If you haven’t heard of Bells & Robes, you probably aren’t familiar with Gainesville’s local music scene. Which, until recently, wouldn’t surprise me at all.
With the drop of their new EP “One Should See Sound,” however, my faith in the masses of students in Gainesville finally supporting not only their fellow students and peers, but also their friends, has been revitalized and renewed.
Most of the youth in Gainesville are familiar with packed, smoky nightclubs dancing and moving to all sorts of electronic music. Usually, it costs between $20-35 to attend such an event. But, with the help of Swamp Records and Grooveshark, Bells & Robes managed to pull off what seems to be impossible in the local music community; they packed a free show, which means more people than a small badass niche community are legitimately starting to care about the music being made in Gainesville.
Via: facebook.com
Luke Sipka and Dean Spaniol make up Bells & Robes, having formed after purchasing a record player together and agreeing on the summer solstice of 2012 to finish a musical project together by the subsequent winter solstice. The name, taken from a zen koan that says people should actualize sound and sight into one, embodies the philosophy the two take into making music.
Having played all over Florida and recently at the massive Imagine Festival in Atlanta, the EP release is only the latest in the group’s journey. With the help of Palo Santo, San Pellegrino and meditation, the two were able to finish up the tracks and come up with a title fitting to their music and their philosophy.
“Anyone can see sound,” Spaniol said of the EP title, “It’s the perception you get from music, especially when music doesn’t have any vocals.”
The seven tracks on the EP were chosen out of approximately 50 that the duo had been working on over the last year. Sipka stresses the idea of finding creative success in working through ideas and releasing the concept of what is “good” musically.
Via: thejamgainesville.com
“It’s a very personal listen; it’s very reflective,” Spaniol said about the EP, “As you listen to it, everyone has those different memories that come about when you hear it.”
Perhaps the personal touch of the music of Bells & Robes explains the huge turnout at their release party (between 300-400 people strolled through and danced around the Motor Room that night), but their musical philosophy and the EP itself might be more representative in larger shifts in the local music scene.
Sipka went on to explain, saying, “When you listen to the right song, you can look at a tree and it’s the same tree you see every day, but it’s a completely different tree because of that song.”
Many of you might be scratching your heads at reading the last quote, wondering what it has to do with the Gainesville music community, so allow me to explain how the philosophy of Bells & Robes relates.
Students in Gainesville often pass the music scene of the city without recognizing anything special, like passing the same tree on a walk to class every day. But one day on that walk, perhaps, you’re listening to the right song with all the right elements and you look up and see the sunlight hitting the leaves on that tree and it’s forever engrained in your mind and your soul as something beautiful and it becomes something special. Right now, all the right elements are in place for the music scene in Gainesville to become that wonderful, special tree. All we have to do is look up and see it.
Slowly, but surely, we’re opening our eyes.
While help from student government-run Swamp Records and Gainesville’s biggest startup to date Grooveshark has been instrumental in gaining support for local music, the actual music being created actually caters to more diverse audience then ever before. In a city that’s primarily known as the birthplace of Tom Petty and a punk haven for years, Gainesville musicians, perhaps now more than ever, are gaining support by making a wide variety of music that doesn’t fit any sort of collective genre or niche. With that wide variety of music and sound, local musicians are allowed to be more creative in what they produce rather than worry about catering to the mass number of students.
When I first got to UF, my idea of local music was a guy playing Oasis and Dispatch covers outside of Swamp. I’m proud to say my idea of local music has transformed dramatically over four years. As a proclaimed music snob, I expected a lot out of local music in a big college town, and finally, as I finish my time at UF, I’m happy to see I’m getting the diverse scene I always wanted.
Featured photo courtesy of: beonespark.com
