Our story so far... Press archives for 2000-2004 -- UNCUT MOJO NME Q NEW YORK PRESS The Schizo Fun Addict internet attic... Why we don't use My Space... Press Contact: Alan Jepson, Vision Promotions alan@visionmusic.co.uk AUGUST 2005 PRESS UPDATE The Atom Spark Hotel hits #15 on the UK MUSIC SEARCH Top 50 albums of 2005 "Schizo Fun Addict make deranged guitar abuse sound like the most soothing noise on earth. The sound of The Jesus And Mary Chain reinventing The Velvet Underground, The Atom Spark Hotel is a record that bristles with slanted lo-fi glory." Mike Bond, UK Music Search LEEDS MUSIC SCENE 5/5 star review "As sensible as it is plain mental, as simplistic as it is complex, as delightfully naïve as it is pure genius. This is the best album of 2005 thus far..." by Danny Martin --------------------------- Losing Today: "...Any remaining doubts about this album’s merits should be easily cast aside once the parting brace ‘Jellstar’ and ‘Neo Theme’ come into view. Sprawling chill out riffs, rumbling floor quaking bass underpins and a certifiable druggy demeanour parades the gorgeously psychotropic and dirtily delicious ‘Jellstar’ – think Cobra Killer squaring up to Primal Scream with Public Enemy mixing up things in the background. ‘Neo Theme’ rounds up what’s been a superb full length, lo-fi hallucinogenic pop that has you imagining Joe Meek getting to grips with remixing the Go! Team’s usually off balanced funky cocktail of 70’s kid TV and NY hip hop and laboratory testing it, splicing it up to be put on a slow bake then tie dyed and fed through the lysergic mixer by a team of boffins made up of the Busy Signals and Lenola. Essential – like your shitting me – of course it is." by Mark ------------------------------ Drowned In Sound freaks out: If, however, I was thinking about what a perfect world it would be if The Pastels, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Vaselines all got back together in a veiled recrimination of past glories then, yes rub it out immediately, because New York foursome Schizo Fun Addict have answered my prayers... Add the mindblowing wig-outs of 'Jellstar' and 'Neo Theme' and you have an album that is equal parts lucid fairytale and apocalyptic prophecy. 'The Atom Spark Hotel' is obviously the best place in town to score - just make sure you keep on the blue and off the brown." Dominic Gourlay ---------------------------- ALL MUSIC GUIDE: "...Schizo doesn't so much make music as manufacture holy emotional ordeals, energy transfers, and metaphysical happenings, and musical notes just happen to be the most conducive building blocks toward those ends. It's about the "aha" moment, the sudden bliss that arrives in the midst of an avalanche of detritus, finding a pattern in the disarray..." by Stanton Swihart ------------------------------------------ COLLECTIVE ZINE "I found myself singing the opening track whilst walking in the sun today. It's ridiculously catchy: 'hanging out in Philly, trying to make some money at the Atom Spark Hotel.' And on track 4 they start singing it again! ...It feels right when the weather is so good and a band is singing 'taking a walk in the sunshine every day'. They're singing what I'm doing!" by Gareth L -------------------------------------------- PULSE RADIO keeps the airwaves warm with our tunes. KOOBA RADIO has been playing some tracks as well. ----------------------------------- BUTTERFLY CRUSH (a paper only zine) SCHIZO FUN ADDICT - THE ATOM SPARK HOTEL (CANARSIE) LP Hinging on an American male/female song-writing partnership and with its heart set on hatching dazed-and-confused indie-pop that is as accessible as it is offbeat, this New York unit’s comparability to Joy Zipper had me wondering whether this crew too would present a case of rosy potential not quite lived up to. Certainly, their record number three seems to lay bare on its first side a wry self-consciousness about the non-marketability of their out-of-time sound; claiming that ‘no one listens but Everett True’ not long after pulling-off an enjoyably off-centre conversion to electric spaced-rock jelly of The Frank And Walters’ ‘Fashion Crisis Hits New York,’ which lovingly aligns the witty critique of trends by the forgotten men from Cork with contemporaries long-since similarly judged passé by the ranks of media hacks (contemporaries, that is, such as Ride and Medicine). There is at the same time an air of justifiable confidence in what they do, with the title track concerning a stay at a flophouse in Philadelphia that is imagined as a haunt of past greats - a kind of Chelsea Hotel for luminaries of noise-pop and shoegazing, perhaps - and treating the listener to a simply radiant arrangement involving elegant guitar and piano of a Greenwich Village folk simplicity, full of the thrills of flooding a time-worn room with the glow of one’s own individual light. Kinship with Joy Zipper is also speedily qualified, even before Side Two finds the group casting its net wider in order to bag more wholly experimentalist trophies. Although singer Jane Gabriel has all of the note-imperfect sweetness of a Tabitha Tindale (and then some), her step-brother and fellow vocalising multi-instrumentalist, Jet Wintzer, is no sleepy-cool Vincent Cafiso; and his often shrill and spat-out alley-cat style attains prominence on the record’s more frictional turns, such as the sci-fi scat-punk like Pavement on Space Ghost to which ‘The Venus Probe’ - otherwise a shivery sunshine daydream jam - continually switches. As for that previously mentioned second side, which pretty much accentuates the tangibility of each connotation signified by the text of the Schizo Fun Addict name, it is surely here that Jane and Jet and their accomplices soar to their loftiest heights. Kicking off with the stand-out earworm that is ‘Solon,’ adventurously patchwork in its musical construction yet invigoratingly percussive and melodically full-blooming, the sounds progress through smothered and juggled-with guitar doodling before the glow-sticks-stuck-to-the-brain dub-wise dance grooves of ‘Mordecai Killed The Video Star’ are ushered in by a suitably psychocandy announcement concerning ‘the red striped beast with the liquid sugar caramel carbonated fruction taste.’ Better yet than these, the multi-layered ‘Jetstar’ wantonly sprays bass filth, jumbo satellite-fantasy beats, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics from the Barbarella school of sexuality to place you squarely in the mosh-pit of a CBGB’s sound-clash between Beastie Boys and Bowery Electric. All ye wannabe indie-rap-rock acts in the universe - kneel. When it’s over, the sour scent of underachievement is nowhere to be detected, while my interest in the band’s previous instalments - 2001’s Diamond, 2000’s Just A Dimension Away - is piqued. And no longer must Everett True make a party of one." BUTTERFLY CRUSH more to come.... peace, love, highness, and volume yours in spirit and sound _______________________________________________ SCHIZO FUN ADDICT UPDATE: MAY 2005 Legendary UK rock journalist Ian Gittins wrote the following review for Chanel 4 TV in the UK, which was featured on their show, Planet Sound. "Much venerated in hip New York art-rock circles, Schizo Fun Addict are a sheer approximation of what might happen had Kim Deal sung with Velvet Underground. There is atonal alchemy here, with SFA happiest emerging from a Sonic Youth guitar maelstrom with a delicate melody line held triumphantly aloft. Fuzzy, spectral songs buffet your ears with the visceral glee of His Name Is Alive. SFA are doubtless too cool for school, but it would take a hard heart not to love them. 8/10" ___________________________________________________ NEON NYC pitcures Schizo Fun Addict on the cover with a feature write up by Jeff Rey, rock prophet of the lower east side since 1977. There's also a write up on our label, Canarsie Records, in the buzz section and features on our friends and fellow Canarsie recording artists, Death of Fashion and The Soft Explosions (also on the cover). _______________________________________________ The mighty UNPEELED Magazine (in UK record shops and on the web) features the album in the May issue proclaiming, "... The songs bubble like sulphate-spiked tizer, flow like guinness and are all covered in as much glory as gore and despite their grimy hometown and this being their third album there’s still an aura of innocence and fun running through much of this set... Like all good albums, no matter how often you play it, you keep finding little bits you missed last time and the lack of formula charms endlessly, odd little piano or guitar fills pop up, like sonic soap bubbles, just the once, seemingly random effects drift around catching and delighting the ear. Which brings me back on message; This is a great record, get it today." UNPEELED has graciously invited us to play one of their live showcases in London. Thank you Shane. Press release coming August 10, 2005. _____________________________________________________ UK MUSIC SEARCH "Jet Wintzer has a voice that can go between a Thurston Moore-esque drawl to psychotic scream in the blink of an eye, a style that blends perfectly when put up against the sweet sung harmonies of Jane Gabriel. Reinterpreting the title track, THE ATOM SPARK HOTEL, to accommodate a harder edged intensity Schizo Fun Addict replace the psychedelia with a frenzied guitar attack and deep bass dub that's like early Sonic Youth jamming with Burning Spear." __________________________________________________ Super Madchester DJ, famous rock journo and long time recording artist, Tony Flecther, features the labum in his Ijamming Zine. _________________________________________________ Alex Lawson from SHADOW PLAY: "Their music is witty ('Solon'), cleverly constructed (the title track) and reminiscent of some of the best rock'n'roll ever created; highly recommended." __________________________________________________ Skif from VANITY PROJECT waxed poetic: "lo-fi Sonic Youth-like clatter with psychedelia settling like dew. __________________________________________________ Also weighing in were hip web only mags JOYZINE and HEATHEN ANGEL ________________________________________________ LO VE Jane, Hadrian, Patrick and Jet. 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