Bart Marantz

Partial Press Release

The time-tested hand game known as Ro Sham Beau is hard to beat as a quick and efficient method for settling disputes. But the Boston band Ro Sham Beaux seems more likely to start arguments than to end them. Is this a jazzy indie rock combo, a slinky funk quartet with a jones for improvisation, or a rockin' jazz ensemble with a knack for sophisticated hooks? The answer is yes.

A fiercely grooving foursome hailing from New England Conservatory, RSB features Luke Marantz on piano and keyboard, bassist Oliver Watkinson, drummer Jacob Cole, and saxophonist Zac Shaiman. The collective quartet announces its arrival on March 13, 2012 with the release of a combustible self-titled album on Red Piano Records that blows apart binary musical categories.

While fluent in the post-bop canon, the band is equally influenced by indie rock pacesetters like Deerhoof, Bork, and The Dirty Projectors. Artfully employing electronic effects and looping in real time, RSB has honed a compelling book of original tunes that embrace pop's concision, indie rock's textural resourcefulness and jazz's improvisational imperative. Rather than serving as launching pads for extended solos, RSB tunes are vehicles for jaw-dropping group interplay and quicksilver shifts in tempo, texture and momentum. Above all, RSB infuses their music with a sense of unabashed joy, as if exalting in each other's company.

"We thrive in the spaces between order and chaos," Marantz says. "We're playing acoustic instruments, but electrified, including saxophone with effects and pedals, which is a sound you don't hear very much. We improvise the forms, which means we've developed a whole language among ourselves out of necessity. Zac brings in new tunes every week and the old tunes keep expanding. We have a whole lexicon of places we can go."

Part of what makes RSB such an exciting ensemble is the sense that they're still mapping the sonic territory into which they've wandered. Though the quartet is a collective, there's no mistaking Shaiman's saxophone as the lead voice, much like a singer in a rock band. A highly expressive player with a bright, clear tone (until he alters it with one of his trusty foot pedals), he often employs effects in subtle and crafty ways.

"I really feel like the record was really important in figuring all that stuff out,Ó Shaiman says. We booked two 12-hour days in a rock studio, and they had tons of stuff to play with. We figured out a lot of stuff in the studio, and we ended up with more music than we could ever use."

While Ro Sham Beaux has developed a sound unlike any other band on the scene, the group traces its origins to a most familiar setting. The four musicians first played together at a jam session at NEC in the fall of 2009. With potent chemistry as friends and musicians, the foursome started jamming regularly, with original tunes gradually replacing standards.

"As we brought in our own tunes and started writing for the quartet, we got further and further from jazz quartet model,Ó Marantz says. ÒWe're all really into rock, and most of us have been in rock bands, so we were just following our other influences."

TO LISTEN, PURCHASE THE CD, OR DOWNLOAD, VISIT: www.rsbmusic.net/#index