A Study In Her

[BearsOnFire]

A Study In Her

[img]http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/265368/a+study+in+her.jpg[/img]

Quick disclaimer: my brother is one of the guitar players for A Study In Her(ASiH) so this is like shameless self promotion once removed.

Any way ASiH is mainly one guy, Constantine Nakassis. He writes most of the songs, although there have been a gaggle of people contributing to ASiH for years. To me there music has always been a mix between a really mellow, almost ambient ( especially their earlier stuff), sound contrasted by a much faster paced indieish (honestly I have no idea what to classify these guys as) rock sound. I've been listening to them for about eight years, and I am still surprised by what I find on each succesive album.

a bit of copy pasta:
Started in 1998 as just improvising with a delay pedal, a cheap keyboard, and a four-track. Rather than being organized around live performance, it was something just for the recording medium. It eventually started to include writing with other people and better technology. Since then there have been five full-length albums (on Honest In Secret, Sex Cells/Electronic Eel), a split CD with CBGaV, and spots on Mall's remix album (tbtmo), Soft Complex's EP, and City-State's 2nd album.

In 2001 ASiH started doing live shows. The live band has been a shifting cast, but has included Tamara Black (jenhitt), Lucas Carscadden (Dead Mechanical), Andrew Black (The Explosion), Alex Hedstrom (The Axis Set), Justin Moyer (Supersystem/El Guapo, Edie Sedgwick), Jon Moser (AV Club, CBGaV), Phil Apostol (Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start), Mike Mikowicz (the mirror orchid), Julie Cousin, and Magda Nakassis. Recordings have included Tamara Black, Alex Hedstrom, Lucas Carscadden, Justin Moyer, Andrew Black, Fluke Leming, Pavan Segal, Kyung-Nah Koh, Julie Cousin, Judith Kaplan, Mike Mikowicz, Shakthisree Gopalan, Kedarnath Sairam, and Elsie Muñiz.

Since its first full-length, Dialogic, ASiH has seamlessly blended live instrumentation and programmed music across multiple genres: from angular DC post-punk to electronica, from alt-country to R&B. Later albums like Autoamputation, Peripheries of Hollywood, and Another Year in Philadelphia have perfected this blend of styles, increasingly crisscrossing genres, presenting eclectic, almost mixtape-esque collections of songs which find their coherence not in established styles of music or instrumentation, but in their approach to song-writing. The albums don’t play like typical records of the past. But neither is the writing process of ASiH typical. Each album presents songs collected over years, like a scrapbook, disparate in their individual origins but coherent in their total composition.

Their fifth full-length release, the double album In, Out, About, continues this approach to music-making. It arrives more than two years since the release of their last album Another Year in Philadelphia (2007), drawing on material written and recorded over the two years Nakassis spent living in South India. While the album moves between many themes and moods (largely dependent on the collaborators), it is the movement in and out of India which characterizes the album, providing In, Out, About with a thematic feel stronger than any of their other previous ventures. In, Out, and About continues ASiH’s collaborative, genre-blurring song-writing while expanding the musical range with new instrumentation and styles of music (notably, frenetic percussion from Tamil folk music and classical Carnatic-inspired violin), as well as featuring new contributors. In addition to regulars Lucas Carscadden (“Tiny Victories”, “Black in Summer”) and Michael Mikowicz (“Water Wishes”, “Images on Tape”) are two notable new collaborators: Shakthisree Gopalan, an up-and-coming singer in the South Indian film industry (“Days & Nights & Weeks & Months”, “Painted with the Lights”), and Elsie Muñiz, a Philadelphia-native R&B singer (“Waiting”). Documenting the dialogue between different musicians from diverse musical backgrounds and cultures, In, Out, and About presents ASiH at their finest, pushing the boundaries of their craft in surprising and refreshing directions.

In addition to ASiH, Costas is also doing production collaborating with DJ Jesse Tittsworth.

Links:
[url=http://www.astudyinher.com/]www.astudyinher.com[/url]
[url=http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=102599]www.soundclick.com/astudyinher[/url] (be sure to listen to Robot Cocaine, it's by far my favorite ASiH song)
[url=http://www.electroniceel.com/astudyinher.html]www.electroniceel.com/astudyinher.html[/url] (all songs from Another Year In Philadelphia are available here)
[url=http://www.last.fm/music/ASIH]www.last.fm/music/ASIH[/url]
[url=http://www.myspace.com/astudyinher]www.myspace.com/astudyinher[/url] (be sure to check out the myspace page for some pretty awesome remixes)

Videos:

Tropes On Television from Dialogic (1st full length album)
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zehBMAy8KP8&feature=related[/media]

Rewrite from Auto Amputation ( 2nd full length album)
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPscglcy0uA&feature=related[/media]

Giant Robot from Auto Amputation ( 2nd full length album)
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj-ai4YmgKI&feature=related[/media]

I Will Always Win from Peripheries of Hollywood (3rd full length album)
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K3kt6tNpsQ&feature=related[/media]

There is nothing on YouTube from their 4th album, "Another Year In Philadelphia", but if you type "A Study In Her" into Google it will come up with a few clips from that album (disregard the picture; it is from the previous album). Or just check out their Electronic Eel page to listen to the whole album.

For songs from thier latest, "In, Out ,About" album go [url=http://www.electroniceel.com/inoutabout.html]here[/url] and scroll down to the bottom of the page for some free downloads.

Upcoming Show Dates:
Feb 13 2010 9:00P O’Brien’s Allston, Massachusetts
Feb 19 2010 8:00P Metro Gallery Baltimore, Maryland
Feb 27 2010 7:00P Green Line Cafe Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mar 11 2010 8:00P South Park Tavern Dayton, Ohio
Mar 12 2010 8:00P Comet Cincinnati, Ohio
Mar 13 2010 8:00P Hi-Tone Memphis, Tennessee
Mar 14 2010 8:00P Longbranch Saloon Knoxville, Tennessee
Mar 16 2010 8:00P DC9 Washington DC

Enjoy!