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| Justin Tolan: Monochrome Sweatsuit |
I was born May 9th, 1987 in Austell, Georgia. My interest in music sparked around the time I was around 7 years old. I started borrowing records from my older sisters room and listening to them over and over. The Smashing Pumpkins record Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is something I can single handedly attribute to the reason I picked up the guitar. In 1995 I began hacking away on a used 3/4 size acoustic guitar. A year later I moved to a town north of Atlanta named Cumming and spent majority of my formative years there. It was through my sister that I began to gain exposure to all kinds of music via the mixtapes that her and her friends made. We had tape cassettes around of everything from Andrew Lloyd Webber to Aphex Twin. I was unaware at the time of how much this music would influence me later on.
From the ages of 12-17 I took lessons with Howie Bentley (Cauldron Born, Briton Rites), and through him I was exposed to guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, Greg Howe, George Bellas, and other guitarists of the Shrapnel Records camp. This led to an intense period of practice that entailed 6-8 hours a day on weekdays and 8-14 hours a day on weekends. I attended the Berklee 5 Week Summer Performance program in 2003 & 2004, providing the opportunity to meet and study with Joe Stump. Between the ages of 16-17 I started sending Demos out to various guitar websites and magazines. This led to an appearance on the Guitar9.com Undiscovered Column. Shortly after I appeared on their Guitars at an Exhibition Vol.2. Just shy of 18 years old one of my demos ended up reaching Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records. He did a very nice write up about me in the Spotlight Column of the August 2005 issue of Guitar Player Magazine.credits
In the fall of 2005 I began attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston on scholarship. In the Spring of 2009, I was featured in the Rock/Pop Guitar Night Showcase at the Berklee Performance center. Around the same time I was approached by fellow Berklee student Keith Freund, asking if I wanted to play guitar in a band he was forming, which became RIBS. I graduated Berklee on my 22nd birthday with a degree in Professional Music. I spent 2009-2012 giving guitar lessons/clinics/ensembles, writing, recording, and playing shows with RIBS (opening for bands like Helmet, Intronaut, Circa Survive, Junius, Lights Resolve, Mona, O’Brother, New Politics, and Funeral Party) and releasing 2 RIBS EP’s British Brains, Russian Blood and 1 Double A-Side The Locrian Singles.
After parting ways with RIBS I moved to Charleston and then back to Atlanta to get working on my next project. I worked at American Apparel folding clothes, and for a community music school giving private and group lessons. I had grown pretty estranged from the guitar and felt the music I wanted to play didn't inherently have guitar parts in them. I began having demo sessions with a loop pedal and a few other stomp boxes, trying to create every sound with a guitar. Much to the annoyance of my neighbors I began experimenting with concepts from Fixed Guitar Playing and using household objects with my guitar to make weird sounds. During this time period I began work on the first MONOCHROME SWEATSUIT EP. A little over a year after starting the project it is coming to a close. MONOCHROME SWEATSUIT EP Spring 2015
released 14 May 2015
Monochrome Sweatsuit wrote and played on tracks 1-7
Bruther Brown played bass on tracks 1-7, auxiliary percussion on 1,5
Ricky Fontaine played guitar on track 5, auxiliary percussion on 1,5
Senam Palmer played guitar on track 5
1. _ony _awk on __t__in_ 02:45
2. mega man 03:15
3. camp crystal lake 02:57
4. surfs up 01:55
5. sparkle motion 01:38
6. spud 02:37
7. monochrome phone home 03:34
Special thank you to DJ Burn One, Ricky Fontaine, Walt Liverson, Bruther Brown, Senam Palmer, Eric Thompson, and Alexa Borthwick
Guitar on tracks 1-6 recorded with Eric Thompson at Porch Cat Studios
Guitar on track 7 recorded with DJ Burn One at The Five Points Bakery
Mixing and mastering by DJ Burn One and Walt Liverson
Album art by Alexa Borthwick
Follow insane guitar videos: https://instagram.com/monochrome_sweatsuit/
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