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Beat Connection
The Palace Garden
In the first flush of freedom, new eras, and new lives, Jordan Koplowitz and Reed Juenger met in 2008 as freshmen at the University of Washington. Their fate was sealed one night not long after they met, over a game of beer pong that turned into a discussion of mutual musical appreciation. In his younger years, Koplowitz had picked up the guitar so that he could play along with his favorite Metallica songs. Juenger had gone down a similar route with Nirvana, but found his friends cover bands to be boring and focused on bygone eras so he started learning how to create electronic music. In their new hometown of Seattle, Juenger and Koplowitz began crafting dorm-room beats on Garageband and venturing into DJing gigs, eventually working their way towards the sounds that would be become their first record, Surf Noir EP.
The songs on Surf Noir are at once dreamy and danceable, sophisticated and free, meant to evoke both golden sunsets and glittering city lights. Of the EP, Juenger has said, “This is an absolute indulgence, because the world is an incoherent jumble of perception. So in that spirit of cutting loose, let’s have a good time and not worry too much: Saturday night always becomes Sunday morning.” Two of the songs, the romantic pop tracks “In The Water” and “Silver Screen,” featured the duo’s roommate Tom Eddy on vocals; Eddy, a folk-rock singer-songwriter, nailed “Silver Screen” in one take. The rest of these songs are instrumental; cool, sweeping waves of synths, electric guitar, drum machines, and samplers. Beat Connection self-released Surf Noir in the summer of 2010; London’s Tender Age records, an imprint of the venerable Moshi Moshi would pick it up for an updated release in April of the next year.
In May of 2011, Beat Connection had toured the UK and Paris with such electronic luminaries as Holy Ghost!, Toro Y Moi, and Niki and the Dove. By June, in anticipation of their appearance at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party, they had added a live drummer, Jarred Katz, another musical roommate and a modern jazz aficionado. In September they embarked on their first US tour, opening for Starfucker. They made fans of the Seattle Times, Pitchfork, KEXP, and the Seattle Weekly, who named them the Best New Band of 2011. They closed out the year in Spain, opening for Real Estate.
2012 is poised to become an even bigger year for Beat Connection, who’ve again expanded, this time adding as their fulltime vocalist and guitarist Tom Eddy, the only man they considered for the job. This summer, the new four-piece will release their first full-length, The Palace Garden, a record that finds the band meditating on the idea of unattainable beauty, an idea that encases magical evenings, flooding happiness, heavy regrets, and sky-clearing epiphanies. They’ve left all genre constraints behind and now, as four, their music can only broaden, rise, and take them on to new adventures and new audiences.
Beat Connection Premieres First Single Off Debut The Palace Garden LP
Performs at Sasquatch Music Festival this Weekend
”[Beat Connection] finds the warm, quivering heart of electronic music…equivalent of a sunset-to-sunrise ecstasy trip and the wistful day after.” MTV Hive
Download ‘The Palace Garden, 4am’ at the Pitchfork premiere or at SoundCloud
Seattle-based Beat Connection has debuted “The Palace Garden, 4am,” the first single off of their debut LP, The Palace Garden, out June 19 with Moshi Moshi / Tender Age. This single follows the album’s expansive track‘Think/Feel‘, an early introduction to the album which The FADER dubbed, “a song that’s easy to swallow but suddenly expansive the more you get into it” - a fitting description for this album as a whole. Beat Connection will appear at Sasquatch Music Festival this Sunday May 27th, two weeks before launching their first headlining North American tour with White Arrows. The band performed at SXSW this year, after touring with STRFKRthis past fall where they played to sold-out rooms and earned rave reviews for their fantastic live set. Beat Connection will revisit these markets and more, ushering in the summer with an LP that finds the group meditating on the idea of unattainable beauty, an idea that encases magical evenings, flooding happiness, and heavy regrets.
The group began when members Jordan Koplowitz and Reed Juenger met in 2008 as freshmen at the University of Washington and started making late-summer-appropriate house music in Garageband. Crafting dorm-room beats and venturing into DJing gigs, together they worked towards their last year’s Surf Noir EP, which received accolades from Pitchfork, KEXP, Death + Taxes, The Seattle Times and The Seattle Weekly, deeming them “Best New Band of 2011.” With the recent addition of Tom Eddy as lead vocalist, and drummer Jarred Katz, Beat Connection is ready to hit the road as a full band.
Beat Connection Live in Concert
5/27 - George, WA - Sasquatch Music Festival – Banana Shack @ 4:40pm
6/14 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop*
6/15 – Santa Cruz, CA – The Catalyst Atrium*
6/16 – Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour*
6/17 – San Diego, CA – Casbah*
6/18 – Phoenix, AZ – Rhythm Room*
6/20 – Dallas, TX – La Grange
6/21 – Austin, TX – Red 7
6/22 – Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s
6/23 – Baton Rouge, LA – Spanish Moon
6/26 – Tampa, FL – The Orpheum
6/27 – Miami, FL – Bardot
6/28 – Orlando, FL – Will’s Pub
6/29 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade – Hell
6/30 – Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade
7/01 – Washington DC – DC9
7/03 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
7/04 – New Haven, CT – Bar Night Club
7/05 – Brooklyn, NY – Knitting Factory
7/06 – Cambridge, MA – TT the Bears
7/07 – Montreal, QC – Il Motore
7/08 – Toronto, ON – Drake Hotel
7/10 – Pittsburgh, PA – Brillobox
7/11 – Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
7/12 – Chicago, IL – Schubas Tavern
7/13 – Detroit, MI – Majestic Cafe
7/14 – Milwaukee, WI – The Cactus Club
7/15 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry
7/17 – Denver, CO - Hi Dive
7/18 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
7/19 – Boise, ID – Reef Boise
7/22 – Vancouver, BC - Media Club
* w/ MMOTHS & White Arrows
Beat Connection Announces Its First Headlining North American Tour Behind Palace Garden Debut LP, Out Later This Year
Beat Connection Debuts New Single ‘Think/Feel’ with The FADER
Prepares for SXSW 2012 Live Debut
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The Palace Garedn - Album Art
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The Palace Garden - Album Art
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Think/Feel - Track Artwork
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