The Poison Arrows

Chicago’s The Poison Arrows return with their third EP, and the second EP
as a full band. After Sinkovich released a solo EP entitled Trailer Park as The
Poison Arrows in 2004 on File Thirteen; He, Reach, and Morris began playing
together. Songs were assembled in their studio The Plaza as the band formed.
A first release was constructed by the three musicians working with prewritten
material, individually layering on top of each other’s work, then extensive edit-
ing and manipulating the sounds, all of which comprised March 2007’s File
Thirteen EP Straight Into The Drift.
While completing the overdubbing, editing, and mixing of the Straight Into
The Drift EP, The Poison Arrows began to write songs together as a band.
One of the key principles of the band’s playing together was (and still is) to
appreciate the moment, and not over analyze a band-mate’s compositions, or
the band’s assemblage of arrangements. After a year had passed, over an
album’s worth of music materialized.
The Poison Arrows went into Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio Studio A with
staff engineer and long- time friend Greg Norman to record the basic tracks
for about a dozen songs. After completing the basic tracks at Electrical, all of
the overdubs were recorded at The Plaza. As they continue to finish mixes of
the awaited debut full-length album, the Casual Wave EP was completed. This
four-song EP shows a substantial evolution of The Poison Arrows into a
band. All of the main tracks from the EP are played together with no editing.
The sounds from Electrical Audio are embraced instead of drastically ma-
nipulated like the previous EP, while overdubs follow arrangements that were
previously decided upon by live arrangements. The skeleton of the first and
title track “Casual Wave” was initially written as the opening movement of a
live film score for Year, a film by avant garde filmmaker Michael Betancourt.
Betancourt has taken this final incarnation and directed a video for the track
that was inspired by his work to begin with. This title track also shows the
band’s shift move toward a more synth-centric sound, as currently Sinkovich
splits his time between keyboards and guitars almost evenly at this point on
stage on in the studio. The final track “Frozen Human Satellite” was originally
composed as an instrumental. The track was further developed in the studio
with friend Bruce Lamont of Yakuza contributing saxophone and Patrick
Morris recording his first-ever vocals.
The Poison Arrows have been playing live in the Midwest and East with the
likes of Battles, Enon, Indian, Shipping News, School of Language, and
many more. Look for them to tour for the release of the Casual Wave EP.