Up until only one month before their first rehearsal, the members of this band all lived in different states. They booked their first show San Francisco's prestigious Noise Pop Festival the band had even collectively met in the same room. And in four months time, the band went from telephone conversation theory to Washington, D.C.'s Salad Days Studio to ready their first-ever album. Such is the story behind New End Original and "Thriller", the band's exceptional debut full-length for Jade Tree.
Though experiencing viable success as a solo artist under his Onelinedrawing guise, Jonah Matranga hard rock band Far friends that he met along the way. Norman Arenas pioneers Texas Is The Reason far back as 1998, when the pair first concei-ved the idea of collaborating. Charles Walker, who spent the better part of the decade playing drums for the much-loved Indiana troupe Chamberlain, made the next connection last year when he found himself sitting in for ex-Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega's solo project on a UK tour with Onelinedrawing. The band solidified when Arenas and Walker migrated to the West Coast in late 2000, shortly followed by New York native and former Texas Is The Reason bassist Scott Winegard, who filled out the band's developing line-up.
Together, New End Original's first record is a big rock blast combination of everything that made the members' previous out-fits so compelling, but carefully relevant and blissfully unguarded all the same. An exercise in diversity, "Thriller" is as raw as it is calculated, shuffling from high-energy hard rock to meticulously crafted pop songcraft and Velvets-styled melancholy both seamlessly and unapologetically.
Aside from their much-feted debut at Noise Pop, the band went on to play a string of West Coast dates with Jets To Brazil in late April before recording "Thriller" with former Texas producer Brian McTernan. The album will be preceded by a mailor-der-only single, a singles series on Germany's Defiance Records, a German and UK jaunt in August, and a full-scale US tour in late September, climaxing at Jade Tree's New York City CMJ Showcase.
Source: www.pam-records.at