“Diversity is the name of the game when it comes to Phaxanation & the Dust Kickers” says Waleed Rashidi of the Inland Empire Weekly. This statement is amazingly appropriate considering that the three guys responsible for the tightly bound beats, trippy fuzz tones, and atmospheric indie-rock are actually multi-instrumentalists. Count 10 instruments amongst three dudes. On their most recent record “Now & Then” they never limited themselves, making the arrangements as complex as they felt necessary by adding layers of very subtle instrumentation with vintage organs from the early 60’s, tracks upon tracks of guitar drenched in tape-echo and analog spring-reverb units, and get this- even saxophone!
It’s a somewhat different story when they perform live. Three dudes can only do so much in a live setting, however instead o
f opting to have other performers fill in the potential gaps, they instead put on a much, much heavier spectacle by turning the volume up to it’s breaking point and making the vibes as intense and “touchy-feely” as possible. “Certain songs are very emotionally draining for me to play live due to the lyrical content since I mainly write about overly depressing personal events.” says frontman Adrien Parker. “But that’s why we jam and blend songs together. We like to take ourselves as well as the audience through an emotional rollercoaster.”
Citing Pomona, California as the city in which they grew up in, Phaxanation & the Dust Kickers consists of childhood friends Adrien Parker, Daniel Huizar, and Enrique Poveda who claim that they’re doing exactly what they want with this project. Their record label, Robot Maintenance Records, was founded by the trio shortly after the formation of the band in a successful effort to assemble a collective of like-minded artists and as a way to release their music without compromise. Lack of compromise is perhaps the cardinal reason as to why it took Phaxanation & the Dust Kickers roughly 2 years to finish “Now & Then.”
“It’s not that we’re slow songwriters,” Parker says. “We just wanted to make sure everything met our standards before we showed it to anyone else.” For example, the trio laid down their whole album in an entirely analog fashion, recording to 2” tape instead of using digital recording software. “Recording to tape makes our songs sound very special, I think.” says Parker of the recording process. “The only downside to doing things this way is that it’s more time consuming and it’s a little more expensive.” But that’s a risk Phaxanation & the Dust Kickers were willing to take.
Songs like “Can’t Win” describe some of life’s most depressing situations in the most carefree, spirited manner, while “Open Your Eyes” shows that the band is perfectly capable of diving headfirst into experimental noise-rock and in the blink of an eye, flawlessly snap right back into the whole desert-rock vibe present in “The Days When We Used to Walk” without error. The album’s title track “Now & Then” seems to convey messages of personal loss, nostalgia, and feeling slightly wrong in the head but not giving a damn about it. “Hey, we’re having fun with this and that’s really all that matters!” states Parker.
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