Preview
7 AND 7 IS
Friday, May 28
Black Swan
"Good timing, we just finished dinner, and you’ve got four out of five of us here," says Dave Foster, over his cellphone on top of some moderately loud background noise. 7 and 7 is – most of ‘em, anyway – are at a café, celebrating a pair of birthdays: guitarist Lance Kozak and Foster’s own. They must be having a good time – he sounds a little reluctant to be extracted from the celebratory atmosphere and stuck hiding in a corner on the phone.
Formed in 2002, Edmonton band 7 and 7 is celebrated the hometown release of their debut EP, Smashed To Pieces (In The Still Of The Night) in March. Currently following it up with a western Canadian tour, it comes nearly a year after they’d planned to put out an initial, completely different EP, which never made it past the early stages.
"We did some recording way back then and then we decided that it wasn’t up to snuff," explains Foster. "We scrapped that, and started from scratch."
Foster (bass), Kozak, Damien Fraczek (guitar), Kelly Chia (drums) and Dave’s brother Sean (vocals), entered local producer Nik Kozub’s studio for the second time last October, recording all-new material with results they deem far superior to their first effort.
"We just came across as kind of flat in the first one – we were still pretty inexperienced. The second time around, (we were) able to play our instruments better, (we had) better songwriting... just having our own sound a little bit more now makes it better."
Fusing punk-funk beats, fuzzy synths and affected guitars, the band offers a heavy rock assault with vocals that supports the band’s musical history. The sounds 7 and 7 is creates stem from the members’ varying backgrounds and wide range of musical tastes.
"Our influences are right across the board – everything from Refused and Primal Scream to Asian Dub Foundation to The Clash. There are some songs on there that even come off sounding a bit like Northern Soul – to us anyway."
With most of its members involved in punk rock during their youth (Kozak was the original guitarist in Edmonton punk band Wednesday Night Heroes, while Foster sang for ska outfit The Clones, and Fraczek played in oi-group Cocksure), 7 and 7 is still feel an empathy with the genre, though their songs may not immediately bring punk rock to mind. Even their name is a reference to Love’s proto-punk song of the same name. Paraphrasing something he attributes to Kozak, Foster says, "(Punk is) more of a state of mind than a sound in itself. It’s picking up your instrument even if you’re not the best musician and being able to make something that means something." |
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