***System Exclusive are Ari B and Matt Jones—a Pasadena, CA originated duo, balancing the hard-edged electronic pulse of old school synthwerks against hot-under-the-collar live drums and slashing post-punk guitar. Ari’s melismatic alto completes the triangle, crowning the cyborg-rock compositions with a torn and vulnerable human edge. Faced with the near-impossible task of making a living in California while working as touring musicians, they put their life in storage, put a bed in the van, and have been living wherever the shows take them. On a mission to make strangers misty in the disco throughout the US, UK, and Europe…and wherever else fine records are sold.
LP $20.25
05/17/2024
***"It’s 9:35 pm on a Saturday in Chico and it’s pouring rain. It’s three days into our NW tour and things keep going wrong. We forgot half the merch at home, we had to turn around an hour out of Sacramento after I tried to leave my lucky leather jacket behind, and sadly, the shows have been pretty slow thus far. Thankfully, the room at The Naked Lounge in Chico is filling up, and things are looking pretty good for once. Whilst happily chatting about our upcoming recording session in Portland on Monday, imagine our horror at discovering that in fact the session was booked for Sunday, a mere 15 hours away. Twin panic attacks and some frantic google searches later we hatched a plan to push through the deluge and drive as far as Yreka after the show, crash for a few hours, and make the remaining 6 hours of the drive as early as we can in the morning. 490 miles later we pulled up to Page Street Studios in Portland as shattered shells of humans, but Frankie and Leon greeted us with stellar vibes and poured us into their freshly finished and stunningly beautiful studio space. We gamely blasted through these three songs in four hours before their next session, including our cover of the Rick James and Eddy Murphy’s stone-cold electro-funk classic, 'Party All the Time.' For everything that went wrong preceding (and following) the session, those 4 hours went amazingly right, and this record is...
12" $15.50
04/28/2023
“Often when music is constructed with synths and other electronically generated sound makers, their level of exactitude and control is such that the vocalist will either wittingly or otherwise seek to emulate the relative artifice of the soundscape. This is often done to great effect, think Kraftwerk. But what if there was a unit whose music was synth-generated but the vocals were coming from a hot-blooded, singing-for-the-cheap-seats approach? If done well, it’s a case of two great tastes that taste great together, which brings me to System Exclusive. “Their multi genre / time period collision is like a car accident where all parties walk away not only unscathed but sure they had a great time, like two different recording sessions sharing the same space and making it work. Vocalist Ari Blaisdell (previously of Lower Self, The Beat Offs) co-exists excellently amidst the driving beats and synth waves and her guitar further helps to jailbreak the tunes from the often sterile entrapments that synths provide. Matt Jones (previously of Male Gaze, Blasted Canyons, and continuing Castle Face behind-the-scenesman)’s smart use of live drums bring great juxtaposition against the machines. Ari’s irony-free sincere delivery is the perfect closer on this very cool record, recorded ably by Enrique Tena Padilla (Osees, Wand, Beach House) in their backyard studio mid-pandemic and adorned with original artwork by Miles Wintner (L.A. Takedown, Mr. Elevator, Devon Williams). If you don’t get this slab of goodness, well, that act of non-compliance will confirm you as the pain-in-the-ass that...
LP $19.00
03/18/2022
CD $12.00
03/04/2022
MP3 $9.90
03/04/2022
FLAC $11.99
03/04/2022