ITS SUMMMMMMMER.

ok, ok.. i got some free time to sit down at a computer. sorry about the lack of internet updates! once summer hits the last thing I wanna do is sit around and stare at the screen. anyways, minus the net updating we have been pretty busy. staying busy writting new stuff and recording as well. we will get something new posted soon. I did want to let everyone know we are playing an indianapolis show on thursday at the vollrath. we are playing with cymbals eat guitars from the NYC area. be ready for a disaster, ITS TOOOOO HOT. oh yea our buddies early day miners from bloomington asked us to play their record release show on july 23rd at the video saloon. we gonna be there.

mere news..

hey so its been a little bit since last update.. sorry. we did close to a month of touring in april and may and both tours went very well. tons of people helped make that happen and we thank you all so much!

we will be slowing down with shows for a bit and start writing again. we are heading to Russian Recording next weekend to lay down a few tracks with our buddy Mike. Its still in the air on how those will be released but we will most likely let everyone hear one or two once they are finished. look for a few new releases soon. we promise to keep you all updated.

talk soon,
-haus

News/Tour/Songs/Moves

hey. this is jilly. I’m not allowed to drive the van because I make everyone seasick, but I think I can write a blog post while beav’s busy having an existential crisis. this is what’s in the works… we leave for a short tour again Wednesday, May 20. sticking to the Midwest this time.

*Wed May 20th - Chicago, IL - Ronny's

*Thurs May 21st - Milwaukee, WI - Franks Power Plant

*Fri May 22nd - Oshkosh, WI - The Reptile Palace

*Sat May 23rd - Minneapolis, MN - Turf Club

*Sun May 24th - Boone, IA - Elephant Dungeon

*Mon May 25th - Omaha, NE - Oleaver's

*Tues May 26th - Kansas City, MO - The Emerald Space

*Wed May 27th - Lawrence, KS - 8th St. Taproom

*Thurs May 28th - St. Louis, MO - Lemp Arts

*Fri May 29th - Iowa City, IA - The Glory Hole

we have new songs. we’re playing them. come see us.

starting to put up photos from the last tour. check out some from Cinci Punk Fest at the Southgate House, Tower 2012 in Cleveland, and the Hex-Margot sloppy makeout session in Pittsburgh. lots more photos to come....NYC, DC, Philly...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wearehex

when we get home we play the Push-Pull cd release show at the one and only Melody Inn on June 5.

recording new songs at the end of June with Mike at Russian Recording.

And Indy... we're moving the Hex Haus to the east coast in August. But it's been real.

STILL ALIVE. its a cliff hanger so the wait is necessary.

Hey, we are all still alive. I am just going through a quarter life crisis right now and I really need to hit rock bottom before I can get out any of the good creativeness. Give me a few days and I will give you some new stuff when I get back in the groove. I promise.

luv haus.

Gravy Makers, Road Dawgs, Raw Dawgs.

We are back from tour and well.. it was a god damn success. I am still coming around and trying to get out of this daze. Give me a day or two and I will give everyone some updates. There are tons of people we want to thank and a few people we don't want to thank. Those we don't wanna thank we hope burn in an electrical wiring caused fire while driving their dumb ass car. Updates soon!

love from the Haus.

New Songs..

Just posted "I'm Here But No I'm Not" and "Strange Jumps" from our new EP Various Songs, Sounds, & Furs up on our Myspace. Check them out and tell all your friends about 'em.

The EP will be for sale only at shows/tour on both CD and cassette. We will be selling it online once we get back from tour.

thanks!

If you Google it.. It will.... BE MY FRIEND TOO MAN!

Hey, so I did some Googlin' today and it looks like people are writing about Gloom Bloom. Here are a few reviews I found:

Gloom Bloom
Hex Haus
Street: 04.07
We Are Hex = The Cure + Peaches
This band is fantabulous. The term “genre-bending” does not do them justice. Banshee-like wails erupt (without much-needed early warning system--budget cuts won’t allow it) from lead singer Jilly’s lips and rain sonic volcanic bombs down around your ears with most finding a resonating purchase in your crown region. Much later, these bombs will make beautiful front yards for people in Hawaii that do not know their illustrative career as enchantingly crooned Hex tunes. I can’t say that I’ve been this entranced with vocals from a female lead in quite some time; they just haven’t been hacking it lately. But thanks be to the gods of rock (the only kind worth believing anymore) for giving me something decent to listen to from a gutsy female lead. The music backing her is also very well done-some haunting, electronic-inspired beats backed by excellent reverberating guitar and some plinky-plinks make for a very rewarding listening experience.
- JP - http://www.slugmag.com/article.php?id=1644 (In print April 09' Issue)
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Band/album: We Are Hex, Gloom Bloom
Label: Hex Haus
For fans of: Deerhoof, Erase Errata, Joy Division, New Order
CD review: If the pen is mightier than the sword then We Are Hex's latest release is proof that the song is mightier than the sawed off shotgun! Gloom Bloom is a rigid and sterile melding of angular post punk and new wave with eerie, almost robotic overlord voices dominating puny human screams. Jagged instrumentation is peppered with bells, synths, xylophones, and even a few basic guitars, bass, and drums. Then again a guitar can be a deadly weapon if you grab it by the neck and swing it at someone's head. This is a far more complicated and experimental album than what usually appears in these reviews, but it's a definite pull your head out of your ass must hear piece.
http://www.evilneedles.com/main/page1.html
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3.5 out of 5
Noisy psychedelic pop-rock made by a bunch of kids from Indianapolis…

We Are Hex are four kids from Indianapolis, Indiana. Two of whom, Brandon Beaver and Jilly Weiss, formed the band in 2007. They shut themselves away from the world for a year and wrote and recorded lots of songs and then…. never did anything with them because they weren’t quite “right”. Hmm. So, early 2008 came along and they get two more kids in on the act - a Trevor Wathen and a Matt Hagan. The four then moved in to what they describe as “the foulest neighbourhood in the city” and that then becomes home to chez Hex; or Hex Haus as the band call it - a recording studio, and a record label. A year later, it is 2009 and they’re releasing their debut album ‘Gloom Bloom’.

So that’s the history, now let’s move on to the music. Sonically, We Are Hex sit somewhere between noise rock and psychadelica, with a bit of art rock, dance and perhaps even a little bit of punk thrown in. They are mainly led by a bass heavy sound, with pretty much anything thrown in, from horns, xylophones and synths to the usual guitars, drums and piano. There is definitely a lot of experimentation going on throughout ‘Gloom Bloom’, and they are really f*cking hard to pin point because of it. We Are Hex are comparable to bands such as Gang Gang Dance or perhaps even Animal Collective in terms of experimentation and eccentricity, but a lot less cohesive and thought out, it seems. But at the same time, they are totally different from any band I can think of. There is a complete free spirit-ness to ‘Gloom Bloom’ and a complete mix of genres. Mostly, this is very much to their credit and they make innovative and interesting songs. Other times, however, it is too interesting (yes, I am going to say that) as there is far too much going on. The pace and style moves from experimental over to messy and overly-chaotic too sporadically sometimes - not even from song to song, but sometimes from second to second or verse to verse (not that there is much coherent structure in terms of verses in choruses - and I’m not saying that is a bad thing). However, I will say that the more I listen to this album, the less the messiness is a problem, and it does slowly become endearing. For a debut album from a band whose line up is little over a year old though, this is good work. I can forgive the messiness and sloppiness, as I mostly think it is intentional, and also because the individualism and the statement that We Are Hex make is a promising and stylish one.
By: Sara Curtis - http://www.subba-cultcha.com/article_album.php?id=9340
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We Are Hex Gloom Bloom (self-released)
A quartet that plays whatever the hell it likes. Wails, shouts, meandering guitars and more are laid over an impressively throbbing rhythm section. I suppose you could call this "gloom," but the drums and bass are simply too jaunty. A fine collection of disconcerting sounds.
http://www.aidabet.com/issues/305/305reviews.html
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In the bio on their website, We Are Hex describe their sound as an amalgam of noise, dance, doom, psychedelia, 50s and 60s pop and punk. And for once, a band’s grandiose claims of musical diversity aren’t utter bullshit. They combine all of those genres into a dreamy, dark and somewhat disturbing sonic stew.

The bio goes on to compare the band to The Cure, Gang of Four, P.J. Harvey and The Jesus and Mary Chain, but I feel like comparing these guys (and girl) to anyone else sells them short. To these ears, We Are Hex sounds like We Are Hex and nobody else.

This album is way too good to be the self-recorded debut of a band that just started two years ago. If they can keep up this level of quality, they’ll be legends in no time. Mark my words.

Actually, you know what? Fuck my words. They’re woefully inadequate. The whole album is available as an audio stream on http://www.wearehex.com. I highly recommend that you check it out if you’re at all interested in good music. I mean, it’s free! You’ve got nothing to lose!
Eric - BEAST Feedback - http://buffalobeast.com/
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"We Are Hex sound like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, except if they were more into Jesus Lizard, Pop Group and Suicide than John Hughes movie soundtracks."
www.detour-mag.com
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Formerly a duo, We Are Hex apparently recorded an entire album of songs, none of which will ever see the light of day, mostly down to (says the press release) their lack of sound quality. Lots of bands do this, record demo material that doesn’t make it onto their full official releases, in fact I suddenly remember reading in a guitar magazine that someone has over 200 hours of demos/jams/bootlegs recorded by Jimi Hendrix stored in a bank vault (I’ve no idea as to what they’re worth today, though). The point is, drawing attention to your unreleased material goes some way towards putting your actual released album well onto the spot.

And Gloom Bloom more than deserves its moment of glory. Starting with instrumental “Sea Hound”, a drolly atmospheric mix of lo-fi accordion and plucked guitar that might throw some listeners quite off the neo-gothic scent of We Are Hex. It is, in any event, a very foggy night in Indianapolis. Fortunately, the sharply discordant math rock that forms the basis of the We Are Hex sound swiftly cuts a swathe through the disorienting murk with more than a tinge of glee. That year in the studio was very far from wasted, and “Bottom Of My Belly”, with its incessant drumbeat and sinister xylophone riff, very firmly establishes We Are Hex as innovators who are quite definitely more than the sum of their influences.

This band is definitely most effective when upping the noise factor, though. Some of the slower moments don’t quite catch fire, such as “No Enemies” bouzouki and violin edginess which, while it’s atmospheric enough, has something of a dissatisfying conclusion, perhaps hinting at those less than satisfactory 2007 demo tracks. It’s the bigger, more assuredly thrash numbers that show We Are Hex at their most formidable, and allow Jilly Weiss’s keening pout of a vocal the spatiality her voice requires, while the growling bass and sharply accented drums of Matt Hagen and Brandon Beaver provide Trevor Wathen’s more inventive guitar licks with an energy that lifts the entire sound of the band, and spending a year sweating over a mixing board has very definitely had results here.

Really, there’s very little actual gloom on display here; rarely has sedative-induced depression sounded quite so upbeat. I’m just glad that the quartet didn’t add an acoustic ballad to the 13 songs on Gloom Bloom, which I’m certain they are aware would break their captiviating spells in ways they probably wouldn’t appreciate. We Are Hex, then: too rockist to fit amongst the real geek oddballs and too archly angst-ridden for the skater crowd. As it should be, really.
Jon Gordon - http://www.adequacy.net/2009/03/we-are-hex-gloom-bloom/
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"Gloom Bloom' starts of with a deceptively fey and moody instrumental and I always enjoy hearing a band soften its listeners up before delivering its real noise assault. Which coming from We Are Hex is a tumultuous blast of what they used to refer to on the US college circuits as 'math rock' spliced against the gothic mainbrace of Jilly Weiss's selfconciously european vocal which perfectly complements the strident narcissism of 'Bottom Of My Belly', the doomy synth romanticism of 'Easy Vision' the blank eyed nihilism of 'No FM/No AM', the toybox catastrophe of 'No Enemies'.

We Are Hex already recorded and then discarded an entire album of material, and if that album was half as good as 'Gloom Bloom' then I for one would very much like to hear it."
http://www.tastyfanzine.org.uk/albums84mar09.htm#WeAreHex
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"They're just doing it for attention. Ignore them and they'll quit."
http://www.hybridmagazine.com
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We Are Hex
Gloom Bloom
2009 - Hex Haus
Rating: 4 out of 5
The highly anticipated debut from Indianapolis’ We Are Hex has finally arrived, and the wait is worth it. Gloom Bloom is a powerful ode to sound experimentation by a group of talented musicians that have captured something richly unique and intensely “in the moment.” As each song progresses, you never know what dark alleyway the band will take you down. This is everything you would expect and more: passion and fury, light and darkness, all feeding off of each other that gives these songs a life of its own.

Whether direct or indirect, the band puts themselves in an ideal situation by crawling back in time without trapping themselves in a retro vortex. When New Order rose from the ashes of Joy Division, they were tapping into disco culture to propel them into a new style of dance music. With the saturation of standard pop and dance elements in today’s indie culture, We Are Hex strips away the ideology, going back to when music was dangerous and the days where The Rezillos wanted to go to Venus, The Adicts were talking about revolution, and Thurston Moore and Lydia Lunch were wigging out in Death Valley, all challenging pop culture one way or another.

Not to say that the band is really any of the aforementioned references but, to an extent, all of them combined. With the band on the move and constantly changing up styles, they escape being pigeonholed into any distinct category, constantly morphing and shape shifting before your ears.

What pleases me the most about this album is its spontaneity. Recorded practically live in their house, the untraditional studio presence works to their advantage. It is mixed and transitioned in a way that puts you on their couch and deep within the output of what the member’s experienced. Songs change from the heavily mixed to dirty and raw to simple found sounds from various outtakes.

“INDPLS” gives you the feeling of celebratory joy, urban power, and dark prowling that only gets accentuated on “Bottom Of My Belly.” Jilly Weiss’ vocal prowess displays a realistic urgency that is pushed forward by a tornadic activity of instruments swirling about, whether it is Trevor Wathen’s growling bass, Brandon Beaver’s rumbling drums, Matt Hagan’s intricate guitar work, the keyboards, the layered vocals, the time signature change up, and so on. And that’s just within one song. Before you know it, you are dragged along through purposefully bastardized early ‘60s-style girl pop (“Noise Knot”), the taunting roar of “No FM/No AM,” or the hauntingly jagged dance number “Serious Sedatives.”

It seems with each passing listen there is something new to discover within each track. Gloom Bloom has found a way to breathe in the soul of this city and create a metropolitan melting pot of vice and virtue that will wrap around you and not let go, even after the sobering instrumental outro of “French Rough” has long since faded out.

Even though you can stream the entire album at the bands website (http://www.wearehex.com), the CD is well worth the buy for the sound quality, the flawless transitions between songs, and the gorgeous packaging.
Andrew Duncan - Zaptownmag.com
------------------------------------------------
We Are Hex - Gloom Bloom (Independently released CD, Progressive pop)
"The debut full-length release from Indianapolis, Indiana's We Are Hex. The appropriately titled Gloom Bloom is an odd and perplexing collection of thirteen compositions that the band recorded in their home studio (Hex Haus). The tracks on this album are inextricably connected with technology. So much so that some of the cuts teeter into the "sound as music" genre where technology and effects are just as important (if not more so) than actual melodies. The band is made up of four members: Brandon Beaver, Jilly Weiss, Matt Hagan, and Trevor Wathen. These folks incorporate a wild variety of sounds and styles into their music. The aural barrage is probably too complex and unpredictable for the casual listener. As such, we can't help but think this band's music will appeal mainly to very young listeners and those wanting stuff on the cutting edge. The press release that accompanied this disc appropriately compared the music to Joy Division, The Cure, Gang of Four, PJ Harvey, and The Jesus and Mary Chain. If you're looking for simple, easy, predictable pop, you won't find it here. If you can handle the strangely disjointed sounds, you will probably end up being rewarded by these strange, provocative tunes."
Top picks: "INDPLS," "Noise Knot," "No Enemies," "Loose Hearts." (Rating: 5) out of 6
http://www.babysue.com
---------------------------------
Dark and droning layers set to a regimented beat make Indianapolis' We Are Hex sound like children of the 1980's fringe. The sound harkens back to a time when bands that were too introspective to be punk, yet too obtuse to be pop or New Wave helped forge a sub-genre that still exists today with bands. Think Jesus and Mary Chain and Gang of Four. The band is atmospheric and angular, switching from swirling sonics to rock aggression.
Frank De Blase - http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/events/choice-concerts/2009/04/ROCK-We-Are-Hex-4-14/

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"There’s no question that We Are Hex has come a long way since adding a guitar and new bassist this spring. The angular, keyboard-heavy, dance-rock band presented a nearly seamless show before the biggest and most enthusiastic crowd of the night on Friday at the Melody Inn (including some on-stage photographers angling for the best shots). Jill Weiss’s vocals are intense and sharp, bringing what I’ll hesitantly call a riot grrrl spirit to the proceedings (I thought of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker’s yelps). And drummer Brandon Beaver aggressively leads the band through arrangements that are, at times, rather complicated, including some stop-time sections and no-huddle transitions between songs. If the previous incarnation of the band sounded a bit heavy, Matt Hagan’s guitar makes a lot of difference, matching Weiss’s vocals in the upper register when soaring on a fuzzy riff, or just giving the band the kind of jumpy energy that’s afforded by a staccato rhythm guitar."
Scott Shoger - Nuvo.net (December 5th 08'Show Review)
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I will continue to add reviews/write ups when I come past them. Also, we will attempt to bring you some writing/thoughts and photos from the road as we take off for a two week tour today.

thanks,
-Brannnnnnnnnnnn

Where ya wanna get it.

Hey, so we are pleased to let everyone know you can now order Gloom Bloom from a few places.

Insound.com got some.
CDbaby.com got some too.

Also, Itunes will have it in the next week or so. Carrot Top Distro is stocking it too! That means everyone needs to tell your local record store they can order our stuff from Carrot Top! (almost all stores should be able to stock the cd) and please do! Clear Spot in the Netherlands is going to carry it too. We are still working on a few others as well and will keep everyone updated. Keeping all kinds of busy before we take off Thursday for tour.

thanks,
-brannnnn

Waiting...

Hey, so our string of Indiana shows is over now and we have little down time until we take off for the April tour. I will try to get some photos up from some of the shows in the next few days. Also, hopefully in the next few weeks we will have some online distro going on. This is where we have to wait for other people to do things for us... damnit. So when everything is in place I will give ya a heads up.

Thanks!

Hey, thanks to everyone who came out this weekend. It was much bigger than we thought and we had a lot of fun. We will be staying busy for the next few weeks before heading out on tour, working on all kinds of things. I will of course keep you all updated, so keep on checking in.

We play the Halloween House tonight at 8ish with Young Widows and My Disco.


video by our buddy Bob.