We Are Dios*:
- Joel Morales - singer/songwriter/scrabble
- Edwin Kampwirth - keyboards/sounds
- John Paul Caballero bass guitar/hair-products
- Patrick Butterworth - drummer
*The started out as "dios" before summer 2004, then changed their name to dios (malos) and in 2009 are back to their original band name, Dios.
CONTACT: wearedios@gmail.com
Influences
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dios are defined by their four-track mission statement: "proud to be a home recording;" an experimental approach to song and studio-craft, creative freedom, and lack of time constraint that had informed the hundreds of recordings the band made during their ascent from backyard party band to critical darling.
dios began working on album 3 in late 2006, following years of touring throughout the U.S. in a van converted to run on vegetable oil, and abroad to the UK and Mexico. After a brief foray into the world of professional recording with the Phil Ek produced sophomore effort "dios (malos)," the band felt compelled to once again embrace their DIY fusion of budget gear lo-fi and spiritual melodic devotion that had defined their previous efforts, this time adding a greater degree of sonic experimentation and genre-bending.
Taking an almost Howard Hughes-ian approach to the recording process, leader Joel Morales largely disappeared from the Los Angeles music scene to commit the better part of a 3 year period toward realizing and expanding the schizophrenic combination of powerful melodies and compelling arrangements that debut effort dios hinted at. Songs melt together, creating a pocket-symphonic-folk-song-cycle in which leitmotifs drift in and out, aurally suggesting a Fellini score played over the Electric Kool-Aid acid test. Spiritually inspired by the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Mexican bolero standards of Chavela Vargas and Cuco Sanchez, and the tortured devotional atmospherics of Los Pasteles Verdes and Los Angeles Negros, the result was a concept record about home-recording, and by extension the group's cultural identity.
It must also be noted that dios are a product of their environment.
The group hails from the South Bay of Los Angeles; a collection of burnt out, perennially overshadowed and disregarded semi-urban cities, specifically the "City of Good Neighbors," Hawthorne; home of the Beach Boys. This once quaint hamlet, however, has slowly devolved into its current chaotic blend of race riot aftermath, shuttered malls, and used car lots. Smog, graffiti, and strip malls; not surf, orange groves, and beach bonfires. They have more in common with the high-school dropout, the homeless man, and the ragged car-wash attendant smoking in the sunset.
They are the result of TV as latchkey parent; marked by the influence of early 90's hip-hop, daytime television, narcocorrido ballads, and post-Reagan American junk culture on their aesthetic.
dios are second generation Mexican American, and this too is an important and often overlooked aspect of the band. They share a cultural identity with approximately 50% of LA County's 4 million inhabitants; the same underrepresented and marginalized people who work long hours on low wages to bring you the California dream at discount prices.
dios are an LA band, in the way that the LA Lakers are a LA basketball team.
Emerging from their hermitic recording pilgrimage, dios have chosen to release their 3rd album and begin the touring cycle once again, playing new arrangements of every song, every tour. It is hard, but dios have never followed the path of least resistance.
