gorman and Lynne Angel. They are friends. They make explosive, scary, pretty - and sometimes ouchie - epic masterpieces. Their music is full of live loops (guitar, bass, and vocals) that build on one another to create intense and haunting structures that are supported and furthered by Brian’s frenetic and complex drumming and grounded by Lynne’s beautiful, ethereal, and stabbing vocals.

Tartufi have been performing since 2001. They have a strong and loyal following and were voted by the SF Bay Guardian as one of the best live shows in San Francisco. They play seemless sets- not stopping from the moment they pick up their instruments until the show is over, often trading instruments mid-song, and leaving their audiences in awestruck.

After releasing their critically acclaimed Westward Onward EP (2004), Tartufi returned to producer and engineer Tim Green of The Fucking Champs and Nation of Ulysses at Louder Studios (Comets On Fire, The Melvins, Sleater-Kinner,) to record So We Are Alive, their highly anticipated, first full length album.

In Fall 2005, Tartufi signed on with Spanish label Acuarela Records to release an exclusive 4 song EP titled "Trouble", recorded by Phil Manley of Trans Am at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francsico. After its release Trouble charted in the top 75 on the CMJ charts, Tartufi toured the west coast a number of times, and embarked on a successful east coast college and club tour last fall when the San Francisco Bay Guardian marked Tartufi as one of the top ten bands to explode into the national scene.

After a stunning and memorable showcase at SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST 2006 in Austin, Texas, Brian and Lynne locked themselves in their studio and began writing what would become the next full length album and their most important work to date. What they did in fact was reinvent themselves, shedding the jangly power pop sound, that had until that point had defined the band, for a much more complicated, aggressive, and beautiful sound that became, “Us Upon Buildings Upon Us” (again w/ Tim Green @ Louder Studios).

Us Upon Buildings Upon Us has just been released (10/2/06) and is already receiving attention nationwide. Tartufi is currently promoting the new album, working on a few film scores, playing shows on the west coast, and planning their sping U.S. Tour.