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Aimee Echo - Vocals

Jamie Miller - Guitars, Synths, Vocals

Erick Sanger - Bass

Billy Brimblecom Jr. - Drums

While theSTART are at the beginning of their musical adventure with the release of their debut album SHAKEDOWN!, it’s a beginning with an impressive history. Sound like a contradiction?

Well, that’s just one of the many engaging contradictions to be found within the music and personalities of the Los Angeles-based foursome. For instance, one pundit described theSTART as “a late 70’s new wave sound dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century … a little bit retro, a little bit heavy.” While songs like “Gorgeous” bear that description out with Echo’s sultry, shimmering, animated voice and the band’s tight synth-tinged rock flair, the title track “Shakedown!” is akin to a punk rock anthem for our time. Disguised as a pop song, with veiled sociopolitical commentary, it’s chorus orders the listener to “Rise up! Dance to a different beat…”.

From the start, it seemed inevitable that theSTART would come into existence. The roots–and scars–of the members’ pasts combine to give them a breadth and depth, rare in new bands and debut albums. As Echo recalls: “We got to know each other pretty well when our former bands shared a tour bus …” The bands she refers to, of course, were the much-beloved and now defunct underground sensations Human Waste Project, featuring both Echo and drummer Scott Ellis, and Snot, in which Jamie Miller played drums (he now plays guitar and synthesizers for theSTART)”…then, when we’d come home, the three of us were sharing a house with four other people from different bands and what have you, two dogs and two cats. You do the math!” It was on a weekend tour to Northern California that Echo and Ellis would meet Jeff Jaeger then playing bass for Sacramento faves Smirch. Furthers Miller,”After awhile we all felt we loved what we were doing but it was becoming a grind, we needed to make something new, to start a new band with no preconceived notions. If no one likes it, who cares?”

And so they did. Upon returning from their final stints of touring with their respective bands they repacked their bags and headed for a cabin in the woods. Yes, really. “On August 23,1998 we went to a cabin in Wrightwood, outside of Los Angeles, put ourselves on lockdown and wrote ferociously.” says Echo, “Our first show was September 9th- and we’d only been writing and rehearsing for 2 weeks! That was our first test; to book a show before we were even a band. When we booked the gig, we didn’t even know if we’d write a single song together.” Clearly they did. And some of those very first songs caught the attention of record producer Josh Abraham (Orgy, Deadsy,Crazytown) who would eventually bring them to sign with The Label/Geffen.

After the band’s rural formation, theSTART moved into an artist loft in Downtown Los Angeles, where they lived, rehearsed and wrote the dozen plus songs that would become SHAKEDOWN!. And the music flowed: “It was so easy to write, because we were able to let go and be who we are,” Echo explains. “We weren’t trying to sound like anything else.” The START’s own varied influences combined to create a forward-thinking sound based on passions of the past.”We are definitely influenced by the sounds and attitude of what we grew up on; Siouxsie, The Cure, Buzzcocks, Punk Rock and right on through… like Fugazi and Jane’s Addiction.”Adds Miller: “I grew up on the Police and U2. I think we’re similar in sensibility but I wouldn’t say we’re retro, no, not at all … we’re music from the future.”

It’s these elements, meshed with Echo’s literate and emotive lyrical approach, that fuse into the unique amalgamation that is the START. Add to that the burnished production of Abraham and theSTART and some mixes by Tom Lord-Alge (The CURE, Blink-182) Brian Virtue (Crazytown, Deadsy) and Dave Ogilvie (Nine Inch Nails) and the result is SHAKEDOWN!. The band’s logo of concentric circles are derived from a favorite quote: “They called me heretic and flout and made a circle to keep me out, but wit and I, with will to win, made a bigger circle to bring them in.” which fits in with theSTART’s positive and inclusive attitude. As Echo believes of past,present, and future: “Every thought has a manifestation and everything happens for a reason, not to sound like a hippie,” she says as the band laughs “But it got us to where we are now. And that’s a good thing.” And a great start.

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