Uncanny Valley

The second full length from North Carolina's Birds of Avalon. Birds of Avalon was formed after newly-wed guitarists, Paul Siler and Cheetie Kumar, split from The Cherry Valence to join forces with vocalist, Craig Tilley, and avid four tracker, David Mueller. They later enlisted their favorite Chapel Hill drummer and mural artist, Scott Nurkin and quickly made a name for themselves with relentless touring in support of their '07 debut, Bazaar Bazaar, and last year's follow-up EP, Outer Upper Inner.

Birds of Avalon wrote and recorded almost two-dozen new songs during a six-month break from touring. In January, they wrapped up a more elaborate record at Mitch Easter's Fidelitorium Studio. Like assembly line workers, the band worked quickly and limited themselves to using only 15 tracks on the 16-track tape machine to try and capture the spontaneous emersion of new material. The band dubbed these recordings Uncanny Valley, after a theory which was introduced by Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, in 1970 to describe the phenomena by which human beings become more unsettled by robots or other human facsimiles in direct proportion to how lifelike they appear. This sense of uncomfortable strangeness can sometimes develop between the creator and what they create - a sudden vertigo that arises as, in this case, a song takes on a life of it's own. With Uncanny Valley, Birds of Avalon embrace this sensation by capturing new material as it arises, taking advantage of analog limitations in today's digital recording age.