Chairs in the Arno

Jeff Excell, Jeff Knight and Ryan Fly snuck out of their dorm on occasion to drink wine while they studied abroad in Florence, Italy. One day, just down the hill from Piazza Michael Angelo, they consumed two or three boxes of wine and drunkenly threw their plastic chairs into the Arno River. In the commotion of high fives and broken Italian, they came up with the name Chairs in the Arno.

Stateside, Excell, Knight and Fly began fledgling experiments with old keyboards, scouring central California thrift stores for anything bearing the heralded “Casio” trademark before packing it up and moving North to the Napa valley. Chairs bonded as huge fans of Figurine, Barcelona, Grandaddy, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. Shortly after the Rentals broke up, Chairs took decisive action to record songs. The very first taped jam sessions amounted to horrific recordings of factory-set beats with three-tone variations, sounding like-uh, well, the term “electronic cavemen” comes to mind. Knight told Becca Hsu that they needed a keyboard player but tricked her into joining their band as a vocalist. In good humor, she did not run away. To seal the deal, all the band members moved into a house together and worked at the same coffee shop.

On a small tour through California with Megamoog and Program Names, Chairs stopped by Davis, CA. Excell thought it was the worst show ever and haphazardly handed a cdr wrapped in lined paper to Jenn de la Vega, who happened to be selling merchandise for Megamoog. Two years later, de la Vega reconnected with Excell and gleefully agreed to put out File Folder on Mushpot Records.

Several Moogs, a microKorg and an MC 505 open Chairs in the Arno’s synth-poptastic debut album File Folder. Adorably layered guy/girl vocals from Excell and Hsu exude a degree of nerdiness over computer programming, Nintendo products and badminton. No longer “electronic cavemen” (and woman) -Chairs in the Arno delivers sunshiney fun IDM music.


Buy File Folder for $10.00 (US).
Search for Chairs in the Arno on iTunes!

So I guess some people have some good things to say about the album…

“Still it’s not hard to see how Chairs have made this genre their own. The soft vocals of lead singers Jeff Excell and Becca Hsu are layered throughout the record, adding an element of variety to a tune that may have otherwise fallen into banality. In many ways Excell and Hsu sound more natural in their melodic interactions than Ben Gibbard and Jenny Lewis ever did. [...] File Folder is a fun and catchy debut, and I can only hope that Chairs in the Arno will continue to work together and release that sophomore album soon. ” – THREE IMAGINARY GIRLS

“Chairs in the Arno play smart and catchy synth-pop, somewhere along the lines of Looper or The Boy Least Likely To. Although their songs are often bittersweet and understated, they’re also lovely and charming.” – CABLE AND TWEED

“Chairs in the Arno capture that moment in life when you realize that it’s alright to begin to reflect on the fun you’ve had, that moment you realize you’re some strange form of an adult – all the while knowing that there will be plenty of good times to still be had.” – CULTURE BULLY

“The primary palette of sounds here is unabashedly electronic from beginning to end. It really reminds me of another album I enjoyed earlier this year: Au Revoir Simone’s The Bird of Music, although with male and female vocals adding a human element to all the bleeps, bloops, and synth-sounds that energetically flit by. Consider it youthful digitized quirkiness to brighten up your day!” – MAINSTREAM ISN’T SO BAD…IS IT?