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Air Traffic Controller with special guest Fast Romantics with Fast Romantics

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You know their hit song “The House”, winners of multiple Indie Rock awards, and all around high energy and fun musicians – Air Traffic Controller – is coming to Infinity Hall Norfolk. Joining them is Fast Romantics, which is another incredible Indie Rock band. Check out the video on these guys! Here comes a taste of some new music so let’s give them a big welcome as they make their debut here at Infinity Hall. Grab a pair of tickets and come for a fun hang at the venue with us this June!

Air Traffic Controller

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www.airtrafficcontrollermusic.com

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Artist Bio

Air Traffic Controller have created a place all their own in the indie pop world.

Serving in the US Navy as an air traffic controller, singer/songwriter Dave Munro sent home demos written during deployment.  Band-mate and singer/songwriter Casey Sullivan met Dave soon thereafter, and the two forged a collaborative bond that has become the vocal sound of ATC.

With an eclectic song catalog and category-defying organic/electronic sound, people are taking notice of ATC.  Theywere 2015 Billboard Hot 100 Fest performers with The Weeknd and Justin Bieber, placed on the NPR Hot 100 List for SXSW, named Guardian UK Band of the Day, won Best Indie Alternative Song for "You Know Me" in the Independent Music Awards, and have over 15 million Spotify plays. ATC's music has been licensed by Bose, MTV, NBC, ABC, Disney, Verizon, Toyota, and many more.

The band started 2016 with showcases in Park City at Sundance with ASCAP, Toyota Music Lodge, and Cisero's. They followed this up with their first Sixthman Rock Boat cruise with bands like Bronze Radio Return, Jukebox The Ghost, and Michael Franti. An Official act again this year at SXSW, ATC played showcases for McDonalds, the Grammy Museum, and was featured on Jeff Regan's Alt Nation playlist of bands to watch at this year's festival.

Air Traffic Controller’s third album, BLACK BOX, was released on March 11, 2016. The new album features "People Watching," "On The Wire" and "What You Do To My Soul." The official music video for "The House" won Improper Bostonian's "Boston's Best" Music Video, as well as the 2016 New England Music Award for Best Video.  The House was also named by Boston Magazine as the best video for 2015, and has been in rotation on MTVU, MTV2, and on the homepage of Funny Or Die.

Support for the new album has come in from all over. Vanyaland in Boston calls BLACK BOX an evolution forward featuring "crafty alt-pop, an expansion of depth and sound, catchy hooks," and describes the song "Warrior" as "a pleasantly brooding, mystic-pop thumper." One Stop Record Shop in the UK states "the album is equal parts fascinating and brilliant" while "combining flecks of CHVRCHES with the indie vibes of Pulp and a smattering of Death Cab For Cutie."  

Songs from BLACK BOX have been featured by Gary Vaynerchuk in the Daily Vee, EA Sports NHL 17, the UK's top reality show Made In Chelsea. At radio, WXRV and WERS have multiple songs in rotation, songs have been played on Top 40 Mix 93.3 in Kansas City, KX 93.5 in Laguna CA, KCSN & KXLU Los Angeles, WLCA Illinois, WHSN Maine, KXTE Los Vegas, KTCL Colorado and more. CLIF Bar, Quiznos, and Boston Harbor Distillery have asked to work with Air Traffic Controller, as well as MyMusicRX out of Portland, OR.  On the road ATC has hit Summerfest, Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Denver's Beaver Creek Music Experience and will continue to play shows throughout the year in support of the new album. 

Fast Romantics

Connect with this artist:

www.fastromantics.com

“[Fast Romantics] punch up a new breed of New Romanticism with plenty of power pop hooks...Matthew Angus croons, lovelorn, to his heart’s desire with Jarvis Cocker-esque swagger bolstered by the band’s exalting choruses, buzzing guitar licks, chiming keys and pulsing beat.” - KEXP

What does it mean to fall in love in the 21st century? American Love, the aptly titled forthcoming album from Toronto indie-rockers Fast Romantics, is a nod to the type of cinematic storybook romance Hollywood has conditioned us to search for. But in real life, love is often subject to chaos beyond our control, and American Love doesn’t deny the social and political turmoil we’re living through.

“I was falling pretty hard in love when we started the record,” explains frontman and lyricist Matthew Angus. “But the rest of the world went mad. This bizarre election in the United States started up just as everybody’s obsession with social media hit some kind of peak, and suddenly everyone was talking about America. It started seeping into the songwriting, and now I’m not even sure what came first. Are they love songs about politics or political songs about love?”

But Angus insists that American Love, produced by the dynamic duo of Gus Van Go and Werner F (Arkells, Wintersleep, Whitehorse) is not a traditional protest record. Rather, it’s a series of reflections by a non-American songwriter living so close to the border, hyper-aware of the United States and its influence on his own country. This duality is reinforced by geography itself, as the songs on American Love were recorded over two years alternating between Brooklyn and Toronto. It’s also fitting that work on the album began around the same time the U.S. election campaign launched, with the final song finished almost two years later, on election day.

“I don’t feel like these songs are set in just one country. Borders are blurring," Angus says. "What does it mean to be Canadian, or American, or Chinese, or British? We’ve all got Twitter, we can all stream the BBC, but does that mean we’re becoming the same? There was this international identity crisis happening in both countries, and I found myself caught in the middle of it while trying to write a bunch of love songs. “

American Love serves as a follow-up to Fast Romantics’ 2013 LP, Afterlife Blues, bringing together the most lyrical songs Angus has ever composed. The group, originally founded in 2008 in Calgary, lost most of its members around the time they were set to record their breakthrough single, “Julia", in 2014. Founders Angus and Jeffrey Lewis were forced to rebuild the band from scratch. But this didn’t slow down the group — or the success of the single — and Fast Romantics took home the prestigious 2016 SOCAN National Songwriting Prize for the track. This can be added to an ever-growing list of accolades for the band, which took home the prize for Pop Group of the Year at the Sirius XM Indies in 2014, and has been climbing the charts on commercial radio.

Always drawn to the contrasting dynamic of a female vocalist in the mix, Angus started the band's rebuild by recruiting Toronto-based singer-songwriter Kirty. Since joining the band, Kirty has become an integral force in Fast Romantics, serving as a creative support for Angus and bringing her own wealth of experience to the fold. “She has a brilliant sense of songwriting. We started playing together, and the connection was immediate. I said, ‘OK, I’m going to need you in my band,’” Angus recalls. “She balances me out. Whenever I get too loud, she reminds me that quiet can be more powerful. Whenever I write something trite or obvious, she’ll send me some snippet of a Paul Simon song and inspire me to dig deeper.”

Rebuilding a band is no easy feat, but every other new member—Kevin Black, Nick McKinlay and Lisa Lorenz—fell into place in a similarly organic way, by pulling threads around the Toronto music scene. And while it was tempting to rush right into a new album, Angus wanted the group to take their time and let the lineup stick.

“It was a back-to-the-drawing-board moment, building up a brand-new band, practicing, touring," he explains. "The songs evolved, and then they evolved again. We all lived through this election cycle side by side in the van, driving around North America. What started as a disparate bunch of personalities and tastes has turned into a genuine friendship, something that feels like a home.”

Fittingly, the results are a culmination of words and sounds about what it might mean to love—or be loved—in the new status quo. What it means to fight for something that feels true, and what it might be like to find a home.

The first single from American Love — the anthemic “Why We Fight”— was released on January 27, 2017, with the album set to be released in April 2017 through Light Organ Records, in partnership with Postwar Records. 

 

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