"get out, get out of here"
If you were to stuff 90's Goth pop, post punk electronica, raw sensuality, 80's black leather aloofness and copious amounts of anytime cool into a sonic blender and hit chop and then puree, you would have the almost undefinable "Artifacts". Of, course, I just tried to define it's sound, give a flavor of it's aesthetic but it was not easy for me because it is an all encompassing sound. I mean, after the sort of Bonham drums at the beginning, the track is flooded with so many sonic elements that either hold hands or push each other away that there is this impression or emotional wave more than lyrics to filter through you brain while rhythms hold them up. It feels like sort of industrial wave meets post punk meets synth pop as surreal shoegaze, if you try to decode it, define it, but best not to, best not to. Best to just get lost in the feeling, in the hallucinogenic dream.
It is also, the kind of sound that perfectly fits a band, a project called Karate, Guns & Tanning. Like the name, "Artifacts" makes no sense, at first. The outfit's members work collaboratively, maybe even psychically from different spaces, from Indianapolis and Louisville. The crux of this matter are Valerie Green and Paige Shedletsky who have a long 15 year history as divergent thinkers, artists and creative weirdos. Anyone who knows me, knows that weirdo is the ultimate complement and that descriptor is my assumption based on the lengthy, well written press notes that, as always, I encourage you to read (way down below).
“We basically share a brain,” Shedletsky says in terms of their instinctive songwriting process.
"Artifacts" is from the band's debut album 'Concrete Beach' which drops March 21, 2021 with pre-orders ongoing via www.karategunsandtanning.com.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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Long before coronavirus made remote collaboration the norm, Valerie Green and Paige Shedletsky were accustomed to creating music together across state lines. Best friends and collaborators since the mid-aughts, Green, who is based in Indianapolis, and Shedletsky, who lives in Louisville, don’t need to be in the same room to know what the other is thinking. “We basically share a brain,” Shedletsky says in terms of their instinctive songwriting process. Concrete Beach, the debut album from their newest band, Karate, Guns & Tanning, is the culmination of that 15-year collaboration, an incendiary blast of industrial-tinged post-punk, shoegaze and dream-pop that draws on influences as varied as the Riot Grrrl movement, Grotesque art, and the gonzo visions of Hunter S. Thompson. As Green puts it succinctly, “The album hits you like a Mack Truck.”
The two artists officially formed Karate, Guns & Tanning in late 2019, taking their name from a sign above a strip mall in Green’s hometown of Plainfield, Indiana. Shedletsky and Green first met in Colorado in 2005, waitressing together at a creepy diner fit for a David Lynch set. “It had these black and white checkered floors and every time the lights would flicker, it always felt like something ominous was about to happen,’” Shedletsky recalls. At the time, Green, a trained musician with wildly eclectic taste, was living in a house with an analog studio; Shedletsky was a teenage noise-rock obsessive with a Fender Rhodes keyboard, and a fondness for avant-garde iconoclasts like Captain Beefheart. Green invited her to come over and check out the studio and soon the two formed their first band, Good Housekeeping, a dream-pop group that drew inspiration from Cocteau Twins and Twin Peaks.
Despite Green moving back to Indiana in 2009, the two kept trading song ideas on-and-off for nearly 10 years. When COVID hit, they found themselves with ample free time on their hands and decided to complete Karate, Guns & Tanning's debut album at last. Green recruited two friends from the Indianapolis music scene, guitarist Joy Caroline Mills and drummer Daniel Guajardo, to join the band. In typical 2020 fashion, the album was recorded remotely, and some members of the band had never actually met in person until after the album was completed. The present lineup consists of Shedletsky (she/her) on keyboards and assorted synths/noise-making, Green (she/her) on lead vocals and bass, Joy Caroline Mills (she/her) on guitar, and Daniel Guajardo (he/him) on drums.
Concrete Beach was born out of restlessness and pent-up aggression, further intensified by the ambient dread of the early months of the pandemic. That fierce energy is palpable on standout moments like the rousing, militaristic cries of “Hot Bots,” which envisions a hostile AI takeover and culminates with a distorted kazoo solo, as well as the synth-splattered “Badlands,” a nightmarish vision of a doomed journey into the darkest heart of the desert. The song’s harrowing denouement is meant to represent a car flipped over in the sand; a sputtering sample of the 1970s country classic “Convoy” signifies the detuned radio, still blaring into the futile chaos while the wheels are spinning. “Breaking Teeth,” with its metallic guitars, gritty bass and chanted rally cries of “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” (not to mention some blazing guitar solos from Mills), evokes the hyper-distorted noise-pop clamor of Sleigh Bells. The track describes an underground fight club, where a match is happening and the crowd is screaming, blood and teeth flying through the air.
That brooding intensity percolates on “Fire,” a new wave-tinted track powered by technicolor synths, melodic bass and dreamlike lyrics inspired by Marc Chagall paintings and Grotesque art (the track is accompanied by a surrealist video by visual artist Andrew Knives.) Meanwhile, “Artifacts” roars to life with pounding, Bonham-sized drums and hyper-processed vocals that serve as another instrument in the mix. The song was meant to evoke the unsettling feeling of being trapped by something not quite tangible. “I wrote this before quarantine,” Green says, “and it ended up being super relevant.” Elsewhere, the band’s experimental dream-pop past is resurrected by the lush and soaring pop smarts of “Zenith,” a minimalist cut inspired by the SpaceX launch.
Concrete Beach may be the culmination of all those years of Shedletsky and Green trading tracks back and forth with little more than a band name and a GarageBand setup, but with the addition of Mills and Guajardo, it became a passion project for the group during the most destabilizing year in modern history. “It's been a saving grace,” says Green. “It’s definitely been therapeutic.” Shedletsky adds, “It was just so scary going into [the pandemic]. This was such a needed distraction. We already have most of the next album written and a seven-inch follow-up on the way.”
Concrete Beach will be out March 21, 2021 with pre-orders ongoing via www.karategunsandtanning.com. When touring resumes, catch Karate, Guns & Tanning breaking teeth at a concrete beach near you.
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