Byron Yang

mannaRose is an up-and-coming band from La Crosse, Wisconsin combining sound from late Seventies post-punk to Eighties Bollywood with a touch of new wave, dance and a contemporary rock feel.

Left to right are Kumong, Byron and Paul

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Questionnaire courtesy of Hitt Music Group

1. What is your stage/band name? Does it have a special meaning? Where does it come from?

One night I was sitting in front of my computer trying to come up with a band name. The word manna popped up in my head out of nowhere. I went online and looked it up. The internet dictionary said that manna was a bread substance that rained down from the skies which helped fed Moses and his people in the wilderness during the exile of Egypt. I thought that was pretty cool. I've always had a fondness for roses because of what they represented. Roses to me are one of the most iconic symbols for love. I combined the two words and they sounded really nice together.

2. How would you describe your music to people? (This is not a short answer. Discuss it.)

I grew up in the early Eighties and was engulfed in a unique culture of dance, disco and rock through the guidance of older cousins. In that time frame when I was around the age of five, I was influenced by synth pop bands that sounded like OMD, New Order and Tears For Fears. "Shout" by Tears For Fears was my all-time favorite.

I also have my mother to thank for raising me on Bollywood music. I draw a lot of my ideas and compositions from vintage Eighties Bollywood films like Rocky (starring Sanjay Dutt), Teri Kasam, Betaab, and Silsila. There's more, but it would take too long to list them all here. I'd hum a tune from one of these classic films and it'd bring me back to being that little chubby five year old all over again.

When trance really started to hit the scene in the early 2000's, I just became mesmerized with its unique sound. Trance had this way of creating these beautiful, repetitive motifs to lure you in as backdrops of kicking snares and bass drowned your shyness into this emboldened awareness. I still admire Gigi D'Agostino's "I'll Fly With You" to this day.

During my college years, I was diving into Aphex Twin and Squarepusher in the electronica genre through the help of my graphic designer roommates. Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) really helped me understand that whole art-house language of using found materials, instruments and sound to combine meaningful, avant-garde bleeps and blips into a structured soundscape than just hearing it as, well, bleeps and blips. In my college days, I was very much in love with the Daft Punk Discovery album.

After college, I started getting into Philip Glass. His approach towards the minimalist movement attracted me to his work. The man could play just two notes on the piano over and over again for ten minutes straight and make it sound like a masterpiece. He's a total genius.

It all started to wrap up between 2002 through 2006 when I went to work for Geodigm Corporation in Chanhassen, Minnesota. I encountered a great co-worker who was a few years older than me, and he would always bring in his eclectic Eighties collection ranging anywhere from Kraftwerk to General Public.

One band in his collection really made an impression on me. It was Joy Division. I loved it how there were only three instrumentalists and one vocalist, yet Joy Division was able to create this liberating atmosphere of hypnotic lamentations.

You could say that the work-in-progress music of mannaRose is a conglomeration of the listed experiences.

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