Art Decade

ART DECADE

Art Decade

Plenty of indie-rock bands might use the occasional orchestral arrangement to flesh out their songs; more still drape their productions in synth symphonies. It’s the rare band that builds the balance of their album around a 15-piece orchestra as Boston four-piece Art Decade has done on its self-titled sophomore effort. The result is, as they call it, symphonic neo-indie classical. Although a push of buoyant strings puts the air in the wings of songs like opener “No One’s Waiting,” this is still at its core a rock ’n’ roll record. “Harbor Light” churns on dirty bass chased along by a piano lead before the strings give an extra charge in a rousing sprint to the finish. “Idle Talk” segues from a gentle strings passage into a hip-hop drum loop broken up by shuddering violin passes, then explodes into a sweetly sung pop-rock chorus. There’s a lot of conceptualizing of genre, and experimentation with form here, but fortunately they haven’t ignored the most important part of any rock band’s arsenal, symphonic or otherwise: the tunes. (Out now)


ESSENTIAL: “Harbor Light”

Luke O’Neil can be reached at lukeoneil47@gmail.com. - The Boston Globe

Boston orchestral pop band Art Decade began when singer Ben Talmi was in the 8th grade. Or rather, the seeds of what would become Art Decade first took root when Talmi formed his first band, Channel, while still in his early teens. After several EPs, Channel garnered the attention of the late LeRoi Moore of The Dave Matthews Band. By then known as Art Decade, they were invited to record their 2008 Innocence/Experience EP at Matthews’ own Haunted Hollow Studio in Charlottesville, Virginia.

When the band was ready to record their 2012 debut LP, Western Sunrise, they enlisted producer Dan Hannon, set up shop in his studio, and came away with a self-described “neo indie classical” album of symphonic pop/rock. They continue this thorough dissection of indie pop and classical music on their self-titled sophomore album, which is due out sometime in September.

For our first glimpse of the upcoming record, the band has shared lead single ”No One’s Waiting”. With soaring vocals that reach skyward and a rhythm section that never allows the song to lose momentum, the band sets its sights on maintaining the balance between its narrative intimacy and pop self-importance. Sentimental without being over-wrought, the band reveals true feeling and revelation within the swaths of swaying strings, thudding percussion, and biting lyricism.

“The title ‘No One’s Waiting’ was inspired by a story my father told me about his post collegiate life,” Talmi says in a statement. “He would talk to young composers who would say, ‘Oh I’ll be leaving for Los Angeles’ to pursue their musical career, in response his teachers would say, ‘Good luck because No One’s Waiting when you get there.’” - Consequence Of Sound

While some musicians still grumble about Twitter, others are diving in and making or collaborating on innovative art that combines their music and new tech tools. Art Decade released an animated video created using the iPad and Procreate App. of Montreal integrated projections into their live show via the Kinect for XBox 360 and Google's SketchUp 3D visualization tool. And Dry The River took it to the streets with posters that included an audio component that one listens to through tin cans attached to strings.

The music tech connection is rather obvious in these examples but I hope the music marketing connection is also clear. These projects and videos could obviously get music blog and media coverage and, in this case, are getting music industry coverage, but they could also tempt a variety of other web publishing genres from tech blogs to visual art blogs.



Western Sunrise Animated Video by Art Decade
Using iPad & Procreate App

For the single Western Sunrise off the same-titled album, Boston-based Art Decade recently released a lovely animated video to match a lovely song.

The video was created using the iPad and Procreate, an inexpensive iPad app.

Director Whitney Alexander and animator Kipp Jarden take you behind the scenes and discuss the making of the Western Sunrise video. - Hypebot

Thanks to tablet technology, creating a music video has become as simple as swiping a finger — well, sort of.

Art Decade, a band consisting of duo Ben Talmi and Binod Singh Jr., recently debuted its music video, Western Sunrise, which was made almost entirely using Procreate, a $5 iPad app.

"I really recommend it to anyone who does storyboards, concept art and animators, filmmakers, producers, whatever — this is the future," says the video's lead animator and director, Whitney Alexander. (You can see the full making-of here.)

The band hired Alexander to infuse as much visual art as possible. The process, which was mostly done on an iPad 2, took four months, but the result was strikingly vibrant.

"The four-month process was arduous. I had all of the character animation assets complete, and then the rest — backgrounds, effects animation and color correction — was up to me," says Alexander.

Although creation relied heavily on the iPad 2, Alexander also used the iMac keyboard. The artist had to invest in orthopedic gloves to protect his fingers — eight to 12 hours per day of pounding away at the keys can cause some fatigue.

Aside from ProCreate, Alexander used other programs, like Adobe After Effects and Mocha. "I used After Effects to compose all of the elements, and also to create elements like the water, mist, clouds, as well as the final paint filter called Video Gogh," says Alexander. "Mocha was used to track the position of the character."

Art Decade's singer/songwriter Ben Talmi says he had a very clear vision of Impressionism in motion for this video.

"Alexander actually ended up surpassing what I thought was even possible," says Talmi.

Do you think this is the future for art direction? Let us know in the comments. - Mashable