Caspian

Mike Wexler

The Caspian label is proud to present Mike Wexler. A Brooklyn musician whose name will no doubt be revered and uttered in hushed tones by those lucky to hear Wexler’s music, for years to come. A virtuoso of sorts, without a scene or history to explain or contextualize his talent, Wexler seems to have arrived from nowhere to hypnotise us with quietly exotic songs that caress and unsettle in equal measure.

This single marks the second release of a series of seven on the Caspian label. Mike’s debut album “Sun Wheel” is available worldwide through Amish Records here

15/11/07

Sleeping States

This is something somebody else once said about sleepingstates:

“Enter Sleeping States. Dr Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesiser, may have recently left the planet, but Sleeping State’s lead-singer, Markland Starkie, is reinventing the concept. Starkie looks like a mad scientist on stage, hovering over his audio experiments and twisting dials.

First he takes a Fisher Price radio to his guitar, and then what looks like a hairdryer, pressing them against the pickups he works up an electromagnetic drone. Once the drone meets his required standards, he stands up at the microphone and begins to sing. He sounds like Jeff Buckley malfunctioning over a railway station PA. This is a band designed from its atoms up never to break into the mainstream. Starkie’s sprawling lyrics fall like a balm over the white noise and whale song of his guitar, but it all swings quickly from the gorgeous to the totally inaccessible. The band is often drowned out by the babble of the crowd, but Sleeping States don’t care one bit. Starkie just presses a short-circuiting Dictaphone to his guitar pick-ups and smiles out into the dark.”

- Chris Stevens, www.new-noise.net

15/07/07