Lucibel Crater

Lucibel Crater is a New York 3-piece band, cranking out bits of funk and jazz elements along with some indie shoegaze. The Family Album is a 10-track exploration of eclectic elements coupled with lush instrumentals and Leah Coloff’s singing/spoken word. Oftentimes moody and mysterious, the music definitely does not drag. For example, track 6 (�Blue Stationwagon�) is a long jazzy instrumental piece, sounding like semi-improvised explorations of sound set on top of brilliantly frenetic drumming. If The Doors had known shoegaze, they might have made something like this, bringing a harder edge to “Riders On The Storm.� Track 9 “Swimmers� broods on for the first 3 minutes of the track; the guitar theme then mixes with the drums at the 3-minute mark, congealing into a catharsis of dissonantly beautiful melodies, before abruptly ending at around 5:30, shaking the listener out of its kaleidoscope of manic action. The best piece on the CD is arguably track 7, “Where You Are,� showing off Coloff’s excellent vocal talents and enveloping the listener with a haunting, repetitive melody. Perhaps not as focused as it could be, The Family Album nonetheless showcases the project’s excellent musical ideas. - No Eyed Bird

Lucibel Crater – The Family Album

You know when you walk into a record store and all the music clerks are busy putting away albums while some obscure but really cool band is blasting in the store speakers? You want to ask who is playing, but its just so not cool to do it. Then you hear it...Dude, is that Lou Reed in there? That has to be him! Oh man...this is burning my brain...WHO IS THIS BAND?

Meet the band Lucibel Crater.

Lead by cellist Leah Coloff the Brooklyn based band put out The Family Album, an interesting collection of ten songs packaged into one beautiful masterpiece. Add in a thunderous back beat, spoken word, Paul Chuffo's piano and a handful of nontraditional instruments including a cell phone and you can only guess where this is headed.

Now, close your eyes and imagine if Picasso had a band, and what they would sound like. Can I bastardize the term here and say Cubistic Beats? Ahh...Okay...Hmmm...I'll just say what I really want you to know, this is totally music to get high too. There, now its out.

The album starts off with There Was a Time, which is spoken word over a melody reminiscent of Riders on the Storm by The Doors. This leads us into what might be the most interesting track on the album Into the Bushes which is an abstract combination of a cello, an electric bass, voice and to quote Sarth Calhoun of the band “and the drummer doing this crazy thing live with a whammy pedal and a contact mic on the snare drum creating a feedback loop from the cello sound, which creates the screetch at the beginning of the tune and in the first break.�. Its cool, and the lyrics are as abstract as the melody. Leah belts out “Don't bury the hatchet, lets cut down the trees instead� with such conviction that you don't know if its sarcasm, expression, or both.

The legendary Lou Reed is on the next track. Back story is that Lou and Sarth do a fairly unusual form of Tai Chi called Chen style. The two have collaborated on some meditation DVDs, and then Lou checked out a Lucibel Crater show. Shortly thereafter he ended up on Threadbare Funeral, a slow paced trippy melody pondering where do we come from in a Velvet Underground-esque fashion. And you can't really go wrong when Lou Reed is playing in your band.

Also on the album are Next of Kin, Blue Stationwagon, and then Where You Are which is really one of those tunes you can listen to over and over again, and pull something new out of everytime.

All in all, Lucibel Crater put out an entertaining work of art. We dig it.

Catch Lucibel Crater at www.lucibelcrater.com and listen to Into the Bushes @ www.cyqo.com/lucibelcrater


pdf review at:
http://buzzbinmag.com/BuzzbinJuly2008.pdf - buzzbin magazine

Lucibel/Sarth went to LA to do a triplet of experimental shows with Lou Reed and Ulrich Krieger at the REDCAT.

a quick quote from the review:

"Calhoun is another fellow traveller, a knob-twisting daredevil who describes himself as an 'electronic alchemist' ..."

[...]

"The mood grew grittier after Reed had his roadie fuss with his amp for a while and changed guitars. Calhoun, using a laptop, a keyboard and a sort of electronic slide instrument called a Haken Continuum Fretboard, added gut-shaking low notes, distortion and drone to the mix. Krieger responded aggressively, and Reed seemed to draw in the energy ... " - LA Times

…Lucibel Crater, on the other hand, recalls those old pictures you look at in front of the fire on a winter evening. The Brooklyn trio- cello, drums, and voice- with its latest work, “The Family Album” (searching eye records), collects cinematic stories in black and white. Perpetually oscillating between analogue and digital, between Bjork and The White Stripes, Lucibel Crater surprise us with a schizoid, unpredictable sound made of both live improvisations and thoughtful studio recordings.
Ten muscular tracks and only one guitar, Lou Reed's, that gives us the gift, in the song “Threadbare Funeral,” of an LSD, machine/factory sound.
“I met Lou Reed through our common passion for Chen Tai ji,” says the bandleader, Sarth Calhoun. “We study with Master Ren Guang Yi. And we worked together on some music for Master Ren’s Tai ji DVDs. Lou's advice has been of vital importance in the birth of “The Family Album.” It was him, in fact, that continuously pushed us into searching for a sound that was new, and it was with his words in mind that we created our first album. He's a special person: instead of acting as a celebrity, unreachable on his cell phone, he took care of us.” (Saint Lou, patron of the new sound indeed).
The band is recording a new unreleased track called "Masticate", to accompany a video available soon on www.lucibelcrater.com.

- Vogue Italia

Something like Bjork and maybe like White Stripes; But the truth is that their sound is unique and not easy to label, to the extent that even Lou Reed has fallen in love with it.

For a few years music in Brooklyn has traveled in the fast lane. While the whole music world walks on eggshells worrying about making irreparable false step, in this NYC borough artists and bands push the accelerator violently, every year producing one album that is years ahead of everything the seven notes market is offering.

Matisyahu, School of Seven Bells, My Brightest Diamond, Sufjan Stevens: these are only some among the many names that enliven the scene beyond the East River, which today grows richer with a new, “reckless” band. They’re called Lucibel Crater and talking about them, music wise, you can venture the adjective “unpredictable”: Cocorosie, Björk and White Stripes, but also nu-jazz atmospheres, ambient expansions and psychedelic moments. Listening to Lucibel one bounces like the little ball in an acid colored pinball machine; pushed and rebounded by Sarth Calhoun’s synths, Leah Coloff’s cello and Paul Chuffo’s rhythmic patterns.

There are no rules, there’s no logic, just music and the purest emotions. These are the ingredients in The Family Album, the very first album for this band whose schizoid sound conquered the heart of a Brooklynite par excellence, his majesty, Lou Reed. On top of giving the band advice on their route to success, in fact, the leader of the never-missed-enough Velvet Underground has chosen to be physically present at their musical debut, the unmistakable voice of his guitar standing out in The Family Album track “Threadbare Funeral”.

Listening to your album one is amazed by the absolutely unpredictable sound diversity: each is song is different from all the others (in genre and style). Is there any Arianna’s thread to link the songs of your first album? If so, what is it?

Leah: “Well, there’s the cello in every track…” (she laughs)
Sarth: “I think the common ground is the attention to sound. It has to be absolutely
new. Every song ought to be like a photograph (their first album name is in fact The Family Album). Usually, in a family album, every shot is different from one another. That is why our songs have titles such as 'standing in front of her new/used turquoise station
wagon' or 'next of kin.' They’re all photo titles”.

What is The Family Album talking about?
Leah: “Through the family theme we intended to talk about the American Life. When we wrote the songs we were permeated with disenchantment and bitterness. The song 'Threadbare Funeral', for example, talks about a woman living alone in the prairie for years who finally looks for someone to rescue her from her abandoned condition. This has been a common “political” thought, lately, as people in the US have felt really abandoned … “Into the Bushes” is a sarcastic glance onto what could happen if we remained anchored to our ideas as Bush did in the past years. We would go on living in ignorance, thinking that the earth is flat. We would not be able to look at our past in order to create a different future. Ideas, that’s the glue, our common ground”.

How did your collaboration with Lou Reed begin?
Sarth: “We came to know him due to our (Lou’s and mine) common passion for Chen Taiji. We both studied with the same teacher, Master Ren Guang Yi, and we have collaborated in composing parts of the soundtracks for some taiji and meditation dvds.
That’s how it all began.

And how was to work with him?
Sarth: “Exciting. (Sarth is in the Lou Reed trio MM3). To observe his attention to sound detail was a real turning point for me. It’s just incredible when you see how preparation, attention and research can open highways to inspiration. Inspiration, that’s the word I associate to Lou… he inspired me with his way of creating. He’s able to do huge things and always puts soul and humanity into them.”

Imagine you could chose for your next album another guest star. Who would it be?

Sarth: “Beck, but only if the producer was Tom Waits”.

Your music would be the perfect soundtrack for…
Paul: “Sunrise by F.W. Murnau; Metropolis by Fritz Lang; Battlestar Galactica”

Imagine you are in an empty room. Outside your music is drawing a landscape. What would you see looking out of the window?
Paul: “Water all around with mechanical islands floating on it. On every island there would be one city with its one identity”.

How would you describe Brooklyn from a musical point of view?
Leah: “Eclectic. Diversified.”
Sarth: “A friend of mine once said that if you live in Brooklyn and you do music, it is impossible not to put some hip hop in it. Actually cars here go around with subwoofers on all the time, even when you sleep… I mean, it sneaks into your subconscious, there is nothing to do…”


-- Simone Tempia

(translation by Valentina Angeloni)

- Urban Magazine (Italy)

"It's not easy to sound this fresh without ever sounding contrived, but Lucibel Crater pulls it off effortlessly. The Family Album enacts family values the way they ought to be- emotionally charged, continually surprising, inspiring in their originality and ambition, provocative and fun, noisy and meaningful. And entirely satisfying." - Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone