Untied States Need “Instant Everything”

By Shawn M. Smith - January 4, 2010 | Email the author

Photo by Jason Maris

Happy New Year, everybody. It’s been a strong start to 2010 (save for whatever-the-hell is going on in my stomach today). To kick off my first post of the new decade, we’ve got a performance from Atlanta-based avant-rockers, Untied States [MySpace]. The group, who have drawn favorable comparisons to Liars, Sonic Youth and Barret-era Pink Floyd, play live in the studios of the Digital Arts Entertainment Lab for the WRAS | indieATL music series.

Their new record Instant Everything, Constant Nothing is available on now on Distile Records.

Check out the performance and more “after the jump”

Download “Not Fences Mere Masks” and 9 other great Distile tracks on the Distile Compilation 2010

“Untied States (note that the t comes before the i in Untied) is an art-rock band from Atlanta, GA that formed in 2003. The musical brainchild of co-writers and childhood friends Colin Arnstein and Skip Engelbrecht (they supposedly met as neighbors at age four), the group is often noted for their exploratory and sometimes elaborate take on arrangement and experimentation with popular forms. Their approach to songwriting has been labeled “baroque,” “deconstructionist” and “avant-rock” by critics and has garnered a wide array of comparisons from the more expected Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Radiohead and Liars and Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd to less mainstream acts like U.S. Maple, The Scientists and the more experimental sides of Wire and The Buzzcocks. Mixing elements of traditional rock with sonic experimentalism by way of full songs interspersed with sound collage, the group (at that point just the duo of Arnstein and Engelbrecht) recorded and self-released its debut EP, Bird of the BloodFeather in 2003 and followed up with two full-length albums, Ineffable, by Design, in 2004 and 2006’s Retail Detail both of which were also self recorded and released on the group’s own Beet Nicotine imprint. These two records featured the core duo augmented by a slew of added musicians and earned the group positive reviews and college radio play in the US, expanding Untied States’ exposure and leading the group to more live performances and tours. In 2007, after several live line-up changes, the group met fellow engineer Darren Tablan and recorded their first 7” single “Bye Bye Bi-Polar” with Tablan entering the fold as engineer/keyboardist/sound-sample manipulator. The single captured the attention of Paris based Distile Records and in 2008, the group, with the help of Tablan got out of their home and went into a large scale studio for the first time to record their next LP Instant Everything, Constant Nothing for Distile. “Instant Everything, Constant Nothing” demonstrated a newfound middle ground between the group’s more structured works and sonic explorations and working with a larger palette of instrumentation. During the process of recording the album, the group also recruited full-time drummer Satchel Mallon who appears several of the record’s cuts, including the oversized percussion of “Wrestling With Entropy in the Rehabbed Factory.” Instant Everything, Constant Nothing was released in the UK by Distile in October of 2009 and is slated for an official release on February 16th, 2010 in the US and across Europe.”