There are 3 bands by the name of Au:

1) AU (pronounced "Ay-you") is the work of multi-instrumentalist Luke Wyland. It's now a working live band currently touring as a duo with Dana Valatka on drums. A new album, entitled "Both Lights", is due in March of 2012. AU has been blessed with the help of many talented friends over the years including Colin Stetson, Holland Hunter Andrews (Like A Villain), Becky Dawson (Ah Holly Fam'ly, Saw Whet), Jeremy Faulkner (Ah Holly Fam'ly), Mark Kaylor (Hammer of Hathor, CexFucx), Jonathan Sielaff (Golden Retriever), Sarah Winchester (A Weather) and many more.

2) Au (pronounced 'Oh') is an ambient/trance/electronic artist from Chicago, IL.
http://www.myspace.com/musicofau

3) AU (pronounced 'ow') are an electronica duo made up of Jan Borchers and Paul Klaui,
based in the Hague, Netherlands.

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We were both leaving the worst behind, mistakes we had made that followed us into the dusty corners of our old rooms. Leaving behind those we spoke of love to, but felt none for anymore. We were leaving behind days of feeling like aliens in our own homes. He moved in the basement, I lived upstairs. We felt fresh, wide eyed, and ready for the world we had been scared to embrace. But the day was too bright, and the faces were too mean, and the city felt no different. We felt no different. So, we hid in the basement where the light barely cracked through the grates like a prison. But we had chosen this prison and we needed it. Our legs wouldn't let us crawl upstairs or out the door. We didn't give a fuck what anyone would think, but with that our eyes were no longer wide. They had adjusted to the dim light of a flickering light bulb and the red lights of guitar pedals. I was lonely and still had my demons, he was lonelier and just waiting for something bad to happen. Survival mode. He had to move back home to Minnesota to take care of his dying father. He was almost too late. I moved to nature and felt wide eyed again. Our friend burned down the old place while he slept. He barely walked out alive. I went back with him to gather stringless guitars covered in fire extinguisher fluid, tapes that had blackened, and ash covered drums. Nothing worked, but I didn't care anymore. We finished what we had to. Here it is.

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As a co-founding member of Shinkoyo records, Matt Mehlan retains the label's core ideals of collaboration, experimentation, and unpredictability with his Skeletons project. Beginning in Oberlin, Ohio as a solo act with help from an eclectic cast of collaborators (classically-trained trombonists, punk rock drummers, a junkyard boy's choir), Skeletons has now settled comfortably into its adult body, having established the full-time band The Girl-Faced Boys (Seve, Johnny, Jason, and Carson) and forming an alliance with Ghostly. In addition to appearances at the 2004 CMJ and 2005 SxSW festivals, the group has lent live support to TV On The Radio, The Unicorns, VHS Or Beta, Animal Collective, Holger Czukay (of Can), Jackie O' Motherfucker, and Twig Harper. A major US tour is planned for summer following the release of the LP Git.

"Apparently, more interesting artists have lived in Oberlin, Ohio than the tiny city has streets. Life and the Afterbirth is the best of the Oberlin-based Shinkoyo label's first three intriguing releases.

Skeletons is one man, Matt Mehlan, an Oberlin Conservatory student who has a lazy voice, an ear for arranging and a knack for penning dark, subversive lyrics. First, about that lazy, breathy voice: if impersonating the Sea and Cake's Sam Prekop is a good way to get dates, well, let's just say that Mehlan is having a very nice senior year. Like Prekop, Mehlan strains to hit unreachable high notes, but never so much that he sounds anything but laissez-faire. He also shares Prekop's tendency to let the instrumental parts of his songs guide his vocals, rather than the other way around. Like the Sea and Cake's songs, Skeletons' pieces usually seem to stroll in no particular direction, with instruments often loosely following a drum groove; Life and the Afterbirth isn't for listeners who hate when music isn't crisp and compact.

And there, finally, is where the Prekop/Sea and Cake similarities end, and where Skeletons really starts to get interesting. Life and the Afterbirth is far more lush than any Prekop project I'm aware of. Mehlan employs My Bloody Valentine-style distortion, noise, fusion-inspired Fender Rhodes doodlings, IDM-like textures and washes of ambient sound, all with such skill that it's amazing that they were all done by the same person. He's also ready with more traditional instruments, including some fine (uncredited) string and horn parts. The self-titled final track even ends with a handclap-accompanied campfire singalong.

Is it a singalong about love, or brotherhood, or campfires? No way: "Get up to the sky, get down in the ground/Get back in your mother's stomach." Mehlan's lyrics contain plenty of perverse ruminations that make the bizarre observations that surround them seem even stranger: "My friend, he drowned in his own vomit/It was Bulls versus Celtics/This is the part of the story where your first pet dies/It was Jordan versus Bird/Pass out the boxing gloves/Take all your clothes off/Let's fight about who wants to die more." Lyrics like these make the apparent placidity of much of the music on the album seem curious and subversive.

Life and the Afterbirth would benefit from more direct pop hooks, and Skeletons could surely include some without interrupting Mehlan's low-key style. That aside, Life works on many different levels: Mehlan's odd and vivid lyrics give the album a feeling of mystery that unifies its already-appealing parts. Skeletons and Shinkoyo are an artist and label to watch.

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"A landscape of days lived stretches behind us, foggy in memory but pristine in the evidence we have for our actions- the pictures, the words written down" Hometapes.

The work of Shannon Fields
http://leveragemodels.bandcamp.com/

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