Phantogram

Phantogram's music sounds like it's made by a band from the city. Electronic loops, hip-hop beats, shoegaze, soul, and pop each find its way into their songs. Unexpectedly, the band doesn't live and work in a major urban center, but rather calls the town of Saratoga Springs, NY home. Despite the cultural influence of local Skidmore College (where fellow beat-experimenters Ratatat formed) Saratoga isn't exactly teeming with fans of J. Dilla, My Bloody Valentine or Serge Gainsbourg. Using various samplers, tapes, records, synths, drums, and both percussive and stringed instruments, Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, the duo that make up Phantogram have allowed their natural surroundings and metropolitan influences to mix, resulting in brilliant, unusual recordings that are beautiful yet hard, dreamlike yet substantial, danceable yet smart.

Phantogram: Nightlife [CD]

Electronic rock duo Phantogram came out of nowhere in early 2010 with the release of their debut album Eyelid Movies (Barsuk), which was lauded from underground to mainstream. In the whirlwind year and a half following the album's release, the band played nearly every major North American festival and regularly headlined sold-out shows on their own - stopping along the way for appearances on late night TV and drawing mounting praise from audiences, critics, and fellow musicians from ?uestlove to Kings of Leon to Big Boi (with the latter of whom the band went on to form the side-project Big Grams). The Nightlife EP contains the RIAA Gold-certified single "Don't Move" and is a companion piece to their debut - its title, in part, refers to the fact that it was written and even partially recorded in clubs and hotel rooms while on tour in support of Eyelid Movies. Barsuk Records is excited to reissue the six-song EP on purple wave vinyl.