SOUNDBITES:
        A:  Excerpts from "I":  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
        B:  Excerpts from "III":  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

COMMENTS:
THE ANTARCTICANS are sad dark Slave-Ghost Draculas!!!
    The Antarcticans are a four-piece Los Angeles based instrumental-attack-noise group that formed in 2001. In recordings and in their performances, The Antarcticans are a violent takeover of overwhelming feedback-peaking builds of heart-breaking psych-trips. The Antarcticans' music has been compared to ghosts, glacial avalanches, dreams about flying & then falling, violence, cowboys dying alone in the desert, and having your face smashed with a thousand guitars.
    The Antarcticans have opened shows in Los Angeles for many avant-rock acts including Acid Mothers Temple, Album Leaf, Beck, Deerhoof, Kinski, Rogue Wave, and Mono from Japan.

REVIEWS:
“I wasn’t prepared for it...it really left a mark, like being bitch slapped by a thousand guitars.”--Chuck P. Dead Air on Indie 103.1

"Avoiding the first-person is a challenge for this writer, when reviewing an album that for a self-professed instrumental rock idolater takes on distinctively personal semantics. The stereotypical way to introduce a post-rock album by hitherto unknowns is the obligatory equation, often skillfully woven into text, but here explicitly stated: Antarcticans = Godspeed You Black Emperor x (early-Mogwai + early-Explosions in the Sky) / My Bloody Valentine. Though somewhat descriptive, such a proclamation is largely arbitrary, and ultimately serves to further distance the unfamiliar from an already insular community of listeners. For post-rock, and noise-rock as is also present, are strange beasts that can frequently, to the untrained ear, come off sounding like a wall-of-noise, distorted and dissonant, formless and excessive.

But as this four-piece Los Angeles-based group demonstrates, it’s all about discovering those hidden intricacies that fail to present themselves on first listen. Unlike conventional rock, this doesn’t revolve around an infuriatingly catchy refrain, but relies on constant revisiting to familiarize oneself with what will eventually prove to be a far more rewarding experience.

Rather than attempt to bombard their audience with short spurts of violence, The Antarcticans realize, with their debut album, that their compositions need time and space to develop. Thus they offer up a free-wheeling sonic journey akin to Godspeed’s most epic constructions. The path is unpredictably volatile, but entirely mesmerizing, contrasting hardcore onslaughts with psychedelic resolution. The second track establishes a vivid and emotive soundscape that evokes Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” (albeit a distant descendant). But The Antarctican’s ability to instantaneously inflect an idiom they have apparently wasted no time in mastering is constantly mesmerizing.

This is a self-produced, self-released, self-titled album that captures a perturbing and raw energy usually only witnessed in live acts. With such an abundance of proficiency and talent so early on, this is a band that we will no doubt hear more from shortly."
(from Shadie at parasol.com ["http://www.parasol.com/mail_order/staffpicks/antarcticans.asp"])

LINKS:
The ANTARCTICANS'  website
The ANTARCTICANS ' MySpace page