Biography
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Years Active
2003 – present (21 years)
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Founded In
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
After three years, two recording sessions and one near-death experience, The Two Koreas return with a new full-length album, Science Island, produced by Jon Drew (Fucked Up, Tokyo Police Club) and released March 1, 2011 on Randy Vicar Records/Last Gang Labels.
Formed in Toronto circa 2003, The Two Koreas gleefully polarized their hometown with a sound they dub “electric jangular beat muzik,” a retro-futurist amalgam of ’60s garage-rock primitivism, ’70s Krautrock propulsion, ’80s post-punk dynamism, ’90s indie-rock irreverence and post-millennial attention deficiency. Over the past half-decade, they’ve been invited to share stages with avant-rock icons (Wire, Pavement's Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg), blog-buzzed faves (Japandroids, Love Is All, A Place to Bury Strangers, Monotonix) and Toronto-scene royalty (Owen Pallett, Constantines, Metric) alike.
The band’s 2007 sophomore release “Altruists” peaked at No. 2 on the CBC Radio 3 cross-Canada chart and earned two nominations for the station’s annual Bucky Awards (for Best Lyric and Best Bassline — the two most important categories, natch); the follow-up 2008 EP Sessions was compiled from live-to-air recordings originally broadcast on XM satellite radio station The Verge, who nominated the band in the Best Artist category for the 2008 Verge Music Awards. In 2009, the Sessions track "54 Is the New 27" reached No. 1 on CBC Radio's Bande a Part channel.
Science Island marks a further evolution of The Two Koreas sound into a new sub-genre to be henceforth known as “glacial garage,” or GG for short (as in, “this album is sooooo GG!” Or, “I’m thinking of moving to Williamsburg to start a post-GG band” — by all means, feel free to drop it into casual conversations and/or use it to break awkward silences). Glacial garage is, as its very name attests, garage rock encased in ice: a frozen tableaux of ray-gunned punk and strobe-lit psychedelia, captured in a state of permanent combustion, floating for all eternity.
The Two Koreas are:
Stuart Berman - vox
Kieran Grant - gitbox
Jason Anderson - more keys please
Ian Worang - bacist
David Gee - tom-tom clubbing
http://thetwokoreas.bandcamp.com/
http://thetwokoreas.ca
http://twitter.com/thetwokoreas
http://facebook.com/thetwokoreas
http://myspace.com/thetwokoreas
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