The Los Angeles and San Francisco based band Casinos is gearing up to release their first full length album via Danger Collective Records on December 26th.
The Art rock group composed of Kreider Dane (vocals/guitar), Rafe Noonan (piano/synth), Jackson Katz (drums), and Reed Kanter (bass/noise) has be compared to the likes of Nick Cave, Tom Waits and The Pixies interlaced with a punk approach and pop sensibility. They are beginning to become a crowd favorite in the Los Angeles DIY scene; attributed to their impressive live performance.
Today Casinos is premiering their first single, ‘Catacombs,’ off the upcoming full length album.
‘Catacombs’ sounds like a grungier version of the punk band Weatherbox. The song is a slow build featuring angsty vocals and dissonant guitars splattered on top of ambient echoes and reverberations. The single also features guest vocals from Derek Ted of San Francisco band Owl Paws. An all around solid track. Stream below.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/228195544″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”200″ iframe=”true” /]
The band also took the time to answer a few questions for Casablanca Sunset in honor of the premiere of the albums first single. Below is the brief Q&A.
Casablanca Sunset: Describe your bands sounds to someone that has never heard you before.
Casinos: Carnival punk, experimental art rock with a weird deep rooted sensibility of vaudeville. Although this single doesn’t particularly showcase the overall sound that we have created on our previous releases and the rest of the new album, this song specifically is something different and new for us.
CS: What bands or music genres do you draw influence from?
C: Modest Mouse, Man Man, The Pixies, Oingo Boingo, The Cure, Bauhaus, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Kanye West, Elliott Smith….. I could go on and on for influences we all love so much different music and draw influence from such far ranging selection of artists.
CS: How long have you guys been together?
C: We’ve been playing together for around four or five years now.
CS: Who produced the new album? How long did it take? What’d the production process look like beginning to end?
C: We worked with our friend Derek Ted from the SF band Owl Paws on this record.He engineered, mixed, and produced this record for us, he was a massive help we cannot thank him enough. We recorded this album in two or three days at the end of April up in West Oakland at this Studio called Secret Bathroom. It was super tight it was just us the band and Derek there the whole time,and we’d do super late nights it was a nice change of pace from our previous recording experiences. The vocals were recorded at Derek’s house in San Francisco, like Derek is so sick cannot say it enough how much he helped with this whole process, to say he is talented is a severe understatement. We didn’t get the masters back til very recently, so the whole process has taken a quick minute, so we are super eager to get this shit out.
CS: If you could write a song for any band or artist to record, active or inactive, who would it be?
C: I don’t know if we’d want to write a song for somebody else that we look up to, we like them cause of the music they make, we wouldn’t want to tarnish their reputation with our shitty music ya know. With that being said if Kanye West wanted to write us a song I’d be super into that.
CS: Plans for the future?
C: You can look for us on some shows with our friends HUNNY very soon , and other than that just getting this Album out on Danger Collective Records and playing in support of it as much as we can.
Thanks guys! For more from Casinos head over to their bandcamp page or check them out on Facebook. Also keep an eye out for their album dropping December 26th.