Something like Alt / fusion / rock / funk sorta thingy. Original if nothing else....lately its been busting a kind of "velvet luxury love boat death funk" vibe.
ignition is (by jim)
Ignition was formed around 1992 when chris and burt and jim tripped across each other while trying to form an original band. Craig was added to the lineup as guitarist shorty thereafter.
fun fact: Ignitions original name was "13th floor"
Ignition's early music was a rather odd mix of rock, funk, dance and what would later be called "alt".
fun fact: Our first gig was in diamond bar, Craig says it was at the "tree house". I think he is right.
Johnny(1) joined as drummer shortly before the first gig and would later play drums on our first (unnamed) demo. Johnny(2) joined later adding a more funk based drum style to 13th floors sound. We had a keyboardist for about 15 seconds around this same period. I shall call him "random keyboard guy" as i forget his name. as usual, drummers continued to implode and disappear...at some point (1995ish?) we hooked up with hamzah and went onto the next phase of musical style, we also picked up "ignition" as the band name around that time. Ignition's sound became a bit harder, but we continued to write in whatever style we wanted too, still blending, alt, fusion. funk, rock, etc as we saw fit. We recorded several more demos between...1995 and..2000ish?
fun fact: all of ignition/13th floors demos "disappeared" when our recording engineer moved.. or was abducted by aliens.
most of our gigs were booked and played in this same time frame, including: hoagie barmichaels - industrial lounge - the loft - blackwatch pub - rude dog - granada theatre - old town pub - grape harvest festival - caseys - Namm Jamm - sunset club
fun facts: video exists from industrial lounge(1998) and one of the many black watch pub gigs(1996).
At some point, hamzah had to leave the band. We went through a few drummers before we added tim.
fun fact: tim runs the studio ignition/13th floor has played in for years. (urban audio, duarte) bonus fun fact: duarte is "the city of health"
at some point, chris, our singer had to move on to keep up with his outside schedule, Ignition continued to write and do alot of dirty recording as an instrumental band. fast forward to present: Hamzah rejoined the band in july of 2008. Ignition moves on to the next phase with a pretty new logo and an awesome i.r.e. (ignition recording engineer) (thank you star on both accounts!!!) We have stickers...and hats! its a merchandise extravaganza! The power of the muse is undeniable! over the years, ignition/13th floor has always been a truly original band/writing project. Currently, the style is original alt/fusion/rock with funk/pop/dance/metal mixed in. I like to think of ignition as a "pure" band. music and fun always take precedence over image and conformity. We continue to improve as musicians as we write and record songs and morph into different music styles. Although ignition has always been able to stand alone as an instrumental band we are open to adding vocals back into the mix if the right person appears with the right quirky individual style. As digital recording gets cheaper and cheaper i expect ignition will be releasing finished mastered music in the same way we produce copious quantities of "on the fly" rehearsal recordings now. In some ways i will always prefer the "dirty" takes that get captured live over meticulously finished multitrack recordings. But then what do i know, i just play bass ! Lastly, ignitions writing style: In general most of our songs start as bass lines and then are then combined with drums and then guitar is added giving most of our songs a fairly percussive slant and leaving craig the job of creating guitar lines that weld the whole mess together and keep it melodic.
fun fact: I am a major bass riff writing whore. Who needs sleep!
jim, aka ja-mes.
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