North Carolina’s GIANT has announced that they intend to move forward under the moniker BRAVEYOUNG. The band comments:
“To avoid inevitable legal repercussions, we have decided to stop using the name Giant. Braveyoung will be the name we now collectively function under. Nothing is changing, we are still the same band, but this has been a long time coming, and we are finally confident enough to go forward with it. It’s only a name.”
2009 promises to be a big year for the band, who will soon be releasing a 10-inch entitled ‘Bloom.’ Later in the year, the band will release a full-length followup to their 2005 debut, ‘Song.’ Details surrounding both releases are forthcoming.
BRAVEYOUNG bio:
Listening to Greensboro, North Carolina’s BRAVEYOUNG, Estonian minimalist composer Avro Pärt might not immediately come to mind as an obvious influence. Indeed, many who embrace the sort of timeless, passionate, other-worldly sounds that the members of BRAVEYOUNG create have probably never even heard of Avro Pärt. Or Henryk Górecki. Or Philip Glass.
But perhaps that’s what makes BRAVEYOUNG so special: this group of eager young musicians from the foothills of Appalachia is just as moved by European post-modernism as they are by American post-rock and because of this, there’s a degree of subtlety in their work that’s difficult to find elsewhere in the sea of American post-rock and post-metal bands that have sprang up recently.
The members of the band, which was founded in 2004 under the moniker ‘GIANT,’ consider themselves more of a collection of musicians with the common goal of creating art for its (and their) own sake than a traditional ‘rock band’, per se. For BRAVEYOUNG—Zachary, Isaac, Ben, Derrick, Kyle—it’s not about the band so much as it’s about the music as art, and the musicians as artists.
“Braveyoung, like Giant, is only a moniker,†explains Zachary. “If we could, we would call ourselves ‘Zachary Isaac Ben Derrick Kyle,’ but I suppose it doesn’t work that way.â€
In 2005, BRAVEYOUNG recorded their first album, ‘Song’ (then still under the GIANT moniker) with Chris Dowhan at Planet Red Studios, which they released with the help of politically charged label Southern Empire Records in the next year. In 2007, the band released a split with Providence, RI’s Tides via Level Plane / Teenage Disco Bloodbath and they’ve recently finished work on their next release—a 10-inch for THE END RECORDS, which will be their first release for their new label.
The 10-inch, a two-part opus entitled ‘Bloom,’ was recorded in a Greensboro church and will be limited to a very small quantity with no re-pressing. After that, THE END will release BRAVEYOUNG’s sophomore full-length effort, details for which are still murky.
As for the immediate future, BRAVEYOUNG has a two-week tour with Advent and Torch Runner coming up in early February and shortly following that will come an announcement concerning a full US with Tides.
“We just like to play,†confesses Zachary, “and don’t really think about much else. As with any other form of expression, it is and will continue to be a constantly growing and evolving process. If it wasn’t, there’d be no point in us continuing on.â€
BRAVEYOUNG is:
Zachary
Isaac
Ben
Derrick
Kyle
BRAVEYOUNG on the web:
http://www.myspace.com/giantnc
http://www.obraveyoung.com