EYEBALL formed around a coffee shop table in late 2015 initially as a sound-art project with the only direction being anything goes without adopting pre-fabricated "blueprint" music and focus on creating a sound that attempts to transcend genre and become its own thing. Drummer and founding member Trey McLamb had until then been joining already established groups that had lost their drummer for whatever reason, which he found was usually the same scenario - learn the band's material, get them back on their feet, and then after some time actually begin to write new material with them.
Over the years he found himself bored with a lot of groups and how most were more or less doing the same things stylistically as the bands they listen to, wondering how they could possibly enjoy imitating something that has already been done many times over and feeling disappointed at how "normal" so many of them sounded. So after some thinking one night about wanting to do something new, he wondered if he should either join another established act that is already up and running, or join another cover band and make a little spending money? He decided to put together a startup band that would create music with a sound that was a bit weird embracing effects-driven music and stay away from musical trends because they come and go, something he had always wanted to do. With that vision as a starting point he contacted guitarist Myriam Martian and bassist Brian Oaksford who he knew would understand what he had in mind, they formed EYEBALL and began writing as a three-piece group for a time, the right keyboardist was more difficult to find as it’s not a very common instrument, but eventually found Aaron Albrecht by running a local ad, and all members contribute to vocal parts to some degree depending on the song, they've also composed an equal amount of instrumentals to balance out the set as they prefer to perform musical interludes and not fill up the music with vocals the majority of the time. After a year of writing, fine-tuning, and rehearsing together they teamed up with producer Jeff Eacho of Eacho Sound Lab to record their first EP, "Paradox of Eternal Limits". In the studio they decided to bring in more "song" oriented material and leave their more arty-freakout stuff for the stage, the music played during the live show is a different animal than the recordings as they don't try to replicate every nuance and enter the studio with no preconceived notion of having to pull anything off live, the recordings take on a life of their own and become intentional "studio productions" by using the studio itself as an instrument. Once recorded, they create interpretations of the recording to give the live show its own experience. They filmed two music videos even before their first public performance, which was playing live on a local radio station, and soon after they released the "Paradox of Eternal Limits" EP after having played their first club gig. They were told they should wait until they played out more to gain a following so they'd have an audience to actually sell them to, but feeling they didn't want to tour around empty handed and feeling obscurity is the biggest obstacle in the beginning, the EP was released to spread around as the group begins its venture into climbing the ranks of the club circuit. The group is a constant art-project "work in progress" that strives to not repeat itself and to explore the boundaries of their collective creativity using whatever is available to them at the time while remaining free of genre restrictions. Because they dwell in a more underground music environment and like using lots of effects, the media has categorized them as playing "experimental psychedelic" music, which they say is fine by them because they feel the parameters are broad enough plus its an apt description. However, they realize that the a problem with writing and performing music on such a vast soundscape is that one song alone isn't enough to encapsulate what they're about, their music has to be heard spread out across several pieces to even begin to grasp the scope of what they're attempting, the live set and EP sound more like compilations than a work from just one group. So this is just the beginning for EYEBALL, now that their internet presence is established and the EP is behind them, their shift has focused to live performance; however they are working on another video concept with director Josh Sokal that promises be something quite different from the first two they've released.
Stay tuned for more things coming as they will always be exploring new ground and creating sounds different from ones that came before. To coincide with the release of their EP, they launched a website [www.eyeball-band.com] and all their relevant social media site links can be found on the homepage.
Links:
WEBSITE: www.eyeball-band.com
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/eyeball_band