Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s a band. Of brothers. From Illinois. Making a lot of noise…
Tweak Bird are a complex sonic mystery, a strange brew of high voltage metal and thoughtful, jazzy instrumentals. Although the latter element is buried beneath the rubble of thunderous guitars, drums and falsetto Led Zep style screeching, delve deep and your ears will be treated kindly. Urgent Theremin gurgles, breezy saxophone solos and trickles of synthetic Moog filter through: whatever these boys can get their sweaty hands on they will try to incorporate into their sound, thus constructing layers and layers of intricate but weighty aural nuggets. Their mental shows may suggest otherwise (you must see them play live to experience the full Tweak Bird effect), this is music for the more cerebral individual, to be unravelled and deciphered with satisfying results.
You may be shocked to learn that there are only two parts to Tweak Bird – brothers Ashton and Caleb Bird – which is most impressive considering the sheer volume of sound that they manage to create. But how do they translate this brotherly bond into art? “Our musical vision is really more of a double vision,” says drummer Ashton Bird. “One of us will bring an idea for a song to the table with a certain vision for it, and the other will usually interpret it totally skewed.”
And skewed it most definitely is, but that’s what their music is all about, swapping linear processes for something a lot more messier and invigorating. Pushing boundaries like this, it won’t be long before Tweak Bird are flying high on the wings of musical success…
Words by April Welsh
Where: LA via Illinois
What: Jazz-metal-noize
Unique fact: They are big players on the LA ‘Smell’ scene.
Get 3 songs? ‘Whorses’, ‘Spaceships’, ‘Stampeado’
