We love: The Beatles, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, Beta Band, Grizzly Bear, Subtle/DoseOne, Yo La Tengo, Brian Wilson, Bjork, Prefuse 73, Savath y Savalas, Squarepusher, The Kinks, Big Baby, Elliott Smith, Queen, The Police, The Billowing Clouds, Beach House, Adam B. Rich, Anticon, The Books, Talking Heads, Ween, Plaid, Ra Ra Riot, Built to Spill, The Sea and Cake, Midlake, Will Oldham, Neil Young, Yeasayer, Jamie Lidell, Mark Kozelek, To Be A High Powered Executive, David Bowie, Modest Mouse, ELO, Gravenhurst, Boards of Canada, The Monkees, The Free Design, Hot Chip, Of Montreal, Grandaddy, Television, Field Music, This n Scat, Mocha Bovine, Motown...
"Red Abbott, the band, is not really a band at all in the traditional sense... In fact, they don't see much of one another at all." (excerpted from Popular Mechanics).
"From first riff to postproduction, they do it by e-mail." (excerpted from The Boston Globe).
Bert Brown, Joe Madera and Chip Means are three multi-instrumentalists who create Red Abbott's music via e-mail from their homes in New York City, Providence and Portland, Maine, respectively.
Red Abbott's first album, Having Fun Without You, was made over 18 months of recording individual tracks and sending them to each other one at a time. "By the time a file came back to me, it was a completely different song than what I imagined it could be," Bert said in a recent interview with Popular Mechanics, who took interest in the band's do-it-yourself approach and recording process. "By the seventh or eighth song we were handing each other more thoughtful and complete work," added Chip in an interview with The Hamilton-Wenham Chronicle (Mass.).
Since its release in September 2007, the album and the band's music videos (created entirely by Bert) have achieved success throughout the US and overseas. The video for the single "The Spare Room" (below) is currently in rotation on MTV2's 120 Minutes in the UK. "The Spare Room" has also been aired as the feature video on Portland-based television program My Tunes on The CW. "There's another version there, where people have heard our music through the video," Madera told The Boston Globe.
Meanwhile, the video for "Reversed Sides" (below) has been a top-rated featured item on both The Daily Reel and Crackle.
Additionally, the editors of CD Baby, one of the online music sites where Red Abbott's music is sold, named Having Fun Without You among the "Editor's Picks" in three categories: Experimental Rock, Electronica and Party Music.
The band recently gathered in Boston, joined by former Radka drummer drummer Shawn Hildonen, to play its first live performance of the music on Having Fun Without You. Red Abbott is currently adding live dates while getting started on a second LP.
Online Now!
