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The current line-up formed in Lincoln, NE in 1998. Numerous shows, college radio support, recording sessions, and collaborations resulted in a growing following. The Duracraft EP was recorded in their strict DIY methodology, and sets refined to accommodate the swelling sounds that had begun to formulate. Seeking a more musically intoned environment in which to pursue their vision, The Prids relocated to Portland, OR in the year 2000. Ecstatic reviews followed their first lives shows in Portland as well as their release of the Duracraft EP in its final form. The Portland Mercury's Compact Disc of Sound compilation showcasing numerous local acts included The Prids track "Persona Solara," which was subsequently chosen to promote the disc on a local radio station. Live shows continued to growing audiences. Musical comparisons naturally followed. Often likened to The Cure or Joy Division, The Prids do not easily fall into a self-category. Dark attire, strobe lighting, and smoke machines hint toward the gothic arena, however, the truth is to be found in the music itself. Manic to poignant guitar work, experimental bass manipulations supported by acoustic and digital percussion provide a sonic backbone in tandem with vocals of a literary tangibility. And equally as varied. Sultry echoes of reminiscence and regret, layered refractions of dual harmonies, to hysteric retaliation of realized abuse. From Kraut-rock intelligence to synth-pop accessibility, the immediacy of punk rock, to gut-level experimentalism. And all points in between. Categories attained and defied with every step. The truth is in The Prids music itself. At the time of this writing, The Prids are going deep into hibernation to record their first full-length album, tentatively titled Raw Candidates for Heaven, inside their own living quarters/studio. All else is future... A live webcast show of The Prids perfoming at the Satyricon in Portland, OR can be seen at: www.dcn.com/bands/bands_pages/prids_5611.shtml ### For more information, contact: The Prids 503.786.0375 theprids@earthlink.net From the Press LOSE MY BREATH The Prids: A Lovely Kick in the Gut by Julianne Shepherd DO YOU REMEMBER the first time you heard Joy Division, or My Bloody Valentine, or any musician who's dark and somehow literary, but also instinctual? Remember how you felt--like there was some heavy thing pressing on your chest, this new beautiful melancholy, this strange and wonderful sepia-toned sound, and maybe you didn't really know where it came from, but it was new and fascinating and electric? I remember that feeling. It's few and far between, but I got that super-dark shiver again, last Monday (Aug 14). And it was better this time, because it was live, in Portland, at Satyricon's New Band Night (NBN), of all places. Admit it; most people aren't likely to go to NBN at any club, unless it's their neighbors' band that's playing, or there's some really cheap deal on Schlitz. And, to be honest with you, I wasn't expecting anything good, except for the somewhat amusing possibility of seeing some bands that haven't yet traded in their Alice in Chains CD collections. If I hadn't promised I'd be there in a previous Mercury (Up & Coming, Aug 10), I probably wouldn't have gone. But I'm glad I did. It really seemed like the NBN angels had come down and bestowed a special treat upon the 30-or-so attendees. Vibrant punk openers Try and Step on Her had contagious energy in the way Superchunk used to, pre-On The Mouth. Mortal Clay, who played second, were eerie-cute goths, adorably complex like Lenore or a Dame Darcy drawing (more about both bands coming in future issues). Then there were The Prids. Holy fucking shit. You have got to see this band, right now. Imagine if My Bloody Valentine and New Order decided to collaborate when they were both at their peaks. They'd make magenta-charged electro-wave, a crashing of static guitars with a heavily delicate synthesizer melody and unexpected drum smatters. The vocals would be iridescent, with breathy distortion. Imagine the electricity in that dark tension. That's The Prids. "We grew up in a time when [music was] really hard, and there was punk. We were so embedded in new wave, but we were also driven by that punk rock aesthetic. We wanted it heavier, so it seemed to come out really raging instead of just wilting. It isn't necessarily right up front sad. There is sadness to it, but it isn't a mourning," says guitarist David Frederickson. The Prids, who moved to Portland from Lincoln, NE, in January of this year, have been playing as a band since 1998. They stretch a canvas of guitar and bass (Mistina Keith), gessoed with a keyboard (Trenor Rapki) and swept with a hard abstractness of drums (Jairus Smith). Their music is subconscious, a result of both incredible talent and incredible passion. "We all give everything we have to the music cause it's really all we have. We're lucky to have the music we make," says Smith. Says Keith, "Music is the only thing I want to do, and it's the only thing I care about. Silly little things in life like fights, even when they're major, mean nothing in comparison. All I care about is the way it makes me feel, and I'm hoping when I'm performing that it can make other people feel that way." "We're looking for the chill factor," says Frederickson. The Prids will play Sept. 23 at Medicine Hat. Their self-released EP, Duracraft, is out in October. Local Bands You Can't Miss There are hidden treasures in Portland's music scene - and here's just one of them. THE PRIDS If New Wave had continued its evolution uninterrupted until the present day, Portland's The Prids would be the archetype of whatever the new century brought to this genre. Comparisons to the Goth movement often get thrown on to this somewhat dark band, but mostly it's gotten in bed with popsters like New Order, the upbeat, arty turns of post-Bauhas Peter Murphy, his bandmates' Love & Rockets, and the noisy pleasure waves of My Bloody Valentine. But like those bands listed here, The Prids are not content with tooling around in any one genre, and highly experimental jaunts turn up that evoke folks like Tangerine Dream, Trey Gunn's "Ten Thousand Years" album and even old European nursery rhymes. Often, The Prids are both simplistic and seriously psychedelic, creating a strange sense of complexity by the mere twisting of the simplest of song structures and melodies, and then throwing on tons of gooey textures from keyboards and effects-laden guitars. Mistina Keith's bass sometimes brings on memories of the blockish bass of Sarah Lee from Robert Fripp's minimalist punk band League of Gentlemen, while guitarist/vocalist David Frederickson and keyboardist Trenor Rapki balance that with walls of magnificent textures that calm, grate, bite, cuddle, hover over and surround the listener. Meanwhile, it's mostly a sense of danceability that grabs at the listener's hips in the middle of all these maddening and dizzying colors, while co-vocalists Frederickson and Keith aide in the ultra-pop frenzy by anchoring it all with linear melodies that threaten, at times, to never leave your head. http://www.kxl.com/FSI.asp?SecID=10&ID=62 The Prids Duracraft (4-song EP) Self-released 2000 Grade: A+ This four-song EP from Portland's indefinable The Prids is a small treasure and a big tease, making you crave more of their slightly dark, esoteric experimentalism and starkly strange pop. Sometimes these fuzzy tunes take on an Iggy Pop or Joy Division slant, while another evokes medieval faeries singing over an echoey dreamscape that is both lulling and jarring. There's a vast sampling of influences here, fused into startling hybrids that seem to create their own genres. The songs aree often rooted in Gothic, New Wave and the introspectiveness of My Bloody Valentine, but their catchy melodies have a naïve simplicity reminiscent of old European folk. -Andre' Hagestedt The Oregonian - A&E March 2001 GET LOST IN TIME How You Should Spend the Next 18 Minutes by Julianne Shepherd Portland Mercury BEFORE YOU LISTEN to Duracraft, the new four-song EP by The Prids, you should turn up your stereo as loud as it can possibly go without breaking champagne glasses. That's because this album deserves to become the landscape of the room, the car, or wherever you are listening. Its sound rises up from the floorboards like a jangling stalagmite. It's sticky, musty, and sulky-cool. You will press play, and "Lienzencages" will begin. The keyboard melody will wrap around the dark bass like a cloak, stitched together with a milky vocal. The drums will remind you to dance, hands clasped behind your back, and you'll lose a little equilibrium when the song increases its pace, going from murky to urgent, and ending all at once. The second track, "Memoreyes," will take you to a windy, industrial section of a gloomy city, where forgotten voices whisper from the darkness. Or you might be in the New Orleans of Poppy Z. Brite, where pale-faced goth children tempt the paranormal, searching swamps for ghosts and absinthe. You will feel like you are sinking in danky muck, until the sunrise-sweet "Fades in Time," in which Mistina Prid's distantly airy voice sheds a ghostly light. Now you are floating, warm, soft, and safe. Finally, "Duracraft" finishes your journey, pulling you back to the dance you started with, confident rhythms and lush, consuming, lightheaded melodies. You will like Duracraft because you loved Bauhaus, Joy Division, and The Cure when it seemed there was no one else to love in music. You will like The Prids because they're not only paying homage to the earliest, deepest, and best new wave, but because they capture what was so cool about it to begin with. They're dark, but smart-dark, not weepy-dark or kill-your-parents-dark. They're smoky, like a trenchcoat and a black-blooded heart. And you will listen to Duracraft very, very loudly, because it is a portal to a world like the ones in Marc Caro films, a landscape where the day never comes, but it is warm and you'd like to stay there for a little while. http://www.portlandmercury.com/2000-11-30/music2.html StarVox Music Zine The Prids duracraft ~reviewed by Blu 06/17/01 The Prids were brought to my attention by Marshall Serna - keyboardist for Sumerland in Portland. Marshall had seen this band play live and had fallen in love with their sound. He offered to help produce a full length CD for them which is now in the works. In the meantime, he very enthusiastically, shared this 4-song release they had put out in 2000 and I have to agree, there is incredible potential here if this is any indication of this band's capabilities. This ep sounds better than a lot of fully produced full lengths I get in here. They open up with a song called "Lienzencages" -- an up-tempo song with a darkwave feel - almost Brit-pop in many ways with an edgy guitar and bass line. Track 2, "Memoreyes" is where my interest is really tweaked though...atmospheric walls of feedback and obscure percussion echo out as if you've walked into some dark cave of gloom and eventually, this haunting guitar riff comes slithering through only once, teasing, and hides again. More feedback, and then the riff is played again and the bass and drums kick in dramatically and a song forms. Heavy in feel, its almost like a nightmare in slow motion. The vocals are intense, heavily distorted, and end up just screaming at some point. There are elements that remind me of Pink Floyd at their best. And after the scary parts, there's always a happy ending right? Well, the tension created on track 3 is washed away with the delicate, sparkling bells of "Fades in Time" - a light, airy song with female vocals this time. Liquid and fluid, its an anti-thesis to the previous song. It plays along and then fades all too soon when the final track, "Duracraft" bounces in. "Duracraft", with its rolling punk-inspired bass line and raw percussion sounds a lot like a Joy Division song in structure. Female vocals come in and it takes on a form of its own, dark and driving. Its hard to put a finger on exactly what the Prids sound like. They are raw and dark and edgy with echos of the past mixed with contemporary sounds all their own. These four songs vary greatly from one another and I suspect, were selected to showcase the range of this band. I've said it before many times, I think there's something in the waters in the Pacific Northwest. I've never seen as many original sounding, talented bands anywhere as I've seen here. Truly there is a musical well over flowing with talent. I'm excited about this band and look forward to hearing more. Add The Prids to your "ones to watch" list - you'll be hearing more of them in the future. http://www.starvox.net/cdr/prids.htm Check out the artist's website: http://www.theprids.com/ Track List: 1. Lienzencages 2. Memoreyes 3. Fades in Time 4. Duracraft Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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