Music Makers

Three Music Thingz with Antenna93

feat. image photo credit: Sin^^

Heyyoooooo, it's another rendition of Three Music Thingz, the blogseries where I ask musicians for three thingz that are essential to their music-making.

Today we've got Antenna93! Antenna93 are a four-piece (Trevor Yardley-Jones [guitar and vocals], Akira Satoh [guitar, vocals, miscellaneous], Derek Robinson [bass] and Michael Tomizzi [drums]) in Montreal that put out an EP, You're Not Made for This Business, in April.

It's rock music that straddles the crispy-messy divide...you know the crispy-messy divide? On one end: neatness, structure, timeliness, 'frameworks.' On the other end: amorphousness, chaos, formlessness, 'vibes.' The EP hovers suspended between the two poles, with unrestrained guitars at max fuzz and lyrics that often tumble forth as if they've been forcibly held back too long (or else are shouted out in full catharsis mode). Tomizzi's complex but clean drumming holds everything together, a sleek kettle containing boiling water. Good shit!!

Antenna93 sent over their three thingz and you should read them, right now...

Cancon
Interestingly enough, Canadian radio stations are required to have at least 35% of the content they play be Canadian content. A fantastic idea in theory, but terrestrial radio stations love showing just how obsolete they are by picking the same handful of artists and songs to play over and over again. If you grew up playing music and lived in Canada, then you definitely know the same ~50 cheesy classic rock staples we have such a soft spot for. When we all met, a big point of bonding were these songs. We like to imagine we don’t sound anything like them, and we all share influences that are a lot more in line with what we’ve been doing (think Women, Modest Mouse, Pixies), but it's definitely a big talking/joking point with us and we all secretly aspire to become the next Bachmann Turner Overdrive or Kim Mitchell one day.
Akira’s Field Recorder
We love incorporating sounds other than our recorded instruments in our music. If you put on any of the tracks on our new EP, but especially our intro track “N10a93”, you’ll catch a lot of these little subtle moments from things we’ve recorded at practice/shows/elsewhere. We’re planning on incorporating this even more in the next release. I think recording every practice and show we’ve played has given us many cool moments that we’ve since been able to add into our music. Tying our first response about Cancon into this, at one of the last shows we played, Akira sang the name of our unreleased song “Spine” to the tune of Kim Mitchell’s “Patio Lanterns”, and I can’t NOT hear it starting like that in my head every time we play it.
Traveling and the trinkets found therein
Since we’ve all met, we’ve been lucky enough to travel all over. Akira spent time on tour as well as in Seattle, Michael and Derek spent separate trips in Europe, and Trevor got a few weeks and multiple countries in on his South American trip. We’re all linked by our love for the unique and I think that comes through in the music, and whether its salty licorice from Finland, obscure soccer jerseys and Skibidi Toilet dollar store cups from Argentina, or bouzoukis almost purchased in Greece if not for checked baggage prices, we love to experience it. We’re all avid hobbyist photographers/videographers, and a lot of the photos and videos we’ve taken on our travels as well as the aural palettes we’ve experienced have influenced our creativity.

Thank you Antenna93! Listen to You're Not Made for This Business. Also here's a last note from the band with some other Montreal-based band recommendations. Music blogging is the gift that keeps on giving!!:

"Montreal’s scene has been getting better and better in the past years, and some of our friends have been making fantastic music. The hardest thing to do playing music starting out is to stay optimistic, because you can be writing great music that just never reaches anyone’s ears. The only thing you can do is enjoy the ride and keep it up. I really think if you like our music, you should check some of these albums out"