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FANG ISLAND

Brooklyn, NY

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Fang Island is a self-proclaimed “Healing & Easy Listening / Visual” band from “Philayorkadence” in the United States of America. Made up of a guitarist from the band Daughters (Nicholas Andrew Sadler) and four others from the aforementioned town (Jason Bartell, Chris Georges, Marc St Sauvuer, and Michael Jacober), Fang Island makes music that they describe as “everyone high-fiving everyone.”

Brooklyn-based indie rock outfit Fang Island craft impossibly heavy hymn-like anthems that blend the uplifting and accessible hard rock melodiousness of Andrew W.K. and the D.I.Y. recording style of Surfer Blood with the offbeat tech-heavy progressive metal of bands like Protest the Hero and Sparta. Formed in Providence as an art project while the members were all attending the Rhode Island School of Design, the band (comprised of guitarist Jason Bartell, bassist Philip Curcuru, guitarist Chris Georges, guitarist Nicholas Andrew Sadler, and drummer Marc St. Sauveur) released its eponymous debut album through the Sargent House label in early 2010. (Itunes)Fang Island began in 2005 as an art project with original members, Philip Curcuru, Chris Georges, and Pete Watts, while attending Rhode Island School of Design. They were later joined by Bartell, Sauveur, Jacober, and guitarist Nick Sadler, who had played in another Providence-based band, Daughters. The band got its name from an article in The Onion. Guitarist Jason Bartell recalled, "I think it was just a funny blip about Donald Rumsfeld having a secret hideaway, and it was on Fang Island. We like how it was sort of this, like, fictional space that we imagined our music was played on". The band describes their sound as "everyone high-fiving everyone" and their goal, according to Bartell, is to "make music for people who like music". The band independently released Day of the Great Leap in 2007, followed by a second EP, Sky Gardens, in November 2008. Their song "The Absolute Place" was remixed by Chris Keating of Yeasayer in 2009. An unmastered version of the band's forthcoming full-length album leaked in early 2009 and was later named one of the year's top 10 albums by Brian Cook of The Stranger. In December, the group digitally released the album's lead single "Daisy", which features an electro-organ intro and chanted vocals. The song played during a series of commercials promoting the MTV reality show The Buried Life. The band's self-titled debut album was released on February 23, 2010. Adam Pfleider of AbsolutePunk described it as a "wild party" that "listeners will want to relive ... over and over again". Dan Goldin of Decoy Music praised the album for "successfully combining the luster of indie pop music with the technical eccentricities of progressive rock". Pitchfork Media's Ian Cohen called the music on Fang Island "honest and life-affirming and infectious". In March, the band performed at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas, and were named by social networking analytics site Next Big Sound as the artists who experienced the fastest growth in online fandom during the festival. While in Austin, the band also recorded three songs for a Daytrotter session. Fang Island entered the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart in April.
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