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  • HB
  • ARCADE FIRE SETS THE BOWL ABLAZE
  • Sep. 20, 2007
  • WILD LIGHT AND LCD SOUNDSYSTEM OPEN THE SHOW

    THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2007, AT 7PM

    Concert sponsored by WAMU; Media Sponsor: Myspace.com

    Canadian indie-rock band Arcade Fire returns to the Hollywood Bowl for their first appearance as headliners at the iconic venue on Thursday, September 20 at 7 pm. Wild Light and LCD Soundsystem open the show.

    Arcade Fire performs in support of their latest chart-topping release Neon Bible. Since Arcade Fire's 2005 appearance at the Hollywood Bowl with David Byrne, band members Win and William Butler, Régine Chassagne, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Sarah Neufeld, Jeremy Gara and Owen Pallett have garnered widespread acclaim for their live performances - an infectious mix of indie-gypsy-rock.

    New England foursome Wild Light sets the tone for the evening with their crowd-pleasing melodies and lyrics. James Murphy, aka LCD Soundsystem, mixes it up on the turntable with sounds from his latest release, Sound of Silver, elevating audiences with his mix of pulsing beats and abstract funk.

    The ticket price for this concert includes a one dollar donation to Partners in Health (www.phi.org).

    ARCADE FIRE spent most of 2006 holed up in a small church in a small town outside of Montreal. They were recording their second album Neon Bible. The couple years before that had been rather hectic. Funeral, their first album, was released in September of 2004. The moment it came out, The Arcade Fire was caught up in a flurry of activity that left none dead but several wounded. In 2004, The Arcade Fire was playing small venues packed to the gills with 100, maybe 200 people. After Funeral came out, the size of the shows slowly crept up. You could probably argue that the live show was better than the record. By the end of 2005, The Arcade Fire was playing large venues and performing with such greats as David Bowie. In the summer of 2005 they opened for David Byrne at the iconic Hollywood Bowl. The success of these shows led them to play gigs in Japan and Sweden and Brazil. They also got to perform a very poorly rehearsed version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart (Again)" with U2. So all in all, by the time the year ended, the Arcade Fire were pretty damn tired. Coming off a year of intense touring, they wanted to just sit down and write some songs. And then record them. So they found a church out in a small town and turned it into a studio. All this took about a year. The band worked and played and worked, and as Christmas 2006 approached the recording was finished. Neon Bible was full of half-assed punk rock mistakes and meticulously orchestrated woodwinds, processed strings and mandolin, quiet rumbles and loud rumbles. But mostly just eleven songs that the band thinks are really good.

    LCD SOUNDSYSTEM James Murphy is at least three people, maybe even four: head of the Grammy-nominated LCD Soundsystem, globetrotting DJ, in-demand producer/remixer (Justin Timberlake, Nine Inch Nails, Gorillaz), one half of the mighty DFA production team, DFA Records honcho, etc. etc. His latest release Sound of Silver on DFA/Capitol Records, the follow-up to the massively acclaimed, Grammy-nominated 2005 debut, was recorded over the summer of 2006 in a farm in upstate New York by Murphy and visitors from the big city including live band members Nancy Whang, Pat Mahoney and Tyler Pope. There, between silver foil-covered walls, nine tracks were crafted into one of the pinnacle albums of 2007. Seen "As close to a perfect hybrid of dance and rock music's values as you're likely to ever hear…an absolute joy to listen to for every possible reason," by Pitchfork, Sound of Silver finds LCD Soundsystem further expanding its sonic palette, taking its experimental impulses to wild new places but also firmly establishing itself as a singularly great pop group. Here, pulsing beats, abstract funk, crystal melodies and towering walls of sound combine to create a sound genuinely like no other.

    WILD LIGHT formed in the spring of 2005, Wild Light began as a series of cross-country letters between Jordan Alexander and Timothy Kyle, but in truth, the seeds of these letters were planted years before in the
    schoolhouses of their New Hampshire youths. Trading melodies and lyrics, the boys crafted catchy and powerful songs. Childhood friend Seth Pitman joined in to help bring the songs to life, and the three
    moved into a house in a dying New England town. Soon Seth Kasper, seeing the boys huddled around their piano, hired himself to be the band's drummer. Through the damn cold winters and beneath leaky ceilings, the four boys wrote what was to become their first release. Since then Wild Light has delivered memorable, melodic songs, show after show, crowd after crowd…and the whole thing grows and it is good.

    One of the largest natural amphitheaters in the world, with a seating capacity of nearly 18,000, the HOLLYWOOD BOWL has been the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since its official opening in 1922, and in 1991 gave its name to the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, a resident ensemble that has filled a special niche in the musical life of Southern California. The 2004 season introduced audiences to a revitalized Hollywood Bowl, featuring a newly-constructed shell and stage and the addition of four stadium screens enhancing stage views in the venue. To this day, $1 buys a seat at the top of the Bowl for many of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's concerts. While the Bowl is best known for its sizzling summer nights, during the day California's youngest patrons enjoy "SummerSounds: Music for Kids at the Hollywood Bowl," the Southland's most popular summer arts festival for children, now in its 39th season. Attendance figures over the past several decades have soared: in 1980 the Bowl first topped the half-million mark and close to one million admissions have been recorded. In February 2007, the Hollywood Bowl was named Best Major Outdoor Concert Venue for the third year in a row at the 18th Annual Pollstar Concert Industry Awards; the Bowl's summer music festival has become as much a part of a Southern California summer as beaches and barbecues, the Dodgers, and Disneyland.

    PLEASE NOTE:

    THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 at 7 PM

    HOLLYWOOD BOWL, 2301 N. Highland Ave. in Hollywood

    In order of appearance

    WILD LIGHT

    LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

    ARCADE FIRE

    Concert sponsored by WAMU; Media Sponsor: Myspace.com

    Tickets ($31 - $50.50) are on sale now at HollywoodBowl.com, at the Hollywood Bowl Box Office (Tuesday - Saturday, 12 p.m. - 6 p.m.), or by calling Ticketmaster at 213.480.3232, and at all Ticketmaster outlets. Groups of 10 or more may be eligible for a 20% discount, subject to availability; call 323.850.2050 for further details. For general information or to request a brochure, call 323.850.2000.

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  • Contact:

    Adam Crane, acrane@laphil.org, 213.972.3034; Lisa Bellamore, lbellamore@laphil.org, 213.972.3689; For photos: 213.972.3034