The Caribbean Bio
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Established in 2000 in Washington, DC, The Caribbean comprises Michael Kentoff (sings lead, some guitar, waveform edits, Gameboy), Matthew Byars (electronic warping, drums, bass, harmonies), Tony Dennison (drums, email drums, some brass), Don Campbell (bass, drums, slide guitar, kitchen sink) and Dave Jones (electric guitar, banjo, synthetic tinting). Divided between Columbia, Baltimore, and Minneapolis, the band has unleashed a healthy brood of records since the turn of the millennium: Verse By Verse (Endearing, 2001), History’s First Know-It-All (Tomlab/Endearing, 2003), William of Orange EP (Hometapes, 2004), Plastic Explosives (Hometapes, 2005), and Populations (Hometapes, 2007).
The band is known for, among other things, assembling songs and records via email and, sometimes, snail-mail. Although that creative model has to some extent been abandoned now that the group members live in relative proximity to one another, the mind-set, like any mind-set (punk rock, DIY, reactionary, revolutionary), is locked in. It’s part of the group DNA.
Thus, the idea of sending five tracks from The Caribbean’s 2007 Hometapes record Populations to engineer, producer, mixologist Scott Solter for Solter to deconstruct, warp, and otherwise obliterate, was neither intimidating nor foreign.
While Solter was busy toiling with 2″ tape, textiles, liquid polymers, and computers in his North Carolina sound lab, the group became familiar with cutting-edge Australian experimental pop music label Hidden Shoal and it became clear to both group and label that the Caribbean/Solter EP was, conceptually, just the kind of project that might be perfect for Hidden Shoal to release. Once group and label began receiving rushes of Solter’s work, it became obvious that such a Caribbean-Hidden Shoal partnership would make creative sense. And it would be fun. And it is.
