Rare Monk, Eclisse, Coastlands

Rare Monk is a Portland, OR based indie rock band. They are gearing up to release their debut full-length album in the summer of 2017 featuring 10 brand new songs recorded in Portland with Skyler Norwood (Blind Pilot, Horsefeathers, Priory). 

In 2015, Rare Monk released their apocalyptic-tinged self-titled EP, produced by Tom McFall (Weezer, Bloc Party, Snow Patrol, R.E.M.). Single's "Warning Pulse" and "California (Will Burn)" received considerable attention form the blogosphere, college radio, and streaming services such as Spotify. This was the follow-up to 2014's widely lauded 7-inch "Splice/Sleep Attack". The boutique record label, B3SCI Records, released both EPs.

In 2016 Rare Monk faced several lineup changes. Their original guitarist and violist left and the once 5-piece became a 4-piece with the addition of lead guitarist and vocalist Hugh Jepson. With the addition of Jepson, Rare Monk started focusing more on writing bigger guitar parts, dueling leads, and beautiful falsetto harmonies. What resulted were ten new songs written and recorded over the course of the last year and a half.

The songs deal with death and agency – our control (both individual and as a species) of how the future will play out. “It’s easy to be deterministic – the world’s a shit show right now and it feels like all we can do is make popcorn – so there’s a lot of grappling and grasping for free will.” The songs are also a lot of fun – big guitar fun – a commitment to giant choruses as a medium to discuss humanity’s doom and how we might prevent it. If there’s a unifying theme to the album, it’s that we have control over the music we make, that band practice is chaos under our control and feedback cures all diseases.

Rare Monk decided to release their debut full-length independently after self producing much of the album, alongside Norwood, having previously worked with him on 2013's "Death By Proxy EP". These tracks represent a sound formed over the course of the last 5 years, containing some of their most adventurous yet accessible songs to date.

Rare Monk are: Dorian Aites (Vocals, Keys, Violin, Guitar), Hugh Jepson (Guitar), Forest Gallien (Bass), and Rick Buhr (Drums).