Talent: Tokyo Police Club - Live - "Nature of the Experiment"
Host: Chef Sam Mason
Formerly the pastry chef at WD-40, Mason is one
of the most creative pastry chefs in
prestigious kitchens of the times including Palladin, Union Pacific, and Atlas,
Mason has truly been able to shape his aesthetic culinary vision, combining
molecular gastronomy with innovative ingredients to produce desserts that
continually aurprise the palate. (www.sammasonnyc.com)
Band: Tokyo Police Club (www.tokyopoliceclub.net)
Drums, Percussion: Greg Alsop
Guitar, Percussion: Josh Hook
Vocals, Bass: Dave Monks
Keyboards, Vocals: Graham Wright
TOKYO POLICE CLUB started by accident one day in the ordinary suburb
of Newmarket when Greg, Josh, Dave, and Graham decided that they
missed playing music together, their previous band having broken up
several months before. The four gathered in Josh's basement, plugging
in instruments and making up songs almost at random, with no goal but
to recapture the magic that they felt making music together. By the
time summer came, TPC had began quietly to play shows in the Toronto
area, shows at which the very few people in attendance seemed
impressed by what they saw. The band seemed likely to end here, with
the various members preparing to go their separate ways in the fall,
when fate intervened in the form of an invitation to play the Pop
Montreal festival. Packing their instruments and girlfriends into a
tiny university residence room, TPC spent a week immersed in music,
spending days lazily wandering the streets of Montreal and nights
rehearsing loudly in the tiniest of spaces, and topping it off in
style with a sold out show that saw the band play for the first time
to an audience that was actually interested. A few weeks later, all
four had agreed that it was time to break their mother's hearts and
pursue that most elusive of pipe dreams: a career in the music
business.
The boys got straight to business, playing a series of Toronto shows,
and earning a reputation for live shows that were exuberant, lively,
and unrestrained. In January, the very day that Dave returned for
good from university, Tokyo Police Club signed up with esteemed
Toronto label Paperbag Records to release their debut EP in Canada.
In April, A Lesson in Crime was released, and the band has spent the
months since on the road, bringing their optimistic brand of wide-eyed
post-pop to audiences across Canada and the U.S., and making many new
friends along the way.
So what exactly is Tokyo Police Club? Perhaps EYE Weekly summed it up
best when they wrote "[Tokyo Police Club] are undeniably catchy and
raw, marrying danceable hooks with talk of robot masters and global
emergencies, providing an upbeat soundtrack to our troubled times."
Personally, however, I prefer Exclaim's proclamation that "somehow,
the deeply innocuous subdivisions of Newmarket, Ontario have hatched a
four-headed beast of tunefulness."
