Atsuko Chiba
House of TARG
presented with the support of Ontario Creates
Big Business is a band. They play heavy rock. On that, we can all agree. Things get tricky when you try to classify exactly where on the musical spectrum the dynamic duo's racket falls. "I guess psychedelic heavy metal punk rock? I don't know. People always say 'sludge rock,' which I always found to be lazy and kind of inaccurate," says drummer Coady Willis. "A lot of our songs are fast, and it's not like we're playing a half-assed Black Sabbath riff over and over again. That's been the struggle of the band. We're a band that doesn't really fit into what everyone else is doing." Willis comes from punk rockers The Murder City Devils. His co-conspirator, bassist/vocalist Jared Warren, spent time in noise rock weirdos Karp. Together, they formed Big Business in 2004. The LA-based outfit's first three albums didn't quite mesh with Hydra Head's post-metal aesthetic, but their idiosyncrasies caught the attention of another iconoclastic outfit: The Melvins. They recorded three albums, an EP, and various songs between 2006 and 2016 with that iconic grunge/doom/experimental act, all while maintaining their own identity as Big Business. Along the way, they picked up guitarists Toshi Kasai and Scott Martin, but on 2016's Command Your Weather, they returned to their core duo format. They remain in that lineup on their sixth full-length, The Beast You Are. "It's just better. We work faster, and we know what we're both going for. It gives us more room to be weirder in certain aspects and try different things. It makes sense because that's how we established ourselves in the beginning and how we learned to write songs together, it was just the two of us. Coming back to that lineup felt natural," continues Willis. The two performed everything on the album, which was recorded between the early November and early December of 2018 at El Studio in San Francisco by Phil Becker (Pins of Light, Terry Gross). Willis, Warren, and Becker handled the mixing, with Carl Saff lending his mastering expertise to the final product. Once more, Warren has hacked up some construction paper for one of his unique cover art pieces. With a new, dynamic demoing process leading to the creation of the most songs they've ever written for an album, The Beast You Are delivers 13 doses of uncategorizably heavy rock music. From the ominous death march of "The Moor You Know" to the soaring "Let Them Grind" to the delicate, ethereal "Under Everest," Big Business continues to defy listener's expectations. No matter the context of their music, however, one thing remains true: they are definitely still a band.
Montreal's Atsuko Chiba fearlessly cross genre-defining borders with a unique blend of progressive, psychedelic, post-rock, funk, and krautrock.
The band's live performances uniquely combine their sound-based creative practices and live-triggered projections to create immersive sensorial environments. Over the years, they have shared the stage with 65daysofstatic, Caspian, Duchess Says, Tricot, Indian Handcrafts, If These Trees Could Talk, The Alarmist, Arms and Sleepers and Little Tybee, among others.
The inimitable psychedelic-prog rockers are back with Trace—their second full-length album. The eight-song collection, mastered by Chris Common (Chelsea Wolfe, Mastodon, Isis), encapsulates relentless riffs and dexterously performed rhythms that feed off herds of intertwining melodies and otherworldly soundscapes.
Atsuko Chiba will hit the road to promote their upcoming album with dates in direct support of ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead as well as a series of shows with Lume.
1077 Bank St.
Ottawa, ON, K1S
http://www.houseoftarg.com/