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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Minneapolis band moves to Heartbreak City and is spotted on Billboard

If you were at the very first installment of the now institutional Voltage: Fashion Amplified in Minneapolis way back in 2004, you’ll remember a promising Twin Cities band called Shadowbox fronted by Dan Lichty stealing the hearts of many concert-goers. You may have also caught Shadowbox at England Swings that year sneaking in a cover by Ireland’s U2 and memorably covering Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” Either way, you will recall the band then had stature in this town later represented by bands such as The Hopefuls and even more recently by White Light Riot.

Though Shadowbox left town a few years ago for NYC, and Lichty is now known as Daniel Dean, he and guitar player Dmitry Iyudin have been kind enough to drop me a line from time to let me know what’s been going on out there. It’s been a while ago now that the band changed their name to 3rd Culture, and in late 2007 they released their debut EP "Sunrise for the Dislocated," now available everywhere for purchase, download and stream (iTunes, emusic, Napster, Rhapsody, etc.)


A quick listen to the EP has the band still showing the promise five years on that I heard when I first listened to them in Minneapolis venues like the 400 Bar and The Uptown Bar and Café back in 2003. Daniel Dean’s voice is strong, confident and charismatic, Iyudin is still one of my favorite guitarists, and production on the new EP – especially on the cover of the Psychadelic Furs “Heaven” – allows his Iyudin's guitar to sing brightly in the style of Coldplay, Travis, U2, or any of the (frequently British) influences they so proudly wear on their sleeves.


The band recently got the attention of Grammy Award Winning producer Thom Russo, who remixed their single “Heartbreak City” for a March 28th, 2008 re-release which garnered them the attention of Billboard Magazine and VH-1.


See live performance footage of Heartbreak City combined with audio from the original EP track here:










Want the boys to write a song for you? Help spread the word and you might get one.

Here are the details:


Add a 3rd Culture song to your MySpace profile and put 3rd Culture in your Top Friends list on Purevolume & MySpace for a 1 week this month, and in return they will randomly pick three participants and write each of them a song. E-mail them via their MySpace site or at contact@3rdculturenation.com to let them know that you are participating or just to get back in touch.

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