DropCaster Artist Showcase Begins with MORAY

So last night, I made my way over to a someone's house in the northeast Heights of Albuquerque to interview an alternative rock band called Moray. As I told the band when I met them, "I don't really know what people mean anymore when they tell me they play 'alternative rock', so what do you guys mean?" They preceded to show me, leading me into their rug-lined little studio capsule in the back of the house, where they flipped on the amps and the instruments and got down with their bad selves and let me record a couple of live tracks on my trusty Mini-Disc recorder. With Ryan on vocals and guitar, Ian on bass, and "Animal" (yes, he really goes by that) on drums, Moray utterly *ripped* the place up with their version of alternative rock, complete with those guhn-guhn-guhn-guhn feedback-distortion sounds from the middle '90s that might remind you of Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins, and that song by The Cranberries that might be called, "What's in Your Head?" but lord knows I don't remember anymore.

This is a rock vernacular that is at once familiar and fresh, accentuating what I've always felt about the music of that time, that the death of Kurt Cobain and Bily Corgan's fascination with house music ended a conversation that still had a lot more to say. And Moray, it would seem, are here to say it. Described by another reviewer (and now themselves) as Jimi Hendrix meets the Smashing Pumpkins, I'm here to tell that these guys live up to the hype and here's hoping they've got a long future together.

Moray is the subject of the first DropCaster Artist Showcase podcast, which we will begin casting as soon as we go into our Alpha Two. In addition to a live track and a short interview, the cast will include some interstitial twelve-bar blues that the band jammed out for me - providing I can figure out how to make Audacity work the way I want it to. Until then...check out Moray on MySpace for a look at their upcoming Albuquerque gigs.