photos by Mauricio Castro
“The sounds blend together to create a fun, relentlessly optimistic celebration of musicianship and, well, superhero-like abilities.” – Everything Is Noise
Everything Is Noise is hosting the exclusive video premiere for “Better To Be Alone Than In Bad Company,” the new single from American/Dutch jazz fusion trio LAST SCENE ALIVE. The song is found on the band’s debut album, World Class Pep Talk, nearing release in early March.
A hard-hitting hurricane of saxophone, synths, and rhythm, the transatlantic trio LAST SCENE ALIVE sees Amsterdam-based saxophonist Graham Robertson (Odd Circus) and Washington, DC-based synth player Zack Be (ex-Pretty Bitter) and drummer Sean Sidley (Jack Waugh, The Economy, Dissenters) collaborating on the band’s debut album, World Class Pep Talk. The band occupies a space where the bizarre meets the accessible: math rock anthems, jazz fusion breakbeats, expansive progressive rock passages, punk rock energy, and synth rock club bangers seamlessly coalescing under one umbrella.
LAST SCENE ALIVE’s powerful, singular sound on World Class Pep Talk guarantees a unique experience to listeners from a wide array of genres, injecting a tongue-in-cheek cynicism into the music almost entirely without lyrics. The album was recorded and mixed by band members Graham Robertson and Zack Be, mastered by Be, and completed with cover art by Ange Omer Rheaume. Garrett Gleason provides guitar to “Better To Be Alone Than In Bad Company” and Taisha Estrada adds vocals to “Summit Not The Chasm.” At a crucial time for the trending “alternative jazz” movement, this trio emerges poised to plant a flag. When you’ve exhausted the alternatives, you go to the LAST SCENE ALIVE.
The quirky video for “Better To Be Alone Than In Bad Company” was created by the band’s Graham Robertson and features the trio as well as guest guitarist Garrett Gleason flying around Amsterdam.
Zack Be writes, “LAST SCENE ALIVE exists because Garrett Gleason—friend, guitar wizard, human ignition switch—kicked Graham and I into action by offering us an excuse to generate one of our dream projects. Inviting Garrett to unleash his unique brand of shred onto our bubblegun math-rock sizzler was destiny. George Washington warned about bad company, but with friends like these? Sorry George, we choose company.”
The beefy write-up adjoining the premiere at Everything Is Noise reads in part, “On the song from their upcoming album World Class Pep Talk, the Dutch via D.C. jazz fusion progressive metal band slowly sets fire to a trail of fuel before it. The gasoline-soaked riffage spreads itself under a heavily-looped, 7/8 rhythm before guest guitar player Garrett Gleason ignites with electric, angular solos, embers floating up from the main melody with the pulsating confidence of a flame-shooting superhero… The sounds blend together to create a fun, relentlessly optimistic celebration of musicianship and, well, superhero-like abilities.”
Check out LAST SCENE ALIVE’s “Better To Be Alone Than In Bad Company” video first via Everything Is Noise RIGHT HERE.
The band will self-release World Class Pep Talk digitally on March 6th. Place preorders at Bandcamp HERE and find digital presaves HERE, and if you missed it, catch the “Mad News Travels Fast” video HERE.
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