Now, from members of Five Iron Frenzy comes the launch
of a new project, Brave Saint Saturn, and with it a whole new genre
of music.
Welcome to the final frontier: astro-rock!
Pushing musical and lyrical boundaries is all in a day's
work for Five Iron Frenzy and Brave Saint Saturn members Reese Roper,
Dennis Culp and Keith Hoerig.
In the ever-evolving world of music it seems that new
genres are born every day, ranging from the accesible alternative-rock
to the hipster's avant-garde-neoclassical-jazzy-grindcore.
Brave Saint Saturn's debut album "So Far from Home" will
hit shelves everywhere on June 20th, and with it, evidence of some of
the most experimental and eloquent songwriting this side of the solar
system.
Astro-rock and it's twin sister space-pop are foreign
terms which aptly describe this album's harmonious collision of Roper's
vocals, lyrics and electric guitar, Culp's electric and acoustic guitars,
bass, vocals and Hoerig's bass. This central core is heavily augmented
by programming, percussion (Satriani's Jeff Campitelli, FIF's Andrew
Verdecchio), keyboards, accordians (Those Darn Accordians' Big Lou),
strings (Rivulets and Violets' Masaki) and turntables (FIF's Micah Ortega).
Produced by Masaki, Brave Saint Saturn takes a huge stylistic departure
from the poppy ska-punk of Five Iron Frenzy.
The buzz surrounding the impending release of So Far From
Home is growing through Brave Saint Saturn's offical website (www.bravesaintsaturn.com)
which is averaging nearly a thousand hits per day, as well as positive
album reviews. Bandoppler Magazine (http://www.bandoppler.com/REVbravess.html)
enthuses "BSS could easily be one of the most standout albums of the
year... Brave Saint Saturn is going where no album has gone before.
It may be too real for some people, but that's exactly
why it's so good. Enough of hiding the truth with pretty words and fancy
phrases, BSS is honest, real and straight forward." Created by Roper
in 1995, Brave Saint Saturn was initially a platform for Roper to express
his thoughts on topics traditionally considered dark and emotional.
Lyrically this is definitely the dark side of Five Iron
Frenzy," explains Roper, "It is a lot of songs about struggling with
the world and tragedy." An example of this, the song "2-29" is about
the death of Roper's grandmother. The track opens with the haunting
sound clip of the Challenger shuttle's countdown and liftoff as relayed
by Mission Control, and then flows directly into the opening lines.
Rounding out the poignant lyrics of loss is another sound clip of Dylan
Thomas reading his infamous elegy "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night."
Even though loss, alienation, loneliness, numbness and
pain are reccurent themes throughout the album, they are not dark for
darkness' sake alone. "I've tried to show the redemption and peace of
God through tragic things," elaborates Roper. "I think overall the lyrics
are about hope."
Roper has already started to write for the second album,
so the future of Brave Saint Saturn is as open and as optimistic as
1960's space exploration itself.
Look out world: here comes astro-rock!