The music of Brooklyn, NY’s (by way of Minneapolis) Artifact Shore evokes bleak post-apocalyptic landscapes, and ranges from industrial, frenetic rage to a meticulously layered melancholy. The band is alternatively reminiscent of stalwarts like Joy Division and Sonic Youth, with equal doses of early Big Black, the British shoegazer movement, Primal Scream and the more beat-oriented noise of Merzbow. That it all holds together while constantly threatening to break apart is an apt description of Artifact Shore’s aesthetic outlook.
The band began playing together in earnest in 2005, when its core members, who hail from a range of musical backgrounds, began honing their severe sound using a mix of traditional rock instrumentation with electronic sources. Since then the band has performed in clubs, galleries, and theatres in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago and elsewhere, and is beginning to earn a reputation for a dynamic, yet sonically punishing stage presence.
On recent recordings, Landscape Removal (2006) and Fun Is Near (2007) (both released on the band’s own label, Interference Shift and Fun Is Near subsequently re-released on RCRD LBL) each song progressively constructs a seductively infectious architecture of fevered violence. Moving effortlessly from catharsis to introspection, Artifact Shore forges its own complex and haunted vision of terror and loss, as wave upon wave of sound surges ecstatically forward.
Recently, the band finished up its first full-length entitled Instruments of the Devil (2009) far and away their most ambitious music to date. The album encompasses many aspects of the band’s past, but pushes the boundaries of contemporary psychedelia, pop and noise.
Band Members:
- Dan Cords: bass, saxaphone, guitar, programming, backing vox
- Justin Martinez: programming
- Ben Pagel: vox, backing vox, synth, programming, noise
- Joe Thoen: guitar, synth, programming, noise