1% Productions Presents

Cursive

 

Cursive is the longtime trio of Tim Kasher (vocals, guitar), Matt Maginn (bass), and Ted Stevens (guitar, vocals), with Patrick Newbery (keys) and Cully Symington (drums). I Am Gemini is the follow-up to 2009’s critically praised Mama, I’m Swollen (Saddle Creek), which caught the attention of publications including Alternative Press, Billboard, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Time Out New York, among others, and earned the band their network television debut on The Late Show with David Letterman. Cursive has released six full-length albums – including the heralded Cursive’s Domestica (2000), The Ugly Organ (2003), and Happy Hollow (2006) – two EPs, a disc of rarities, and numerous singles since the band’s 1995 inception.

With:

Conduits

The music scribes and bloggers that have already caught on to the band Conduits have all enjoyed bandying about the word "shoegaze" like a ball of yarn when talking about the band.

It's an understandable and easy shorthand for a group that prefers darker, dreamier sounds carried to the apex by a female vocalist who sounds haunted and enraptured. And it's a descriptor that this Omaha-based sextet wouldn't necessarily mind as they do list Jason Spaceman (Spiritualized, Spacemen 3), Beth Gibbons (Portishead), and Slowdive among their varied musical inspirations.

Truth be told, though, shoegaze only scratches the surface of what's behind the music of Conduits. These aren't affected youth staring at their guitar pedals and hoping that the audience in front of them would just go away. This is music that pulses and crackles with energy and incident.

& The Berg Sans Nipple

The franco-american duo The BERG SANS NIPPLE consists of (but is not limited to) Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren. The former is a suave Frenchman from the dirty rues of gay Parieee and the latter is a lanky Scandinavian-looking fellow who actually hails from the dusty plains of Nebraska.

Once rumored to have been Siamese twins separated at birth (according to them, their relationship is really much closer to that of Ghost Dog and the ice cream vendor), the reality is only more mundane at first glance: two kids (both best known as drummers) trapped in a tangled mess of cables, keyboards, samplers, horns, bells, machines and drums.