Tales of Apathetic Oceans

Hell, call Titan prog if you want, they're too busy playing Resident Evil 4

A A A Comments By Michael Crumsho Tuesday, Mar 27 2007

"Somebody can call us 'solar-horse-shit-core' and they'll probably be right," offers Titan guitarist Josh Anzano during a lunch break from his Manhattan day job. Why not? His Brooklyn quartet has spent a couple of years now fusing lysergic guitar bliss with sky-high keyboards and a ferociously pounding rhythm section, culminating in their recent Tee Pee debut A Raining Sun of Light & Love, for You & You & You. And while the band's psych pedigree and prog moves reverberate like feral punk, such commonplace tags tend to miss the point.

photo: Morelli

The solar-horse-shit-core pioneers are all smiles.

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Though the band's members were playing around New York long enough for some of them to get tossed from a practice space for roasting Gang Gang Dance's amps, Titan only coalesced back in 2004. It was then that Anzano hooked up with drummer Dave Liebowitz, keyboardist Kris D'Agostino, and bassist Dan Bates after they'd all quit their then current projects when both the loud and heavy quotients weren't quite up to snuff.

But despite Titan's seamless mix of sludge-fuzz, spiraling keys, and twisting tempos, these four weren't necessarily born with a prog jones. Anzano, for one, got his start thrashing with California hardcore band the Anasazi. But after a few albums, he moved to both New York and the headspace required to start figuring out Yes records. "I never really did want to stop 'playing' hardcore," he maintains. "I just wanted to stop being bored with what I was hearing."

Yet even with all the instrumental bluster, Anzano is decidedly nonchalant about the idea of Titan being new-school virtuosos for the post-hardcore set. "I've gotten compliments after a set about how I was totally shredding during some solo or something," he says. "And in my head I'm thinking, 'Are you fucking kidding me?' I wasn't playing anything. I was thinking about how to kill those two claw dudes in Resident Evil 4 and just moving my fingers really fast to pretend I was doing something."

Titan play Lit Lounge April 9, litloungenyc.com.

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