Ferbus
Oklahoma by Los Angeles’ Ferbus recently released their self-titled four track EP through Danger Collective Records & on cassette via OBNEAC Tape Club and we are proud to present you with the following listen, featuring some exclusive insights from the band. The group began recording the EP in their keyboardist/producer Danny Goliger’s room this past March but lost the vocal tracks when their band van was broken into on tour & their laptops were stolen. “This turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” Ferbus described, “Realizing we had settled on some mediocre vocal takes for the sake of getting it done. In recording the EP, we set out to try to use simple equipment in new ways and figure out how to make our instruments sound great in a bedroom with careful attention to tuning, amp settings, pedals, etc. Also, just for the hell of it, we decided to record some of the shittiest equipment we had, including a First Act Adam Levine Designer Series acoustic guitar and a Line 6 Spider II on insane mode.”
From here the band moved to a new warehouse loft space this past May where they re-configured their studio & rehearsal sanctuary where ultimately their EP was made full. The crew of Danny, Henry, Daniel, Leon, Peyton & Kyle make some smart sounds together that find themselves striving & developing an expressive & emotive style that is incredibly compelling. The opener “I Just Wanna Be Blond Again” grapples with the “it’s just another day” sort of ennui where frustrations are balled up into the superficiality of something as trivial as bleached hair desires. But this is something of a motif, as the hair-dress obsessions turn into DIY fantasias as witnessed on “Art School Haircut” where romantic aesthetic institution crushes are carried over on “Sexy Robert” until the emotions completely build up to their incredibly sophisticated closer “No Love Remains” that points to a rich masterful full-length that we imagine the midwest by west coast group is dutifully planning, but not before embarking upon their upcoming November tour. Get to know Ferbus better, and dive into the group’s following exclusive forward before you become fully immersed in their brilliant self-titled EP:
This EP was recorded earlier this year in our old house in Los Angeles. Henry Dillon wrote much of the material for our first record, released in 2015, on a loop pedal before the band came together, and some of the guitar parts were worked out on acoustic guitars before we had a bass player or drummer. For the EP, Henry experimented with Ableton to come up with demos that were fleshed out by the full 6-piece band in our cavernous outdoor garage. As we starting working on these songs we were all experiencing separate bouts of emotional confusion, and we were able to find some sense of comfort in collaborating on and recording this EP. We had finished recording by March, but ended up losing the vocal tracks when our van was broken into and our laptops were stolen on tour. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the final vocal takes were much more energetic and detailed. We moved into a new warehouse space in May and spent the first months of summer building a studio/rehearsal space where we finished the EP. In our first album, we dealt with feelings of discontent and uncertainty, and, in a sense, the songs from this EP represent the transformation of those feelings into fresh perspectives on inevitable change.
