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The Big Sleep

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About Me


THE BIG SLEEP - Slow Race
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These people crazy:
"If there is any justice in the world, The Big Sleep is, simply put, the future of rock."
- Head Exploder
"Sonya sings about her visions, her fears, and trouble close to home -- all while you're pumping fists and realizing suddenly your cruising well over the speed limit...check "Undying Love," "Slow Race," and the Mew-ish "So Long"/"Sleep Forever" exeunt to understand why people preach after seeing the Sleep's live show."
- Stereogum and Stereogum
"'Bad Blood' is a wake-up call to a tauter, more urgent, and more vocal-driven Big Sleep-- like, never mind the psychedelic milk-clouds, here's the Irish coffee."
- Pitchfork
"This brooding Brooklyn trio's winding arrangements build tension in jagged, noisy, overlapping riffs, minor-chord melodies and a steadfast pulse..."
- Alternative Press
"For every moment the band spends reflecting on where we've been, it's using the rubble to rebuild a rock'n'roll future. It's a lesson to which a lot of classic-rock loving acts should pay attention."
- Aversion
"And just when we thought we couldn't love this trio anymore, we heard their new album Sleep Forever...It's hard to make a diverse record work, but the Big Sleep pull it off. Of course they do. I mean, they're the Big Sleep."
- Recommended Show, Oh My Rockness
"Their strength lies in their propulsive power; it’s a shock that it’s only three people making this beautiful noise."
- Recommended Show, This Week in New York
"The Big Sleep is as indebted to its influences as any band is, but on Sleep Forever the members take bold enough steps to shake the influences clear. Sure, the riffing still reminisces of Tony Iommi or Jimmy Page and the blistering feedback of Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore lingers throughout. But The Big Sleep owns the foundations of these songs...Sleep Forever distinguishes [the band] as a force in its own right."
- Prefix
"Check your pulse if 'Bad Blood' doesn't get you moving...'Pinkies' is frankly irresistible...2008 is shaping up to be the year of The Big Sleep. No shit."
- Band of the Week, Ear Farm
"I can’t recommend any single song on this disc over any other, because like the work on their previous album and EP, everything here is outstanding...This is an example of rock music as art."
- Confront Magazine
"Definitely not a victim of the sophomore slump, The Big Sleep’s latest offering is cool, both loud and subdued, and worthy of your ears."
- Sentimentalist
"Sleep Forever" is propulsive and robust. Mr. Barria hasn't changed his guitar tone much but the band seems to have expanded around him - they both want to be part of the ruckus. The result is noisy, seductive accessibility. An acoustic guitar and a drum machine are mere adornment on the Big Sleep's core of bass, drums, and electric guitar, and the potential energy promised by those weapons constantly hovers somewhere in the album's mix. That the band doesn't always feel the need to mess up a great, thundering song with words makes "Sleep Forever" one of the most solid no-filler rock records of this young year."
- NY Sun
"The first amazing track of 2008 is officially 'Pinkies' by The Big Sleep."
- Coatie Puffs
All the stuff below is about our first cd, "Son of The Tiger" -
This is our video for "Murder":
"I always imagined the whole point of events like CMJ was to discover music you hadn't heard before, but my luck hasn't been too good the past two years. Pulling into Pianos as part of the Frenchkiss showcase, The Big Sleep were my pleasant surprise of the night. The Brooklyn-based trio banged out muscular avant-rock textures with a totally bonkers Mick Fleetwood bugeye drummer who did those Zep things Dom Leone loves and a guitarist as content to hash out blues riffs (over bassist Sonya Balchandani's teutonic drone) as ear-splitting electronic noise. It would've been next to impossible to buy beer in this sardines-packt crowd, so at least the music was pretty kickass." - Pitchfork
"Illuminated from the floor as if playing in a creepy, lantern-lit barn, the threesome is deceptively powerful. Building slowly on a simple bass line or an unassuming synth effect, they eventually assault the room with a wall of jagged noise that escalates even further with guitarist Danny Barria's soaring solos. And then, the decibel level abates, gradually lowering to mellow grooves that frame bassist Sonya Balchandani's blunt, understated vocals. Even though its high-low roller coaster scrambles the stomach as thoroughly as a metal band might, the Big Sleep shows just how delicate the heavy stuff can be." - Time Out NY
"The Big Sleep's combination of name and aesthetic is a gutsy move: this is exactly the kind of thick, meandering music, heavy on the multitracking and light on the vocals, that if done badly would merely allow satisfied critics to note that the band is selling precisely what they advertise. But there's too much life here for that—too much in the prog-rock stomp drummer Gabriel Rhodes cheerfully slathers across churning pop like "Murder"; too much in the billowing guitar Danny Barria casts over "S.K.B."; and too much, particularly, in Sonya Balchandani's bass, which in one of Son of the Tiger's wisest moves is given what amounts to an entire track of its own. "You Can't Touch the Untouchable," driven by a slowly loosening bass line that carefully skirts the edge of mood music, is a highlight—as is the title track, also Balchandani's show; she not only steadily supports the song's hyperactive menace but turns in a hazy vocal performance that's one of her best..." - Stylus
"The Big Sleep is a New York City-based three-piece. It's just drums, guitar, and bass, but oh how the members put it all together-and their music doesn't sound like Mogwai, Russian Circles, or Godspeed You Black Emperor. They pick up where the Verve could have gone with the wig-outs on its first two records, or where shoegazers like Slowdive only hinted at going. Throw in some heavy riffs and layers of My Bloody Valentine-drizzled haze, and that's the sound of the Big Sleep's take on (mostly) instrumental songs. When Sonya Balchandani's (bass and vocals) voice slithers over the cacophony, it's chilling. Her voice is thick and lustrous, the lyrics rolling like velvet off her tongue. Rather than turning over the already-stripped dry soil of '80s angular rock or '70s street sleaze, the members of the Big Sleep are invoking the ghosts of psychedelia and poking the not-quite-cold corpse of shoegazer pop with a well-aimed toe. The songs sound quite dark but with an energy that crackles bright and warm..." - Prefix
"The Big Sleep, a mostly instrumental trio from Brooklyn, N.Y., touches down with an uncommonly strong debut in the form of "Son of the Tiger." The band comes crashing out of the gates with the unrelenting "Brown Beauty," whose jet plane guitar and buzzing synth lift the song toward a dramatic, heart-pounding climax. Out of the smoldering wreck comes "Murder," propelled by a rat-a-tat drum attack and Johnny Ramone-style hyperspeed guitar and eventually lathered with a thick, foamy wash of reverb and delay. "You Can't Touch the Untouchable," anchored by chest-thumping bass and a deep-in-the-pocket drum groove, is punctuated by sudden stops that heighten the building tension, including one long pause more than three minutes in that you'll be certain is the finish line. Awesome. With "Son of the Tiger," the Big Sleep has brewed up a stirring alchemical stew of math rock industry and emotional depth." - Billboard
"The Big Sleep's seducing-yet-disorienting bedroom-metal boasts berserker guitar lines that bug-eye and rubberband through sumo-dense walls of winter-coat feedback and anxiety drums. On standouts "Murder" and "Shima," the hypnotic leads are flanked by doorbell keyboards and Balchandani's ghostly, answering-machine vocals. This is religious music." - Spin.com Band of the Day
"This three-piece -- Sonya Balchandani (bass/keys), Danny Barria (guitar/keys), and Gabe Rhodes (drums) -- often sounds like five or more onstage, where over the last few years they've slowly gotten some word of mouth going via a show melding the most infectious elements of heavy, long-winded psych with an onstage chemistry that's almost too perfect..." - Village Voice

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 10/9/2005
Band Website: thebigsleep.net
Band Members: Danny - guitar
Sonya - bass
Gabe - drums
Influences: The Cure, Led Zeppelin, Nick McCabe, Smog, Funkadelic, WWII
Record Label: Frenchkiss
Tangled Up!/One Little Indian
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

SLEEP FOREVER - OUT TODAY/BV SIRIUS RADIO

Hey-Sleep Forever is in stores and on iTunes and all that today.Check it out here, then get your own copy, freeloader.Also, we're on BrooklynVegan's Sirius Radio show at noon and midnight tomorrow, We...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:55:00 PST

OH YEAH! Album Stream

HeyI forgot to mention, you can listen to our whole new record here:http://www.frenchkissrecords.com/bigsleep/Or you could just download it from somewhere....
Posted by The Big Sleep on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:22:00 PST

TAKE AWAY SHOW/ RECORD RELEASE/ TOUR DATES

Okay, bullet points, just like 6th grade (Sacred Heart/Abington Elementary/DC Prep Forever!): - We filmed a Take Away Show for OneTakeNYC/La Blogotheque. Check it out here.  Behind the scene...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:41:00 PST

INSOUND SLEEP FOREVER PRE-ORDER

April 21, 1992.  I got up at 9:30am to be at the mall at 10am when Sam Goody opened so I could buy 'Wish' by the Cure.F that, folks.  You can pre-order our new record by going here:http://ww...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:17:00 PST

New Record, New Song, New Year

So, our new record is all set.Frenchkiss Records will release "Sleep Forever" on February 19, 2008.It means "us forever."We posted a new song in our player,we'll have more soon.We're also playing show...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:22:00 PST

Check out Fader checking us out

Whatever, rain:http://www.thefader.com/articles/2007/11/15/freeload-bi g-sleep-pinkies
Posted by The Big Sleep on Sat, 17 Nov 2007 12:24:00 PST

SON OF THE TIGER IN THE UK

HeyOur record comes out in the UK/Europe today! It's being released on One Little Indian/Tangled Up! Records, home to our good friends Levy.If you're in the UK, check it out.  If you're in the US...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:44:00 PST

Mixed, mastered, reissued, repackaged

Well, we're done.  Just got out of mastering. Eleven songs that will be grouped together and given a title that will include the words "sleep" and "forever,"we think.Here are some things I learne...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Tue, 25 Sep 2007 04:29:00 PST

As promised...

Pictures of us yelling at each other and someone recording it:http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebigsleepnyc/sets/72157601 247690953/detail/...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Wed, 15 Aug 2007 05:25:00 PST

Everyone!

We're back from spending the week at Shorefire Studios in Long Branch, NJ.Intense. Here are some funny things we said/heard/thought in our heads but didn't say: Racewar DinerThe Star Wars Suite"Does m...
Posted by The Big Sleep on Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:23:00 PST