Monday, September 6th, 2010

Sisters – Highway Scratch

Lo-fi indie/noise-pop duo Sisters will release their debut record Ghost Fits on September 28, 2010 on Narnack Records. Sisters is Aaron Pfannebecker (vocals/guitar) and Matt Conboy (drums/keys). They may not be siblings but the moniker they perform under — Sisters — reflects their commitment to the music they manifest together.

Matt and Aaron met while studying fiction writing at the New School in New York. It took a while for Aaron and Matt to figure out how to develop their sound. Wanting to create as big of a noise as possible with just guitars and drums, Aaron started playing his guitar through two amps, augmenting the monster sound he created with pedal-based loops. Upping the ante, Matt built a custom analogue drum synth into his kick drum. Running this feed through effects in real time allowed him to get a wholly unique sound out of his kit, completing the Sisters’ one-of-a-kind, 21st Century alt-rock sonic experience.

Aaron originally hails from western Massachusetts, a small farm town not far from the liberal arts Mecca of Northampton where he attended a public charter arts school. Matt is from Oakland, California, where a cultural combination of gangster rap and punk rock dominated his young music life. The pair initially found common ground with bands like Nirvana, Pixies, Pavement and Sonic Youth (the Sisters moniker also gives a nod to the band’s fourth album), but from there their tastes diverged. Matt really loves fellow East Coast masters of noise, Lightning Bolt, while Aaron is into the popier side of 70′s post-punk, My Bloody Valentine-style noise. “We both like noise — and really good hooks in the music and voice,” Aaron notes.