The Volta Sound Chad digs the empty hippy wisdom... Stoner music of any sort can get pretty damn tedious unless you're constantly on the receiving end of a giant bong. And if that's your thing, then sure; The Volta Sound will make you happy as a clam there, Chief. But if you're more of the Be Cool, Stay In School sort—at home on a Saturday night, fixing yourself a nice plate of pasta while talkin' on the phone with your Aunt Margie...well, we still think you'll really like The Volta Sound. Their latest album, This is the Yin & the Yang, is perfect for all sorts of quiet moments. And PMA knows, we could all use a lot more of those in our lives. Chad and Eric took one such quiet moment about a week ago to have a chat with The Volta Sound's Mike Cormier. Here's how it went: Firesideometer: Have you ever heard of the band Fireside? Mike: No. Firesideometer: Well, they just released an album called Get Shot in the states. You need to run out and buy it... Mike: I have connections. I'll get it, I'm sure. Firesideometer: So, you guys hail from Cleve Land? Mike: Indeed. Firesideometer: Is it truly, as Huey Lewis says, the heart of Rock and Roll? Mike: For a while, I thought not. I'm not from here, but I'll be here for a long long time. When I got here, it seemed like it was all just regular people. But after playing so many shows and then being out in the rest of the country...back here is where the shows rock the most, because the crowds do all the rocking. And if you don't rock, you get ignored, which is kind of righteous. Firesideometer: Where are you from originally? Mike: I'm from Ohio. The city doesn't matter. In Ohio, there's Cleveland and Ohio; the two are barely related. Its kind of like... what New Orleans is to Louisiana. You'd never say New Orleans was in Louisiana. It's just New Orleans...Ohio is very cow-like. Cleveland is more East Coast than it needs to be. Firesideometer: What type of music do the kids like there in Cleveland? Mike: The kids like loud. Garage rock, punk, and plain loud rock. The fewer effects and the more sweat, the better. Firesideometer: So, how does your sound go over with that crowd? Mike: It goes over well... live, in town, we're loud. We play long sets of drones and boogie, and get drunk and stoned. We tried playing some more complicated songs, stuff with theory and tricks in them—very pretty, accomplished songs. But they just fly over the heads...so, its caveman rock for us. Firesideometer: How did you guys get your start? Mike: It all started at a sold out Luna show. Ben Gmetro was standing outside and Todd Vainisi and I went to see if we could get in. We met and talked with Gmetro for a while; then Ben came to our studio and heard the stuff I had been making. He called up later and said we should start a band. He brought Matt Cassidy, and I brought Todd and Mike Prieto. It was instant hitsville. Firesideometer: So you guys had similar ideas, musically speaking? Mike: I don't know. Maybe. I think we just wanted to see what it was like to do something, and I had about a zillion songs to pick from. Firesideometer: Does having so many people in the band make it hard to turn a profit, touring with six people. Splitting everything six ways? Mike: We don't split anything. The money goes right back in to the band, period. We do it for free, or we don't do it at all. 'Cuz if you're doing it for the cash...I dunno...doing it for the cash sucks. Playing live and making records should be a byproduct of just a simple love of gettin down, you know? When it gets to be the other way around... then its just not worth hearing. Firesideometer: Wish more musicians thought that way... Mike: You and me both. You can tell when its one or the other pretty quick though. Fakers are obvious. Firesideometer: True. What was the line-up when you toured for This Is The Yin And The Yang? Mike: Me, Todd, Mike Prieto and Dave Geddes did most of it. Just the four of us. Cassidy flew to CA to join up in San Francisco and Portland. Ben never tours with us. Firesideometer: Family? Mike: I dunno. Nerves maybe? I'll tell you one thing about Cleveland, people rarely leave it, and if you're from here...chances are, you haven't really been anywhere else. So... with that...I bet it's a terrifying big world out there for a lot of them. Firesideometer: You wouldn't think nerves would be a problem for anyone in your band... Mike: Yeah, I was just joking. I really don't know why he doesn't come. We're pretty hard on the road, and he's just not like that. So maybe he doesn't want to have to participate. He's a very nice boy; still visits grandma on Sundays and all. But the rest of us are hedons. Ben has his own band, the Dreadful Yawns, and they're about to release their first record on Undertow. So Ben will get out and tour one way or another. Firesideometer: That's cool. Are you still on Orange Sky recordings? Didn't Elephant Stone Records put out your EP? How does that work between the two labels? Mike: I don't see it as two labels. It's mostly Ben Vendetta. Wherever he goes, I go, and he is Elephant Stone. Our next record and probably every record from now on will be on Elephant Stone. Firesideometer: Why follow this man? Mike: Because he believes and he understands. We don't have contracts, we just trust. We only do this 'cuz its there. Firesideometer: Are you into any of the bands on either one of those labels? Mike: The Out Crowd. I don't know the other bands personally, but Ben plays them for me and I like them. I think it's very important for a label to be a community. Davenport is our community. New Planet Trampoline, The Dreadful Yawns and 9-Volt Haunted House.. Firesideometer: Your music is really mellow. Great music to relax to. Do you feel like more people in this world need to just chill out? Is that important to you in how you approach the music? Mike: Absolutely. Without a fucking doubt. Man...I could go on about that. Its almost so important that its the whole damn thing. If you're trying to play emotional music, and you're up there, and you're thinking about stuff that's stressing you out, then you're not going to be playing very well. And your definitely not going to be saying anything with what you're doing. Unless, of course, you're trying to stress everyone out. So, when I pick up an instrument, every last aspect of my present life disappears, and I start talking with what I have in my hands about stuff I like to daydream about. I'd like to see everyone in the band do that. But I know it's a complicated and difficult thing to do, to let go of yourself and your problems like that. I realize that most people in the world spend every minute of their day thinking about the past or the future and stressing out about both of them—so much that they forget it's a great day out, or they have just enough cigarettes, or to notice that honey across the street. There's so much hate and anger everywhere. Firesideometer: You guys get a lot of comparisons to Spiritualized and Spaceman 3. Flattering or annoying? Mike: Both. I see it as, might as well compare...uh... any rock band to the Stones or the Beatles. I don't intentionally try to be like Spaceman 3 or Spiritualized. I do love the truthfulness of the sound of gospel and blues, and since we're not maestros or accomplished musicians of any sort, I really like to keep it simple so we can just get it on instead of trying to remember all the tricks of a complicated song. Jason Pierce says it best: "I'd rather play one note amazingly well than a bunch of notes poorly". Firesideometer: Chad wrote in his review that he had no doubt that you guys were smoking a lot of burn when you wrote This Is The Yin And The Yang. Is he correct in this assumption? Mike: That was the only time we weren't high. We did that record in two days, and no grass was to be found. I think what happened was that since we didn't have anything to smoke, we made ourselves high with the songs. I felt that and loved it. I wish we could keep doing it like that—get ourselves high instead of some silly drug. Firesideometer: Does it bother you that people like us can’t write a review about you guys without referencing killer seedless? Or do you feel like that’s a pretty appropriate framework for discussing your music? Mike: We've definitely got stoned-out songs. There's no doubt about that. But mostly, I think it's just my personality in the songs that makes them that way. I'm a very hazy sluggish person in general. When I'm writing songs, I put a lot of that in them, and I want people to not get all uptight and want to fight when our record is on. I want to people to be fucking, or petting, or getting high and laying around. Firesideometer: Is it difficult to balance good songwriting with good atmosphere? Is there such a thing as too atmospheric? Mike: Good songwriting is one thing. Creating a scene or something that people want to witness is another. When we get on stage and perform all kinds of neat tricks, people just talk and look around. But when we forget about them and start just gettin it on with one chord, they all stop to look and listen. I think it's more important to be into what you're doing than it is to try to impress anyone. Firesideometer: The album definitely has a certain mood or theme when you listen to it, as if the songs were meant to be one major piece or together in some way. Were the songs written individually or as a whole? Mike: Individually. Mostly during our first tour, on acoustic guitar. Then I started thinking about the notes in the songs, and I took the first note of every song...wrote them down, and put them in an order that resembled yet another song. So, yeah. The whole record is one song...if you take the first note of each and play them in order on a guitar, its a pretty decent song. Firesideometer: So, did you start at A, and work your way down to A,B,C,D,E,F,G repeat or throw in minors? Mike: I hate minors. Minors mean something bad happened. I think the album is mostly in D major. Firesideometer: Do you consider This Is The Yin And The Yang a concept album? Mike: No, it wasn't well thought out enough to pull that off. If it has a concept...no, no concept. Just songs played in two days with very little practice, so I kind of surprised the guys with that. Firesideometer: Where'd you record it? Mike: In my attic and living room. We have a studio, but I wanted everyone to be somewhere different, and I didn't let them practice the tricks. I got them to just be themselves instead for two days. We had just gotten off the road and I don't think they fully understood what was going on. I record all the time, but this time I knew it was going to be a record. Firesideometer: They didn't? Mike: Not really, no. Our first record was recorded over a couple of months with overdubs and all that. This one was such a short session that they didn't think anything would come of it. Firesideometer: Will this be the case for the next album? What can we expect, as far as sound, compared to the slower melodic stuff on the last record? Mike: I've been writing more spiritual songs, not about God or anything—just more from inside and about things that are less concrete than girls and cars and stuff. I've had a few revelations this year...some eye openers. Nothing specific, just a strange kind of awareness, and it's showing through on the songs. I've been accused of giving out empty hippy wisdom by some of the guys, but really it's just wisdom I found through Dr Seuss. Firesideometer: ha! Mike: Really! You know? I mean, its all there. And its from the 20's and its clear as candy. The Zax...no two people are absolutely right. The Sneeches...don't covet what other people have; you're just fine on your own. The Grinch... it's not what you have, it's what you do. On and on and on, and its like no one is doing any of it. Firesideometer: Sounds like you're on to something. Mike: Not really. It's obvious. We hear about it every day. I'm not on to anything that Jesus didn't already tell us. Mohammed told us this, too. And Moses, and Krishna, and Buddha. So, that's what the songs are about, really. A little preachy, yeah. But you know what? So what? It's there and anyone who gets it makes the world a slightly better place. You don't need church. We are a church. Not the band... everyone, individually. There's absolute truth in the fact that we are god. And it's easy to find that inside if you just give it a little bit of effort. You don't have to tithe or join a cult or anything. I think there are 7 billion religions on the planet, one for each individual. Firesideometer: You know, your thoughts are very transcendental in nature. You must read a lot of Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau... Mike: Yeah, good stuff, that. There are some more contemporaries too. Tom Robbins, for starters. I read a lot...my wife fills up our house with thrift store books. Firesideometer: J. Krishnamurti is also a great thinker, check him out. Mike: I will! Firesideometer: So, when can we expect a new Volta Sound? Mike: Next Spring. March? April? Whenever it's ready. There might be something before that, too. I've got a big stockpile of songs that should be released. I'll figure out how to do it and do it. Firesideometer: Solo, maybe? Mike: I guess. I'd like to think that the band would play these songs... Firesideometer: We recently reviewed all the Pixies albums in our Rockstöddgrupp, what is your favorite Pixies’ album? Mike: Pixies...don't have a favorite album. Just songs, and most of 'em I don't know the name of. But I can play a lot of them... Firesideometer: This month is Ride. Any thoughts on them? Mike: Nope. I've never heard any Ride, but the guys in the band and Vendetta sure dig 'em. Firesideometer: What band should we cover next month? Any band that you think deserves recognition and has made an impact on modern music… Mike: BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE! Best band since the Beatles and the Stones. Firesideometer: Bold statement there... Mike: It's fucking true. I don't care whose tip I'm on. I really feel that way. Anton has something going on in his soul that just not a lot of people have. It's some kind of a short wire that lets him see things that are there but we all ignore. Firesideometer: Pick one: Stones, Beatles, or Velvet Underground? Mike: Stones...Beatles. Wait... trick fucking question. Impossible to answer. Firesideometer: True. Maybe, it should be Brian Jonestown Massacre? Mike: No. BJM are great, but they're not any of those three. Firesideometer: I see. I was thinking, your approach to music seems like it would work well as a soundtrack to a movie. Is that something that interests you at all? Mike: No. I'd do it though. I don't control what the songs I write are or where they come from, so I couldn't really consciously make something on purpose. Most of the songs show up like an old friend out of nowhere. Firesideometer: Sounds like the way you write songs could almost be a philosophy for daily living? Mike: It is, absolutely. It's the way I live, really. I don't think about where I'm going or where I've been, and everything always seems to work out just right. I think there are people like me and him and you everywhere. And we're all prophets. There's got to be millions of us. Firesideometer: Ok. This is a hard one, so get ready. It’s a fireside lyric. Take a minute to digest it, and then give us your interpretation. There is no wrong answer: “Pieces of the shelter is missing / Waving with the white flag, no answer returned / Mad at the know not who’s fault, hoping that you’re OK” Mike: Being abandoned by god. I don't believe in any one god, though. I believe in 7 billion gods. And we haven't been abandoned, we've just forgotten who we are. Firesideometer: Interesting. I think I'm started to feel that hippy wisdom your friends were talking about... Mike: Yeah. I can see how it gets heavy on them. It's heavy shit, and if you don't grasp it, it feels insulting. Firesideometer: I want to go home and read. Mike: Try Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction, or Jitterbug Perfume. Firesideometer: Cool. That's it for us. Any final thoughts? Mike: Have children, everyone. You learn all the shit you forgot a long time ago. Firesideometer: Will do! Thanks so much for your time it was great meeting you. Good Luck! Mike: Take care, man.

The Psych Ward The Davenport Collective breaks new ground with a '60s sound By Jason Bracelin "We can't have just anybody in here," warns multi-instrumentalist Ben Gmetro, surveying the shadowy Lakewood practice space-cum-studio that's home to four tight-knit bands, all of which share the same eight members. Piled high with amps and guitars, illuminated by white Christmas lights, and lined with Syd Barrett and Mercury Rev posters, the room is something of a psych-rock sanctuary -- and not everybody is welcome. "When we bring somebody in, they're not just some guy joining a band, playing a part," explains Mike Cormier, frontman for the Volta Sound and percussionist for the Dreadful Yawns, two of the four bands that form the Davenport Collective. "When we invite somebody in, they've got to be able to hang, to just sit down here and be in it, be a part of it. It's not just 'Hey, bring your bass, here's your parts.' That's not what we're looking for." Cormier and company are looking for open-minded musicians to contribute to the Davenport Collective's already impressive body of work. Along with the Volta Sound -- which won nationwide acclaim with 2002's My All American Girl, a joint release from hip L.A. labels Elephant Stone Records and Orange Sky -- the group includes the Dreadful Yawns (Gmetro's main band), New Planet Trampoline, and 9 Volt Haunted House. Davenport's musicians trade instruments and bands like wife-swappers in '60s suburbia -- which is also where their sound is centered. All four bands are steeped in permutations of '60s pop and rock, and all have developed followings in psychedelic rock circles, from Byrds fans to Spiritualized devotees. The seeds for the Davenport Collective were sown in the late '90s by guitarist Matt Cassidy (leader of New Planet Trampoline and 9 Volt Haunted House), who was creating a compilation of area bands for his own Davenport record label. In his search for artists, he met Cormier and Gmetro, who had already launched early incarnations of the Volta Sound and the Dreadful Yawns, and the three began collaborating. The troupe was distinguished by its laissez-faire attitude toward band membership and instruments (Gmetro sings and plays guitar in the Yawns, bass in the Volta Sound, and organ in NPT. Everyone else is similarly prolific). Since landing its Lakewood rehearsal space in 2000, the Davenport Collective has been on a roll. Gmetro's wonderful, blissed-out Yawns recently signed a deal with Chicago's Undertow Records, whose roster includes such notables as Jay Bennett and Varnaline. The band is sure to create national ripples with its lush folk, which mates the pop sensibilities of Simon & Garfunkel with the austere beauty of Smog. "I'm pretty selective when deciding to take on new bands or release records," says Undertow manager Bob Andrews, adding that the Yawns won him over with their debut EP, "Pretend," which was self-released earlier this year. "It's familiar but original, pretty but ragged, homemade-sounding but still hi-fi. It has a timeless quality to it." 9 Volt Haunted House, Cassidy's ambient, esoteric electronica project, is also raising eyebrows, along with New Planet Trampoline, which is currently laying down its debut of kaleidoscopic garage rock. "I really dig NPT," says Ben Vendetta, owner of Elephant Stone, home of the Out Crowd and Land of Nod. "It's the perfect hybrid of all the British '60s Freakbeat groups like the Pretty Things, early Pink Floyd, and the Fleur de Lys." For all the benefits of a collective ("You start to listen to stuff more, you get more practice," says Cassidy. "It makes you a better musician, playing with that many different people"), there's also the challenge of juggling four different bands, all with ambitious schedules. The collective's core members focus on one group at a time -- Volta Sound toured last spring, the Yawns will hit the road this summer -- while bringing in outside musicians to help out in the studio, keeping things moving at all times. "I want to get to the point where no matter who shows up, who's available, we can still play and have a good time," Cormier says with a grin. "I'm curious to see how long we can keep it going." So are we.

Sex, Drugs and Kids in the Backyard The Volta Sound ponder the yin and yang of making adult space-rock By Heather Brack I was half an hour late meeting the Volta Sound at guitarist Matt Cassidy’s Tremont walkup and they didn’t even seem to notice, engrossed in coffee, Camel Lights and Syd Barrett. They laid back on mod vinyl furniture, the wooden beaded curtain swayed and clicked in the background, and time actually seemed to slow and thicken in their presence. In this case, though, laid-back doesn’t mean lazy. In just over two years, the Volta Sound have gone from local psyched-out noodlers to a polished and internationally distributed group with its own studio and fledgling record label, Davenport. It hasn’t even been two months since the release of their Fast Light with Radio Signal EP, and this week they sent their second full-length album with the L.A. space-rock label Orange Sky out into the world. The new record, This is the Yin and the Yang, draws heavily from the Manchester, England, music scene, but feels warm as California sunshine. “That record’s got a mission,” declares singer/guitarist Mike Cormier. “That one’s got a point. It was put together that way, and all the songs go together that way, and all the layout. It’s kind of like XTC’s Skylarking, where they did this whole record that from beginning to end is like the birth of this guy, through his trials and tribulations, and then he dies. Except it’s not as good or as deep as that.” A lot of bands play heavy-lidded, spacey psychedelia, but the Voltas mean it. They say “far out” without a hint of irony and their live show has earned the blessings of Spiritualized frontman and psych-rock despot Jason Pierce, who calls them “fookin’ brilliant.” But as a band, they live with a lot of contrast. Their first tour ended in a druggy lost week in L.A. that has become something of a local legend, but when they’re home several of the Voltas have families and children. That’s a big part of the yin and yang the album refers to. “We recorded that record at my house, and it took two days,” Cormier says. “The whole time we were doing it, all this rock and roll was going on but the songs aren’t just sex, drugs and rock and roll on that record. A lot of it is just about everyday life, because we’d been working on it for a while and all this life shit was affecting it. It was the beginning of summer and all the windows were open and I was recording and mixing this druggy music and folk music and meanwhile I could hear all the kids in the front yard and lawnmowers going. So while these songs are talking about big grownup things, there’s all these children floating in and out of it.” “The kids in the neighborhood gave a really good performance, too,” adds Cassidy. “Lots of counting and hide-and-seek.” The band’s first instinct was to find a way to eliminate that background noise from the recording, but after a few attempts to record without the sounds of children and birds, they decided it was just part of the music. And in some cases they actually took microphones outside to record extra backyard noise, says Cormier. “The last track on the record is really long and droney, and when I was mixing it I would sit back on the couch listening for things I wanted to do with it, and I would gradually start to fall asleep,” he says. “I would wake up to the final notes of it and I would hear the kids in the backyard screaming and yelling, and all the birds. After that happened five or six times I realized, when I play this back I’m gonna want to hear that. So one afternoon we took the mikes outside and [organist Todd Vainisi] brought his kids over and we recorded that. So now, sure as shit, it’s the middle of January and I go put the record on and when it gets to the end and I start to doze away, if I put the heat on it’s August again.” The summery album treads familiar musical ground for the Sound, including newly revamped versions of songs like “She Gets Me High,” which also appeared on some of their earliest self-released CDs. “Henri Chinaski,” named for a Charles Bukowski character, is dark formulaic space rock, with a simple repeated riff drenched in reverb and overlaid with trancelike vocals, followed by the much poppier “Take Yer Sweet Time” and “The Ride,” driven by a prominent bassline that conjures a memory of the Jesus and Mary Chain. After just a few local shows to support This is the Yin and the Yang, the band is already starting to pull together a new album. And they’re hoping, beyond children at play, to catch some otherworldly sounds, recording in the desert in a geodesic dome owned by labelmates Moroccan. “I asked if we could go out there to record the next record and they said yes,” Cormier says. “The guy that built the dome back in the ’50s, what happened is apparently some aliens from Venus came down and said, ‘The human race is not evolving right and if you build these things and let people live in them we will come again and we will tell you what to do.’ And he built the damn things, and now Moroccan got their hands on one, so if we go out there and I don’t see a fucking spaceship, I’m gonna be pissed.”

The Volta Sound Cuts 2000-2004 (Elephant Stone) While the lineup that plays on this limited-edition collection of odds and sods has changed plenty since the tracks were recorded, it's still a fine representation of the Volta Sound, at least in the incarnation that was popular on the local scene for the past four years. Opening with the mellow “Space Program,” the album quickly segues into heavier material, ranging from the Brian Jonestown Massacre-like “Suicide One” to the snarling “Midnite Girl,” a song that almost sounds like My Bloody Valentine playing a psychedelic rendition of “Mississippi Queen.” The shoe-gazer guitars really rock in “Don't Bring it Down,” and the band successfully puts horns and handclaps into the mix on “Innocent & Arrogant” and “Goner,” respectively. While the British accents are clearly affected and sometimes the music drones too much (see “Sleeping Potion”), the music has an effective trancelike quality. —Jeff Niesel (July 2004)

The Volta Sound Cuts 2000-2004 (Elephant Stone) The Volta Sound gets around like the women they sing about. The band has released an album or EP every year since 2000 and still has enough leftover songs to put together Cuts, a superb rarities collection that rivals any of its previous releases. Cuts' pressing is small (only 100 copies), but its sound is anything but: The sprawling psychedelia drifts from lazy, languorous drones ("Suicide One") and the limber acoustic pop ("There Was a Time") of the band's most recent efforts to the more flammable, guitar-driven rock that characterized its earlier work ("Innocent and Arrogant"). "Take Me There" encapsulates all of the band's breadth, with frontman Mike Cormier singing of supernovas in a gentle murmur, before cresting guitar drowns his voice in feedback and dissonance. The song is eight minutes long, and it takes another eight to catch your breath. —Jason Bracelin (July 2004)

The Volta Sound Fast Light With Radio Signal: (Elephant Stone) This Is The Yin And The Yang (Orange Sky) Their EP from 2002. Precursor to their full-length. Worth the haze and stoned-out psych shoegaze drone rock 'cause it's as cool and well-executed as Brian Jonestown Massacre and early Rain Parade. Full-length. True bohemians in the mold of 21st century LA drug/rock culture.But they come from Cle-town Ohio. Even though their liner note is almost more entrancing and wonderful than the music, it all makes sense. Their aesthetic is clear and they won't do you no wrong. Smart hippies with that mid-'60s pop sense and the whole California vibe. 10 songs drift away and come back and you let them play. Right on, right on. —Pat Pierson (February 2004)

The Volta Sound This Is The Yin And The Yang (Orange Sky) Fast Light With Radio Signal: (Elephant Stone) Despite numbing urban and cultural decay, Cleveland has had pockets of musical resistance as long ago as the mid-'70s heyday of Pere Ubu. The Volta Sound, along with a loose collective of rehearsal-sharing groups with names like 9-Volt Haunted House, New Planet Trampoline and The Dreadful Yawns, is among the latest, most promising guerilla ops. Last year's My All American Girl romped blissfully through several decades' worth of cool, from Velvets and Stooges to Charlatans and Stone Roses, and while This Is The Yin And The Yang offers similar archival plundering, the sound is more focused. One clear archetype: Spacemen 3, whose transparent radiation core heats up anew on such tracks as the opiated jangle/feedback-laden "Henri Chinaski," gospellish deep-twanger "The Ride" and the 13-minute interstellar-boogie title track. Taut dynamics, stoned vocals and fluid organ/fretboard drone locate the Volta Sound in the vicinity of the Warlocks or Brian Jonestown Massacre. Such comparisons are further illuminated on the five-song Fast Light With Radio Signal, thanks to a hypnotic live reprisal of the first album's "Zen Is Everywhere" and the fuzztone-draped space rock of "Sleepy Crunchy." It's the proverbial "take a trip with us" rock aesthetic, one clearly suggested when, on The Yin And The Yang, the sound of a NASA countdown slowly becomes audible deep in the mix. Yes, gentlemen, we do have liftoff. —Fred Mills (June 2003)

The Volta Sound Fast Light With Radio Signal: (Elephant Stone) The Volta Sound's on-line bio states that "this ain't the time for sissy shit" and the band will then proceed to "seal your fate, steal your girlfriend, smoke all your smoke and drink all your wine". So you may want to keep all this in mind before inviting them over to play at your house. The Volta Sound are best kept at safe listening distance. That way you can still enjoy their music without all the mess. Their latest EP is good to bond with; you can make out to it or get drunk or just space out to it. They create an amazing cosmic sound with lots of stretched out vibrating guitars, lazy organs and steadily building drums to carry you into your preferred state of high. The first of the five songs is "Henri Chinaski," the fictitious name used by Charles Bukowski and if this is an homage to him then lift your glasses because it rocks. Followed by "Ano Domination" ala Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, whom they have toured with in the past and "Zen Is Everywhere (live)" which is an ultra hypnotic jam. —Rita Neyter (May 2003)

The Volta Sound Fast Light With Radio Signal: (Elephant Stone) Not to be confused with The Mars Volta this lot are a young band with one full album (‘My All American Girl’) and another due round about now (‘This Is The Yin And The Yang’). The play slow, ambient, psychedelic-tinged space-rock and have been compared to Spiritualized, The Velvet Underground, The Stone Roses and The Byrds to name but a few, influences coming from both sides of the Atlantic. First track Henri Chinaski sets the tone nicely with some simple guitar chords. Ano Domination has a one minute intro of shimmering guitar before the organ joins in and at around 2.20 they’re joined by vocals and handclaps. Zen Is Everywhere (live) continues in similar vein; slow, simple guitars, with an Indian feel. The tempo picks up for the acoustic, country folksy You’re Nobody’s Girlfiend which has a guitar line that’s a dead ringer for Queen’s This Thing Called Love and some restrained organ playing. Closer Sleepy Crunchy (Sleepy) is the rockiest track, building gradually with plenty of spacey effects. There’s a hidden track of suburban noise; motorbikes, birds chirping, kids playing etc. Jason Pierce called The Volta Sound ‘fookin’ brilliant’, and while that’s overstating the case, they aren’t half bad. —Graham S. (2003)

The Volta Sound Fast Light With Radio Signal: (Elephant Stone) “Fookin’ brilliant” was how Jason Pierce described The Volta Sound. They’re that and plenty more. Current EP, Fast Light with Radio Signal:, predecessor to next year’s full-length This is the Yin and the Yang (Orange Sky Records) confirms it all. Opener ‘Henri Chinaski’ is an avant-garde slow single-chord overture in the style of contemporary acts as South and The Charlatans, blemish-free and inviting. ‘Ano Domination’ continues slow with the only percussion sustaining the 4/4 being a clap, guitar work reminiscent of ‘Transparent Radiation’, all with a soft acoustic guitar and Cormier’s colloquial narrative. So does the live version of ‘Zen Is Everywhere’—allow me to reiterate this from a previous review of this band: The Volta Sound are the best American ambient/space-rock act around—picking up pace half-way through akin to The Cooper Temple Clause’s ‘Murder Song’. Folk-bluesy-rockish ‘You’re Nobody’s Girlfriend’, with Organist Todd Vainisi’s interludes confirming their breadth of composition, is the single most impressive track on the EP. Closer ‘Sleepy Crunchy (Sleepy)’ is a Slowdive-ish track without the choir vocals. Instead, they’re replaced with tight harmony and a snail’s pace build-up that you could drive the distance from where you live to Cleveland listening to, just to catch this sextet live. And like DJ Shadow inserts native traffic noise, or Boards of Canada make full-length tracks of Scottish ambience, The Volta Sound’s nature sample is the hidden track—birds chirping, suburban noise, and a hemorrhaging guitar. 8.5. —ea1 (December 2002)

Fans of spacey drone-pop would do well to check out The Voltasound's performance this week. The band has been compared to the likes of the Radar Brothers, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and perhaps most accurately, Spiritualized, whose Jason Pierce called the band "fookin' brilliant." —-Stephen Seigel (December 2002)

The Volta Sound Fast Light With Radio Signal: (Elephant Stone) Like one prolonged Calgon moment set to wax, the Volta Sound's latest recording is pleasantly anesthetizing. "Hello all you people, waiting for your rapture to arrive," singer-guitarist Mike Cormier drawls midway through the disc, bringing the bliss on the appropriately titled "Zen Is Everywhere." Cormier doesn't breathe much life into his words; his voice is calming and sedate, like a warm bath. The rest of the Volta Sound tosses a toaster into the tub, however, with bursts of feedback, oceans of reverb, and full-on psychedelic fantasia. The highlight of it all is "Ano Domination," an equally beautiful and bracing number with comfortably numb vocals and skyrocketing guitars. "You're Nobody's Girlfriend" is another gem, an acoustic sing-along powered by smiles and saccharin. Forget the bubble bath -- let the Volta Sound take you away. —Jason Bracelin (November 2002)