Yahtzeen September 1999 schrasj presents some well played jazz influenced post-rock. and while post-rock is a lazy and overused term, it is the sound that schrasj makes that I would guess that would fit in a category that includes bands such as tortoise and the sea and cake. okay, with that said lemme say that they keep it a little bit light on lyrics and heavy on atmosphere. laid back and melodic, schrasj also experiment with a variety of sounds and roll it all up into something interesting and most of all enjoyable. (mb) The Big Takeover #44 Spring 1999 Every so often a band you've never heard of comes along and unexpectedly pays off, reminding you what attracted you to rock in the first place. schrasj is Gram Lebron and Terri Lowenthal, both on guitars, bass, organ, and various electronics, and Alexei Angelides on drums and more electronic gizmos. They're a trio from Houston that plays jazzy, instrumental rock, at times loose and expanding, and then contracting and tight. They have the right idea - they play in a style somewhere between trancey space rock and the post rock of tortoise, but with indie rock's directness and lack of pretense. Some songs have vocals, but they don't last very long, soon getting trampled in the band's rush to play again. Their effortless combinations of shoegazing, sonic youthfulness, noise, and Durutti Column-glistening guitar shimmers make for a great listen. Shredding Paper Spring 1999 Wow, this is a surprise. I always thought this band was throwaway indiepop with a pig-tailed girl in a pink cardigan. As usual, I missed the bus. This is useful background music for driving, sex, sleep, reading etc. This record could as likely be on Darla as it could be on Kranky - sleepy grooves that won't lull you to sleep, if you don't let it, and just as pleasant when being ignored as it is full-blast on your car stereo. File next to the first Tortoise LP and the unshitty Sea And Cake stuff. Pop Culture Detox February 1999 If you are a fan of Schrasj, like I am, then you are probably just shocked to be reading a review about their latest album, as I am to be writing it. After they had supposedly broken up last year, I had never thought that I would see another Schrasj release, much less a full length album. However, reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated, and luckily we have f to show for it. f features Schrasj's usual laid back style that combines indiepop constructions with a mellow jazz sensibility. What sets Schrasj apart on f, however, is their ability to take chances and succeed at a musical fusion that seems impossible. This is not the same Schrasj that you can hear on their first album, but it seems like the next logical step for a band that has broken up, grown apart, and come back together again. - Brandt Fundak Texas Monthly February 1999 If you're already missing King Coffey's Trance Syndicate label, schrasj - a trio of ex-rice students - will provide your post-rock fix. On "f" (ojet), all the ingredients that have made Chicago's Tortoise one of the most popular touring bands on the club circuit are here: oddly chorded bass runs mixed way up front, guitar playing that is adamantly anti-virtuosic, and a drummer who calmly slaps and shuffles his way around the beat. These days a lot of this stuff is floating around indie-land, but little of it is as good as this. Splendid E-Zine January 25, 1999 Describing Schrasj is easy -- just reel off a list of words like gentle, simple, delicate, melodic, shy, mellow, understated or sedate. But Schrasj is more than a string of disjointed adjectives. Combine the mostly-unobtrusive drone-and-hum-and-blat of organs and 303s, gorgeously unhurried guitar melodies, bass work reminiscent of early New Order and a self-effacing boy-girl vocal combo, and the result is something pretty transcendent. This optimization of aesthetics is particularly obvious on "The Birge", in which Terri Loewenthal's breathy vocals skim the top of a tightly-meshed guitar-bass assault, while drums veer unexpectedly from percolating subtlety to pistol-shot intensity. The last forty seconds of the song are one of the most beautiful pop moments I've enjoyed in ages, but there are plenty of additional epiphanies elsewhere on the disc. The sprawling "Connect", for instance, is a womblike creation of muted guitars, electronic noises, ambient sounds and incisive, sometimes mechanical beats -- over nearly eight minutes, it goes through constant, fascinating changes in rhythm and melody. Schrasj also scores points for being smart enough to vary their song tempos rather than remaining constant; this, plus thoughtful track sequencing, helps f avoid the "one track sounds exactly like the next" pitfall. If you enjoy Luna or perhaps Aerial M, and if you appreciated the direction taken by Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, Schrasj deserves a place in your music collection. Spongey Monkey #9 Beautiful, sedate pop music along the lines of tortoise... but with a few upbeat electro moments and male/female vocals. A very pleasant find! 5 of 5 stars. Feminist Baseball #15 "This has the best Wedding Present jangle since, well, the Wedding Present. Recommended! - Nancy Ostrander Catch That Beat, Japan "I think that Fantastic is 'spacy.' This 7 inch is just it. Spacy melody really matches softie vocal. It made me comfortable. Keep on ear on this fantastic record label." -Yayoi Pitchfork Winter 1999 Most musicians would probably tell you that going unnoticed is the death knell. Then again, others not only go unnoticed, but they tend to shoot for it. Richard "Aphex Twin" James is perhaps the foremost purveyor: a soundscapist so tuned-in that when he does make a song that demands your attention, it's horrific enough that you need him to fade out fast just to keep from freaking out. There are no freakout moments on Schrasj's F, a mix of low-toned guitars, ambient vocals and various MC303 knob twiddlings. In fact, nary a moment on the band's sophomore effort demands your attention. But that doesn't mean you won't catch yourself listening, anyway. The steely samples and warped rhythm that introduce "Connect" couldn't be sonically further from the elegant guitar repetition they lead into, yet the odd coupling works as well together as an antique end table with a postmodern lamp on top of it. A similar build seamlessly takes "Old Fred Levy" from a dub- inflected spillage of drum loops to a mumbling guitar. For all the bit parts that accentuate F and bring it close to the cinematic ambience created by Tortoise, Schrasj is a guitar band at its core. Indie chords hold up Terri Loewenthal's melancholic vocals and make "The Birge" sound like it's coming straight from the Unrest and Velocity Girl school of bubblegum heartbreak. And both "Five Parts" and "Weathered as the Wood it Tends" are bolstered by guitar patterns that are as responsible for the dull mood as the vocals. In the album's liner notes, Schrasj printed the motto "We don't go straight, we go forward." It may be true, but after listening to F, a more fitting motto would be, "We don't go unnoticed, we go unassumed." - Shan Fowler Fanatic Promotion/Pal Mail-Order Before describing Schrasj's music, one must play a round of the name game. If you didn't catch on after the band's 1997 debut album, don't worry you can do it. Simply take the first half of "school" and the last half of "garage" and, well, you know. Like their name, Schrasj's music is not easily pronounced. This Houston based trio has weathered a four year existence that has included the loss of three guitarists, breakups, marriages, divorces and a house fire, so it should come as no surprise that Schrasj make music ladeled thick with the air of escapism, of crawling deep within the impulse of musicality, of detachment from the mundane realities of existence. Schrasj use loose song structures, ambient guitars, hypnotic bass lines and fragmented vocals to make music that is the soundtrack to travel without destination. Like when you get in the car and it's not about where you're going, it's about the excitement of uncertainty; it's about the drive. - © 1999 Fanatic Promotion Stratagem Reviewed 12/98 (for HaC #21) Schrasj - self-titled 7" Just about as 60's / 70's as a cover can get and the music, complete with funky basslines, diddling guitar notes and low-key female vocals...pretty intriguing. A toned-down !!! crossbred with one of those lo-fi indie bands like Low or Ida, maybe. This 7" is pretty lengthy and some might consider that a fault, since the energy level is so...well....non-existent for the better part of the record. It has a tendency to drag, but some of you folks out there might get a kick out of it. I can't see myself listening to this with any regularity, but my experience was pleasant enough. One of those records that is intended to help you with the transition from day to night and conscious to sub-conscious. - DO Space City Rock 1997 Schrasj - s/t CD (76.2%) "Upon listening to this, I have to wonder why it is that one of the coolest, most beautiful pop bands in town had to burn out so damn quick - at the time of this album's release, the band's been nonexistent for some time, with former members off doing their own various band-type things (like Ozone Park and Jessica Six, for two). Thankfully, in the wake of this record's release, the folks formerly known as Schrasj have recently managed to put aside their differences and do a few reunion shows - and hey, if we're lucky, those few shows will build up to bigger and better things. Enough blathering about the band - the album itself is a pretty little pop gem, with plenty of delicately-sung melodies, shimmery guitars, and songs about love & sleeping. Don't take that to mean that this is all twee harmonies and the like, though; when they get going, Schrasj rock like Velocity Girl at their best (as evidenced by the faster bits of "Unfinished"), or quietly rage right alongside folks like Mineral (take a listen to the furious ending of "Moneyshot"). Heck, some of this album is just plain funky - "Winkle," in particular, which reminds me of nothing more than the dancier side of the Darling Buds. To top it off, the listed tracks end up with the out-of-place-but-still-cool Slint-like track "Colder Than Water Ice," essentially a poem read by drummer Alexei over moody instrumental ambience (not "ambient" as in the style of music, mind you) - and damned if it's not bad, at that. Just so all you collector purist freaks out there know, this isn't all new stuff. Five or six of the twelve songs have appeared elsewhere, including three 7"s and a Cher Doll compilation. However, the old stuff here has been remastered, remixed, and generally prettied up, and I can definitely tell the difference, after listening to both the old and new versions. So, if there are old songs on here, well, they're still good songs, and at least they're not quite the same as the previously-released versions. In addition, there are a two extra "hidden" tracks tacked on the end ("Flips" and the Seam-meets-Simon & Garfunkel ballad "Flying"), recorded way back when with original guitarist Kyle, that've never been released anyplace before (and if they hadn't been stuck on here, they might've never seen the light of day). Put it all together, and man, this is one of the best damn indie-pop efforts I've ever heard." Incite #30 Schrasj are a fine, understated pop band with a very worthwhile debut (at least I think it's their first) single on Fantastic called "Tower." It took me awhile to figure out what this reminded me of, and why I liked it so much...then I remembered "Skinhead Girl" by Unrest and how that will always be one of my favorite songs, and how Vomit Launch never got the credit they deserved. If I had to guess, I'd say Schrasj remembered the same things: insistently swaying guitars & drums set the pace, while quietly sincere guy-girl vocals trade pondering duties. "Tower" is one of those all-too-rare crafted songs that grows on itself, and as a result it's sure to grow on you as well. - Tim Alborn Houston Press December 18, 1997 Future a blur... Granted, Schrasj's recent decision to embark on an indefinite hiatus doesn't make a whole lot of sense -- especially now. This last year or so has seen the ambient noise-pop trio (and sometime quartet) emerge from its self-absorbed shell and come tentatively into its own on-stage. Thanks mostly to their spacy, hypnotic, self-titled debut CD on the local 76.2% Records, the group was also beginning to show faint signs of a life above and beyond Houston's artier underground enclaves. Media mentions were trickling in from as far west as Austin, and it looked as if this Public News poster band might have a shot at breaking out of the Inner Loop scene's overprotective sanctum of hipness. Among Texans in the know, Schrasj has been mentioned in the same breath as the heady cult favorites American Analog Set and Furry Things, whose label, Trance Syndicate, has given the band its blessing in print. Some have even speculated that Schrasj might earn its own place among the legitimate post-psychedelic inheritors of the dreamy, disjointed aesthetic handed down by pioneering Houston experimentalists Red Krayola and the 13th Floor Elevators. The group even landed a gig in Austin, praise God. But that significant surge of momentum has hit a wall, so to speak, with the departure of drummer/band co-founder Alexei Angelides, who split for London a few weeks ago. Apparently, the trip is exploratory in nature, undertaken for no reason other than pure curiosity and governed by no particular real-life parameters (though he did find a job). In other words, Angelides simply packed up his shit and left -- which, again, might not make a lot of sense to most of us. The band could find another drummer and continue. But that isn't even an option as far as remaining Schrasj members Terri Loewenthal (vocals, bass) and Gram LeBron (guitar, vocals) are concerned. LeBron looks at it this way: "In a way, it was kind of cool, because we knew we weren't going to burn out," he says. "We had a month to work as hard as we could and then [Alexei] was gone." From its inception, Schrasj has been a rather perplexing entity, surviving mostly on impulse and seemingly fueled by unexpected twists of fate. The group came together in January 1995 at Rice University, where LeBron and Angelides met while working lunch duty at the school's faculty dining facility. Fellow Rice undergrad Loewenthal, LeBron's girlfriend at the time, was brought in to sing and play bass. The group's live debut came at a small on-campus party. Since then, the trio has been augmented by a series of guitarists (Will Adams was the most recent), none of whom have stuck around for long. "We've always had a problem with that fourth member," admits Loewenthal. Adds LeBron, "For a while, we had this old drunk in the band. He was a good guy, but he would just get drunk every time we played and it got really annoying. Then we had this guy who was really into being an artist [LeBron gives the word some effeminate embellishment]." Over the course of the band's on-again, off-again existence, LeBron and Loewenthal got married, watched their house -- and most of their belongings -- go up in flames and saw their marriage disintegrate. The band's temporary breakup was the inevitable result of the couple's divorce. But as the harsh feelings mellowed over time, LeBron and Loewenthal realized their creative chemistry hadn't suffered, and Schrasj reunited, remaining intact until Angelides's recent move. Then, there's also the matter of the band's CD, Schrasj, a lethargic amalgam of slightly off-center grooves and reluctant craftsmanship that straddles the wavy continuum between the well-grounded song structures of female-fronted post-punk acts like Velocity Girl and Blake Babies and the more impressionistic atmospherics of Velvet Underground disciples Galaxie 500. The sonic embodiment of a grade-school daydream, the band's music rarely attaches itself to anything stable or predictable. And when that happens -- as on more conventional tunes such as "$10," "Age of Consent" and "Moneyshot" -- the results are far from ordinary. The group's deceptively complex ribbons of sound hang there precariously, standing out like colorful shreds of a burst balloon snagged in the branches of a bare tree. It's pop music, sure. But it certainly takes a roundabout way in getting there. "The thing about pop is that it's so predictable," says Loewenthal. "And that's the part about it that I don't like so much." Indeed, it's hard to believe that anything associated with Schrasj could be considered predictable at this point. Now that the band is all but history here, LeBron and Loewenthal are finishing up the follow-up to Schrasj, on which Angelides laid down most of the drum parts before leaving. Once that's been released, LeBron and Loewenthal are planning a trip to London, where, if everything goes as planned with Angelides, they may even resurrect the band. And seeing as just about anything's possible with this bunch, one shouldn't rule out a Schrasj phenomenon overseas.