Sounds Under Radio

From Spinner.com… Sounds Under Radio are an Austin based alternative pop/rock band. They distributed their first album, Cinematica, independently in 2009. it was highly successful. Their song “Portrait of a Summer Thief” was featured on the Spider-Man 3 Soundtrack. After a brief stint with Sony/Epic records, Sounds Under Radio continue to embrace their independence for the time being. They’ll perform at SXSW ‘10 as they await the release of their new album My Communist Heart. We spoke with Lang Freeman. How would you describe your sound in your own words? Kind of an Americanized version of Brit-rock. It has large anthem elements but also with intimate and personal moments. It’s cinematic, movie music in a centered pop medium. Lately we’ve attempted to test our limitations, and redefine what boundaries we’d previously had. How did your band form? I moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas at Austin. I then started playing with Bradley Oliver (bass, keyboard). The rest of the guys we met through the scene more or less organically. What are your musical influences? The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Nirvana, Radiohead, Sigor Ros. We’re consumers as much as creators, we tend to like a lot of things and that influences our sound. How did you come up with your band name? The name was an attempt to reflect what we thought was our desired sound, which is a kind of a rock/pop with a more intellectual flavor that’s also genuine and sincere. We wanted a name that kind of described the foundation of our music in a way. What’s your biggest vice? Indecision, which is reflective of our new record. The conflict aspect of indecision. What’s your musical guilty pleasure? Katy Perry. What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen or experienced while on tour? I don’t know if i can actually talk about that. Well, about a year ago when we were in Louisiana, we left the venue and had a very crazy drunken evening sort of situation with the folks we were staying with. The husband ended up disappearing all night, I spent an hour talking on the phone with the cops discussing this, everyone was wasted, at one point we got locked out of the house we were staying in, nobody had any keys, and the people who had the keys weren’t there. So we kind of broke in through the window, one guy made it through the doggy door, then finally the husband shows up at 7 am still drunk. Everything was fine at that point, but we still really have no idea what happened to these people. It was crazy. That was in Monroe, LA, at what used to be the blue monkey tavern. Who or what kind of people would you recommend listening to your music? The audience ranges from indie snobs to metal kids, Death Cab for Cutie to Nirvana fans. Really just anybody who enjoys a good song or melody. Our main goal has been to write great songs. What works or accomplishments is the band most proud of? Independently releasing our first record. For a time we got picked up by the label (epic), things got mixed up wth some inter-label politics. Fortunately we were able to get our record back, and we released it independently. I think we’re the only independent band with a song on the Spider-Man 3 Soundtrack. Who was your first celebrity crush? At one point we thought kind of jokingly – wouldn’t it be awesome if we convinced everybody that I was dating Kirsten Dunst. That obviously didn’t happen. I still have never even met her. When and how did your musical career technically start? I had been playing in bands since High School. When i moved to Austin, it really convinced me that i could actually do it after I finished college. Then the band conveniently came together in this very collaborative way. What key moment made you feel that the band had really ‘made it’? I think that when you walk into a room for a venue in your hometown, and there’s a line out the door that you can’t really account for and you have people you dont even know who are singing along to all your songs. That’s when you really feel that you’ve made it. What’s your latest music related accomplishment? The new album, our second. It will mean that we didn’t just quit after the first record. It will mean that we overcame something to keep the band alive in this way. It’s called ‘My Communist Heart’ and should release around March 30th. By September we hope to release ‘My Capitalist Mind.’ The two sort of go together and play off each other. (Bio 2008) In rock music, great power can be found in contrast, in opposites. It’s a musical truth that the members of Sounds Under Radio know well. That contrast—between light and dark, guarded and vulnerable, specific and vague—this is what the songs on the band’s debut album, Cinematica, are built upon. Against a tidal wave of drums, bass and shag rug thick guitars, lyricist and frontman Lang Freeman laments a self-destructiveness threatening to unravel his life and the lives of those around him, and when he does, he rides that sonic wave through its many apexes as the band blisters through the various genres dotting today’s indie and modern rock landscape. “I don’t know who these Sounds Under Radio folk are trying to fool, but that is a big-time rock ‘n’ roll band masquerading as some unsigned indie-emo whatsits,” is how Entertainment Weekly put it when the band’s “Portrait of a Summer Thief” scored a spot on last year’s Spiderman 3 soundtrack, the only track from a then-unsigned band to do so. On their first full length release the Austin, Texas, band is stepping out of the shadows, and bringing its knack for dynamics and a penchant for building stadium sized rock landscapes to an even bigger stage. “That ever present element of contrast in our songs really helps illuminate the duality of this band,” says bassist/keyboardist/co-founder Bradley Oliver. “… we try to express the music and the lyrics as two separate entities which also work together intimately as one cohesive unit. It’s really important for us to communicate through that mode of contrast—saying something that is very personal and intimate and almost too revealing atop a musical landscape that’s aggressive, boastfully confident and driving.” The songs composing Cinematica, Freeman explains, are all in a way linked around “this sort of existential idea of how everyone is really in control of everything in their own lives, … yes there are all these peripheral elements that we have to deal with and take into consideration, but what it boils down to are the choices that we make on our own—on a day to day basis for ourselves.” ”These summer stars are fading out, your silhouette reminds me now, of all the things I wish I could have said…” he sings on ‘Portrait of a Summer Thief,’ a song hinging on that beautiful collision of nuance and drama“…so picture-esque in black print dress, I’d touch you if my hands could only try.” “Most of the lyrics on this album are extremely personal and very specific to circumstance that I have experienced,” comments Freeman, “But I tried to create these larger globalized themes around those moments … I didn’t want the words on this record to have just one meaning, I wanted everyone else’s interpretations of them to be just as valid as mine.” Through Cinematica, what emerges is a band that wears its heart on its sleeve, one unafraid of sincerity, of being completely sincere, says bassist/keyboardist/co-founder Bradley Oliver. “We’re four guys onstage that absolutely want to be playing every one of those songs in the way that we wrote them. We’re not writing pop hooks because we think it fits a new market or a new model, our goal was to write an honest record which we could walk away from at the end of the process with no reservations and no apologies… I think we accomplished that goal.” The band played its first show at the 2004 South by Southwest music festival in Austin, TX, however the core of Sounds Under Radio began taking shape several years earlier while Freeman and Oliver were living in the same dormitory at the University of Texas in Austin. After playing in several different bands along the way as side musicians, and not finding enough artistic fulfillment, they began writing songs together, a process that proved way more fruitful than playing other artists songs. Not long after, Freeman and Oliver took in a show featuring guitarist Doug Wilson and drummer Sonny Sanchez. “We immediately knew that these two were the exact players that we wanted for our project…’” says Freeman. “‘The textures and landscapes that they created were perfectly akin to what we envisioned for the songs we were writing.” “Exactly,” says Oliver. “When starting a project from the ground up, you always envision that dream band that you could put together, and we’ve been fortunate enough to make that dream band our reality: Sonny was and is this bombastic Bonahm-esque drummer that you can’t not pay attention to… while Doug creates these huge Johnny Greenwood style landscapes and writes these frighteningly beautiful melodies” It would take time before that band could become a reality though, it wasn’t until Wilson returned to Austin after a stint in Los Angeles that Sounds Under Radio formally took shape, writing songs, touring, and then beginning the recording process with musician/producer Will Hoffman (Pushmonkey, Flyleaf). The first recording sessions produced a three-song EP of sorts which the band quickly decided to expand into a full length album that would in time become Cinematica. After a brief writing hiatus they emerged with a new collection of songs, of which included “Portrait Of A Summer Thief,” which was the first to be a pure collaboration between the band’s four members and serendipitously the first song to garner strong national attention. So with the album finally in place, things began to quickly unfold for the band. The unreleased CD began circulating throughout the industry and amongst friends, finally ending up on the desk of an executive at Sony Pictures in Los Angeles, landing “Portrait of a Summer Thief” on the Spiderman 3 soundtrack. It was just last fall when Sounds Under Radio inked a deal with Epic Records after being heavily pursued by a slew of major and indie labels. However, after only a short few months with Epic, business relations soured as the band found themselves caught in the middle of company politics, inter label turmoil and a stubborn business model that refused to change as promised. “When we finally decided to sign with Epic, the agreed plan was for the band to spend most of our time on the road touring, building on our previous successes, and doing things the organic way by meeting more people, creating stronger relationships with our fans, and winning new audiences over with our live show,” commented lead singer Lang Freeman. “However at every corner in the Epic offices roadblocks were being built and wrenches were being thrown into this plan. It became obvious to us that they weren’t honestly interested in developing new artists as they had originally promised. It seems Epic Records President Charlie Walk isn’t prepared to face the future of the record industry and step up to its new order of challenges… Fortunately for us though, their many missteps allowed us to escape with everything we needed to release the record on our own, the way we had originally planned before the label ever got involved.” Cinematica, which was recorded before signing with Epic will be released independently on the band’s own label on October 14th. The band’s first single from the album will be “Portrait of A Summer Thief,” bringing them and their new record back full circle. Ultimately, Cinematica is an album of pictures; a mixture of light and dark, both equally important to creating and understanding the whole. Sounds Under Radio have found their niche in taking incredibly personal moments, surrounding them in beautiful chaos and creating a mirror in which everyone who listens can see a little bit of themselves. Lang Freeman (voice, guitar) Bradley Oliver (bass, keys) Doug Wilson (guitar) Sonny Sanchez (drums)