New York, NY (Top40 Charts) New Beat Fund have mastered their debut LP at Bernie Grundman Mastering with engineer Brian "Big Bass" Gardner. The album was co-produced by the band with Matt Wallace (Faith No More, Maroon 5) at LA's Fairfax Recording (formerly Sound City) and mixed by Tony Hoffer (Foster the People, Beck).
New Beat Fund were inspired to name their band when they saw a corporate billboard piggy bank encrypted with the words "New Beat Fund." The band has been active over the past two years, releasing an EP "Coinz," and touring with the likes of blink-182 and 3OH!3.
"The whole point and the reason that we're in this," says Paul Laliberte, "is to grow with a culture. And to also influence that culture rather than just hit at a surface level."
"When people meet us, they say, 'you guys are weird, but it's fun!'" says Michael Johnson. "We want people to be cool with being weird, and thinking about things differently. The name of our record is 'Sponge Fingerz.' It's what we are as a band, there's no definition -- we're able to be free. We wrote the record in Topanga Canyon -- the freest place ever. We live in Southern California and that's the whole vibe of our band. Just being weird and free."
Freedom is a main theme of "Sponge Fingerz," which touches on such genres as surf-rock, dub, hip-hop, indie, punk, garage pop and jam music. "It's not just punk rock, or indie, or weird-ass psychedelic art. We were all exposed to different things growing up, so we didn't choose to only go in one direction," says Shelby Archer.
"We don't claim any certain scene," adds Michael Johnson, "and that's kind of what we represent as a band, especially for kids who are figuring out who they are and where they fit in this weird ass world. We can hang with all of it and show people that's OK to do. Let's play how we play as individual musicians, and let's write about our lives and go in that direction and not think about it too much. And this is what came out."
Jeff Laliberte sums it up: "We want everyone to be into our music. We want people to feel at home when they come to our shows, like they can do whatever they want at a New Beat Fund show. Come to our show, have a good time and relate to our music."
New Beat Fund's "Sponge Fingerz" is now available on Red Bull Records.
Learn more at: https://www.newbeatfund.com
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Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood operates six studios, including a 5.1 mastering room. All processing devices can be completely bypassed, resulting in sonic quality that is unsurpassed in the mastering industry. Virtually all digital and analog formats are accepted for mastering, with the facility providing high quality disk masters, and sub-masters for CD. Grundman's custom consoles are built in-house with all discrete electronics.
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