The Alternative Tone

Who is Enemies and what's your story so far? Enemies is Eoin Whitfield, Lewis Jackson and myself (Mark O'Brien). Almost seven years ago Eoin brought us together to make a live band from one of his bedroom projects. Fast forward to 2014 and we've released two albums, three EPs and have toured parts of Europe, America and Asia that we never imagined we'd even visit, never mind perform in. Safe to say it's all worked out very nicely. How was 2013  for the band? It was definitely a roller coaster year compared to any before it. With the help of some fantastic friends we recorded and released our second album Embark, Embrace . We toured pretty extensively and at the end of it all had a very amicable parting with Oisín Trench, who'd been drumming with us since the band's formation. There were a lot of euphoric highs and some pretty tough periods too. I don't think we'd change a thing about 2013 though, it was a really valuable learning curve f...

Hi Nick! Hey Kelly! Thanks for taking the time to do this interview! What are you up to at the moment? Well, I woke up really early for some reason and have been lurking the internet all morning. Park Jefferson just released a record at midnight and the response has been kind of overwhelming. How did the new record come about? Well, for like two years there had been talk of us doing it. We broke up but there was always the possibility of it happening. I went to school for recording and when I came back I figured we should just do it and put it out just to say that it happened. What's changed about PJ's members since the break up? I guess the biggest "change" is that we're still not a band. There's not any permanent members and we're not planning on doing anything else in the future except perhaps some shows here and there. Everyone's gone off to college or doing other things and so there's not a set lineup or any plans to do anything...

Who is Arlo Aldo and how did you get together? Arlo Aldo is  David Manchester - Guitar, Vocals Ariel Forbes - Vocals, Keys, Bells, Melodica Susanna Meyers - Vocals, Bass Brandon Forbes - Percussion I moved to Pittsburgh about three and a half years ago from Baltimore, MD. I wanted to start a new band, but I didn't really know anyone yet, so I took to the magic of the internet. Ariel and I were the black sheep of Craigslist. It seemed everyone on there was looking for heavy metal guitarists, or death metal bassists, and here I was putting up a post for female harmonies in a mellow, alt-folk band. My intention was to just be a two piece. I've always been intrigued by the male/female harmony dynamic in contemporary bands like Low, and classics like Jonny and June Carter Cash. After playing together for a few months, Ariel mentioned that her (then) friend (now husband) Brandon was really interested in playing drums. So, we all got together, hung out, played some ...

Label Profile Name: Too Far Gone Records Location: New Jersey/  Massachusetts   Founded: 2013 Contact Them:  Facebook ,  Bandcamp ,  Tumblr __________________________________________________________________ How did the label come about and what's the story so far? The label came about as a result of me wanting to become more involved with the music scene and deciding that, since I don't personally have musical talent, that a record label would be an endeavor that I would both enjoy and would hopefully contribute to the scene. I actually wrote a paper about the DIY music community for a class in my fall semester in which I interviewed two of my older friends that ran labels and asked them questions about how they started and such. Come mid spring semester I decided to just give it a go, thought up a name, set up an email, and things just took off from there. I was planning to only have a couple tape releases over this summer but I'm way pas...

Few bands on the scene have made me fall in love quite as quick as Our Sunday Affairs did, so I was delighted to get an interview with a band whom I considered to be rising stars of our world. When the interview revealed to me that these guys were calling it a day, I was gutted. However, read below and check out their upcoming record, Cave, and prepare yourself to say goodbye in the best way possible. Hi there, Our Sunday Affairs! Hey Kelly and everyone at Alternative Tone! We're super stoked for this opportunity, much love! No worries! Who is Our Sunday Affairs and what's your story so far? Ever since Transitions the band has been Jake Schwab as our vocalist and the dude who really shows the most raw energy during our live performance.. Ryan Malmos as our drummer, who started playing drums shortly before he joined, and had no band experience what-so-ever. He ended up being an amazing drummer, and really showed a lot of heart through the good and bad times ...

Label Profile Name: Don't Live Like Me Records Location: Boston/ Medway, MA Founded: 2012 Current Roster:  Deathdealer, SLOTHS, Troop Of Echoes, Gillian Carter, Undark & The Radium Girls, Gatlin, Canadian Wedding, Native Wildlife, Monoliths, Dionaea, can lady, These Branches, BATS, Sunlight Alumni Contact Them:  Facebook ,  ___________________________________________________________ How did the label come about and what's the story so far? So after spending a year on interskramz / driftwood records I decided it was best to run a manage a label myself. Dandy (driftwood records) had moved away to Oregon and it made sense to start fresh. I also had enough contacts to start it up. I asked my friends Tanner and Gina to help me run the label and we have been active since xmas day of last year. Since then we are approaching 20 releases so far with the majority being vinyl.               ...

Hi there! Hello! Who is Johnny Edwards and what's the story so far? Johnny Edwards is a 4-piece emo band (currently 3 because we're missing a bassist) in Golden, CO. We like to play shows with cool bands. We currently have put out a demo and 2 splits via No Direction Records(my bud Evan's label) and Too Far Gone Records(my other bud Billy's label) with plans to put out more this summer. We also like to party. How did you come together? When I was in 9th grade I met Nick Caddigan, our drummer. I played bass at the time. We both wanted to start a band and it was a mutual thing (but he always says it was him who started it and I let him now because he bought me pizza or something). At the time we wanted to play the worst music, like, I laugh about it now because we thought we were so cool for liking breakdowns and whatnot. And I dunno you couldn't really blame us when the CO music scene was heavy metalcore and we were young and stupid. But after like 420 y...

Hi there! Well hello! Who is Meraki/Toska and how did it come about? Meraki/Toska is myself of course, Matthew Ziegelbauer and P.J. Ray playing guitar, Brian Huynh playing bass, and Hayden Six on drums. We were all part of a prior project called Old Men Die In New Suits and our singer quit the band to focus on school and work so we decided instead of trying to replace him we would just make our side project (M/T) our full time deal. How would you describe your sound? That's a tough one, I feel like we never answer it the same way each time. When we started the band we all listened to a lot of Pianos Become the Teeth and Oceana so we started off trying to really blend that together and from there we've just added and removed elements from it until we got to the sound we wanted. Our drummer described us as "mewithoutYou meets The Chariot meets Rancid", but he's a ginger so I don't know. ...