Stars Like Fleas “The Ken Burns Effect”
Hometapes HT023 CD/Digital
HEAR
Hear "I Was Only Dancing" from Stars Like Fleas "The Ken Burns Effect":
http://www.home-tapes.com/mp3/I%20Was%20Only%20Dancing.mp3
READ
Download the Stars Like Fleas "The Ken Burns Effect" onesheet here:
Stars Like Fleas - The Ken Burns Effect - One Sheet PDF
Download the Stars Like Fleas "The Ken Burns Effect" liner note info here:
Stars Like Fleas - The Ken Burns Effect - Liner Notes PDF
SEE
Stars Like Fleas Photograph 1 Stars Like Fleas Photograph 2
Stars Like Fleas Take Away Show #1 on La Blogotheque:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E6y4ScfoNg
Stars Like Fleas Take Away Show #2 on La Blogotheque:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWRHlyMTCRY
SELECT PRESS
"The single, "I Was Only Dancing," is a precise audio replication of a cloudburst falling on parched earth, sandwiched between slices of warm sunlight. Bathe/bask in it and you'll see why it's already one of my favorites of the year." - 3hive
“As if being one of the most fascinating live bands in New York wasn't enough, Stars Like Fleas' The Ken Burns Effect takes the group's aesthetic—weird, wondrous, naïve, bewildering—and wrangled it into a full-length that finally does overdue justice to their immense promise…one of those rare records that you want to hear on headphones to uncover each nook and cranny of its myriad contours. It's a record that you want to live in.” – Todd Burns, Editor-in-Chief, Stylus Magazine
“the spectacular result is full of pop songs…far more traditionally cogent than a typical Animal Collective offering…contradictory but not obtuse, [it] doesn't have the prodding instinct to withhold or stymie that embodies acts like the Fiery Furnaces… one of New York's most sublime and continuously undiscovered bands” – Jonas Oransky, Paper Magazine
“a sprawling mix of folk, Americana, free improv…the band can transform a dingy room into something as gorgeous and sweeping as the Great Plains” - New York Press
ABOUT STARS LIKE FLEAS
ELEVATOR PITCH
More expansive than god, the flu; electro-acoustic band trafficking in cognitive dissonance, as confusing as heartbreaking, crying seen at shows, nervous laughter, dancing. Long-secret recording project hotly praised by PFork &c.; now recently a live band w/ mems of TVotR, Beirut &…ScarJo? Indeed.
LINEUP
(lineup is fluid, misc combinations of the following)
Shannon Fields: guitar, electronics, keys, noise
Montgomery Knott: vocals
Ryan Smith:piano, synthesizers, laptop, glock
Ryan Sawyer: drums, percussion
Matt Lavelle: bass clarinet, flugelhorn, trumpet, cuica
Sam Amidon: fiddle, banjo, voice
Jon Natchez: reeds, brass, strings, keys, ukes, other
Gerald Menke, pedal steel, dobro resonator, guitars
Shelley Burgon: harp, laptop, baritone guitar, keys, dulcimer
Tianna Kennedy: cello
Shayna Dulberger: bass
Laura Ortman: violin, musical saw, guitar
PRESS RELEASE
"Stars Like Fleas juggle the disturbing, confrontational, direct, sincere, romantic, and the blatantly contrived, in quasi-improvised song cycles".
Begun in the early aughts as a recording project, Stars Like Fleas gained worldwide attention with the small handful of people who cared in each country they invaded. They sold literally tens of records (and were traded for free everywhere fine records were traded). Fortunately many of those listeners happened to be tastemakers, bands, and other people who do things -- soon Pitchfork, Salon, Stylus, Paper Magazine, Time Out, the Village Voice, and others were propping them up on 'best of' lists and praising the bands unreleased releases.
A couple of years ago Stars Like Fleas began playing shows in unmarked spaces in Brooklyn, lighting a fire overnight, with many FAMOUS! and IMPORTANT! people coming to their shows and leaving frustrated, pissed off, or strangely moved and uplifted (in all cases inviting the Fleas to perform). Even though Stars Like Fleas reconfigure their lineup, sound and music for almost every room they play (sometimes absurdly loud, sometimes entirely unamplified, performing amongst the audience, sometimes abstract, sometimes pop, sometimes sticking w/ sentimental drivel).
Stars Like Fleas were invited to play shows with Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors, Excepter, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Kyp Malone (TV On The Radio), Phosphorescent, Akron/Family; at concert halls, in illegal dingy spaces, at camping trips upstate, at festivals, in galleries. Stopping by CMJ in an unofficial capacity, they were named both the BEST (Pop Matters) and the WORST (Idolator) show of the festival.
Choosing not to capitalize on their hard-earned buzz, Stars Like Fleas went back below deck in 2006 and spent a year making a record (called "THE KEN BURNS EFFECT", a title they think is funny but nobody else does) with Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Fiery Furnaces, Cat Power, Black Dice, Oneida) and at Brooklyn's Seaside Lounge (The Occasion, Psychic Ills, The Double, New Pornographers); the Fleas were invited to Iceland by Bjork/Mum/Sigur Ros-producer Valgeir Sigurddson to mix their record. They mixed with sound artist Ben Frost, mastered with Valgeir. They came to an understanding with galciers.
First releasing in non-English speaking European countries late in 2007, their record ended up on many, many French/German/Italian/Spanish year-end "best of" lists. They are currently releasing a split 7" in the UK with Tunng and contributing a track to an upcoming Asthmatic Kitty compilation. People are talking again.
ON JUNE 3, 2008, "THE KEN BURNS EFFECT" (destined to be at least one of the most polarizing and perplexing records of 2008) WILL BE RELEASED IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE UK BY HOMETAPES (distributed by ADA via Absolutely Kosher/Misra).
Stars Like Fleas live to perform but do not make a habit of it. They will play as many dates as they can afford in support of the record. Hopefully one of them will be yours.
