ThouShaltNot

Electronic music is made mostly by tech geeks who don't have a clue about real music - or so goes the popular theory. If you're a glutton for punishment, you can debate that idea with Pittsburgh band ThouShaltNot. Lyricist/vocalist Alexx has a master's degree in music composition and will soon have a doctorate in the subject. Jeremy studied music for years and plays classical piano and guitar. After twelve years of drum lessons, Aaron began designing state of the art custom instruments; his masterpiece is a completely portable, self-contained electronic drum kit that is strapped to his chest for live shows, allowing him full mobility to move within the audience.

If all of that leads you to expect music full of pretentious, artsy, experimental rubbish, prepare for a pleasant surprise. ThouShaltNot craft beautiful electronic and orchestral pop music that manages to infuse a highly developed sense of harmony and structure into amazingly accessible and catchy songs. Alexx is gifted with a smooth, clear, emotive voice, which is a perfect complement to his expressive, spiritual, intelligent lyrics.

ThouShaltNot began in Ohio in the late 1990s, when Aaron began working with Alexx on some of the demos Alexx had recorded. The duo eventually began playing shows, and soon thereafter, they attracted the attention of Seattle record label ADSR Musicwerks, who released the band's self-titled debut album. A national tour followed, and their label urged ThouShaltNot to begin work on a follow-up disc. In June of 2001, the band released The Holiness of Now, which spawned a minor hit, "Last Comfort." When club DJs began putting the track "Without Faith" into rotation, however, the album took off. "Without Faith" became a bona fide smash, popping up with regularity on club and college radio playlists around the country and in Europe as well. The Holiness of Now sold faster than the label was able to reprint it.

Anxious to capitalize on the success of Holiness, the label released You'll Wake Up Yesterday in 2002, a collection of demo versions, B-sides, outtakes, and a few off-the-wall tracks. One particular song made an impact: The band's hilarious, Vegas lounge lizard style cover of Front 242's classic industrial-dance track "Headhunter" became a favorite closing track for industrial clubs everywhere and helped confirm that, while being serious songwriters, ThouShaltNot were hardly stuffed shirts. By this point, the duo had expanded to a three-man operation with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Jeremy.

In 2003, ThouShaltNot became only the second American band to be signed to Dancing Ferret Discs in the label's five year history. Their fourth release, The White Beyond, was released worldwide by DFD on September 2, 2003. The band embarked on a tour of the Midwest and West Coast during the summer with trip-hop band Hungry Lucy, and plans more dates on the East Coast in the Fall. An advance copy of the first single from The White Beyond, "Cardinal Directions," is already making an impact on the club scene, having been included on 20,000 CDs packaged with the Summer 2003 issue of Asleep By Dawn magazine. In late September, "Cardinal Directions" was released as a four-track single that appears on a split single disc called Vier Factor 1.