Brian Casey (L) and Danny Burke (R) of Glorious Monster

If you own a television, then chances are you’ve heard the music of Danny Burke and Brian Casey before. As the commercial production team Skeptic Music they’ve written the theme music for multiple MTV programs, scored a recent BMW ad campaign and even cranked out some of the tunes you might have caught in the trailers for recent large scale indie film release like Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, all from their offices in downtown Minneapolis. And, oh yeah, these guys are all of 24 years old. Compared to the resumes of most people I know that age Burke and Casey should be just about ready to start resting on their laurels for the next decade or so. Instead, the affable workaholic pair have taken what they learned on the commercial music circuit and morphed it into sublime and spacey indie-pop of their band Glorious Monster’s debut release, Adventures on Earth.

As the trippy album art—replete with requisite anime-styled-lonesome-alien—would imply, Glorious Monster’s brand of pop looks to the stratosphere for inspiration. Every song features layer upon layer of effects-treated guitars, rhythmic loops, and multi-textured keyboard blips. Throw Casey’s icy tenor into the mix and it’s clear right off the bat that these guys have spent their fair share of years obsessing over the likes of Radiohead’s OK Computer and Massive Attack’s Mezzanine while fiddling with home recording programs.

Unlike so many prog-happy bands that nail the atmosphere while forgetting about that important little thing called melody, however, Glorious Monster largely remember that at the end of the day it’s all about the song. Although they clearly have fun playing with effects pedals and producing strange sounds (little touches like the sound of a crying baby inserted right after lyrics about being “born into this world” don’t exactly wear well over repeated listens), the duo's experiences in arrangement from their commercial work have helped them learn to hone their songwriting chops while simultaneously reveling in the joy of sound.

“With commercials, there’s really just kind of one moment that you’re ramping up towards musically for the big reveal or release or whatever,” offers Casy, sitting beside creative partner Burke during a recent lunchtime chat. “Good pop songs just really aren’t like that; they have a beginning a middle and an end.”

“The commercial work just kind of forces you out of your box,” adds Burke. “Your bag of tricks just gets deeper each time, whether you’re talking about songwriting or production techniques. We end up having so many sounds in our head that we can reference with one another when working on Glorious Monster stuff just because we’re working on music together constantly with our commercial jobs.”

Glorious Monster’s day gig also shines through in the obviously cinematic bent and scope of their musical work. It’s not a coincidence that the album’s strongest track is titled “In the Movies” and kicks off with the sound of an old-school film projector starting up. In an era where most bands can be fully experienced by grabbing mp3s off of a download service, Glorious Monster are that rare tech savvy band that still believes in the power of the album, aiming to create a world of sound and images that’s all encompassing.

 
“It’s really just a direct reflection of the fact that we grew up loving ‘album’ bands like Pink Floyd and Radiohead and Massive Attack,” admits Casey. “Bands that wrote albums with recurring characters and images that were distinct and made up their own world.”

“That attitude carries over to our live shows,” adds Burke. “We don’t want it to be just some guys playing on a stage. We try and make it a bigger experience by incorporating some multimedia. We have a friend who does live film projection stuff while we play; we incorporate some live looping things.”

Glorious Monster's live show isn't complete without their film projector in tow.

And for the most part it does so masterfully, although occasionally the album's more ambient experiments stall in the take-off phase to their interstellar destinations, with Casey’s voice blending a little too seamlessly into the surrounding sonic haze. It’s a minor quibble considering the album’s high points—“In the Movies” shimmering guitar fills and simple but effective recurrent xylophone figure, the zonked-orchestral-keyboard-ballad-set-to-overdriven-beats “Photograph”—are some of the most innovative and lush pop you’ll likely hear in or outside of Minnesota this year.

Adventures on Earth is certainly an auspicious debut from a group intensely committed to their craft (“We spent pretty much all our nights and weekends working on the album from about November of 2005 to July of 2006,” offers Casey). Unlike so many other passionate young musicians, however, Casey and Burke clearly have their eggs in more than one basket thanks to their day gig – and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“The music industry has changed so much with the advent of the internet that the old path of plugging away and hoping to get signed by a big label still exists for some people, but only if you’re super-lucky,” says Casey pragmatically as our conversation winds down. “We’re friends with a lot of dudes in bands and some are still hanging on to that dream of getting signed. Realistically though I think it’s dangerous when bands get into that mentality because that’s when stuff happens where everyone decides to take out massive loans and do their ‘breakthrough’ album. Then if nothing happens and you make no money you’re stuck in a ton of debt with all these people who are supposed to be your friends. That’s how bands break up—they’re unsustainable financially most of the time. The biggest blessing we have is that we don’t do Glorious Monster trying to make any real money off of it, we do it for us. Because of that I think we can sustain it for a long time. I don’t think we’ll ever actually get popular per se but hopefully we can scrape up our own share of fans on the seedy underbelly of the music scene at large.”

Glorious Monster's official website

Glorious Monster's MySpace page 

The music video for "In the Movies" by Glorious Monster from the album Adventures on Earth