Album Notes

Sometimes locales just end up creating similar occurrences, differentiated by the era that births them. Take a crafty pop music guitarist who knows how to come up with hooks and have them team up with a trained avant garde classical musician and you get the Velvet Underground. Move that same combo from the Lower East Side across the river to northwest Brooklyn and tack on 40 years and you get Christy & Emily.

This duo present their version of this mixture of elements with their second LP Superstition. An octet of pieces that explore modern classical techniques grafted with pop songs. This alchemy produces a string of highly catchy ascetic tunes combined with undercurrents of discordance and dissonance. Add to this lyrics that take from the history of pop and modernist mid-20th Century poetry.

Christy Edwards started learning to play the guitar from a “Ride the Lightning” tablature book in her bedroom in central California. After coming to New York she played in Lil’ Fighters, who self-released two albums. At the present she also plays in a pop punk band called The Totallys and drums in cult favorites, the Sumerians. When not playing music she is shooting and editing video, with a focus on documentary.

Emily Manzo has been tickling the ivories since she was able to tickle while growing up in Maine. Since graduating from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and moving to New York she has won numerous awards and much critical praise in the U.S. for her interpretation of new music. She has premiered the works of a number of composers and is part of an ongoing collaboration with video artist Paul Rowley based around John Cage’s keyboard works from the 40s. She teaches piano and feels a strong commitment to her students who she encourages to create and explore at the piano.