Event

San Fermin with American Wrestlers

The Luminary presents San Fermin with American Wrestlers on Thursday, May 14. Doors 8:00 pm, show 9:00 pm. Tickets: $12 advance, $14 dos.

San Fermin
Brooklyn-based San Fermin, now an eight-piece touring enterprise, did not start that way.

In December of 2012, the initially makeshift project performed a single concert from sheet music and signed a record deal. Their self-titled debut was subsequently released worldwide in the fall of 2013 via Downtown Records. Following rave reviews, the band was thrust into the spotlight, performing sold out shows and festivals across the world and opening for the likes of the National, St. Vincent, Arctic Monkeys, and The Head and the Heart. "Suddenly, we were not in a vacuum. We were in the thick of it, which was thrilling but also terrifying," bandleader Ellis Ludwig-Leone says. "There were all these new possibilities and gray areas. It was a shock to the system out in the world, barely at home, constantly in a state of semi-crisis."

Many of the songs on Jackrabbit, San Fermin's second album, existed only on Ludwig-Leone's laptop for the better part of a year, as he toured and turned the band into an ensemble operation. When at last he revisited them, he knew that they had to be reborn.

"The first record was written in a very pre-composed way, recorded when I didn't think this would be a band. So I went from being this isolated composer guy to sitting in the back of a crowded van with seven other band members playing shows in rock clubs every night," he says. "When I got back, I ripped these holes in the middle of the existing songs and added some new ones. I rethought everything I had been writing."

Recorded piecemeal in many sessions under Ludwig-Leone's watchful eye, Jackrabbit bears the scars of experience admirably. If San Fermin could seem prepared and guarded to the point of being polite, Jackrabbit lines that record's complicated compositional maneuvers and grandiose pop eruptions with necessary aggression. It is urgent and in your face, like a band sweating and singing in a cramped venue. It is emotionally complicated, too, like a group of strangers who have suddenly had their lives interrupted and linked by unexpected circumstances.

http://www.sanferminband.com/

American Wrestlers
Now based in Missouri, the Scotsman behind American Wrestlers has been on one hell of a journey. Born and raised in Glasgow, he then found his way to Manchester, where he recorded some demos under a different name and posted the songs online. It was then that his now-wife first got in touch, and after becoming enraptured with one another, he moved across the Atlantic to get married.

"I like to write real songs that survive all on their own," he explains of the sound. "One human and one instrument. Just the human even." Melodic and hazy, its ramshackle surface hides an attention to detail that leaves the 'lo-fi' tag dead in the water.

"The lo-fi thing was all unintentional," he confirms. "This was me trying my hardest to keep all the different sounds and layers under control. Make the reverbs and chorus sound nice and get just the right amount of overdrive from the multi-track's inputs, while at the same time trying to make sure I kept the natural sounds and feels of the real sources the music was coming from."

https://americanwrestlers.bandcamp.com/releases

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The Luminary (View)
2701 Cherokee Street
St. Louis, MO 63118
United States

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Owner: The Luminary

On BPT Since: Jan 19, 2009

Liz Deichmann

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