Off Contact
Sioux Falls, South Dakota post punk outfit Off Contact and the jagged, frenetic "Device" feels gloriously old school in the best possible way. The vocal aesthetic that feels purely close contact punk and drawn from inner places that give you stomach aches. The interconnected proggy musical structure with fairly clean strident guitars feels like late 70's proto music, the likes of Television, Gang of Four, The Plimsouls to name a few. The bass work in "Device" is a beautiful thing as is the drumming, everything really. There are other textures and temperaments that make me think of Joy Division, Sonic Youth and Thurston Moore's brief 3 year 2012 to 2015 foray as Chelsea Light Moving. As I mention all these other bands, it is not to say that Off Contact sounds like any of them but possesses aspects of, the undefinable essence of pure divergent punk and post punk sounds and temperament, a sound that has absolutely no place for pop rock motifs of any kind (smiling).
[Vocalist Lindy Wise, bassist Pat Nelson, guitarist Benjamin Swank and drummer Brogan Costa were stalwarts of the city's diverse music scene before forming the band in 2017. They knew each other - and each other's music - long before that. On more than one pre-2017 occasion, three members of what would become Off Contact were in the crowd to watch the fourth perform, in groups including Talk Rock (Swank), Roman Ships (Nelson), Angie Hosh (Wise) or Weather's Rest (Costa)]
Love my first taste of Off Contact. Truly do.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/Offcontactband
https://www.instagram.com/offcontactband/
https://offcontact.bandcamp.com/track/device
Great things can happen when fans become bandmates.
If that's the argument, Sioux Falls, SD post punk outfit Off Contact - and the razor-sharp tour de force of their second full-length album - are powerful evidence for it.
Vocalist Lindy Wise, bassist Pat Nelson, guitarist Benjamin Swank and drummer Brogan Costa were stalwarts of the city's diverse music scene before forming the band in 2017.
They knew each other - and each other's music - long before that. On more than one pre-2017 occasion, three members of what would become Off Contact were in the crowd to watch the fourth perform, in groups including Talk Rock (Swank), Roman Ships (Nelson), Angie Hosh (Wise) or Weather's Rest (Costa).
Which is to say that mutual respect spirals through the band's DNA.
It's no surprise, then, that the sonic result of their collaboration is something akin to a bubbling road trip conversation between four people who'd long shared a geography, history and dialect but hadn’t spoken more than a few words to one another before the trip began.
It’s that combination of comfort and discovery that's made Off Contact so fruitful a creative enterprise. There’s familiarity and fandom, but just enough distance and difference to create a challenge to be risen to. There are not-insignificant age gaps, for example (Nelson and Costa are 41, Swank is 35, Wise is 24), gaps that can't but color the way they've discovered and digested the influences they share. There's also plenty of daylight between each musician's previous work and the work they're producing together now.
Simply put, these are seasoned musicians who bring out the best in one another.
Nelson, the band's most experienced touring musician, typically jump starts the creative process with riffs and rough outlines. Those structures metastasize into fully formed songs with striking speed, as Costa and Swank complete Nelson’s sentences on instinct and intuition. Nelson's bass frequently serves as the driving melodic force, cutting through Swank's hazy, trembling fuzz like a cold knife; a sharpened blunt object that clears a path for Wise's emotive, marble-mouthed baritone to waller, lament and wail its way to droning crescendos of gut-wrenched emotion.
The sound is a fully realized fusion of post-punk styles, something unique and fresh but not unfamiliar, particularly to fans of Joy Division, Bauhaus, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Scientists or the Jesus Lizard. The live shows, like the songs themselves, spin out in unsettling, throbbing cycles that have crept up on and captured unsuspecting rooms across the Midwest and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic, landing as it did just two years after Off Contact came together (originally as Lot Lizard), became a catalyst for reflection, rebranding and recommitment. Live performance opportunities were few. Aside from well-received Headlights Theater shows that saw the band soundtrack a dance troupe for an audience safely distanced in their vehicles, nearly two years passed without the opportunity to tour widely, or even to sharpen their skills in local and regional venues.
What could have been a moment for the band to fizzle and fade away instead became a stark reminder of how meaningful the project had become, both to its members and a local scene that had so quickly and wholeheartedly embraced their efforts.
The embrace was easily earned, at least partially thanks to the band's contributions to local culture.
Sioux Falls is a scene with a more storied musical history than those outside its 200-mile radius would likely expect, and it’s a scene to which each member of Off Contact is deeply connected.
Their initial release was put out as a collaboration between Different Folk and Total Drag Records. Different Folk is a go-to local label for indie artists of all stripes. Total Drag is a vinyl shop and performance space first and foremost, one that’s emerged as the central nervous system of the Sioux Falls music since its founding by Liz Nissen and her husband Dan, himself a musician and former bandmate of Costa’s. Costa, meanwhile, co-owns Total Drag and owns Green Dream Screen Printing, the premiere shop for screen-printed T-shirts and posters for local bands. The shop is nestled between Total Drag and a coffee shop called The Breaks, co-owned by Corey Gerlach.
Nelson is the co-owner of the Hello Hi, a bar where the Nissens occasionally spin records, and spent years before that managing Tommyjacks Pub, itself a frequent host of local outdoor music shows (about a block from Total Drag). As a teenager, Nelson played in The Skamunists, an southeast South Dakota institution that headlined shows and opened for acts such as Blink-182, Less Than Jake and MU330 at a locally legendary club called the Pomp Room (which became a parking ramp after being demolished in 2000).
Swank works for Last Stop CD Shop, whose east-side location doubles as the studio for the local live music show The White Wall Sessions, which airs Sunday nights on KELO-TV. Wise, meanwhile, cut his teeth performing at Total Drag in Angie Hosh and the experimental noise outfit Androgynous Sqaush. He appeared on The White Wall Sessions for his previous projects before filming an episode with Off Contact (as Lot Lizard).
Off Contact, in essence, is both a product and reflection of a vibrant but largely unknown indie music scene built from the ground up by and for artists who live hours away from the nearest urban enclave.
As filmmaker Brian Bieber pulled together the soundtrack for his documentary on the Sioux Falls DIY scene of the 80s, 90s and early aughts, “I Really Get Into It,” Off Contact was included on the soundtrack (released on cassette, in a nod to the film’s era of focus) as a torch-bearing modern representative of the era's influence.
The pandemic pause that hit the band and the whole world at once with COVID-19 came at a particularly inopportune time for Off Contact. They'd just released their first album on vinyl and were preparing to tour in support of it. Once it became clear that hoped-for return trips to cities such as Minneapolis, Denver and Lawrence, Kansas were unlikely to materialize, the band turned its attention inward.
The pandemic forced them to think about who and what mattered most as they tightened their social circles and kept their distance from crowded bars and social situations.
"The circle I wanted to keep close was the band," Costa said.
As quiet months turned into quiet years, Off Contact continued to collaborate and absorb more music. Costa, Swank and Wise hammered out ideas as Nelson and his business partners navigated a wholly separate pandemic-related stress bomb: how and when to open the Hello Hi, a business they'd initially planned to launch mid-2020.
By the time the dust settled, case numbers dropped, the doors opened, and the band resumed its regular practice schedule with all four members, the songs that would become their second album had practically written themselves.
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/Offcontactband
https://www.instagram.com/offcontactband/
https://offcontact.bandcamp.com/track/device
Great things can happen when fans become bandmates.
If that's the argument, Sioux Falls, SD post punk outfit Off Contact - and the razor-sharp tour de force of their second full-length album - are powerful evidence for it.
Vocalist Lindy Wise, bassist Pat Nelson, guitarist Benjamin Swank and drummer Brogan Costa were stalwarts of the city's diverse music scene before forming the band in 2017.
They knew each other - and each other's music - long before that. On more than one pre-2017 occasion, three members of what would become Off Contact were in the crowd to watch the fourth perform, in groups including Talk Rock (Swank), Roman Ships (Nelson), Angie Hosh (Wise) or Weather's Rest (Costa).
Which is to say that mutual respect spirals through the band's DNA.
It's no surprise, then, that the sonic result of their collaboration is something akin to a bubbling road trip conversation between four people who'd long shared a geography, history and dialect but hadn’t spoken more than a few words to one another before the trip began.
It’s that combination of comfort and discovery that's made Off Contact so fruitful a creative enterprise. There’s familiarity and fandom, but just enough distance and difference to create a challenge to be risen to. There are not-insignificant age gaps, for example (Nelson and Costa are 41, Swank is 35, Wise is 24), gaps that can't but color the way they've discovered and digested the influences they share. There's also plenty of daylight between each musician's previous work and the work they're producing together now.
Simply put, these are seasoned musicians who bring out the best in one another.
Nelson, the band's most experienced touring musician, typically jump starts the creative process with riffs and rough outlines. Those structures metastasize into fully formed songs with striking speed, as Costa and Swank complete Nelson’s sentences on instinct and intuition. Nelson's bass frequently serves as the driving melodic force, cutting through Swank's hazy, trembling fuzz like a cold knife; a sharpened blunt object that clears a path for Wise's emotive, marble-mouthed baritone to waller, lament and wail its way to droning crescendos of gut-wrenched emotion.
The sound is a fully realized fusion of post-punk styles, something unique and fresh but not unfamiliar, particularly to fans of Joy Division, Bauhaus, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Scientists or the Jesus Lizard. The live shows, like the songs themselves, spin out in unsettling, throbbing cycles that have crept up on and captured unsuspecting rooms across the Midwest and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic, landing as it did just two years after Off Contact came together (originally as Lot Lizard), became a catalyst for reflection, rebranding and recommitment. Live performance opportunities were few. Aside from well-received Headlights Theater shows that saw the band soundtrack a dance troupe for an audience safely distanced in their vehicles, nearly two years passed without the opportunity to tour widely, or even to sharpen their skills in local and regional venues.
What could have been a moment for the band to fizzle and fade away instead became a stark reminder of how meaningful the project had become, both to its members and a local scene that had so quickly and wholeheartedly embraced their efforts.
The embrace was easily earned, at least partially thanks to the band's contributions to local culture.
Sioux Falls is a scene with a more storied musical history than those outside its 200-mile radius would likely expect, and it’s a scene to which each member of Off Contact is deeply connected.
Their initial release was put out as a collaboration between Different Folk and Total Drag Records. Different Folk is a go-to local label for indie artists of all stripes. Total Drag is a vinyl shop and performance space first and foremost, one that’s emerged as the central nervous system of the Sioux Falls music since its founding by Liz Nissen and her husband Dan, himself a musician and former bandmate of Costa’s. Costa, meanwhile, co-owns Total Drag and owns Green Dream Screen Printing, the premiere shop for screen-printed T-shirts and posters for local bands. The shop is nestled between Total Drag and a coffee shop called The Breaks, co-owned by Corey Gerlach.
Nelson is the co-owner of the Hello Hi, a bar where the Nissens occasionally spin records, and spent years before that managing Tommyjacks Pub, itself a frequent host of local outdoor music shows (about a block from Total Drag). As a teenager, Nelson played in The Skamunists, an southeast South Dakota institution that headlined shows and opened for acts such as Blink-182, Less Than Jake and MU330 at a locally legendary club called the Pomp Room (which became a parking ramp after being demolished in 2000).
Swank works for Last Stop CD Shop, whose east-side location doubles as the studio for the local live music show The White Wall Sessions, which airs Sunday nights on KELO-TV. Wise, meanwhile, cut his teeth performing at Total Drag in Angie Hosh and the experimental noise outfit Androgynous Sqaush. He appeared on The White Wall Sessions for his previous projects before filming an episode with Off Contact (as Lot Lizard).
Off Contact, in essence, is both a product and reflection of a vibrant but largely unknown indie music scene built from the ground up by and for artists who live hours away from the nearest urban enclave.
As filmmaker Brian Bieber pulled together the soundtrack for his documentary on the Sioux Falls DIY scene of the 80s, 90s and early aughts, “I Really Get Into It,” Off Contact was included on the soundtrack (released on cassette, in a nod to the film’s era of focus) as a torch-bearing modern representative of the era's influence.
The pandemic pause that hit the band and the whole world at once with COVID-19 came at a particularly inopportune time for Off Contact. They'd just released their first album on vinyl and were preparing to tour in support of it. Once it became clear that hoped-for return trips to cities such as Minneapolis, Denver and Lawrence, Kansas were unlikely to materialize, the band turned its attention inward.
The pandemic forced them to think about who and what mattered most as they tightened their social circles and kept their distance from crowded bars and social situations.
"The circle I wanted to keep close was the band," Costa said.
As quiet months turned into quiet years, Off Contact continued to collaborate and absorb more music. Costa, Swank and Wise hammered out ideas as Nelson and his business partners navigated a wholly separate pandemic-related stress bomb: how and when to open the Hello Hi, a business they'd initially planned to launch mid-2020.
By the time the dust settled, case numbers dropped, the doors opened, and the band resumed its regular practice schedule with all four members, the songs that would become their second album had practically written themselves.
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Off Contact, alternative rock, garage rock, Post-Punk, punk, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, "Device", jagged sound, proggy post punk, alt rock, frenetic, art punk, raw,
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