Slitzweitz Gamelan is an alternative rock band from Yarmouth. The band is infamous for its avant-garde take on alternative rock music. The band plays dissonant, chaotic music with a clear and serene-sounding rhythm section, which led Dan Sandoval, lead guitarist of the band, to naming the band after the Indonesian Gamelan music. He found that the rhythm section sounded like gongs and xylophones, but that the sound of the band was chaotic and noisy, just like a Gamelan.
Slitzweitz Gamelan was founded in 1989 by brothers Perry and Jake Connoly. They were joined by Britney Wolanski and Dan Sandoval in 1990, when they turned their bed-room band in a studio project to record some music score for an experimental film that Jake Connoly was doing at the time. Motivated by their synergetic garage sessions, they started to record demos, which quickly garnered them a cult following under local alternative music enthousiasts.
Inspired by their impromptu success, they recorded a studio album with the tiny indie label Maddar Records and got some airplay at the underground show at Marbella XFM late in the night in 1991, which was noticed by the influential label Copeland Recordings. They were allowed to record another album and they quickly rose to fame after releasing the quintessential New Shetlandian rock album 20 Songs of Praise. Their fanbase was limited to New Shetlandian alternative music fans. They got virtually no commercial airplay, but sales of 20 Songs of Praise were high, and it was named the most important New Shetlandian music album ever released in 2005 by both an internet poll and readers vote of the music magazine Madness.
The band continues to play sold-out venues and headlined the 2008 Marbella Open Air Festival.
Discography[]
- Angt Hu
- 20 Songs of Praise
- And then there were none
- Brewer, Fowler
- A Compilation of 16 Absolutely Fucking Terrible Songs
- Drt