Since its genesis in 2001, Oakland-based sextet Subtle has been home-recording its way to the far side of song. Drawing from a diverse palette of instruments: sampler, synth, guitar, cello, winds, electronic and acoustic drums, and the unmistakable voice and prose of doseone, the band fashions a self-sampled and live-micd honest to genreless music.

Not to be missed, their live performance parallels and elaborates on the complex and natural lengths of their recorded material. With painted backdrops, stage-props and a whole lot of middleclass mojo, it is in the midst of live performance that Subtles works of song complete themselves.

Olympia, Washington. New Year's Day, 1995. A dark and smelly basement. Three young musicians gather to tackle the vast songbook of Arrington de Dionyso. They had heard his self-recorded cassettes. The songs were wild and lovely. Arrington (the rebellious son of Methodist ministers) played every instrument with the soul of an outsider artist who didn't know any better.

The original trio was brought together for one show. You know ­ just to see what would happen. They called themselves Old Time Relijun.

Arrington played a $20 guitar and a beat up bass clarinet. He sang with a mixture of piss and vinegar that exploded with naive charisma. Bryce Panic harassed the drums. Aaron Hartman beat on a two-string upright bass with a microphone taped to its bridge. They communicated with the clairvoyance of long-married ninjas.

That first show, everything went red: strings broke, the bass was a solid mass of feedback, the PA was blown. They used Arrington's songs as a template to meld shock-ritual with a mad-tea-party-dance-vibe. They barely noticed the college kids in full Riot Grrrl gear screaming, they had no idea that punkers and hippies were dancing together. Something awful happened that night.

A band was born.

Soon they were playing full sets to friends and taste-making Olympia hipsters alike. They played every show they could ­ whether or not they were on the bill. They developed the kind of intuitive free-jazz rapport most bands could only dream of.

In 1996, OTR recorded their first album, "Songbook Volume One". They released it themselves, financing the production by tricking a friend out of his meager inheritance. The CD was packaged in stolen popcorn bags.

In 1997, Calvin Johnson invited the band to record a song for the "Selector Dub Narcotic" compilation for his K Records label. From there, a beautiful relationship was born.

After Bryce left to pursue a life of dance and yoga in India, one of the band's younger fans, Phil Elvrum, asked if he could join. He moved to Olympia, and OTR's second of many lives began. Phil's caveman beats and undeniable production savvy helped launch the first three Relijun albums K would release. "Uterus and Fire" (1999), was a bombastic exercise in recording in the red. "La Sirena de Pecera" (2000) was a one-night multilingual wonder, acting as a coda to "Uterus'"unyielding momentum. Then came the band's first true masterwork, "Witchcraft Rebellion" (2001), an album as deep and bizarre as anything you'll find on your record shelf. A retelling of the first chapters of Genesis from the serpent's point of view.

After a couple U.S. and European tours, Phil decided to focus his energy on his recording projects and his own band, the Microphones. Old Time Relijun continued in a variety of mutated formations, with various lost souls sitting behind the drum set.

"As above, so below"

The group experienced a brief lull in activity as Arrington began a period of vagabonding that would take him hitch-hiking across the United States and back and forth between Italy, France, and Argentina. A compilation of unreleased oddities, "Varieties of Religious Experience", was released in 2003, and both Arrington and Aaron had time to reevaluate the direction their band would take.

During his travels, Arrington composed an outline for what would become "The Lost Light Trilogy". The first two installments, Lost Light (2003) and 2012 (2005), recorded with the help of drummers Rives Elliot and Jamie Peterson, respectively, saw extensive touring, a wider audience for the band, as well as high praise from critics world wide.

Arrington likes to say, "Every song on each album has a correspondence to other songs, whether musically or lyrically; with exponentially as a spatial archetype. Each song is like a small shard of a larger mirror - so that each piece reflects another piece, much in the way a cubist painting reflects many perspectives of the same object at once."

The trilogy moves like an odyssey which blurs the lines between dream and life - placing the entire Universe within the expansive structure of three Old Time Relijun albums.

Now based in Portland, Oregon, Old Time Relijun have re-invented themselves again. The final installment of the trilogy, Catharsis in Crisis, is the culmination of twelve years of deceptively untutored refinement. With new members Germaine Baca (drums) and Benjamin Hartman (saxophones), Old Time Relijun keeps charting new territories in the nether regions between the Ancient World and the Invisible New.

These songs are at once autobiography, dream diary, and new myth - politically and sexually charged manifestos for alchemical revolution from a fully realized band, whose conceptual roots dig down as deep as their music. Old Time Relijun songs embrace life in all its joy and terror- birth, death, awareness, experience, love. Live or recorded, they don't shy away from confronting the monsters that lurk deep in the shadows. At the same time, we hear a band that takes sheer vibrant delight in playing and being alive.

The music of mr. Gnome has been described as utilizing elements of AltRock, Metal, Post Punk, and Prog, but lands in a realm of their own making, crafting a compelling sonic-psychedelic melange of indie rock. Since their conception in 2005, the Cleveland duo has released two EPs, receiving wide-ranging and honorable comparisons to Massive Attack, PJ Harvey, Tool, Portishead, Cat Power, Pelican, Death From Above 1979, Bjork and Blonde Redhead. While comparisons vary, one thing is certain - the duo's unique sound explores unpredictable shades of violence and intensity, while meshing the sludgy, reverberating monsoon of hardcore with the feminine. Their debut full-length CD, Deliver This Creature, is now available on El Marko Records.

Rising from the ashes of a basement band that never saw the light of day, Nicole Barille and Sam Meister began experimenting with a sound based on minimalist instrumentation and the rigid dichotomy of soft vs. loud and masculine vs. feminine. Within a year, the two released their first EP, Echoes on the Ground, and were touring the regional circuit. Their second EP, self-titled (Mr. Gnome), was released in November of 2006 and the two, having hooked up with Lost Barrio Artists, a booking agency based out of Tucson, Arizona, now found themselves on the national circuit. After completing their first two national tours, Barille and Meister found it hard to go back to the daily grind and felt an immediate urgency to continue traveling the countryside.

With the road calling, Nicole and Sam ditched their belongings in a storage space and temporarily parted ways with the midwest. Mr. Gnome, an officially homeless band, began touring the United States, living out of a van and sleeping on random couches for the second part of 2007. With a handful of new material in their setlist, the two used practice spots along the way to complete the writing of their new creation and by the force of their journey, discovered both Larry Crane's Jackpot Studios (Elliott Smith, Cat Power, The Shins, The Decemberists) in Portland, Oregon and Craig Schumacher's Wavelab Studios (Calexico, DeVotchka, Neko Case, Animal Collective, Iron and Wine) in Tucson, Arizona where they recorded their first full-length album with engineers Kendra Lynn, and Chris Schultz. Mr. Gnome headed back to Cleveland to put the finishing touches on their album at Ante Up Audio (Bone Thugs N' Harmony, Tori Amos, Guided By Voices) working with Michael Seifert. The album was then mixed at Butch Vig's Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin by Beau Sorenson (Death Cab for Cutie).

With four national tours under their belt within the last year and countless regional dates, mr. Gnome, with the support of El Marko Records, will continue to tour the countryside in spring of 2008, behind its first full-length release.

Sophia's Revenge is an Alt/Post Rock Band from Madison, WI. The band consists of 5 seriously dedicated musicians; we write music that evokes emotion and passion in us and we can only hope that it does the same for the listener. With influences ranging from The Beatles and Pink Floyd to Coldplay and The Mars Volta, the band has crafted their own unique sound that will keep their audience captivated from the first note to the very last!

The Readiness is an indie pop band from Madison, WI and features Jonathan Ferrer, Tom Klein, Nicholas Brenneman, Drew Fergusen, and Aaron Brown. With such influences as Death Cab For Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, Nada Surf, and The Goo Goo Dolls, The Readiness capture a familiar yet unique sound that will have you dancing and singing along in no time. The Readiness is excited to record a new EP this summer... look for new tunes and shows soon!