Lo Moda is Raili Haimila, Sam Hopkins, Gillian Quinn, Peter Quinn, Christian Sturgis, and Antony West — Drop-Out Soul from Baltimore USA. Sometimes described as descendants of Can, John Cale, Mission of Burma, the Fall, Pere Ubu, Rain Coats because of their stripped-down agit-prop pop sensibility. Where Gospel Store Front is a poetic manifesto of love songs and defiant resistance, Replica Watches is a journey into more melodic and existential depths.
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Histrionics: Post art school Candy Machine (skene, east west, dischord/desoto) members Peter Quinn and Lyle Kissack were playing music with Craig Bowen and Nat Rabb (san serac) in a band called INK on Monitor Records when they decided to call it quits with an unreleased cd waiting to come out. Over the next year, Peter Quinn approached some friends/musicians around town with some music he had been developing in his studio (computer) with the intention of creating a new group. The music stayed in line with the streamline quality of INK but the new collaboration would create a new richer and lush sound that would take on a life and tension of its own. With the orchestration of Raili Haimila (Calgary) on viola, Gillian Stewart Quinn (Scotland) on keyboards, jeff McGrath (Baltimore) of Thank You on bass, Christian Sturgis (Baltimore) of Fascist Fascist on guitar, and Scott Braid (Baltimore) on percussion and trumpet, Lo Moda became a complex woven mesh of intricate patterns and hooks driven by a group of varied experience and tastes. Within the first year, Lo Moda would show to be very prolific and went into the studio to record two cds. They first recorded an honest and warm recording with Adam Cooke in their living room for a release that, due to scheduling, fell behind the manufacturing date of the second recording, Gospel Store Front, which they recorded with J Robbins in Baltimore. With plans to release the living room recording entitled “Once Upon a Time We Dreamt in the Land of Prosperity,” they started writing Replica Watches. During the writing process, Antony West joined to write a new batch of songs for Replica Watches on bass.
