“These guys have actually developed a band like A&R reps used to do. They weren’t put together by a bunch of studio heads like most bands these days,” says Paul Udouj CEO of Zabulon Management Group. “They are very energetic. They are a ball of power and energy.” says Udouj. Their audience seems to agree. They have a great up-beat sound that gets people revved-up with easy to sing-a-long  jams that are pure fun. “These guys have worked hard, and it shows” says Udouj.  As their first single and video “Right Coast Envy” are now available on the web.

With the new year upon us everyone wants to have the jump on the superstars of 2011. Here we showcase the top three artists/bands we see bubbling here at the Underground Scene and the individual song we feel will send them to the top of the charts.

1.) Chiodos – “Baby, You Wouldn’t Last A Minute On The Creek”

Their kick you in the teeth rock sound is just what radio DJs need to wake up in the morning!

2.) Stereo Drive-By – “Sticks & Stones”

It’s time music got back to having passion as its core.

3.) Noisettes – “Never Forget You”

Soul is making its way into mainstream for good.

Never the girly Shakira type that other mothers on the block liked to see in their daughters Nikki was the tough one. She would spend her weekends working on cars and greasing up for car shows. “I wouldn’t call myself a mechanic,” confirmed Nikki “But you better believe I know my way around an engine.”

It was in Daytona one year at Biketoberfest (one of the nation’s bigger motorcycle rallies) when she came of age and she started getting more attention for her own body than to the bodies of her award winning cars she was building. A modeling career was born. While singing was secondary in her life she would start to see her voice began to get notice as well. It was on a hot summer night at Mango’s, the hottest Latin club in Miami Beach, when she found her love for the music of the Caribbean and South America. Things would never be the same again.

She would move to Reno and pursue other venues but her voice would find its way to the Nevada dance clubs and late night establishments. Her reign as the late night queen would not be accepted by all. One such time she was jumped by three girls outside a club. Nikki reveals that “They thought I’d fight like a girl but they were wrong. Very wrong.” Those three learned the hard way that Nikki had spent her spare time taking out her aggression in fine art of kickboxing. Nikki was definitely not a girly girl.

Her duet with a Belizean artist Shadowyze would cross the ocean and spread like wild fire across Central America. Nikki’s quick notoriety brought her to the attention of Josh The Code who is President of RVM records and Paul “Wild Turkey” Udouj who manages the stable of RVM artists. “Nikki Breeze is the next badass of Central America”, replied Wild Turkey “She is a rare blend of sexy and bare knuckles.” RVM has signed on Texas producer and hit-maker Pecos Trill to create the song for the group effort and Josh will personally oversee the final production.

Nikki Breeze is destined to be a force in Latin music and it would be dangerous to stand in her way.

Talking to Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner Hammel is like being an extra in some improvised post-modern play. You start in a freewheeling scene, and by the end of the night, you end up in the audience. Sure, they answer your questions, but not to you, only to each other; using each query as an excuse to bounce back and forth in some private utopia. At a Red Roof Inn in Gainesville, Florida, Kori and Jason sit on opposite ends of an unmade bed. Although there are two beds in the room, only this one appears rumpled. Kori is the straight-(wo)man, sitting up, blonde ponytail at attention. Jason, the comic foil, usually stays prone, his coiffure as disheveled as the bed he lays upon.

Mariah Robertson

The Mates of State

“The best thing about Captain and Tennille is, I saw this clip of them, they’re riding this paddleboat together, like, ‘Yes! We’re still together, we’re still recording music,’” says Kori, miming the actions of paddling a boat, further ruffling the bed sheets. “That’s where I want to be. I want to be riding in a paddleboat when we’re 60 going, ‘Yes, it’s been great!’ Their music wasn’t that great but their relationship obviously was.”

“Was it just the two of ‘em?” asks Jason.

“Yeah, she was like the singer.”

“If I had a song like that, I could get up there.”

“Yeah, we need a gimmick. …The Captain!”

“You can call me Captain.”

Both giggle openly as Kori points a running video camera at Jason

“You want me to call you Captain,” inquires Kori, “don’t you?”

“You do call me Captain.”

“Cut out the sexual innuendo.”

“You’re the one that said, ‘I’m gonna call you captain.’”

Here Kori and Jason — lost in the lens of the camera, their love for each other, or possibly both — appear as to have forgotten there’s anybody else in the room, as well as their world or their plane of existence. The tone of voice becomes a blushing intimacy.

“I’m not calling you Captain,” half-gushes Kori.

“You’re calling me Captain.”

“Why should I call you Captain?”

“‘Cause I am Captain.”

“No you’re not, I’m Captain!”

“I am.”

“You’re the skipper.”

Both laugh — followed quickly by uncomfortable silence and a re-positioning of the video camera. End scene.

Kori, 27, and Jason, a-just-turned 26, are The Mates of State. Like Captain and Tennille, they are a married couple who happily plays music together. Unlike Captain and Tennille, they don’t suck. Their sound is lush mix of indie-pop hooks, sparse intimacy, and the type of harmonies that can only come from two folks who are, well, so damn harmonious together. All played out on spare-only-in-theory instrumentation of drums and organ.

The Mates of State legally became mates on July 7, 2001. After quitting their jobs in San Francisco, they tied the knot at a wedding ceremony held in Trumbull, Connecticut. Although Kori’s Catholic mother urged them to have the ceremony a church, it ended up in the backyard of Kori’s parents. It was a sunny Saturday, 78 degrees, book-ended by three days of rain.

Kori and Jason had been playing together for over three years at this point — meeting and forming at the University of Kansas in ’97, moving to California in ’99, and playing shows practically every weekend — so the collaborative process came easy for the duo. In this spirit, they wrote their own vows and sermons for the secular ceremony and culled the hippest handful of music to ever grace an indie-rock matrimony.

Kori walked in, on an aisle covered with 1,500 rose petals, to the ever-melancholy Cat Power’s spare cover of The Velvet Underground’s “I Found a Reason.” The rest of the procession followed to Nick Cave’s brooding “(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?” Later in the ceremony, guests were treated to a piano rendition of “Über Legitimate,” a transcendent track off the Mates’ latest release, Our Constant Concern. Kori and Jason entered the reception to the strains of delicate indie-poppers Pinback, played some Bright Eyes on acoustic guitars, and did their first dance to Olympia lo-fi-songstress Mirah.

Kori’s Catholic mom, whom she is very close to, had problems with the no-church ceremony, the female justice of the peace presiding over the service, and of course, the grave melancholia used as wedding music.

“She was like, ‘You can’t walk in to that! It’s depressing!’” Kori says. “Now she’s like, ‘You had the best music at your ceremony!’”

The Mates honeymooned in Tahiti, and three days later, were travelling in their bulky Astro Van, lugging around Kori’s 175-pound Yamaha Electone Organ in a massive trek across the U.S.

	Mariah Robertson
	The Mates of State

“Our last year or two was like a complete whirlwind,” Kori — the more vocal of the two, both on stage and off — says whilst twirling a coffee straw around her finger. “We were working those jobs [Kori as an elementary school teacher, Jason as a cancer researcher]. The kind of jobs where you don’t just leave your work at the office, you have more to do when you get home. Then we’d play all the time. Almost every weekend we were playing in a different place. We were planing a wedding. June came, we quit our jobs, got married, we went on tour. It was all consecutive events happening at once.

“We honestly thought we were gonna be completely starving or poor if we didn’t jump right into the tour, ’cause we spent a good month on the wedding and the honeymoon. We weren’t getting paid. It was all about making enough money to pay rent.”

Since then, they’ve gone nonstop. Their most recent tour brings them to Florida. Although the erratic chills of the February night leaves Gainesvillians opting for warm clothing, the big furry neck on Jason’s parka still makes him stand out, especially when attached to the top of the same lanky frame that towers over his drum set. Kori keeps warm in blue scarf, framing her grinning visage, a dead-ringer for a young Julianne Moore. At the Barnes and Noble, Kori and Jason finally purchase the latest issue of Spin, which features a small feature on the duo. While both are exited by the coverage, they seem preoccupied with the cover, and soon drift off into another one-act play.

“That’s pretty cool,” Kori says, peering at the cover. “Jimmy Fallon! Isn’t that the guy that plays Corky Romano?”

“No it’s not. I was hoping it was,” says Jason.

“He calls me Corky Romano, so we were hoping that was who was on the cover.”

Why does he call you Corky Romano?

“‘Cause I hate it,” Kori says without hesitation.

“That’s not why! I don’t do things that you hate.”

“Remember that show Life Goes On? They used to call me Corky just because of that guy on Life Goes On, which I thought wasn’t very cool. So when Jason said ‘Corky,’ it immediately brought back childhood scars. And then he hasn’t stopped since.”

“You make it sound a lot worse than it is. I think I called you that once.”

The Astro Van with the broken side handle and black-haired-n’-beady-eyed hula girl hood ornament burns toward the Red Roof Inn. Like a true couple, they slept in today, watching TV until two. Like a true band, they collected addresses on their immaculate white iBook, printed them on a series of manila envelopes stacked in a pile on the dresser and stuffed them with CDs. The band has national distribution from Polyvinyl and Omnibus Records, yet still end up stuffing envelopes themselves, possibly in an attempt to further shrink the Mates of State microverse.

“The ideal situation for me would be to have enough time to actually do every single aspect of the band by ourselves,” Kori says. “If I could have a home studio and the engineering knowledge that could get us a good sounding record and space to store merchandise and a printing press…”

The Red Roof Inn is a $50 stay, pricey by Motel 6-frequenting Mates standards, but they need a good two nights of sleep. Jason lays out on the bed, skinny hands reaching for red velvet cake.

The lyrics of Mates songs may seem rather bleak, especially when spilled through their austere boy-girl harmonies (“The robe fits tight/My hands were wide with spots unworn.”). But it doesn’t take more than a simple lull in conversation and the comforts of a familiar hotel room for the Mates to get a little goofy.

[pause]

“So, we rented a porn last night,” Jason intones.

“Oh, why did you have to tell him that! [smacks him] God! It was his idea!” yells Kori, twitching uncomfortably.

“Yeah, it was”

“Illicit Sex on the pay-per-view porn.”

Well, how was it?

“Porn,” jokes Jason.

“It was OK,” Kori says, fidgeting with hair, visibly unnerved by where the conversation is going. “We watch it, maybe, like once every six months together. I mean he might watch it alone on his own.”

“Yeah! I watch it every day! [laughs]“

“But that’s how much I can handle it. [dramatic pause] So this is the article our parents won’t read, right?”

Do your parents read Ink 19?

After another pause Kori shouts, “You know, actually, we’re married now! We can watch porn together! …Well, we didn’t get married in a church.”

Mariah Robertson

The Mates of State

They are indeed married. The proof: The preceding conversation is just one example of the endless playful banter that seems to permeate every conversation they’re in. They have the rings to prove it — Kori’s a glimmering rock that dances across the organ when she plays, Jason’s a subdued “white gold.” They, um, do some other things that married couples do, too. Maybe the über-relaxed confines of the Red Roof Inn relaxes the Mates too much — they readily spill the beans about some, um, cheeky sexual exploits. And although these anecdotes wormed their way onto the spinning wheels of my tape recorder, the Mates prefer to leave ‘em private, thank-you-very-much. Let’s just say everything seems healthy and all videos have been promptly erased.

Yep. Those crazy kids are in love. On stage, Jason and Kori are notorious for exchanging glances, humorous asides, and quite possibly, telekinetic bonds. They’re so damn close that their live show is a virtual macrocosm of the tiny back-and-forth nuances visible in the hotel room — an unspoken bond, a chemistry, an intimate performance staged only for the two of them.

“It’s true,” says Kori. “Sometimes we’re not sharing an inside joke, sometimes we’re talking about fixing the sound. But most of the time, yeah, that’s accurate. We’re so close that it wouldn’t make sense to play a show and have us just play the songs and not even look or talk to each other. That wouldn’t feel right. …We’re just there to have fun and enjoy that 30 minutes of playing music together. That’s what it is.”

“We’re a close relationship when we’re not onstage, why would we fake it when we are onstage?” says Jason “We’re still a close relationship and I think, obviously, it shines through. Whether we intend for it or not.”

And unlike other revered minimalist couple bands (The White Stripes ended their marriage in 2000, Quasi has been famously divorced since 1995), they plan keep that relationship alive. For the Mates, their love and music are inseparable.

“Our relationship and the band are so one-in-the-same that if one ends, the other ends.” Kori says. “We’ll always play music together, we might not be doing it to this extent, but we’re not ever gonna stop playing music together, we’re not ever gonna stop being together.

“I think if you’re not with the absolute right person and you’re spending all of your time together, you’re doomed. But somehow we got lucky. We get along really well, yeah, we argue, but…”

“We do?” Jason adds, sarcasm duly noted.

Once again the Mates answer a question with personal asides. Once again it kicks off another play for two characters who could care less if there’s an audience or not.

As friendly and warm as these individuals are, there’s just no room for anyone else in the Mates of State microverse. It’s a world created solely for the two of them. As they leave room 224 of the Red Roof Inn, they hang a sign on the doorknob that reads “Do Not Disturb.” As if anyone could.

http://www.matesofstate.com

by Christopher R. Weingarten

Following on one of the most well received 16 minutes of music in recent history (2006′s A Lesson In Crime EP), Newmarket Ontario’s Tokyo Police Club will release a debut album entitled Elephant Shell, due out late April on Saddle Creek in North America and Memphis Industries in the UK.

Elephant Shell lands roughly a year and half after A Lesson In Crime (with last year’s Smith EP and “Your English Is Good” digi-single and a ton of touring also bridging the gap) and barely four years from the band’s 2005 formation. Not bad for four friends who learned to play during senior year in high school, later naming themselves for a nonsensical lyric from the song that would become track one on their first EP, which would in turn sell over 30,000 copies-probably about 29,000 more than they expected-and garner accolades from Entertainment Weekly (“We can hardly wait for the full length), Rolling Stone (“If only all young guitar bands were smart enough to rock out this fast, banging out seven first-rate mod-punk party starters in barely more than sixteen minutes”), Interview, Blender, Nylon and The New York Times among others.

If bassist/vocalist David Monks once described the band’s music as “wide-eyed post-punk with a tendency to get over excited-so much so that someone has to come and tell it to settle down,” Elephant Shell is the sound of four early-20-somethings now seasoned through hundreds of shows from tiny clubs to the festival throngs at Coachella and Glastonbury, maturing a bit and learning to temper and modulate their own more varied musical moods. Or maybe Canada’s socialized health care means easier access to generic Ritalin and Adderall?

Either way, Elephant Shell delivers on every bit of promise in Tokyo Police Club’s rapid-fire barrage of material to date. The opening one-two of “Centennial” and “In A Cave” barely evaporates before “Graves” and “Juno” pack innumerable hooks and “what-does-that-remind-me-of” glimmers into meager 2-minute-and-change frameworks, while “Tessellate” and “Sixties Remake” encapsulate everything great about the manic TPC live experience: soaring guitar signatures and keyboard figures, driving backbeats and irresistible singalongs abound. Elsewhere, “The Harrowing Adventures Of…” and the down tempo standout “Listen To The Math” find our young protagonists ably adapting their energy into more subdued structures before the rousing coda of “The Baskervilles” brings the record to an all-too-early halt.

Unsurprisingly, Tokyo Police Club is already back on the road at press time and will continue to be through the release of Elephant Shell.

UNDERGOUND MUSIC TOP 10 – SPOTLIGHT ARTIST

Donald “XL” Robertson is know now for mixing New Orleans funk with West Coast soul. It wasn’t always this way. We snuck a peak at just a few albums XL worked on…and we will say…well…he’s been making hits for a long time. Watch out Timberland!

1999	Only God Can Judge Me [Clean]	Master P	Producer, Engineer
1999	Only God Can Judge Me	Master P	Producer, Engineer
1999	World War III	Mac	Vocals, Producer, Drum Programming…
2000	Brick Livin’	Mr. Marcelo	Producer, Engineer
2000	Ghetto Postage [Clean]	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2000	Ghetto Postage	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2000	Goodfellas [Clean]	504 Boyz	Producer, Engineer
2000	Goodfellas	504 Boyz	Producer, Engineer
2000	Time for Da Real	Wild Boyz	Producer, Engineer
2000	Trapped in Crime [Clean]	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2000	Trapped in Crime	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2001	Breather Life	Krazy	Producer, Engineer
2001	C-P-3.Com [Clean]	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2001	C-P-3.Com	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2001	Game Face [Clean]	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2001	Game Face	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2001	My World, My Way [Clean]	Silkk the Shocker	Producer, Engineer
2001	My World, My Way	Silkk the Shocker	Producer, Engineer
2001	Streets Made Me	Soulja Slim	Producer, Engineer
2001	Training Day [Clean]	Original Soundtrack	Producer, Engineer
2001	Training Day	Original Soundtrack	Producer, Engineer
2002	Ballers [Bonus DVD]	504 Boyz	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2002	Ballers [Clean][Bonus DVD]	504 Boyz	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2002	Ballers	504 Boyz	Producer, Engineer
2002	Tru Dawgs	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2002	Years Later	Soulja Slim	Producer, Engineer
2003	Malibu’s Most Wanted	Original Soundtrack	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2003	Project Gotham Racing, Vol. 2 Hip-Hop..	Original Soundtrack	Producer, Engineer, Mixing, Appearance
2003	Storm	Tru Thug	Producer, Engineer
2003	Straight from the N.O. [Clean]	Choppa	Producer, Digital Editing, Programming…
2003	Straight from the N.O.	Choppa	Producer, Digital Editing, Programming…
2004	Based on a True Story [Clean]	Silkk the Shocker	Producer, Engineer
2004	Based on a True Story	Silkk the Shocker	Producer, Engineer
2004	Beginning of the End…	Juvenile/Skip/Wacko	Producer, Engineer
2004	Good Side, Bad Side [Bonus DVD]	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2004	Good Side, Bad Side [Clean]	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2004	Good Side, Bad Side	Master P	Producer, Engineer
2004	Nolia Clap	UTP Playas	Producer, Engineer
2005	All Things	Erica Fox	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Best of Silkk the Shocker [Clean]	Silkk the Shocker	Producer, Engineer
2005	Best of Silkk the Shocker	Silkk the Shocker	Producer, Engineer
2005	Goodbye So Long	Katie Marino	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Instrument of Praise	Erica Fox	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Return	The Legendary Ghost	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Run Away	Katie Marino	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Rush the Dance Floor	Katie Marino	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Source Hip Hop Hits, Vol. 10	Various Artists	Producer, Engineer
2005	Syrenz	Syrenz	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	That’s the Business	XL	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2005	Truest $#!@ I Ever Said [Clean]	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2005	Truest $#!@ I Ever Said	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2006	No Limit Greatest Hits	Various Artists	Producer, Engineer
2006	Reality Check [Clean]	Juvenile	Producer, Engineer
2006	Reality Check	Juvenile	Producer, Engineer
2006	Start The Conversation	Movement	Producer, Engineer
2006	Tru Story: Continued	C-Murder	Producer, Engineer
2007	Could It Be	Kanary Diamonds	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2007	Do What I Want	Andrea Lewis	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2007	I Rock	Kanary Diamonds	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2007	Ironman	Action Figures	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2007	It’s Like This	XL	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2007	Kids Creative Movement	Hip Hop Mimi	Producer, Engineer, Mixing
2007	Trials of Darryl Hunt	Original Soundtrack	Producer
2008	It Is What It Is	Impromp2	Digital Editing