Biography
PERSONNEL
Jeb – electric and acoustic guitars, organ, voices, imaginary jew’s harp, distorted imaginary jew’s harp
Frank – bass/fuzz, pedals and knobs, electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals, summoner of ghosts, lead beard
Nathan – electric guitars, agonizing painbombs, heavenly screeches, lady pants
Scott – drums, percussion, electric guitars, organ, backing vocals, infinite holy holy holy, noise table
BIO
Dear Astronaut began in 2004 as a solo/recording project for guitarist Jeb Ebben after moving to Milwaukee from the Northwoods. He released one album this way, a dark and dirgey piece that recalls Palace Brothers and Nick Cave. Not content playing and recording by himself, Ebben brought in friends Frank Knaebe on bass and Scott Emmerich on drums. The former had played in several Milwaukee and Madison-area indie rock and hardcore bands and was at the time playing with the apocalyptic folk outfit Partisan, who had played their first show in the basement of Ebben’s house. Emmerich was known for leading one of Wisconsin’s more well-known crust-punk bands, Legion of Doom, and had also recently moved to Milwaukee from Northern Wisconsin. The trio began work on what would become The Dark Forest EP and toured the East Coast with shitgaze pioneers Pink Reason.
2007’s The Dark Forest took Dear Astronaut in a new direction—louder, noisier, electric—finding the former one-man-band as a grungy, fuzzed-out three-piece playing slowed-down caveman rock that somehow still maintained the literacy and lyricism of the previous album. Recorded live to four track by the band in a grimy Milwaukee basement, these songs presented a sort of jagged, broken narrative about emotional violence and dysfunction, and were darker, heavier and more oppressive.
Soon thereafter, the band went back to the basement and recorded two songs for the unfortunately never released Owls/The Capital of Forever b/w Sandstorm 7 inch. These songs again found the band exploring different sounds, fuzzed-out to the extreme, replacing the steady strum with a heavy stoner groove and a freedom to experiment more with song structures and all-out weirdo noise. Here the trio is at its tightest and most simpatico, making dark, rhythmic psychedelia held together by a deep, haunting voice singing surreal tales of the ineffable.
For the next two years, Dear Astronaut worked their asses off playing as many shows as possible, including a Midwest tour with Partisan. They began writing songs much more collectively, and continued to experiment with structure and form. The experiments with noise continued as well, culminating in His Rotten Milk Smells Like Gasoline, a harsh noise/industrial piece released under the moniker Sonic Typewriter. The band recorded what would become Escape From Rainbow Mountain, their first full-length as a trio.
For reasons too mundane to detail here, that album took almost a year and a half to be released after being recorded. In the meantime, the band recruited Nathan Riddle to play lead guitar. Riddle was a Milwaukee transplant also, and his style complimented the band well. Whereas Ebben and Knaebe were all low end, Riddle’s guitar screeched and squealed strictly in the upper register. The band continued to write and play shows in this new formation, even as they became involved in other projects–Riddle in Cartilage Party and Bzy Bodies, Ebben, Emmerich and Knaebe in The Spur & the Long Lost with Partisan’s Charlie Hoehnen.
In March of 2010, Escape from Rainbow Mountain was released as a cassette on Knaebe’s Brown Hue label and digitally on Elmwood Townhall. Musically, the album finds the band both at its most cohesive and yet somehow all over the place, jumping genres seamlessly and sometimes within single songs. The album retains the heaviness and noisiness of the previous works, but is far more dynamic and satisfying, recalling at once the sludge of bands like Melvins and Sleep, mid-90s hardcore, grunge, harsh noise and the dirgey folk of the solo recordings. The initial run of 50 cassettes sold out in just over a week.
PRESS
[Dear Astronaut's] chords are all oil-thick, a murk of endless depth, but they sound as though they were recorded through something thin, high and lonesome, like a box of rain.
Here [they've] gone mad on mountaintops and come back down to tell us of what [they] saw. And worse, what [they] did not see at all. The whole affair like Black Sabbath walled off in the wood, reading William Blake from the hills of dying meadows, their brains hissing from drugs and scenery.
But an early highlight was provided by Dear Astronaut, the Borg Ward’s stoner-doom house band, who churned through a set of their complex was-that-three-songs-nope-they’ve-only-played-one fuzz-rock. As much as I dig those guys, the band would probably benefit from reigning in their collage-like song arrangements, which are not unlike William S. Burroughs writing songs for Bongzilla. When they launch into a groove, it’s infectious, which makes it occasionally frustrating when they pull a 90-degree turn into the next part. But then, my favorite moment of the set came during their second-last song during some of the most disjointed but tight rhythms the band’s pulled off to date, so I probably should just shut up and enjoy.
Dear Astronaut shows have been a nearly weekly occurrence lately at Walker Point all-ages venue The Borg Ward, due in part to the Milwaukee trio having its practice space there. The band’s creepy, creaky psych-folk isn’t really suited for kids, though. Its full-length, which it’s recording this month, may end up being the perfect soundtrack to your next nervous breakdown.
Though they proudly consider the Borg Ward their home, the members of Milwaukee’s Dear Astronaut have made quite the name for themselves on the rest of the local all-ages circuit, thanks in part to their anthemic and doomful guitar work, which is nicely offset by softly repeated melodies and the band’s sporadic, blasé vocals. The Dark Forest, the group’s 2007 EP, showcased a more cut-and-dry fuzz sound, a bit of a departure from their “psych-folk” roots. Hot on the heels of their last EP, the band has already begun to arrange their next 7-inch [...] due out this winter.
Dear Astronaut play the sort of tender, heavy strumming and eerie acoustic songs that often explode into a mire of tunelessly tuneful self-hatred and made Eric Gaffney’s side of Sebadoh in the late 80s so great.