Beatfolk

11 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, FOLK: Political



Details:
Hot Heels Records, the Chicago-based Beatfolk band is following up a well received Ep with a new full-length album, "The Hi-Jacked Generation." Self-produced and recorded through borrowed microphones, the genre-bending album rolls through influences like a cracked bottle sinking through the current of the Ilinese Lake.

The album has less to do with aircraft hi-jacking, more to do with the stories of the wanderers and hot souls of a generation twitched at by sophists and ambitious advertisers from straight out of the womb. The album as a whole is catchy, literate and honest. It says something about the times in which it was created without becoming self-important. Itâs a search to catch the sunâs name, a tempest tossed stone, a shadow on your hand, a goddamned Toys R Us kid.

The band name Hot Heels Records is a locator. "In my mind, a band name is a vehicle for people to find songs, that's the extent of it," says Brandon Seyferth, the bandâs founder and main songwriter in the two singer/songwriter, two guitar, one drum kit line-up. "There is a friendship between the members, but also a strong sense of standing on one's own. We live and die on our own voices as individuals. Weâve come together as a group more like a jazz trio might if that trio were into Sonic Youth or Bob Dylan or Schneider tm or whatever else is in our ears at present. I might add too that I view a recording as as much a story as a song." Seyferth is an award-winning poet and a 21st century songwriter who has trav-eled extensively through the mountains and industrial cities of China and along the U.S. East Coast. Sleeping there in the back of carnival trucks on the way to his next move in the next town. During these travels he released songs online, which led him to performing and writing with among others, Jackson Browne and Eric McFadden (George Clinton's P-Funk). On arriving in Chicago he released his first studio quality Ep under the band name Hot Heels Records and was later joined for the current release and follow-up by classically trained percussionist Marty Grossman from Maryland, and Mike Rhee, a fellow singer/songwriter and a reporter for Chicagoâs National Public Radio affiliate.