Ultimate Power Duo
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada | INDIE
Music
Press
“A buzz like a shotgun blast has ripped across Canada based on their live shows alone.” - Saskatoon Jan19/06
“Hard aggressive rock sharing something with the authentic, original punk of the British pioneers.” - Chartattack.com Mar 6/06
“Making like Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee never died, UPD has a knack for the all-killer-no-filler anthem.” - Winnipeg Feb 23/06
"Ultimate Power Duo blends equal parts modern punk and retro Liverpool sounds for an album that is fun from beginning to end." - www.ezinearticles.com
With influences including Pixies, the Who, and the Ramones, the band is aiming an all-out assault at your eardrums. From the spectacular melodies on the opener "Count Chocula" to the awesome finale of the title track, the album successfully forges a party-punk atmosphere that makes you want to paint your bedroom walls black and push your grandmother into a mosh pit...New Normal is full of crunchy licks and playful lyrics...The album puts the raw back in rock. -Julian Blizzard - www.thefulcrum.ca - Apr 4/09
"Blending the angularity of old school Drive Like Jehu riffage with some Pixies-style feedback, this band’s sophomore long player will be hipster marmalade for the whole summer...play it loud." -Lee Repko - uniter.ca Apr 1/09
"They started the song by playing a loud punk riff and screaming "The cone of silence isn’t working!" But then, all in one synchronized motion they kept freaking out and pretending they were playing, but turned off their instruments and stopped hitting the drums. So the cone of silence was back on! They continued to alternate having the cone on and off for the rest off the song, very original!" - playingspoons.wordpress.com Dec 3/08
"It seems to dare you to get close and then spit in your eye...A fascinating album." - www.berkeleyplaceblog.com Mar 17/09
"The skies opened and a tremendous thunderstorm began as the Ultimate Power Duo took the stage. For real. It was like in Masters Of The Universe, when Prince Adam yells "By the power of Grayskull!" and becomes He-Man." - Toronto June 14/08
If Ultimate Power Duo is the "New Normal" for music, then the Canadian rock scene is in good hands.
The Saskatchewan-based group’s second full-length album bursts with forceful energy and unpredictable-yet-danceable rhythms. Wild drum patterns clash with heavy, melodic riffs, creating an aggressive sound that is radically different on each of New Normal’s 13 tracks.
With edgy, intelligent lyrics, UPD’s songs cover an outrageously diverse array of subject matter. They throw biblical stories into question in Judas the Betrayed, recount their 2008 woes at the American border in Homeland Security and managed to craft a great song around just two words in Hey! Oh! New Normal is an unbelievable recording full of surprises and hooks that set UPD far apart from any other rock group today.
- Apr 3/09
Discography
Ultimate Power Duo presents Space Joe: Ad Astra - To The Stars (Double Concept Album featuring 78 page Graphic Novel- National Hearing Lab/ May 2012)
Maximum UPD - Vinyl LP 2010 (Saved by Vinyl/ National Hearing Lab)
"New Normal" LP March 17 2009 (Saved by Radio/ Killbeat Music/ National Hearing Lab Recordings)
"We're in Control Now!" LP June 2006
(National Hearing Lab Recordings)
"Our Side of the Moon" EP Oct 2005
"Big in Japan" EP April 2005
"Cone of Silence" EP June 2004
"We're in Contro"l EP Nov 2003
Photos
Bio
“It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.” Joseph Campbell – The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Vishnu. Gilgamesh. Beowulf. Ulysses. Buddha. Jesus. Luke Skywalker. Neo.
Prepare to meet the new name in mythic, epic story telling.
Space Joe.
Ultimate Power Duo presents the next character in humanity’s mono-myth, a near future character who, while exploring his true inner meaning and life path, changes humankind’s perceptions of reality and existence.
Space Joe: Ad Astra – To the Stars follows the story of a boy named Joe, an Air Force army brat who has his first experience with zero gravity in high school, before finally making his full ascension to the stars as an adult. Once among the regions of space, Space Joe meets an amazing array of characters, discovers a new meaning to his life, and creates a celestial course previously uncharted by any other human being.
Ultimate Power Duo has taken on their biggest challenge yet; a 22 track concept album following a single, continuative story line while simultaneously displaying themselves at their most musically innovative, daring to explore previously un-delved genres and styles.
Produced by UPD and Barrett Ross (Colour Field, Foam Lake, The Bloodlines) and mixed and mastered by Dave Carswell of JCDC (New Pornographers, Tegan and Sara), Space Joe: Ad Astra – To the Stars is highly accessible and highly dynamic featuring straight-ahead driving rock songs (“Chasing Airwaves” and “Gyles Coyote: Inspirational Speaker”), slower, introspective melodies (“My Memory” and “Captain Joe and the Wayward Star Ship (Star-Crossed Lovers Cross the Stars)”), long narratives with ambient keyboards, space sounds and historical news footage regarding space missions and moon landings (“Noveture”), and spoken word musical theatre accompanied by thick, trudging guitar riffs and robotic anti-humanity ranting (“An Oral History of the Robotic Revolution, Liberation and Subjugation of Spero Spondeo”). These diverse elements elucidate essential UPD in delivery and attitude pontificating intelligent song writing, dry humour, outrageous creativity and wit.
In the vein of The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia, The Kinks’ Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Space Joe: Ad Astra – To the Stars is a beginning to end musical journey and epic story-telling experience.
Ultimate Power Duo has reclaimed the art of true album making.
Track Listing
Noverture
Chasing Airwaves
Gyles Coyote: Inspirational Speaker
My Memory
Space Joe: Ad Astra
Welcome to the Moon, Man
An Oral History of the Moon Satellite Colony, the Pursuit of Scientific Scrutiny and the Dark Matter Mission
Gyles Servo: Cybernetic Junk Dealer
Alien Attack
Victorious!
Point-To-Point
Saeculum: Heroic Pathos
An Oral History of the Robotic Revolution, Liberation and Subjugation of Spero Spondeo
Escape to Star Ship Algo
Captain Joe and the Wayward Star Ship (Star-Crossed Lovers Cross the Stars)
Keep It Under Control (?)
Gyles Milgram: Holographic Guidance Counsellor
An Anti-Universe Apart
11:11
Cast Off the Electric P.I.E.R.
Avatar Illuminated
Hail the Conquering Hero
Ultimate Power Duo, with the release of Ad Astra, UPD have released a 78 page graphic novel with each song from the album getting its own distinct 3-4 page comic illustrated by some of this country's rising stars in the comic book world. UPD has showcased at Telemiracle 2012, Vancouver Olympics (4 shows), various years of SXSW, CMW, WCMA'S, NXNE, Great Escape Festival (UK) Nerve Festival of Guns, Vans Warped Tour, opened for DOA, the Vibrators, Sloan, Finger Eleven, Danko Jones, Bad Religion, The Bronx and The Waking Eyes, DOA, receives substantial radio, press support, and live show acclaim. UPD has been been featured on Much Music's Going Coastal. UPD even how their own beer called LOKI brewed by PaddockWood which won gold medal at a recent beeer competition.
Ultimate Power Duo has also branched out to other music markets. In 2007 they embarked on a 2week tour of England.
www.ultimatepowerduo.com
"Next up are Saskatoon’s brilliantly named Ultimate Power Duo. Naturally enough, UPD are in fact a classic power trio of riffs, pummeling drums all kept in check by a low end rumble to make Mike Watt jealous. Fresh from being hand picked as a support act for Bad Religion by Jay Bentley himself and a handful of dates with Canadian punk legends NomeansNo under there belt, The UPD are a vacum tight punk rock unit, playing a self proclaimed ‘Demolition Rock”- theirs is the music that would be made if the neo-garage rock of
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