bikos

If The B-52s and The Talking Heads got together one strange night back in the 80s and made a baby, I'd imagine that baby might have grown up to sound just like this week's featured band, bikos (pronounced "bi-kohs"). And just like those theoretical parent bands, bikos’ music is a hell of a lot of fun... and insanely catchy. Don’t believe me? Head over to their myspace page and check out their new single “You Want It”. I’ve had it stuck in my head on and off for the past week and a half. I’m now seeking treatment.

Here’s what singer Gabe Pearlman, guitarist Daniel Hur and bassist Dave Jones had to say about their style, their upcoming album and the location of their secret crime fighting headquarters.

GORILLACOUSTIC: What does the world need to know about Bikos?

DAVE: I feel it’s that we are playing fun, original, heartfelt music for this period in time.

DANIEL: For sure. bikos is six people rocking very hard and having a ball doing it. All of us have dreamed in our own ways of creating the kind of music that we loved throughout our lives. Because where would we be if not for the music? Probably really lost and bored.

GABE: I agree. Can hardly imagine a world WITHOUT music!!! Don’t know that I want to. Can you? Wait, that would be a really interesting idea for a movie. We should do the soundtrack.

GA: How did your unique musical style come about?

DAVE: We came about it organically through the impetus of Gabe’s chords and vox meshed with our individual musical voices to create a distinct composite sound of our own.

DANIEL: Yeah, as a band we jam on Gabe's songs, which usually start with a number of crazy chord progressions and lyrics, and each add our seasonings to the pot. Lucky for us we usually agree on what kind of soup we're trying to make. All of our songs came to life this way and it works very well for us. Our general aesthetic is something like tasteful weirdness. We want our songs to fully express their own individual mood and lyrical theme, but catch the ear with curveballs every now and then. Like we have a song called "Awkward" that seems at first like a bunch of non-sequitors, but it is a very fun ride and it ends with an expansive, satisfying chorus. But true to it’s name, it is a little awkward.

GABE: Personally, it took a long while in my life for me to feel comfortable with being musical, and sharing that with others. Our band was the turning point for that. bikos is like home… a place where we can all be ourselves. It’s a collection of some of my favorite people, and favorite musicians. And our style is homemade.

GA: What can people expect from your upcoming album?

DANIEL: From our new album you can expect a good time and some interesting things to think about.

GABE: That true bikos sound. Reaching out from the garage.


DAVE: And it’ll have diversity in tempos, moods and arrangements, but a consistency in overall approach and point of view.

GA: Why did you decide to play at makeout point?

DANIEL: Well, technically I never really thought about it as makeout point. But apparently nowadays it's become more popular with the lovebirds (And for the several couples up there when we blasted our headlights and started filming "Videogame Sandwich Diamonds," bikos sincerely hopes we didn't get all up in your game!). It's the hill overlooking Culver City and environs, which is where all of us grew up, live now, and/or generally call home. bikos is a very local outfit in that way.

GABE: Yeah, just seemed right. We had a couple other ideas, but this was where it was at. The idea of playing in a headlight lit light was also a plus, though it did make it difficult at times to see what I was playing!

GA: What other local band or bands (besides yourselves of course) should people be checking out?

ALL (in unison and in three part harmony): Ollin, Carnage Asada, Saccharine Trust, Tubby Boots, Tommy Santee Klaws, Freaky Mountain, Le Switch, Julie, the Smithfield Bargain, Matre, Wreckloose, Shrine, Voodoo Merchant, Insects vs. Robots, Chuck Dukowski Sextet, Nerver, Jinsai, The Body Parts, Dan Plaza, The Big Bounce Theory, The Sundowners, the Cigarette Bums, Tijuana Panthers, Visionaries, Bambu, Kiwi, Illafonte, and let’s not forget DJ Mbenga and Refill Jackson.

DAVE: Woh, that was craaazy how we just did that.

DANIEL: Shah… totally.

GABE: Totally Brian Shaw.

GA: If you could do another gorillacoustic performance anywhere else in the world, where would you do it?

DAVE: Eiffel Tower?

GABE: I think the Eiffel would be cool too, especially ‘cause we have a song that references it. It’d be cool to play that song there. It’s called “Waldo and Carmen Sandiego” and it’s about the two of them finding each other at the Louvre! Also, I would love to play at the Watts Towers, one of my favorite places in the whole world.

DANIEL: It’s kind of random, but in Vienna there's this museum called Kunsthaus Wien, which is the architectural brainchild of an artist named Hundertwasser. He disdained straight lines and right angles, so the floor is all uneven and natural, and the windows make you feel like you're in a Hobbit house. It would be a great translation of our music into a space.


GA: Location of your secret crime fighting headquarters?

DAVE: Can’t tell you. (Hint – it’s on the Westside)

GABE: Yeah, can’t reveal the exact whereabouts of our SECRET space. If we did that then we’d have the bad guys, and gals, loitering about in attempt to steal our crime-deterring and dance inducing riffs, only to use them for crime-inducing and dance-deterring!

Stay tuned for info on when you can get your hands on bikos’ new album.

In the meantime, you can check out there music on their MySpace... or better yet, find them at a show and harass them until they give you a copy of their demo. Highlights include: “You Want It” and “Make Your Sound Sound”.
- GORILLACOUSTIC.COM

I vaguely remember meeting bikos frontman and lead song-writer, Gabriel Pearlman, at my birthday party a couple of years ago. We have a mutual friend Seth who graciously hosts all his friends’ birthday parties at his house. The trade is that everyone in the neighborhood Seth knows shows up, in addition to anyone else you’ve invited yourself. There’s no reason for this, other than the fact that Seth loves parties. Every month or so, another invite to another person’s birthday party goes out to his universe. The first few times it seemed strange to me. Was I really going to go to the birthday party of someone, I didn’t know? And then came the justification. Like Gabriel, these people had all come to my birthday party. I should return the courtesy, no?

It took at least three or four of these parties for Gabriel to break it to me that he had a band. In fact, Seth might have told me, and I then asked Gabriel about it. I went and saw their next show at Tribal Cafe in Echo Park, then at L’Keg Gallery in Echo Park, at the Cinema Bar in Culver City a couple of times, at Spaceland opening for Le Switch, their single release party at the Mandrake for “You Want It,” the West LA Civic Center Bandshell, and most recently, The Strange on Heliotrope. The truth is, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen bikos, since I learned about them. I only wish I’d known sooner, so I’d have more times I couldn’t count.

It’s not often you find a band like bikos. Six friends on stage who clearly love each other, just rockin’ out and having a great time doing it no matter who’s looking. Their not-so-secret secret: All of bikos is either Culver City born and raised and former attendees of Culver City High School, or from in or around Culver City, which makes for infectious stage chemistry that can only come from being in close quarters for long periods of time and/or knowing what they wore when they were 15. A homegrown musical experiment playfully run wild in its truest sense. No drama. No frills. No fuss. Just fun-positive, energetic indie rock straight from Gabriel’s room where bikos had its first sessions, to you.

What keeps me coming back? Perhaps it’s the addictive quality of Gabriel’s frenetic speak-singing juxtaposed with Michaella Burton’s sinister-sweet vocals and glockenspiel/cowbell tactics that takes you to a high that can only be achieved otherwise through vicious abuse of candy and caffeine. Perhaps it’s Daniel Hur’s guitar, which in another’s hands might remain a soft-spoken machine, roars happily over Gabriel’s rhythm-lines, nearly leaping out of his hands to take on a life of its own during powerful solos. Perhaps it’s Austin Wester’s perfect timing on the drums that keeps your heart along a steady path, telling it when to calm and rise, such that it doesn’t pop as everything around you seems to lead straight to the sky. Perhaps it’s Jaron Halmy’s deft key work which makes possible the idea of vintage electronica. And then perhaps it’s seasoned Los Angeles music scene veteran Dave Jones’s raucous bass-lines straight from the school of psychedelic 90’s metal and punk. I wish I had a straight answer, but I don’t. It’s just bikos. You’ve just got to see it to feel it.

Best of all, bikos is inspired and unafraid to explore their collective imagination and yours. Whether it’s the 50’s/surfer rock-vibed tune, “Fun, Fun, Fun at the MJT,” about a day at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, requiting otherwise impossible love in a rock ballad duet between Carmen San Diego from the 90’s PBS show “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” and Waldo from the “Where’s Waldo?” books in “Waldo and Carmen San Diego,” or singing about getting love right without fear of arbitrary signifiers in space-evocative “Y3K,” bikos is so far from that band whose entire song catalog was about your last break-up.

To hear bikos, find out more about the band and their shows, visit their band pages on MySpace or Facebook, add them on Facebook @Bikos Youwantit, or add them on Twitter @bikosiloveyou. The band recently released a single, “You Want It,” which is available on iTunes. The music video for “You Want It,” filmed in Gabriel’s room where it all began, is available on YouTube. bikos is currently working with LA-based producer, mixer and sound engineer Dean Nelson (Beck, Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Charlotte Gainesbourg) on an 8-track record due to be released in late 2010. In the meantime, be sure to catch bikos on a stage near you in and around Los Angeles.

- Here Birdie Birdie

L.A.’s freshest venue for intimate rock concerts isn’t some scruffy address east of Western.

It’s upstart music video website Gorillacoustic.com, filmmaker Michael B. Snow’s home for his innovative shoots of outdoor performances across the city, such as synth-pop group Robotanists singing their stripped-down “Plans in Progress” from a rooftop perch in the Toy District. Other one-off, invite-only showcases have been captured at a scenic overlook behind Culver City with gritty-eclectic band Bikos; on a Gold Line train rumbling through Highland Park featuring electro-disco adherents Death Kit; and at LACMA, spotlighting the distortion-favoring Modern Time Machines in front of Chris Burden’s Urban Light sculpture.

The improv productions are filmed guerrilla-style, meaning the only constant is unpredictability: “Security guards asking us to leave, a homeless person walking right through—you just never know,” says Snow, who would love to sneak into the Natural History Museum for a video. “How great would it be to shoot with dinosaur bones in the background?”

- Angeleno Magazine

With a bass player that I swear looks like John Peel's younger brother and a sound that channels Bloc Party through the medium of Pavement I immediately thought that California alt-rockers bikos had to be named after Bloc Party's 'Biko' . However it appears in this case 1 and 1 most definitely doesn't equal 2. The band actually chose the name bikos [bi - kohs] because it means “for the reason that” and also maybe because bikos is how a 5 year old from eastern Europe might, theoretically, spell and pronounce "because".

On debut single 'You Want It' bikos sound like Bloc Party letting their hair down and starting to enjoy themselves. It's the sort of song that I could imagine going down a storm at Kele Okereke's birthday. 'You Want It' has forced itself onto the Devil's list of favourite tracks of the year by virtue of it's jittery energy and singer Gabriel Pearlman's twisted, twitchy vocals which sound like the tonsils of David Byrne and Kele Okereke arm wrestling.

bikos because you know you want it and you're worth it. - The Devil Has the Best Tuna

Last night I happened upon a Culver City collective at the Hotel Cafe just after witnessing the disappointing Laker loss on one of the biggest screens I've ever seen. Bikos, which rhymes with Meepos, you know..the island where Balki Bartokomous (Perfect Strangers) hails, was personally responsible for lifting my spirits with their high-energy eccentric rock and roll. Unfortunately a late weekday billing at 11pm left a scant number of spectators at the hotel; however, we were all treated to a great exhibition ending in a rush to inherit their free demos. Their charming set culminated with a few solid cuts including the epic "That Is Mine" that I'm looking so forward to hearing on their forthcoming LP later this Spring, which I should add is getting some mixing from Beck's engineer of choice. Lead singer Gabriel Pearlman's shouty vocals reminded me a bit of Eddie Argos (Art Brut) but coupled with Miki Burton's vox they give off a bit of the vibe of the Friedberger siblings (Fiery Furnaces), Los Campesinos or a new indie rock version of the b-52's. Each member in the sextet are outstanding in their own right, including accomplished bassist Dave Jones (Magnolia Thunderpussy/SST), Daniel Hur on lead guitar, Jaron Halmy alternating between the piano and keys, and Austin Wester on the drums. Their proclivity in shifting rhythms and time signatures over each composition is great. Catchy hits "You Want It", and "Make Your Sound Sound" have been getting a lot of play on KXLU's Demo-listen. Bikos has a number of shows lined up in the next few months, including their next in their hometown at the Cinema Bar on March 18th.

- Foundtrack.com