Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
The chicago quartet's impassioned brand of post-rock and propensity for dramatic crescendos call to mind the intense styles of their celebrated canadian brethren. while the timeout drawer similarly emphasizes raw guitars and heavy drums, the band substitutes synths for godspeed's violin and cello...the compositions are quietly contemplative one moment, but then erupt into massive, raw fireballs of wailing guitar noise the next...in short, a solid ep that fans of godspeed and dmst especially will want to add to their collections.
- absorb
Instrumental prog rock can go wrong in so many ways, but luckily Chicago’s Timeout Drawer has the collective ability to reference both the wispy delicacy of Tortoise and the palpable density of King Crimson to create a meandering yet compelling soundtrack...The Timeout Drawer’s inherent strength is in its talent for blending equal measures of warm guitar invention and cool synth construction in the pursuit of a sound both organically interesting and technologically precise.
- Rockpile
The dynamic and adventuresome overtones of Presents Left for the Living Dead capitalize on a feeling that has served the band well before and continues to do so, making for an EP with the sort of edge not heard enough in current post-rock, and highlighting a band beginning to fully deliver on their promise.
- dusted
... this new EP seems to hint at a future direction for the band as they expand upon their original style and branch out into more diverse and complex territory. A little heavier on the analog synth keyboards than on their two previous releases, I am highly excited about the prospect of an upcoming new LP release from the band. This is good stuff: proggy, dramatic, and extremely melodic...Too many instrumental rock albums and experimental music out there today is emotionally and musically cold. Unlike the majority, however, Presents Left for the Living Dead is warm and vibrant with melody and emotion.
- tiny mix tapes
‘Presents Left for the Living Dead’ shows The Timeout Drawer further perfecting their union of the electronic and the organic, the discordant and the melodic, the understated and the explosive...more cohesive, potable, and content- heavy than most instrumental full-length albums...the Timeout Drawer’s use of tension building dissonance and resolving melodies adds a sense of vitality to their sound that bands like Tortoise lose beneath layers of spaced-out noodling.
- panel house
The band does a great job of creating it’s own sound, making it’s own voice, which helps TTD stand out in the crowd. By the end of the album you have been dipped in a sea of noise and melody so many times, that you need to take a moment in silence to get your bearings back... Casual fans of the style will find something new with TTD. Veterans to the sound will be amazed this one has slipped by them. If you enjoy instrumental music by the likes of Do Make Say Think you will have to hear this. Or maybe you just want to hear some synth sounds that Pink Floyd would have killed for. Either way, this is an album most of you should check out.
- indieworkshop.com
Timeout Drawer are one of the few (bands) who seem able to pull melodies out of the pummeling din, making songs that you can feel in your ribcage and still hum days later. It’s dance music for children who liked to bang pots and pans while whistling nursery rhymes.
- chicago maroon
This group has...accomplished with analog synths what Sigur Ros and Godspeed have been doing with guitar and strings. Play this back to back with the recent Brian Eno, and notice how this latest batch of postrockers has improved on a time-tested formula with expansive, hypnotic textures, much warmer and lusher than anything the father of ambient music has done in decades.
- Grooves Magazine
The Timeout Drawer's synths and guitar atop the gentle drumming are as fragile as Mogwai's softer, more melodic moments. While these types of songs may be familiar, you've also returned to the same bed countless times, and that doesn't make it any less warm and comfortable a place to rest. - XLR8R
The prog-dwellers and krautrockers of the 70s shared a simple secret: analog synth...sure sounds great when you're under the influence. And so the Timeout Drawer continue in that vein, each song buzzing and burping in harmonies that would cue reminiscent tears (or flashbacks!) for old Hawkwind fans. The technical proficiency of the musicians is near flawless. For contemporaries, think Air's Virgin Suicides score, the best Pink Floyd album never made. - pitchfork
Discography
Nowonmai (LP - coming soon - Consumers Research 2005)
Down So Many Hearts to Fill (EP - coming soon - Consumers Research 2005)
The Exorcist (7" - coming soon - Consumers Research 2005)
Presents Left for the Living Dead (EPCD - Chocolate Industries 2004)
Terrible Secrets... (7" - Chocolate Industries 2004)
A Difficult Future (LPCD - Someoddpilot 2002)
Record of Small Histories (LPCD - Someoddpilot 2000)
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
The Timeout Drawer is upheaval. The Timeout Drawer is not a good time. A disheveled city band, for sure, having formed in 1999 on Chicago's north side while working day jobs painting basement floors in dirty ex-shampoo factories, the band has nothing to offer the light-hearted. It is for the melancholy that they parade, hoping to crystallize the somber in spirit and explode with them into triumphant and stomping riots of evocative beauty. It is a tall order indeed.
But this is what you do when you've grown up in an overly-comfortable suburb: you feel the pain and invent the riot. The founding members of the band, Chris Eichenseer and Jason Goldberg, have done that most of their lives - from breakdancing together in the 5th grade to starting punk rock and metal bands in middle school to spending most of high school in experimental bands with midi chains and electronics in mom's basement, noodling around before IDM and post-rock were on the lips of the hip critics. It was natural when their experiments in sound led them to the instrumental rock outfit they found themselves inventing in the summer of 1999 - The Timeout Drawer.
At first, with original members Ray Dybzinski and Jason Terchin, the band kept it quiet, abandoning the complexity of the midi chains in favor of minimalism: a moog, drum kit, and guitar. The band's debut record, 1999's Record of Small Histories is just that: a quiet album, erupting rather softly into sparkling and gorgeous soundscapes. In the process of realizing this work, Chris and Jason started Someoddpilot Records from the offices of its sister design company Someoddpilot Design. The first release on the newly-found label, the record intrigued critics and found the band a Chicago fan-base. As the band exercised its live chops and began working on 2001's A Difficult Future the first signs of cataclysm appeared: the record label was growing beyond their control as they released albums by Salvo Beta and La Makita Soma, and the stresses were wearing out members of the band. Within a week of the release of A Difficult Future the Trade Towers fell and between the album title, the name Someoddpilot and pictures of an airport on the cover, the whole thing took on an even more somber tone. The band began rigorously touring, tensions mounted, and finally original members Jason Terchin and Ray Dybzinski bowed out for personal reasons. Meanwhile the album was lauded by critics everywhere for its beautiful melodies and tight production.
But the band was still looking for the sonic bombast to mirror the chaos in its heart, and they found it in new member Chris Van Pelt. A furious guitar player who grew up on a steady diet of Sonic Youth and Fugazi, the band ripped the pleasantness of its last two albums apart, toured the country and put together the apocalyptic and dark EP Presents Left for the Living Dead. In the midst of chaos the band left its own label in pursuit of an easier life and found a home for the new work on Chicago's Chocolate Industries. The EP, released in late 2003, delivered on past promises, heaping thick guitar and drum work on top of gorgeous and searing moog melodies. In the process the band picked up another new member from Chicago's electronic scene, Jon Slusher, a guitar wizard and bonus programming geek. The hefty 27-minute EP lays the foundation for the full-length ahead: cinematically huge epic songs, diverse instrumentation and enough melancholy coupled with triumph to win over the heavy-hearted.
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