durham is a singer/songwriter, involved in various pursuits. deej is a producer/guitarist. bohak is a drummer and a bad ass housepainter. they have been spent a great deal of time in their studio, sweating blood, making music.

in this particular case, this music represents an attempt to weld together the funk of american indie dance-rock and the epic vistas of british new wave. the result is stray palace. the band tries to build something huge and tear it all down at the same time. it’s a grand dream, full of emotional clarity, dirty streets and the sweetness of release. it’s three guys trying to make something new, trying to say something old in a way that’s never been heard before.

stray palace has a huge sound, born of durham’s love of echo and the bunnymen and the chameleons uk. after life on two major labels and dozens of film/tv soundtracks (spider man, blade, buffy, the shield, etc.), durham had escaped the wilds of la, hoping for some peace. alas, it was not to be.

a friend of his named deej sent him some sketches for tracks. the tracks and the answering melodies in his head kept him up at night, and soon the two were hard at work, muscling the sound back and forth. it dawned on them that they needed a drummer. bohak had played drums in deej’s band in atlanta and seemed to fit the bill.

holed up for months, the band carved out their territory. deej wanted the funk, bringing his bad-boy falsetto to “hungry” and making sure that whatever else was going on, asses would shake. they fattened up the tracks, then stripped them back down to the bone.

the resulting first ep is a combination of party and passion, of ache and attitude. it’s the cool kid at the party who turns into an open-armed romantic, begging for it in the rain. it’s freedom, change, hunger, escape and desire, distilled into something you want to hear over and over and over. it’s sweet and it will haunt you.

the diamond ep is different. it signals the beginning of a long march into greatness. it takes no prisoners, cutting heads along the road to rome, shedding skins like a face dancer as it snakes its way through your ear canal.

the diamond ep involves the introduction of alex kemp into the mix. a founder of assasins, a post-new-wave electro band that opened for new order and didn’t survive the major label roulette table, alex is a mxther-fxcker. raised in nyc, he’s now an la dog. he eats kittens from the pound for lunch. he records snare drums with ribbon mics. he lays waste with a bass.

this is the future. stray palace will rule. we will dominate the sonic biosphere of this planet. we have only begun.

***warning: highly addictive