Beat Connection, White Arrows

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BEAT CONNECTION
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In the first flush of freedom, new eras, and new lives, Jordan Koplowitz and Reed Juenger met in 2008 as freshmen at the University of Washington. Their fate was sealed one night not long after they met, over a game of beer pong that turned into a discussion of mutual musical appreciation. In his younger years, Koplowitz had picked up the guitar so that he could play along with his favorite Metallica songs. Juenger had gone down a similar route with Nirvana, but found his friends cover bands to be boring and focused on bygone eras so he started learning how to create electronic music. In their new hometown of Seattle, Juenger and Koplowitz began crafting dorm-room beats on Garageband and venturing into DJing gigs, eventually working their way towards the sounds that would be become their first record, Surf Noir EP.

The songs on Surf Noir are at once dreamy and danceable, sophisticated and free, meant to evoke both golden sunsets and glittering city lights. Of the EP, Juenger has said, “This is an absolute indulgence, because the world is an incoherent jumble of perception. So in that spirit of cutting loose, let’s have a good time and not worry too much: Saturday night always becomes Sunday morning.” Two of the songs, the romantic pop tracks “In The Water” and “Silver Screen,” featured the duo’s roommate Tom Eddy on vocals; Eddy, a folk-rock singer-songwriter, nailed “Silver Screen” in one take. The rest of these songs are instrumental; cool, sweeping waves of synths, electric guitar, drum machines, and samplers. Beat Connection self-released Surf Noir in the summer of 2010; London’s Tender Age records, an imprint of the venerable Moshi Moshi would pick it up for an updated release in April of the next year.

In May of 2011, Beat Connection had toured the UK and Paris with such electronic luminaries as Holy Ghost!, Toro Y Moi, and Niki and the Dove. By June, in anticipation of their appearance at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party, they had added a live drummer, Jarred Katz, another musical roommate and a modern jazz aficionado. In September they embarked on their first US tour, opening for Starfucker. They made fans of the Seattle Times, Pitchfork, KEXP, and the Seattle Weekly, who named them the Best New Band of 2011. They closed out the year in Spain, opening for Real Estate.

2012 is poised to become an even bigger year for Beat Connection, who’ve again expanded, this time adding as their fulltime vocalist and guitarist Tom Eddy, the only man they considered for the job. This summer, the new four-piece will release their first full-length, The Palace Garden, a record that fines the band meditating on the idea of unattainable beauty, an idea that encases magical evenings, flooding happiness, heavy regrets, and sky-clearing epiphanies. They’ve left all genre constraints behind and now, as four, their music can only broaden, rise, and take them on to new adventures and new audiences.
WHITE ARROWS
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In the summer of 2008, fresh out of NYU with a degree in Ritualistic Shamanism, Los Angeles native Mickey Schiff began White Arrows. Fusing his studies with a drum machine and the looming, immediate presence of a booming NYC club scene, White Arrows was intended less as a group than as a social document, detailing the experiences of Schiff's age cohort - the young, ambitious, fucked up, beautiful children of a new cosmopolitan America - all coastal culture and no middle. Schiff moved back to Los Angeles by the end of the year, where White Arrows began its life as a performing unit. Despite the relatively recent introduction of the band to the east side club scene, the group has developed a solid following among the audiences and promoters of clubs such as the Echo and Spaceland, holding the distinctive honor of being awarded a Spaceland residency in August of 2010 despite having played out for less than a year. Containing original material as well as remixes by the likes of RAC (Remix Artist Collective), and Kevin Seaton (Mad Decent), White Arrows' debut EP has already seen its tracks used in videos by tastemakers such as VBS, Nylon, and Dazed and Confused Magazine, and channels such as HBO (Entourage, How to Make it in America) and MTV (Jersey Shore, The City).

MMOTHS

Jack Colleran doesn't sleep, and it shows. The 18-year-old producer, who goes by the name MMOTHS, has embraced endless nights and bags beneath his eyes in exchange for something more; a uniquely ethereal sound that's entirely his own. Disregarding genre conventions, the Ireland-based artist and producer mesmerizes with sparse synths dripping in reverb, transforming digital soundscapes into organic songs, equally fit for both a night on the town and one spent indoors in the company of candlelight. He showcases this on his 2012 self-titled debut EP for SQE Music, where no sound, vibe, or texture is off limits.

Growing up in Newbridge, Kildare, Colleran never had any illusions about what he wanted to be. Armed with his first keyboard at four-years-old, he insisted upon professional piano lessons. In high school, Colleran continued to immerse himself in music by playing in a slew of local bands, while also delving into the burgeoning experimental electronic music that the Internet afforded him access to. The moment he downloaded a demo version of Ableton Live during his final year of high school, he began obsessively creating his own tracks from scratch. There was one tiny problem though.

"The save function was disabled in my demo version of Ableton," Colleran laughs. "I never saw the progress I was making in production because I couldn't save anything and listen back to it. Once I got the full version, I made my first official track."

That track was "Blisters." In the song, a bright keyboard melody shimmers over a precise beat as skittering sounds taper in and out. International tastemaker blog Nialler9 immediately embraced "Blisters" touting MMOTHS as an "Artist to Watch". Quickly, the song spread virally across the blogosphere. As MMOTHS' popularity continued to grow online, SQE Music got in touch in mid-2011 becoming his official home.

"I actually signed the deal the day I got my final high school grades," he goes on. "It took me a while to tell my mom but I eventually did." Colleran had gotten used to recording all night, so he fervently began crafting the tracks that would become his debut EP under the moonlight. The subtle effects of this nocturnal writing process can be seen and heard throughout the five tracks.

He adds, "The music doesn't sound like it's coming from another planet though. It sounds natural and organic. There's no manual for writing tracks." Songs like "Heart" break the mold. A dreamy synth line mounts as Sarah P from Keep Shelly in Athens gorgeously croons the refrain, resulting in a truly 21st century love song.

Colleran explains, "I never have a set plan. Music just happens. I'll find a cool sound and write around that. I'm not a singer-songwriter who writes about a certain event, person, or experience. I just try to write music that makes people feel something. If they feel a bit uplifted, I've done my job."

That's exactly how you'll feel after listening to the melodic warmth of "Summer" featuring Los Angeles' Superhumanoids. About the song, he adds, "I wrote that song because the winter was coming and it can get pretty horrible over here. Summer was ending, and I wanted to keep it alive forever. This was my way to do that."

The name came about just as organically as the music for Colleran. He reveals, "Guys call girls 'Motts' over here. I was uploading my songs to Soundcloud and I didn't have an artist name. I was talking to my friend on Facebook, and he was having girl problems. He wrote, 'I hate Motts' because he just broke up with some girl. I needed a name at that moment so I called the project 'MMOTHS'."

Ultimately, MMOTHS is going to kindle a new flame for electronic music, pushing it into lush new territory with the honesty of the young and impassioned. "This is the best job in the world," Colleran concludes. "Even if it all fails, I'm going to make music regardless."