Ottobar

Aaron Frazer
Into The Blue Tour
with guests TBA

“Into The Blue is the clearest portrait of who I am as an artist. It’s me through and through,” says
multi-instrumentalist Aaron Frazer. A daring blend of soul, psychedelia, spaghetti western,
disco, gospel and hip-hop, Into the Blue represents the impressive range of Frazer's sonic
talents. Frazer maintains the unmistakable falsetto and classic songwriting he’s known for, but
plants Into the Blue firmly in the now with a hip-hop mentality at its core, weaving together
genres and production techniques to form something new.
Into The Blue was conceived, like so many classic records, out of heartbreak. Frazer moved
cross-country from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and embarked on a journey that’s reflected in the
album’s themes of grief, loneliness, and searching for healing. “Into The Blue really means
heading into the unknown. That has been the last year of my life and I'm still in the blue,” Frazer
explains. “But there are also songs here that celebrate love and the giddiness of a new
relationship and all that. That's part of a breakup to me, processing the whole thing,
remembering the things that were right as much as the things that were wrong.”
Frazer wrote on every track and played several live instruments on the album. The title track,
“Into The Blue”, is a haunting, resolute anthem, combining cinematic strings and tough-as-nails
breakbeats as Frazer heads west. “Here I go, to a place where the broken heart knows,” he
sings. “It’s all I can do. Back into the blue.” “Payback” is an explosive dancefloor heater,
featuring shimmering tambourines and driving bass lines. Northern soul drums meet snarling
fuzz guitar, hurdling towards its epic conclusion.
The album features moments of towering arrangements, recalling David Axelrod and Ennio
Merricone, balanced by rawness, incorporating iPhone recordings and one-take vocals. For Into
the Blue, Frazer enlisted Grammy-winner Alex Goose as co-producer, known for his
crate-digging samples and collaborations with hip-hop artists like Freddie Gibbs, Madlib and
Brockhampton. Frazer also experimented with samples for the first time on a record, drawing
from unexpected sources like 90s R&B group Hi-Five.
Though Into the Blue is born out of heartbreak, Frazer hopes it leaves listeners with a sense of
optimism. “You know, you can still laugh on a day when you're grieving,” he says, “there’s no
peaks without valleys,” he says, but Into The Blue sees Aaron Frazer at new heights. 

UŽ JSME DOMA
Consumer Culture
Severed Satellites

Music like the one played by UJD is hard to find anywhere else. It is wild in a punk way,
urgent, yet the composition is complex and elaborate with timeless lyrics. The typical
features are the trumpet sound, the incredible tempo and the live performances filled
with intense energy and humor. This is perhaps the reason why the band as well as their
audience don’t seem to get any older.
The music may seem chaotic, arranged randomly or improvised to an unfamiliar ear, but
that is far from the truth. The music relies on each tone, detail, band discipline and much
like a philharmonic orchestra, the musicians play according to sheets. An integral part of
the band’s footprint is the visual aspect provided by Martin Velíšek, a famous Czech
painter and graphic artist as well as a non-performing band member.
Už jsme doma was established in Teplice in 1985. About six months later, Miroslav
Wanek and Romek Hanzlík joined the band, having left the legendary punk band F.P.B.,
and they brought the work ethic and uniqueness that were characteristic of the F.P.B.
The music of Už jsme doma was heavily influenced by the Rock in Opposition avantgarde scene and most importantly by The Residents as well as by the punk scene
(Damned or Ebba Grön). On the Czech scene they have been in such company as the
bands Psi vojaci, Dunaj, Dybbuk or Krasne nove stroje.
Before the Velvet Revoluton the idiotic establishment had basically outlawed the band
making it illegal to perform publicly or make records. However, after 1989 they broke
through mostly because of their sophisticated originality, work ethic and will power
making it as afar as European clubs, North America and Japan where they have been
enjoying success in the form of regular concert tours. So far they have used their original
music to represent the Czech Republic in over 40 countries (just in USA more than 700
shows) and on 4 continents making them a respected part of the worldwide avantgarde.
The band often ventures into other art forms - animated film music (Krysaci - a TV
bedtime story, Fimfarum - Mira Wanek’s music was nominated for Cesky Lev - Czech
film awards), theatre (Ex-divadylko Zvolen, Minor, etc.).