This is the end. The final From Monument To Masses show will be held Saturday, August 28, 2010 at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, California.
Come celebrate 10 years of our musical existence, along with our friends, Judgement Day & Silian Rail. Tickets can be purchased HERE.
During the Fall of 2001, From Monument To Masses set out to record a simple demo of four of the first song's they'd ever written. At the time, if there was any sort of "music career" formula they were looking to follow, they'd soon find that their life as a band would need to embrace a remarkably unconventional path matched only by their equally unconventional sound.
"We were just focused on writing music that we could be proud of," claims drummer Francis Choung. "The demo was mainly so we could document our songs and get some attention from bookers,” elaborates guitarist Matthew Solberg. “It was really early into the project and we had no real plans for finding a label. We'd barely played our first show." In fact, bassist / keyboardist Sergio Robledo-Maderazo recalls getting a call from his long-time friend Steve Aoki during the 6-hour recording session to check in on a politically progressive magazine project the two were collaborating on. When Aoki asked if he was busy, Robledo-Maderazo matter-of-factly replied: "I'm actually recording." When the demo was complete, Aoki was sent a copy as promised. Things took off from there.
Much to the shock of FMTM, the demo became the band's self-titled first album released in 2002 on Aoki's Dim Mak Records, a relatively obscure label at the time whose roster was comprised of mostly hardcore and post-hardcore bands the likes of Pretty Girls Make Graves and Envy, but one which was slowly exploring new musical territory. While many had a hard time understanding how Dim Mak would make a good home for an instrumental Bay Area three-piece rock band whose influences included seemingly unrelated touchstones—Godspeed You Black Emperor, DJ Shadow, Led Zeppelin, Don Caballero and Roni Size—mixed brazenly with radical politics, the movement had begun.
The band recorded its follow-up in 2003, "The Impossible Leap in One Hundred Simple Steps.", with San Francisco underground rock engineer Tim Green, whose career as a member of political punk provocateurs Nation of Ulysses and instrumental genre-bending The Fucking Champs seemed a perfect fit for FMTM. A brainy tale of an American's political awakening as a result of 9/11, the record was met with critical acclaim and embraced the world over by an eclectic mix of fans with hardcore punk, indie rock, IDM / electronic music, and instrumental post-rock backgrounds, allowing the band to venture off on successful tours of the USA, Japan, continental Europe, and the UK.
In 2005, the band released "Schools of Thought Contend.", a record which featured two new studio tracks and 13 remixes by acts as diverse as 65 Days of Static, Loquat, and Thunderbirds Are Now!. To this day, the band proudly refers to it as "the third record" rather than oversimplifying it as "the remix record". "The 'Schools of Thought Contend.' title says it all," explains Robledo-Maderazo, "It was an experiment challenging how we write our music. In having other artists give us their take on FMTM, it was this liberating collaborative experience that, in my opinion, really showed the musical freedom [FMTM] could achieve. The eclectic mix you hear on that record is, strangely, exactly what FMTM is all about."
During the next three years, the band found itself at an interesting crossroads. Choung moved to New York City in 2006 to pursue a career in video production, limiting the FMTM's live performances to the occasional tour. Many had assumed the band was finished. The new bicoastal arrangement only challenged the band's songwriting process. Instead of the traditional "jamming in the studio", the band maximized affordable digital recording technology and the Internet by sending compositions back and forth. The new approach also allowed for some new sonic direction, as new instruments and sound sources found their way into the mix.
In 2008, FMTM enlisted Minus the Bear keyboardist and engineer Matt Bayles to document this bold new direction. Working in San Francisco's Tiny Telephone and a host of Seattle recording and mixing rooms, Bayles contributed his years of experience working with bands the likes of Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes, Botch, Isis, Mastodon, and The Fall of Troy to capture a polished yet energetic sound for what promises to be FMTM's most musically ambitious record to date. As their fourth record on the newly restructured Dim Mak/Downtown Records, "On Little Known Frequencies" is the record that FMTM fans have been waiting for. Chock full of diverse musical influences and intelligent commentary on the world we live in, the album fuses the band's established "sound" while still managing to keep you guessing on where things will go next.
"Comrades & Friends" - 4/27/07 - Tokyo, Japan:
"Deafening" - 4/27/07 - Tokyo, Japan:
“WE ALL KNOW the displeasure with the status quo that bubbles not so far beneath the Top 40. So what separates East Bay power trio From Monument to Masses from much of the marginalized political punk and rabble-rousing hip-hop out there? Intellectual breadth, for one thing. "[We] take on the 'Great Men' theory," the band mates note, and assert that history is "pushed forward by masses of people engaged in collective struggle, not just a few messiahs or heroes. This focus on the collective invigorates every aspect of the band: drummer Francis Choung, bassist Sergio Robledo-Maderazo, and guitarist Matthew Solberg opted to do an e-mail interview with the Bay Guardian so they could collaborate on responses. Their compositional process is similarly inspired, as is their narrative preoccupation with representing the neglected voices of liberation movements throughout history. "Part of what sets us apart is that our samples are from sources that are often underrepresented or hidden away completely," they write. "How often do you hear Ho Chi Minh in an indie rock context? How often are Fred Hampton or Tagalog chants a part of a rock show?" - The San Francisco Bay Guardian
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"Their aim is clear, if not exactly simple: to make music that is revolutionary, that encourages change--in music and in the world. After meeting Matthew Solberg (through the Craig's List website) and Francis Choung (through the ubiquitous Steve Aoki), the three men quickly decided that instead of choosing a lead singer, they'd sample audio files from documentary and narrative films, television programs and commercials, and recorded political events and speeches, and let those speak for them instead." - Fader Magazine
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"Political music that rocks? Yeah, I know what you're thinking, "What's up, Rage Against the Machine." But don't let that thought deter you. This band puts the 'lit' in politics. As in, "Dude, this band is so LIT!" As in fucking unbelievable. As in they destroy. I can't say enough good things about From Monument to Masses. Hands down, their album The Impossible Leap in 100 Simple Steps was my favorite of 2003. Somehow they weave the inept words of George W. Bush and the chaos following 9/11 into an all-out electrically charged math-rock war. These guys effectively use their mastery of their instruments to promote the message of their beliefs. And they're a band's band. Watch out for them, as great things are expected of From Monument to Masses in the future. Let's just hope they stay together for the kids." - Ohmyrockness.com
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"From Monument To Masses, a Marxist trio (they don't have a "front-man" because of the implications of the phrase), releases a collection of instrumental post-rock with Schools of Thought Contend. The fifteen tracks are starkly varied, ranging from playful ("Comrades & Friends") to sobering ("Sharpshooter") to haunting ("The Quiet Before"). The political dissidents have fun with their work but the album maintains a level of seriousness. FMTM songs unfold like overarching narratives. Their use of delay pedal, drum machine, and guitar loops offer a quixotic and complex arrangement, a peculiar and beautiful platform for the sampled speeches. Engineered with craft, FMTM's, most recent effort is good art and good listening. " - Soma Magazine
