Stamen
& Pistils came together during 2003 as Raul
Zahir De Leon and Miguel
Lacsamana took some of their collaborations over the previous year
on various other projects and began to work in a more focused fashion.
S&P became an outlet
for a more direct, instrument based songwriting process, opposed to
the intricate sample based work of some of their prior work. Over
the next year, Stamen
& Pistils developed into a primary effort as the began
the songwriting which would lead to their 2005 debut effort, End
of the Sweet Parade. This release, a foray into dense experimental
pop, would gain them critical recognition by diverse sources such as The
Wire and The
Washington Post. Their latest release, Towns, strips
away a large part of that sonic density and opts for a more transparent
approach. Much more refined melodies strengthen their folk tunes, while
retaining a sense of experimentation in their song structure.
The band has shared the stage with bands such as The Dirty
Projectors, Telepathe, Asobi Seksu, The Blow, Dear
Nora, YACHT,
and more.
Coming out of Washington DC, they come with a sound very atypical of what is commonly expected to come out of the city. The music is largely acoustic based pop, filled out with programmed beats and synths to form a sort of controlled chaos. Influenced as much by the future as by anachronism. While recognizing and respecting the long standing music traditions of the city, Stamen & Pistils aim to create something new and sincerely their own: a highly textured sonic pallet of fuzzy pop, deconstructed just enough to remain consistently innovative.
Click here to download press onesheet for Towns
Click
here to download press onesheet for End of the Sweet Parade
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Releases:
Towns | End of the Sweet Parade | Fan Fiction
Stamen & Pistils / Towns
The second record from Stamen & Pistils is a diagonal step into
new sonic terrain. On 2005’s End of The Sweet Parade, the band built a
soundscape that was largely reliant upon density for texture, with lyrical themes
focused on the follies
of youth, as well as passionate reactions to love and loss. But now, the band’s
follow-up, Towns, sees them stripping that sonic and lyrical method down to the
barest elements. The sound is refined, yet gritty, while maintaining a sparse,
but textured, space throughout. Their expanded lineup now includes drummer/percussionist
John Masters (Metropolitan, Portions Toll), whose contributions add
to the organic presence in the music’s dialogue between man and machine.
Available June 19! Accepting Preorders Now!
Tracklisting
1. Second Hand Valise
2. To That What We Might Belong
3. Quiet County
4. A Death in Ronkonkoma
5. An Elegy for Thee
6. Walk On
7. Hands Washing Water
8. Possessive Nouns
9. At Home Amongst Your Tangles
Selected Press for Towns
"Washington DC's Stamen And Pistils erect finely
crafted songs that takes a worthwhile while to sink in, blending folk and free-form
electro-industrial noise. The connection between folk and noise has always
been obscure and strong: How much is the appeal musical and how much rests
in form: the half-heard melody creeping through a faint A.M. signal, the crackles
of an old 78, signifiers of age and obscurity reinvented as markers of authenticity
(and, you know, soul). And then, can the addition of recording artifacts, bubble,
hiss, glitch and such turn something self-evidently un-folk (like, say, jangle-pop
or singer-songwritery strumscapes, or “Venus In Furs” toms with
an old Slint progression) into folk? Or, I guess, you could end up
actually using the noise as a textural instrument, letting its expansion and
compression direct the melodic momentum, punctuating and directing the song
in a way that threatens (though avoids) the opposite trap of turning folk into
just another set of signifiers in the electronic inventory. Like old favorite
Hannah Marcus (though less haunting), Stamen And Pistils cobble together something
of a workable balance, replete with delicate melodies and surprising turns."
--Paper
Thin Walls
"STAMEN & PISTILS HAS added a third member
since its 2005 debut, "End
of the Sweet Parade," but the complexity of this local folk-tronic trio's music
can't be measured by the number of either musicians or overdubs. "Towns" often
sounds less layered, if no less impressive, than "Parade." Yet singer-guitarist-producer
Raul Zahir De Leon, guitarist-producer Miguel Lacsamana and percussionist John
Masters (the last two also play with Metropolitan) can fill a track to the
brim. There's just the most incidental of electronic embroidery on such songs
as "Quiet
Country," a pleasant folk-pop duet with guest singer Mikal Evans, and "A Death
in Ronkonkoma," a Delta blues song named for a Long Island, N.Y., town. At
the album's opposite stylistic edge are "Hands Washing Water," a churning dirge
that suggests a collaboration between the Velvet Underground and Joy Division,
and "Possessive Nouns," which devotes nearly half its time to a craggy guitar-and-synth
sally. It's apparent that De Leon could make a career on the neo-folk circuit,
if only he and his bandmates could resist marring his pretty ballads with shards
of noise. But "Towns" is distinctive exactly because they can't."
--The Washington
Post
"“A Death in Ronkonkoma,” a slice of melancholy future-folk. Miguel Lacsamana’s acoustic guitar overcomes a glitchy vocal sample as singer Raul Zahir De Leon sets a none-too-sunny mood: “How sweet those lips taste that I’ll never taste again/Only the sour taste of defeat and of the blood-stained end my friend.” He further bemoans the doomed affair on the adagio chorus: “There’s no sense in lamenting what has to be.” On the heels of a spare piano figure, he finishes his patchwork quilt of human suffering in less than three minutes. Towns maps a mournful, Smog-like geography, but Ronkonkoma, a small Long Island town, is the only place named on the record. “It was a terrible day, gloomy and overcast,” De Leon says of a trip across Long Island Sound. “The ferry was moving at 1 mile an hour.” The slow boat didn’t carry the 28-year-old LeDroit Park resident to Ronkonkoma, but the place represents “the moment that the character realizes that the relationship isn’t going to work.” De Leon may have been burned romantically, but he refuses to name names. “I will admit that some elements of myself are in the songs, but not in the sense that I was writing about specific personal experience,” he says. The singer was unaware of an eerie bit of Ronkonkoma history: Some say that the ghost of an Indian girl forbidden to love a white colonist claims the life of one unlucky visitor to Lake Ronkonkoma every year. “There are forces bigger than me at work,” De Leon says." -- Justin Moyer, Washington City Paper
"Lo-fi indie pop that is a dark roadway between Gothic New Orleans flavors and steamy urban folk, Towns seems to be just that—a visit to the various towns that dot the landscape of America, stopping in to lift each borough’s unique mixture of music. Indie rock vibes that will easily cast folk’s memories back to the mighty indie giants Neutral Milk Hotel at times though it perhaps belongs in the same class as Mogwai, Migala, Animal Collective, and Asobi Seksu (whom they’ve played alongside). Acoustic folk-pop that is backed by the instrument most ubiquitous in trendy nightspots—the laptop. Beats rattle alongside odd samples and visceral lyrical twists. I’m proud to say that this is from nearby Washington, DC., who wouldn’t be proud of their music scene when it boasts such up-and-comers and luminaries in waiting as Stamen & Pistils." --Smother.net
"With acoustic verve meets electronica fragmentation, the band borders literate gazing with such lines like “that biting early winter breeze, bristling through skeletal trees…the television’s blue glow upon your sleeping face,” ...Try to imagine the drama of Morrisey, without his Oscar Wilde impersonation, melding into the fastidious pop sensibility of The Church, mixed with the open-ended idea of electronica, which allows for a scattershot landscape of sound and experiment, which conveys the vibe of tunes like “To Have What We Might Belong,” with its weirdly coded title and lyrical exploration of poetry, half-truth, history (which grips him “violently by the side”), and the slippage of our mind’s ability to bridge desires and remembrance. “Quiet Country” hardly seems a quiet mise-en-scene at all, despite the humming boy-girl vocal trade-offs, since it does note the thin-blade between emotions, as in “a knife separates us from malice.” Then there’s the “sour taste of defeat,” ...and “blood stained end,” which forsake the sweetness of the song for an undercurrent of rippling, though subterfuged, hostility and brooding. At times like this, I am reminded of the southern Gothic country balladry of [16] Horsepower. “An Elegy for You” evokes the person who towers like a building, the green inspiration of leaves against which he will lean against for support and comfort. I dig the Whitmanesque blend of the modern steel-work of a city with nature’s abode...The haunting quirkiness returns on “Walk On,” with its minor Tom Waits drifting and funeral march weariness. The second half of the disc somehow avoids the specificity of earlier songs, meaning they skip the imagism and storytelling, opting for larger, more generic brush work, like the line “possibility of wonders uncovered” and so on, a shift in style and method. However, the overall tone seems in balance, such as the smoldering, art-drenched, primitive, Velvet Underground impregnated soundscape of “Hands Washing Water,” whose stripped-down percussive ensemble work and vocal intonations are akin to Angels of Light/Swans in their theatrical pathos." -- Left of the Dial
Stamen & Pistils / Portions Toll Split 7" (Fan Fiction)
The latest release from Stamen & Pistils, this split 7"
was pressed for the tour this autum with Portions Toll. Features exclusive
music unavailable anywhere else! 2 new songs from S&P, a cover of
a Why? (Anticon, Clouddead, Reaching Quiet) song they've been
playing live for some time now, and "The Calliope of Calliope,"
which is a bonus song recorded during the sessions for End of the
Sweet Parade. The Portions Toll side features, "Carried Away",
which was produced by Miguel Lacsamana from S&P. Very limited edition
hand-made jackets on clear vinyl. Sweetness.
