Dust Galaxy (usa)

Rob Garza, co-founder of Washington DC music pioneers, Thievery Corporation, will be releasing his solo artist album under the moniker Dust Galaxy, in March of 2007. Formed in the summer of 1995 at D.C.’s Eighteenth Street Lounge – the now world-renowned venue that is still a creative incubator for DC underground music-- Rob with partner Eric Hilton went on to deliver their 1997 debut LP, Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi, that had already begun to define a new genre of electronic music and connect with an international community of like-minded souls. Three albums later, and last year’s critically-acclaimed The Cosmic Game saw them collaborate with likes of The Flaming Lips, Perry Farrell and David Byrne, culminating in Rolling Stone magazine saying, “Together, Hilton and Garza explore foreign cultures with wide-eyed curiosity and a taste for the unexpected. Then they lock themselves in a studio and record songs that tell stories of a better world.” Which leads us suitably to the next chapter - Rob Garza’s debut solo artist album: Recorded over a three-and-a-half month period at the beginning of the year with producer, Brendan Lynch – famed for his work as the Lynchmob and with producing Primal Scream and Paul Weller, among others, Rob began the process of mixing down the original demos that had originally written and recorded between his homes in DC and Mexico. Transposing his position from that of cult electronic producer to full-on, acoustic guitar-strumming singer/songwriter was never going to be the easiest step, but for Rob it was the only way. Years spent listening to his parents’ soul, rock, and folk records while growing up outside Washington DC had sewn the seed. Teenage punk years soon followed, as would countless world tours as part of the Thievery Corporation – providing Rob with countless stories from the road. As Rob himself says, “This record touches on a lot of those influences and experiences that I’d always wanted to put out. It all had to be put into a very personal context.” Once the demos had been laid down in their skeleton form, Garza contacted Brendan Lynch – who had previously remixed Thievery’s ‘The Revolution Solution’, to ask him if he wanted to work on his own record. Lynch agreed and so the two holed up in various London studios and got to work. Primal Scream band members; Darren Mooney (Drums) and Martin Duffy (Keyboards) were in session, as were The People’s Revolutionary Choir’s Jim Townsend on guitar and Adam Blake from Cornershop on sitar. Meanwhile, Lynch would interrupt production to pick up the occasional guitar or accordion. The live band that will be touring with Rob this fall features such luminaries as James Canty (The Make-Up, Ted Leo/Pharmacists) on guitar, Jerry Busher (Fugazi, French Toast) on drums, Ashish Vyas (GoGoGo Airheart, Thievery Corporation) on bass, and Salem Steele on keyboards with Rob singing and playing guitar. The result – a journey into Rob’s past present and future. A world where psychedelics, rock, punk, Americana, electronica and good old-fashioned songs co-exist without sounding out-of-place. “It’s nice to go outside your comfort zone and shake things up a little sometimes,” he philosophizes. “When you’re working with other musicians and painting with new colors it makes you see things differently in terms of your own art.”