RED (noun) Communist, Bolshevik, Comrade
PAINTINGS (noun) Picture, Illustration, Depiction, Art
Visionary Brisbane-based performer Trash McSweeney sees colour in his music. Ever since suffering a near-fatal seizure eight years ago, Trash set out to share with the world a lifetime's worth of ideas about what he has seen and felt. By taking to his guitar, piano, and notebook, The Red Paintings were officially born upon the dawn of the new millennium.
Based in Australia, though having been fortunate enough to already tour much of the globe, The Red Paintings are a five-piece group incorporating additional choral, orchestral, and performance art features wherever possible. Their shows amalgamate sonics and optics to create a living, breathing canvas that stimulates the senses and minds of listeners and viewers alike. Once jacked into your brain, The Red Paintings' sounds evoke everything from child-like lullabies of the future, to tearing, biting, alternative rock numbers. They are sometimes compared to multi-faceted acts like Radiohead, Muse, and The Arcade Fire, and their appeal reaches baroque-pop steam-punks, metal-heads, indie-rock fanatics, and beyond.
Utilising years of cumulative experience as well as every available resource, Trash & Co. have just wrapped recording their full-length debut album, The Revolution Is Never Coming, a record of truly epic proportions. Sharing desires shaped from a passionate world view, The Revolution Is Never Coming is what Trash hopes will be the tipping point for the band's career. With their diverse history and cult following, the band has stepped into 2008 with an arsenal of music, a highly-praised innovative live performance, and die-hard fans (who Trash says are "the best on the planet"). It truly looks as though the future is now for the band.
Prior to this most recent endeavour, the band released the first two EPs in their Robot Trilogy series, Walls and Destroy The Robots. By taking their show to the streets alongside dozens of fans, the band staged marches throughout capital cities and towns in Australia with intricately designed futuristic costumes and 9-foot robot statues. With all eyes upon their excitingly provocative performance art and accompanying nightly shows, three tracks from the EPs gained high rotation on well-known radio stations including Triple J, Nova, and Sports Talk UK. With EPs selling well and charting week after week - including a mind-blowing 15 weeks on the Net 50 - the band kept things buzzing with interviews and reviews across the globe. To date, they have made appearances in such distinguished print media as Rolling Stone, Blunt, and NME.
After being handpicked as support for Scottish post-rockers Mogwai, the band also played major festivals including Big Day Out, Livid and The Great Escape. They shared the stage with bands such as The White Stripes, Sigur Rós, and The Polyphonic Spree, which helped them to reach across diverse fan-bases to much acclaim. Fortunately, some of the converted happened to be fans of self-proclaimed "punk cabaret" duo The Dresden Dolls, to whom The Red Paintings were mentioned as a potential "perfect fit" support slot on the Australian leg of their world tour.
Singer/songwriter Amanda Palmer (one half of The Dolls) contacted The Red Paintings with an offer to tour Australia together. After winning over The Dolls' hearts and praise in those few shows, the band was asked to tour as direct support throughout the rest of The Dolls' 2006 tour including shows in New Zealand, The United States, and the United Kingdom. The tour was an extreme success, and reached maximum stride each night when Trash performed Tears For Fears' song "Mad World" alongside The Dolls during their encore. Despite having a trailer of equipment stolen while on the road, The Red Paintings managed to persevere in top form, and were fortunate enough to sell as many as 170 CDs per show! In the final days of 2006, two successful products chronicling the tour and the band's experiences throughout were released as an epilogue of the year; their first-ever DVD (a tour documentary) and live EP (which sold out in record time).
Before closing out 2007 with two monumental Christmas-themed charity concerts, the band released the final EP in their Trilogy (Feed The Wolf) and embarked on The Animal Rebellion tour (as well as like-minded marches in which they donned costumes depicting genetically engineered animals). These helped sales surpass the 20,000-unit mark for all TRP CD releases to date! Riding this wave of success, the band released their final single and music video from Feed The Wolf in December, the beautifully haunting ballad entitled "We Belong In The Sea."
This otherworldly dirge served as the perfect requiem for Feed The Wolf, closing a very pivotal chapter in the history of TRP. Following the success of the single on MySpace and YouTube (the mournfully grand video reached top honours on YouTube in December 2007), the band plunged headlong into an Australian and U.S. "Sea" tour. This included an invite to perform at the prestigious MUSEXPO conference wherein the band received praise from industry guru, Bob Lefsetz.
Following these shows, The Paintings have refocussed their attention on their fan-sponsored record, The Revolution Is Never Coming, which to date has generated over $40,000 in donations. Never wanting to be outdone and always wanting to keep fans stimulated, the band has been hard at work on album production at the same time as working on an elaborate accompanying stage show and tour for Revolution. The Paintings have always set themselves apart in their live performances by building stage shows and events that incorporate the imagery from their releases (such as the aforementioned trilogy), and the debut record will be no different.
Equipped with their full-length debut, the band is poised to strike in 2008. Like no other act, The Red Paintings are journeying into the future with vibrant and visionary performances that are sure to impact tour destinations new and familiar alike. As the band continues to spread their positive message online while not touring, buzz and positive reviews pour in daily from new and old fans around the globe. If the intelligence and craftsmanship of the bands back catalogue and live show is any indication of what fans have to expect from the record, then they are truly in for a ride. Perhaps the band will prove even themselves wrong and show the world that, in fact, the revolution is coming. It is here and now, and The Red Paintings are at the front of it.
Trash McSweeney (Vocals, Guitar, Sequencing & Samples), Ellen Stancombe (Violin, Vocals), Mike Langdale (Bass), Andy Davis (Drums, Vocal), David Sue Yek (Cello).
Source: http://artists.letssingit.com/red-paintings-the-qh92h/biography
