Biography
The Timeout Drawer is upheaval. The Timeout Drawer is not a good time. A disheveled city band, having formed in 1999 on Chicago's north side while working day jobs painting basement floors in dirty ex-shampoo factories, the band has nothing to offer the light-hearted. It is for the melancholy that they parade, crystallizing the somber in spirit and exploding with them into triumphant and stomping riots of evocative beauty.
But this is what you do when you've grown up in an overly-comfortable suburb: you feel the pain and invent the riot. The founding members of the band, Chris Eichenseer and Jason Goldberg, have done that most of their lives - from breakdancing together in the 5th grade to starting punk and metal bands in middle school, to spending most of high school in experimental bands with midi chains that could choke a baby elephant, noodling around before IDM and post-rock were properly coined. It was natural when their interests led them to the instrumental rock outfit they found themselves inventing in the summer of 1999 - The Timeout Drawer.
At first, the band abandoned complexity in favor of minimalism: a moog, drum kit, and guitar. The first two releases, 1999's Record of Small Histories and 2001's A Difficult Future were explosive yet polite records, erupting rather softly into sparkling soundscapes of complex melodies and rich sound. The band began rigorously touring, and the records were lauded by critics for their emotional melodies and tight production.
Still looking for the sonic bombast to mirror the chaos in its heart, the band recruited Chris Van Pelt, a furious Miamian guitar player who grew up on a steady diet of Sonic Youth and Fugazi. The band ripped the pleasantness of its last two albums apart, toured the country, and released the apocalyptic EP, Presents Left for the Living Dead, on Chicago's Chocolate Industries. It delivered on tremors only hinted at in the past, heaping thick guitar and drum work on top of gorgeous and searing moog melodies. In the process of ramping up the bands capabilities, another guitar wizard and bonus
programming geek from Chicago's electronic scene, Jon Slusher, was asked to join. A classically- minded songwriter, Jon's role instantly became pivotal on both the shredding-guitar-jock-rock front and the more delicate duties of careful song arrangement.
A setback emerged soon thereafter, as Chris Van Pelt quit the band after completion of the EP to become a pilot, and TTD was again in the midst of a line-up change. Nonetheless, the foundation was laid for the full-length ahead: cinematically huge epic songs, diverse instrumentation and enough melancholy coupled with triumph to win over the heavy-hearted. One man short, though temporarily supplemented by old friend and "Presents.." recording engineer Jef Green, the band embarked on recording "the take-no bullshit" series of 3: a full length and EP at Keith Cleversley's Playground (Hum, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips), and a crushing rendition of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for release as a 7". 14 new songs in total.
By the time the mixing phase came around, engineer Andy Bosnak fell in love with the sound and stepped into the dangerously revolving door that is The Timeout Drawer. Finally a proper foursome and ready to kick some hind-quarters, the band will be supporting the new LP and 7" upon their release in October 2005 and beyond. A fully realized and motivated amalgamation of the band's history, the new works present the bands most powerful edge as well as their most startling beauty…
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