Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Pink Snowflakes: Life in Exile

THE PINK SNOWFLAKES: LIFE IN EXILE...FINALLY RELEASE TRACKS for their latest
EXILED to the PLANET out digitally sept. 9th

Portland Oregon's Pink Snowflakes release their 11 tracks of experimental psychedelic rock after a long winded delay. Daze, ..weeks, years! It all seemed like it was bound to nail the coffin shut. It all sounded like an eternity. The Pink Snowflakes sharpened their teeth and dug their claws in the studio, maybe went a little wild, a little bat shit. A bit compulsive. The followup to Sun Chasing is going to leave you spell bound.
“EXILED to the PLANET” is a much darker twisted progressive psychedelic offering up of quasi religious mantras, echoes, fuzz, sirens, growls, obvious spaced out jams in a tighter, more organic feeling album. The songs angular nouveau and kraut rock like grooves take you on a mind trip through the fertile imagination of Andrew Rossi's cosmic scenario. Ancient civilizations gone terribly wrong and buried only to be discovered by their own race of time traveled scientists wondering what the hell happened and how they can change it all. Its a bold statement. Its an odd album. Its equally soothing, melodic, exploratory and heavy in its floydish undertones, instrumental pieces and echoes-like screams and screaches.
“EXILED to the PLANET” could be conceptual in its varied abstract representations of songwriting and what a semi-known psych rock band from the west coast can do when they want to make a crazy rock album..rock!

Check out EXILED to the PLANETs track listing!

1. Too much Strasbourg pie (intro) ….......................2:00
2. Gods of Sound …......................5:17
3. Ice Path to the Uranium Mind Pts. I and II ….......7:21
4. Peace and Radiation …......................7:46
5. She's the Planet / I'm Dying... ….....................3:16
6. Transmigration of the Spaceman March …...........4:08
7. Vampire at the Shoegazers Ball …......................5:30
8. We were Holograms ….....................4:42
9. Sand Swept Lines …......................3:43
10. We made Machines / When the snow fell ….........9:45
11. Exiled / Time will come to run …......................5:17

WEST COAST PSYCH POPPERS DELIVER FAR OUT ALBUM 9/9 the article

The Pink Snowflakes made a new album after an almost three year break due to unforeseeable circumstances that almost shelved the band for good. The album titled EXILED to the PLANET is the odd, off balanced, destined to be mind blowing followup to their first Lp SUN CHASING. Their latest album firstly recorded in the late fall of
2009 contains tracks the band never had a chance to record when the band was approached by Revolver studios in Portland. Soon after the first few tracks were down, the the Pink Snowflakes added more and more ideas taped field recordings and psychedelic Prog and Kraut Rock jams the band was exploring pretty heavily. After playing of a loose concept of a doomed terrestrial race mining and discovering uranium and plutonium, head songwriter Andrew Rossi started careening his songs to fit the story to be unfolded.
“Some off these songs were ones I showed the band and we played live for quite a while with my co writer lead guitarist since late 2005 Tom helping me out before he had to leave us after a crazy tour in 09” “ One in particular , “We Were Holograms” was played live once with a previous lineup years ago then we forgot about it. Scott Mj and I finally went in and put the finishing touches on it with Scotts weird drumming. The song made sense for the album” “She's the Planet” was another
one we were kicking around ideas with when we were on a tour. I wrote the lyrics for that song all in one night. Those words just appeared out of nowhere in my head.”
A planetary “we must do something” theme runs throughout Exiled to the Planet on almost every track. With the dawn of 2012, the Pink Snowflakes looked to get their efforts out as soon as possible to feed the frenzy of possible mass hysteria but alas, it was over. The date came and went just as the Pink Snowflakes were finishing up
their tedious drawn out mixing sessions with Johnathan Drews, a recording and mixing engineer and member of one of Portlands best seminal quirky sunshine power pop bands Sunset Valley. J Drews also works with Robert Pollards solo project Boston Spaceships and was the perfect person to realize the Pink Snowflakes pop sensibility and their hallucinogenic mind trip music.
“We wanted to make the drums huge on some songs and not so much on others. In fact, we didn't want to have words for some. Mostly a thought out jam. We even attempted to not use our guitars to make sound and noise samples but use this megaphone they had in the studio and run some stuff through that!” “I recorded myself running up and down a gymnasium floor to test acoustics..we wound up using that too.”

The Pink Snowflakes onslaught of heavier tribal percussion, operatic falsetto siren wails and open sonic experimentation with recording and mixing makes Exiled to the Planet a psychedelic rock album with grit and balls. “Just by hearing it you can tell there was a lot of ideas and chances taken that we thought we should do that we didn't know exactly how to do because we weren't taking expectations from anybody too seriously.” “ We made something however, we wanted to
listen to and realize just why we did it and what the hell we did that for.”
Exiled to the Planet is truly a sprawling psychedelic infused Prog like indie album that keeps you wondering what's the next step for the Pink Snowflakes? The band doesn't want to know.

"I'll continue doing this stuff wherever I'm at and however long it takes, is fine." "your just participating in creating some weird memories for yourself and others who stumble along your art."