Opus Mixtum

Flying just below the radar for more than 20 years, but always making uncompromising music and maintaining a deeply devoted fan base throughout the world, Antietam play raw rock and roll that is nearly impossible to define. Originally, the double-CD, triple-LP Opus Mixtum was supposed to be two separate, distinct releases: one a powerful rock record tracked at Brooklyn's Seaside Lounge, with producer (and now auxiliary live band member) Josh Clark, in a beautiful live room and finally allowing the band to truly capture the fire of their live performances; and the other a sprawling, loopy and diverse instrumental album constructed piece by piece in Tara and Tim's digital home studio. Somewhere along the way the albums became tangled together. The title Opus Mixtum comes from a method of laying brick in ancient Rome that combined rectangular and diagonal patterns, but the band uses it to connote the mix of three styles - Antietam rock, the acoustic pop of Tara Key solo releases, and the instrumental soundtracks of their lives. Piece in Mark Howell's horns, Katie Gentile's (Run On, Special Pillow) violins, and Rick Rizzo (Eleventh Dream Day) on stunt guitar and the album flows effortlessly through its varying moods - instrumental passages disappear into hooky pop, Tara's defining guitar is enveloped by Hammond organ or a lush string passage, and then the pounding rock and roll of the classic trio punches through. So you get pop with "Turn It on Me," rock with "Pennants and Flags," and just pure melody with "March Echo" and "Steel G."