In an interesting twist of fate and modern technology, the members of Manic Bloom found themselves gathered in a small rent house in Nashville , TN.
The beginnings were a bit chaotic. In a town well known for a country music landscape, the five stepped onto an unstable terrain of progressive rock and neo-romantic classical piano. Over time, a sound began to emanate that was more than simply piecing together chords and rhythms. Rather, it originated from connecting the physical with the spiritual, frenzy with order, power with beauty.
With the release of their self-recorded EP, Manic Bloom is proving that they are as aggressive as their music. "We basically just holed ourselves up in the basement for months, recording parts over and over," said drummer Jeff Brinkley. "The basement also happens to be Hilde's bedroom, so all of his stuff was crammed in corners, and he had to make a path to get to his bed."
"Among the five of us, we've got a lot of recording experience under our belt," confirms David Stevenson, frontman. "We've all spent time working in studios. For [this project] I'd sit at the board for hours, then pass it off to somebody else at night when I had to get home. I'd come back the next day to find that one of the guys worked on it until 4 am, or never went to sleep at all."
"After we finished recording, we spent a couple weeks trying to mix, but we just kept hitting a wall," recalls guitarist Matt Lawrence. "Eventually, we all agreed that we needed to hand over the final part of the process to an outside perspective. It was definitely the right decision." The EP was mixed by Steve Wilson and mastered by Erik Wolf (Reliant K, Celldweller).
Having been in multiple different bands over the course of their lives, they each pull from years of experience both in the studio and live. "We feel the stage is our escape from the rest of the world. When we see people moving to the music and screaming along to be heard over everything else, we get energized," said bassist Andy Neale. And energy is something the band definitely projects.
Despite the difficulty of juggling families, jobs, and music, the band members stand unfazed. Jeff Hildebrand, keys player, comments, "We've all seen people who have let go of their dreams to make ends meet, and people who just get stuck playing some part in life that they really don't want. We don't have that option. We were made to do this."
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