Stephen Steinbrink & Emperor X @ Monarch Berlin | Wednesday, 05.03.2014

Stephen Steinbrink is a 25 year old pop songwriter, born in Phoenix, Arizona, and currently living in Olympia, Washington. He has just completed his new album of pop music entitled Arranged Waves.

The follow-up to 2012’s I Drew a Picture, Arranged Waves was composed in static intervals between tours as a solo performer and session bassist for Broken Water. Back in Olympia, he began recording these 14 songs in his home studio, inspired by the media artist James Roemer, repressed memories of watching TV, John Cale’s 70’s output, and the mobile songwriting communes that exist in secret throughout the western United States.

Stephen Steinbrink | I Don’t Want to Get Stabbed
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=WBUWWdV1lN4

Steinbrink’s distinctive falsetto and unique fingerpicking is accompanied on record by pop soothsayers Andrew Dorsett, Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson (LAKE / Karl Blau / Mt. Eerie), songwriter Tom Filardo (Filardo / Bouquet) and cellist Jen Grady (You Are Plural / Emily Jane White). The songs were arranged collaboratively, and later heavily edited on both computers and analog tape.

Stephen Steinbrink | When it’s easier
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=VpEBYfLZz10

Former science educator Chad Matheny has been recording and performing music under the Emperor X moniker since 1998. His albums grabbed the attention of NPR, Salon.com, Pitchfork, Vice/Noisey, The Onion, The New Yorker, Said the Gramophone, Rote Raupe, Motor.de, and many other international media outlets. The UK’s Plan B magazine called his music “a swollen interfusion of capricious brilliance.”

Emperor X | Erica Western Teleport
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=YziLq0zaOUQ

Western Teleport, his latest album, was released in 2011 on the venerable Bar/None Records to international blog and college radio acclaim, including a rave review on PopMatters, attention from influential Seattle alternative radio giant KEXP, and plaudits from The Huffington Post, in which a writer called Matheny’s music “one of the most creative things I’ve ever heard of.”