New York City band Sons of Venus have honed an intriguing dreamy rock sound, which adds to a fascinating backstory that’s only getting more interesting with potential future endeavours.
Lead singer John Sully has just been accepted onto a full scholarship to do a masters in Sound Design at Yale School of Drama. He is working on theater and art projects with Yale that the band plans to incorporate into their music and live performances.
The band began when John, a performance and sound artist in NYC, met Kazakhstanian drummer and pianist Ruslan Baimurzin at an East Village after-hours jam. Their chemistry was instantaneous and Ruslan invited Sully to jam on guitar with bassist Igor Reznik and keyboardist Peter Breed. Sons Of Venus was born.
Sully’s organic style of production saw him capture high-quality multi-channel recordings of the band’s extensive improvisations. By arranging the tracks through digital editing he created tight and cohesive demos on which he overdubbed vocals. Excited with the outcome, the band decided to record seven of the tracks at Bunker Studios in Brooklyn.
There is an innate 1960’s feeling to the album, featuring free jazz flourishes and acid rock edges that intertwine with an indie-pop ethos and punk, funk and blues influences.
To get a taste for this the band sent us their debut single Thinking It Through, which comes in at more than nine minutes long. It opens up with a cool fuzzy guitar lick over synth sounds, then rocky bursts feed into opening vocals “Syncronished, Sanctity, In the moment, Living a dream, Choose the wonder, The comes and goings, Falling down.” Big drawn-out cries of “Way down” are met by bursts of trumpet, with cheeky guitar licks cutting in, building up to a chorus of repeats of “Thinking it through” with cool little trumpet and guitars.
A piercing guitar solo takes over after a second chorus, eventually dropping into another chorus and the song picks up pace in a cool section that feeds into another chorus. A rocky instrumental section led by a cool meandering guitar solo takes over, as the song comes to a big rocky ending. Give it a listen below:
The track comes from the band’s self-titled album, which was released back in July, from which we also love the sound of We Hold On. It starts slowly with a low looping guitar lick over light drums and laid-back vocals that gradually build with repeats of “We hold on.” An organ takes over as the light drums continue, then the chilled vocals return.
A cool fuzzy drawn-out guitar lick takes over, with the organ returning in support as the guitars build into a slow solo that ends on loads of guitar noise. Faster vocals come in alongside stabbing organ sounds then dreamy repeats of “We hold on.” I’m not sure if it’s just because I had a really long day of walking, but this gorgeous track was the perfect relaxing tonic. You can check it out below:
You can follow Sons of Venus on Facebook, and check out their music on Spotify, Soundcloud and Bandcamp.
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