The Airborne Toxic Event

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The Airborne Toxic Event
Origin	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Genre(s)	Indie rock
Years active	2006 – present
Label(s)	Majordomo
Website	The Official Site of The Airborne Toxic Event
Members
Mikel Jollett Steven Chen Noah Harmon Anna Bulbrook Daren Taylor

The Airborne Toxic Event is an American indie rock band from the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz that consists of singer and guitarist Mikel Jollett, guitarist and keyboardist Steven Chen, bassist Noah Harmon, drummer Daren Taylor, and keyboardist and violist Anna Bulbrook. Named after a section of the book White Noise, by Don DeLillo, the group incorporates string instruments and keyboards, along with a standard rock lineup of guitar, drums, and bass guitar. They are signed to Majordomo Records.

1 History
- 1.1 Formation
2 Discography
3 Live performances
4 TV appearances
5 Videos
6 Name
7 References
8 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Formation

The band was formed in 2006 by Mikel Jollett. During a one-week period in March 2006 while working on a novel, Jollett was diagnosed with a genetic Autoimmune disease, experienced a break-up, and learned that his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Spurred by these events in his personal life, Jollett turned from writing prose to writing songs, and soon realized he was composing an album instead of a novel. ^[1]

Jollett met drummer Taylor in the summer of 2006 and the two established an immediate rapport. After working on original material together for four months as a two-piece, Jollett asked classically-trained violinist Bulbrook and bassist Harmon to join the band. With a background in orchestral and chamber music, Bulbrook since taught herself to play viola and keyboard, while Harmon holds a jazz degree in upright bass performance from the California Institute of the Arts and taught in East Los Angeles as part of the school’s Community Arts Partnership. Jollett had met Chen several years earlier, when both lived in San Francisco, and asked Chen to complete the lineup as the lead guitarist.

To supplement his fiction writing, Jollett had earned income as a freelance writer, contributing to organizations such as NPR, Los Angeles Times, Filter Magazine and Men’s Health. Since the creation of the band, he has continued to write only fiction and has a short story slated to appear in the Summer 2008 issue of McSweeney’s.

The Airborne Toxic Event played its first show in Echo Park in the fall of 2006, less than a month after it was fully formed. Since then, the band has performed extensively in L.A. and become well known throughout the greater Los Angeles area. In December 2006, Rolling Stone named them one of the “Top 25 Bands on MySpace.” ^[2] They went on to receive positive responses from music blogs and press, notably L.A. Weekly ^[3] and Los Angeles Times,^[4] which named the group one of the top three L.A. bands to watch in 2008. Previous bands to receive this distinction include Cold War Kids and Silversun Pickups.

In a rare move, during the band’s January 2008 residency at the popular Silver Lake venue Spaceland, Los Angeles Commercial Radio stations KROQ and Indie 103 both officially added the as-yet-unsigned band’s song “Sometime Around Midnight” to regular rotation. Seattle’s KEXP, San Francisco’s Live 105, San Diego’s 91X, and Boston’s WFNX also showed significant support for the group.

After an extensive courtship from major labels, the Airborne Toxic Event signed with the indie imprint Majordomo Records in April 2008. Their first full-length record is scheduled for U.S. release on August 5, 2008.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Debut UK 7-Inch single

The band's debut 7-Inch was released on May 21, 2007. The single featured the A Side "Does This Mean You're Moving On" and B-Sides " "Wishing Well" and "Papillion." Cerne Canning, manager of Franz Ferdinand, released the 7-Inch on his label Square Records.

[edit] Debut US EP

The self-released US EP featured demo versions of "Does This Mean You're Moving On," "Wishing Well" and "The Girls In Their Summer Dresses."

[edit] Debut album

The band’s self-titled, debut full-length album is scheduled to be released on August 5, 2008 on Majordomo Records.

[edit] Live performances

In addition to the Los Angeles and Orange County areas, the band has played in cities throughout the country, as well as a handful of cities in the United Kingdom, including London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Brighton (with The Annuals) for 2007’s Great Escape Festival . The group has also supported the Kaiser Chiefs, Silversun Pickups, andIma Robot .

In April 2008, MySpace Transmissions aired a live performance by Vampire Weekend , featuring Bulbrook on the violin. As an undergraduate student at Columbia University , Bulbrook shared a dormitory with Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig and took music classes with keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij.

The Airborne Toxic Event played the CMJ Music Marathon in 2006 and 2007, and Austin’s 2008 South By Southwest Music Conference. In 2008, the band is scheduled to perform at a number of festivals, including Live 105’s BFD in Mountain View, California, the Monolith Festival at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, and the Pemberton Festival in Pemberton, B.C.

[edit] TV appearances

 On April 24, 2008 the band made its national television debut as the musical guest on the late-night NBC talk show Last Call with Carson Daly.^[5]

[edit] Videos

“Does This Mean You’re Moving On”:^[6] Filmed in a variety of locations in the Los Feliz and Silver Lake neighborhoods of Los Angeles—including Jollett’s apartment—the video for this song was shot entirely in black and white and features a three-panel storyline.

“Sometime Around Midnight”: The video for this song is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2008.

[edit] Name

The band takes its name from the postmodern novel White Noise, by Don DeLillo, which won the National Book Award in 1985. In the book, a chemical spill from a railcar releases a poisonous cloud, dubbed by the military as an “airborne toxic event.” This serves as a metaphorical device for the novel’s themes of mortality and media consumption, as the protagonist Jack Gladney is forced to confront the prospect of his own death.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Categories: American indie rock groups