Bishop Allen

We all love originality, or perhaps most of us. Its refreshing, exciting, and expands our tastes each time we have the opportunity to come across it. The major problem with originality is that it's felting and rare in many cases. Bishop Allen, who hails from Williamsburg's North Side in Brooklyn, New York, has boldly dared to give us that innovation that we crave.

Their vehicle of choice, an effort that will result in the production of a new EP every month for the year of 2006. Bishop Allen, currently complied of base elements Justin Rice & Christian Rudder, took time out of their schedule to discuss the important aspects of their group with me. The start of their EP project began when they stumbled upon an abandoned piano outside of a Brooklyn school. They tinkered with the piano until they had a distinguishable product, and then it essentially became "one-upmanship between Justin and I", said Christian. This friendly competition fueled the two co-conspirators into a 4 track EP that was released in January, the free track of which was titled "Corazon."

Now 7 EP's into the year, Bishop Allen is still providing the egger public with these 4 track gems of monthly creativity, even in the midst of tours taking place at venues throughout the Northeast metropolitan area. In fact they use the traveling to help flush out potential ideas before the retreat back to record in Brooklyn. Oh, the beauty of in house recording.

At this point of the year, and this point in the life of the band, Justin and Christian feel that their live performance is really starting to reach its zenith. They haven't toured heavily, but have been doing enough to experiment with their over all sound, while still leaving time to dedicate to their releases. This is significant due to the restructure of band members within the band. “Now we don't always play shows with the same people, but this has not changed our sound much," stated Justin after being asked about the transition of the band since their first album Charm School.

Speaking of tours, BA will be embarking on a west coast stating the 27^thof October and ending November 22^nd. Yay Verily west coasters, let the unrestrained merrymaking commence. If you can hardly contain your joy, whether you hail from the east or west...or in those unnamed middle nether regions, be prepared to become excited further. After this tour, and the monthly Ep projects conclusion, we can look forward to a label released album perhaps as early as spring 2007. Christian revealed that “the full length will have some songs from the Ep's released this year, only with some production touch ups, and hopefully four or five new songs. "We're pretty excited," Justin went on to say about the future of the group, "This is exclusive information that we just settled on."

So what is the best aspect of Bishop Allen? Undoubtedly the structure of the stories that they convey which seems to consume the listener in their music. "We try to create a clear, sparse sound, overlapped with a loose pop makeup. We see our music as point of view story telling with a firm base in the narrative that we construct." Not only this, but naming bands such as the Kinks and the Talking Heads as providing indirect musical tutelage, the bounds on the potential of Bishop Allen are virtually non-existent.

Bishop Allen MySpace