The Axe Sharpens Their Swing

From Interview with Ms. Commish for Cafe Magazine - Dated 2/24/2010

The Axe and the Oak

When it comes to music Miami has always been the kind of city you either love or you love to hate. There has always been something lacking when it came to the city's musical landscape. Now the city that was founded on swampland and marshes, industrialized by drug lords and extorted by countless politicians is contending with other major cities in art, cuisine fashion, performance and music.

There is something very interesting bubbling under the streets in Miami and it's not glitter and spandex. There are a slew of exceedingly gifted musicians paving the road less traveled, taking performance art and fine art to unexpected places and creating a renaissance in Miami never experienced before.

In comes, The Axe and the Oak. A band made up of three members; guitar and vocalist Sander Galt, bassist Myles Kaplan and drummer Fernando Subirats, serving up music reminiscent of rockabilly and psycho-billy and adulterated by Surf, Punk Rock, Death Rock and even Gothic influences.

These Miami natives met early in life. Galt and Kaplan played in a punk band together as teens and Subirats began playing with Galt in the mid-nineties for a band called Sift, where they experimented with performance art music. Then in 2007, drawn together by forces unknown, they joined and their interest in 1950's Rock and Roll led them to a distinctive sound within Miami's already eclectic music scene.  

They wouldn't call themselves a Rockabilly band although their sound draws on memories of when Elvis reigned king. They fall more along the lines of bands such as the Stray Cats and the Cramps on account of their "spooky twang" and dark psychedelic tone.

With songs like "Darkside," "Vampire" and "B-Side," one can see they are inspired by much more than pompadour haircuts and rumbles in the alley. Maybe their collective backgrounds in Punk, New Wave, 80's and Goth has something to do with it.

Thankfully this unassuming, musically gifted trio is not pretending to be something they're not. Galt seems like a throwback to a nineties Goth Punk but when you hear him sing its like Jim Morrison and Nick Cave had a love child (if those breakthroughs in science and time travel were available) and doesn't make any apologies for it. Subirats' broad interest in music led him on a self imposed journey to India to study the Tabla, while Galt and Myles interests expanded with Punk, New Wave, Goth and early Rock and Roll.

This band's brand of psychedelic rockabilly conjures up "Dark Southern Americana," while staying true to its Miami roots. They are currently working on their first album.

*Please note information provided above may not reflect the subjects current details or status.

One Million Sounds - @millionyoung

Past interview with Ms. Commish for Cafe Magazine originally dated 5/5/2010

Millionyoung

Ever wake up one morning and wish that euphoric feeling from last night wouldn't end? Well, once you hear Mike Diaz (a.k.a. Millionyoung) you won't have to.

Millionyoung evokes in his music the intensity of House and Electro, and combines them with acoustic guitars and airy vocals. "It's odd because when I wrote the music I wasn't sure what genre it would fit into specifically. The short answer I gave people was, electronic, which is how iTunes first had me listed," says Millionyoung.

Born to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents, the 22-year old musician remembers how as a kid at big family gatherings he would dance and sing the whole night away. Those memories left a big impression. "I feel at this point its mostly instinctive or subconscious, but I definitely tend to make music that people can all dance or sing-a-long with," said Millionyoung. 

Millionyoung studied film in college and found a special interest in film scoring but after graduating with an AA at Palm Beach Community College and finishing a year at Florida Atlantic University, he decided he'd take a brief hiatus from school to begin work on a full-length album. Once he's finished recording and things settle down from touring, Million Young plans to go back and continue his studies in film to hopefully learn more about scoring music for movies. 

His travels have had a definite influence on his music. "Last March when I went on tour we stopped in Canada for a few days and it was really interesting. I had never been that far north now out of the country, and I was really curious to see what it would be like. Everyone we met was incredibly nice and it was cool seeing people there as enthused about my music as I am about Canadian bands like Metric or Broken Social Scene," he said. 

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Millionyoung takes "do it yourself" to new level, playing symphonic sounds coupled with sparkling guitar riffs, glittering melodies and beats over prerecorded laptop tracks. The guitar is his instrument of choice. He admits he still has a lot to learn too and when working on, or even listening to music, he tends to focus more on structures and the way songs are produced rather than the way any particular instrument is played. 

With over 3,000 online fans, a sold out EP and a strong blog following, it seems Young's keen ear and distinct ability to compose music is reaching the masses faster than anyone could have anticipated. Young is causing a stir on the indie music blog circuit: he's received a bevy of positive reviews from sites like Pitchfork and Gorilla vs Bear and when his "Be So True" EP was released on iTunes in January of this year, it remained in the top 10 in Electronic for four weeks. 

With recent gigs at South by Southwest (SXSW) and a line-up of future tour dates stretching across Atlantic, this Puerto-Cuban" with a knack for being "indie-pendent" is showing no signs of slowing down. 

Songs from his EP have been licensed for everything from compilation cds to video games. Songs like "Cynthia (Letting Up Despite Great Faults Remix)," "Chlorophyl," and his latest endeavor, "Love is all Around," a remake of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song are quickly garnering indie praise on blogs like Weekly Tape Deck, Cause=Time and Musicphile-osophy. Until now, Young has recorded all of his music on his laptop using acoustic and electric guitars, a few midi controllers and AbletonLive, a music producing software. 

Millionyoung recently started performing live with Awesome New Republic (ANR) and thinks the result has been fun and feels the fans are really going to have a great time at the shows when they tour in May. "We've been trying a lot of interesting approached that have really brought the songs to life" Millionyoung says.

Millionyoung will be playing shows at in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Montreal and Toronto and then will be traveling abroad to perform in Amsterdam, Berlin and London.  

Listen on iTunes

Like him on Facebook/millionyoung 

Find him on Twitter - @millionyoung