Enon
Sometimes it happens you miss a band for years. 2008
was for me the year of rediscovering the bands Enon and Les Savy Fav. I knew
them both by name of course for a few years and also the preceeding band of
Toko, The Lapse and had
heard of the name Brainiac, SchmersalÕs first band. I had Les Savy FavÕs debut
album, which especcially had a good opening track, somewhat Blonde Redhead or
The Lapse. Not so strange since I later on heard from John Toko sang the female
vocals on the Les Savy Fav records. Unfortunatelly my The Les Savy Fav album
was a burned CDR and these always get lost in my house since Ôthey donÕt belong
to the official CD-closetÕ and causing I donÕt play them very much. I need
original copies for my own neurotic collectable behaviour to really enjoy a
band.
I preferred the debut of The Lapse above the second
album, so I kind of lost interest to check TokoÕs follow-up band. I listened
three tracks on line at some point, but never took the chance to buy an album
and I had no friends who also listened to it at that time, so the
reintroduction also didnÕt take place.
I met John Schmersal and Toko Yasuda at the Primavera
Sound Festival 2008 in Barcelona, where I gave a presentation. After Barcelona
John mailed me he was interested in having a special guitar built for him and
we worked out all the ideas we thought made sense. In July 2008 I went with my
friend Welmoed to the Dour Festival in Belgium to meet them again and show him
a few of the worked out ideas. After about 6 months I had finished his guitar,
what would become the first Twister Guitar.
After Barcecona I noticed Enon was a lot more rocking
than I thought they were. I thought they were mainly electronic focused. Some
bands have good debut albums, others grow per album. I like the older records,
but Grass GeysersÉ Carbon Clouds is
for me EnonÕs best release so far. Avant-garde indie rock after 2000 is mainly
focused on garage rock revival,
post-punk revival music or poly-rythmic tribal drums and droning
textures, luckily genres I like a lot, but Enon is a very convenient pop music
exception to all this darkness.
Videoclip
of Paperweights on YouTube
Biography
Enon
is the brainchild of former Brainiac guitarist John Schmersal. After the
premature demise of that group from the death of principal songwriter and keyboardist/singer
Tim Taylor, Schmersal moved to New York City the following summer and
recruited Skeleton Key's Rick Lee and Steve Calhoon. And so it came to pass
that Enon (named after a town near Schmersal's hometown of Dayton, Ohio) was
born.
Like its members' previous groups, Enon
displays an appreciation for junk noise and off-kilter song structures that
makes every song totally unpredictable -- you definitely can't get comfortable
with these guys because they're constantly pulling the rug out from under you.
Like the Olivia Tremor Control and other Elephant Six bands, Enon is fascinated
by the aesthetic possibilities of "damaging" pop melodies with
strange noise and sound processing. But unlike E6 bands, whose melodic
sensibilities tend to be shaped by the soaring pop of '60s and '70s bands like
the Beach Boys, Big Star, and Pink Floyd, Enon takes cues from New Wave and
'80s and '90s indie rock and build the noise on that foundation. In this
regard, their rock deconstructions bear some similarities to those of the The
Flaming Lips.
The songs on Enon's
2000 debut album, Believo!, vary widely, deriving character as much from bizarre
samples, vocal overdubbing, crackly vinyl sounds, and totally messed up pots-and-pans
percussion as from the melodies themselves. What they all share is a
brilliantly unhinged quality and a booming catchiness. If you took cartoon
music, made it rock, then made it dangerous, you'd have Enon. Their 2002
sophomore album, High Society, stretched the group's sound even further as
Calhoon departed and fellow Ohioan Matt Schulz came on drums. Toko Yasuda of
The Lapse contributes several dancey pop tunes, adding an entirely new facet to
Enon's sound. Rick Lee departed sometime in between recording and
touring. Yasuda was an even bigger part of Enon's third album Hocus
Focus,
which arrived just a year later (following the In This City EP which was
released earlier in 2003). The B-sides collection Lost Marbles and Exploded
Evidence arrived in early 2005. In 2007, Enon returned with their first new
album in four years, Grass GeysersÉ Carbon Clouds, which blended the
band's electronic, pop, and rock elements even more seamlessly.
Discography
Enon Ð Believo! Touch
and Go Records, 1999
Enon Ð High Society Touch
and Go Records, 2002
Enon Ð Hocus Pocus Touch
and Go Records, 2003
Enon Ð Onhold Touch
and Go Records, 2004
Enon Ð Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence Touch and Go Records, 2005
Enon Ð Grass GeysersÉ Carbon Clouds Touch and Go Records, 2007
External links
References concerning the bio:
Enon bio on www.epitonic.com
Enon bio on www.allmusic.com
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