the BLACKbELT band

... Founded in the great city of New Orleans, the members of the BLACKbELT band have been playing together in various projects (Community, The Wrong History) over the last 12 years. Drawing from personal experience, as well as the rich traditions of their environment, these guys have combined a myriad of different elements to develop their signature style. The ten tracks on A New Community (recorded by Chris George and Daniel Majorie, at the Living Room Studio) present themselves as instantly listenable, but at the same time intelligent, intricate and profound. The group boasts a blend of acoustic, electric and electronic instrumentation. Traces of progressive/experimental rock, blues, post-punk, reggae, cinematic scoring, and about a hundred thousand other influences can show up at any given moment. Rather than hop around in and out of genres, these guys have instead smoothly combined all of these seemingly disparate elements into each song to create something entirely unique. As a live band, these guys are simply transcendent. The music is so rich, so multilateral, as each song unfolds its story. Each component plays wonderfully off the next. Individual musical lines converge and separate, weaving among themselves, producing a whole different atmosphere capable of lifting even the most jaded, apathetic heart. SICKROOM RECORDS, LTD. is honored to help the BLACKbELT band realize their vision for this project.AntiGravity- .....2007 was a year of small victories, like the streetcar inching back to it's pre-K route and some of the Westbank's finest getting back into live music. Whatever it is you want to call them, the trio of former Community members Travis Thompson, Kevin Comarda and Ryan Iriarte are back in action and pushing their musical and song writing abilities to new limits. .....They limit their guitars to the lower end of the scale and weave intricate bass lines through Iriarte's frenetic, but tamed drumming style. They joined the ranks of a growing number of bands such as Metronome the City, A Living Soundtrack, and One Man Machine that are crossing the rock-and-roll/digital divide in new and interesting ways. -Dan Fox.