Aggressive and atmospheric.
Edgy and Ethereal.
Dense and dimensional.
Tactile and textural.
Maximum Indifference works in contrasts, in a conscious and sincere effort to obscure all lines of communication, to confound and befuddle, to perplex and obfuscate.
By the means of frequency, amplitude, and time, affect the vibration of air and resonation of skin to mar that safe silence: pollution in what seemed the boundless container of everything.
It is the mutation of personal interests and perceptions, compressed into random, loud and annoying metaphors; inversely, it is the expansion of atmospheres, in an attempt to harness and distill clouds of clarity and grace into something that can be captured, revealed, and relived again, scanned and saved for some private moment alone.
Maximum Indifference is an all-instrumental rock trio based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Eschewing the standard trappings of contemporary popular music, Mark Bladek (guitars), Rich Duarte (drums), and Gustaf Fjelstrom (bass guitars), focus not on the adherence to a formula or recipe, but on the continual process of experimentation and manipulation.
While functioning around the traditional core power trio armature of guitar, bass, and drums, the trio infuses this skeleton with surgical injections of synthesizers, samplers, sound effects, and the occasional spoken word, defining a luxuriant soundscape, and conjuring up countless images to accompany their filmless soundtracks.
Maximum Indifference formed in the fall of 1990 after linking up through a series of music store advertisements. The short, fruitless, and ultimately unnecessary search for a vocalist revealed to the band that the chemistry and angularity afforded by the trio format far outweighed the need for a fourth member.
A rough live demo tape propelled the band into opening slots in the local progressive/fusion scene, finding themselves warming crowds for the likes of Allan Holdsworth, Steve Morse, Dream Theater, and Brand X.
In 1994, Maximum Indifference entered the studio to record their debut album. Self-financed, recorded on donated studio time, and produced by longtime friend Steve Graham, the self-titled album was released in 1996 on the band's own label, Botched Records.
Though a small and limited release, the album met with critical praise, generating new fans throughout the US, Brazil, France, Italy, and Spain.
Summer 2000 marks the release of the follow-up album from Maximum Indifference entitled "The Transmutations of Supposed Angels: Or Beings that were once Girls"(Botched 0002).
Clocking in at over 67 minutes, Sup_Ang, (as the file names abbreviate) represents the culmination of three year's worth of writing, rewriting, arranging, and performing.
Produced by bassist Gustaf Fjelstrom and recorded primarily at his personal studio, Mercurial Labs, the album reflects genuinely the aura of Indifference.
Guitars weave effortlessly between the harsh and the soothing, bass guitars guard from below, stabbing, growling, and undulating amidst the precise, precarious, and furious placement of drum after cymbal after drum.
Aggressive and atmospheric. Edgy and Ethereal. Dense and dimensional. Tactile and textural.
To this end, the members of Maximum Indifference seek not for the empty promise of success, but for the perpetuation of this creative endeavor.
Their emphasis is not on pleasing everyone, but on indifference, perhaps maximum Indifference, to what the lowest common denominator may dictate.
Read more...