Mixel Pixel, Single Frame, Midstates preview
Mixel Pixel, Single Frame, Midstates
Red Line Tap, Chicago
Saturday, December 17, 2005
“Hi, I’m in Delaware.”
More than 10 years later and we still laugh at that line from Wayne’s World, but we betcha Mixel Pixel, who actually hail from The First State, fuckin’ hate it. Come to think of it though, can you name a single band in the history of rock that has emerged from Delaware? Don’t look it up on the Internet and find some big name act that nobody actually knew came from Delaware and then act like it was obvious. Just wing it off the top of your head right now and throw something out there. Nothing.
Mixel Pixel has the market cornered. Chances are, though, even if Delaware was a hub of music activity, not many of the acts would sound very similar. Pixel take their folk core and mush it together with quirky electronica, snobby art rock, and dance pop like a kid smashing two different colors of Playdoh together. The band’s most recent effort, Contact Kid (Kanine), sometimes sounds like Beck, once in awhile like Canadian indie rockers The Unicorns, often like The Flaming Lips, and here and there like someone playing Atari.
Which brings us to tourmates Single Frame (formerly known as Single Frame Ashtray). Woven from the same punk/electro clash cloth as Pixel, Single Frame is nonetheless slightly more focused with its execution, slightly less lo-fi, and significantly less Delaware: This foursome calls Austin, Texas home. Where Pixel can be, and often is, satisfied with letting things end in a wash of glitchy samples and fuzzy Casio beats, Single Frame seem to have a destination in mind with their songs, especially those on this year’s Body/End/Basement, (Volcom) which finds the band weaving in and out of choppy electronica, new wave, and guitar-driven punk.
Locals Midstates headline the show. The Southside group’s debut, Shadowing Ghosts, gained the band some critical attention, which they hope to capitalize on with the the three-years-in-the-making Boxing Twilight. Set for a late-February release via Mental Monkey, the album is a swirling mix of spacy vocals, psychedelic landscapes, and vibrant pop architecture.
Broken Stone, whose polished mainstream heavy rock should be thoroughly out of place, open.
— Trevor Fisher
Click here to download Mixel Pixel’s “I Am The Contact Kid.”
Click here to download Midstates’ “Till Dead.”
Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly
Ha Ha! It is often overlooked that George Thorogood & the Destroyers actually started out as George Thorogood & the Delaware Destroyers. That’s right, the classic rock hit Bad To The Bone actually came from a state that has 300 chickens per person!
3 Mental Monkey bands: Mixel Pixel, Alan Astor and Change! all went to the same high school together, Concord. This is the same high school that the owner of Jade Tree Records graduated from.
Our only other claims to fame are Zen Guerilla (who signed to Sub Pop) and Boy Sets Fire (who are a top hardcore act.) Alas, Delaware couldn’t contain us. Mixel Pixel relocated to NYC and Mental Monkey Headquarters are now in Oakland.
Thanks for the props! Have a great time watching these amazing bands.
wait a second homies let’s not forget that Television’s Tom Verlaine was from Wilmington, Delaware:
“Famed for his trailblazing work as the singer and guitarist for the seminal New York punk band Television, Tom Verlaine also carved out an acclaimed and eclectic solo career. Born Thomas Miller in Wilmington, Delaware in 1949, Verlaine (who borrowed his name from the French symbolist poet)…”
Not to mention that Bob Marley spent about 2 years near Newark, DE working at an automotive plant (yes before he got famous he lived with his moms and brought jah to Delaware – where by the way jah has stayed).
check the facts – it all pans out – Delaware is radical.
PS. ALSO matt and I used to live a block from where george thorogood wrote “Madison Blues”. Madison is a low rent piece of crap housing development in Newark – at U of DE. George did his time here as well.
bob marley chilled in chillmington, de for a short spell.
delawares tight nig
This debate is absurd!! By virtue of Clifford Brown, Marley’s auto work, and Rob. C’s car window tornado diagrams, Wilmington, DE is known as the “New Orleans/Trenchtown/NYC of the Delmarva Peninsula.” Also know as “the Financial Capital of the Upper Chesapeake,” the “Paris of New Castle County,” and “the Dayton, OH of the Mid-Atlantic,” Wilmington’s musical legacy trancends reality and most reasonable fantasies.