>>PREVIEW
SHOUT OUT OUT OUT OUT
Saturday, October 29
While the multi-member Canadian musical collective is quickly becoming an indie-rock archetype (Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers and Vailhalen being three very obvious examples), Edmonton’s Shout Out Out Out Out (SO4) have provided a much needed variation on the template. With two drum sets, four bass guitars, synthesizers, samplers, cowbells, octopads and the ever-popular vocoder, the spastic six-piece are an omnipotent exhibition of dance-punk energy.
Currently, after several high-profile gigs opening for Chromeo and a buzz-worthy performance at this year’s North By Northeast festival, SO4 are in the midst of their first national tour. But while they may be on a one-way train to next-big-thing-ville, the band actually arose from relatively humble beginnings.
"It started pretty small with just a couple of us getting into dancy music and wanting to do a project like that," explains Nic Kozub, the band’s ponytailed front man. "As we got going, we just started adding more and more people, and all of a sudden there were two drummers and four bass players. I’m not really sure how that happened, but it came together and just somehow wound up as this big spectacle."
Outside the band, Kozub devotes his time to Normals Welcome, an umbrella project that includes his personal recording endeavours, design work and the record label of the same name that he co-manages with his bandmate Jason Troock. The label’s lineup currently includes SO4, fellow Edmontonians The Floor, and their most recent signing, the Toronto electronic act Black Turtleneck.
SO4’s DIY ethics are also reflected in the way they dress. With tight jeans, vintage T-shirts and Converse Chucks, they much more closely resemble a New York punk band than your typical neon-spandex-and-big-pants clad electro-rave act.
"I don’t really know what kind of dress would go with dance stuff. I only own T-shirts and jeans," says Kozub with a shrug. "But I do kind of like the juxtaposition of looking like a scumbag and using technology. We’re a band, not just computer nerds."
With so many members and instruments involved, Kozub explains that SO4’s songwriting process often relies on leaving certain elements out.
"A lot of it will involve deciding when it’s in the best interest of the song for someone to just jump around for awhile and not play anything," he says. "When everyone’s hammering away at everything at once it can get pretty chaotic, so we just have to make sure not to do that until a song is at its peak."
Although SO4’s recorded output to date only includes the Nobody Calls Me Unless They Want Something 12-inch, Kozub says the band plans to return to the studio in November, with another 12-inch coming in early 2006 and their debut full-length scheduled for a springtime release. Until then, you’ll simply have to catch them live, doing what they do best.
"I just want people to listen to our music and buy our records is that so wrong?" says Kozub with a laugh. "But really, I just want to play this music. It’s fun." |
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