Sharks' Teeth

Sharks’ Teeth is the project of Tyler Scurlock, the unbelievably prolific NOLA songwriter who previously fronted the band Sun Hotel, a band that released some of the most emotionally resonant songs I’ve ever heard. (Seriously. If you feel like bawling your eyes out, give their song You (Shake) a listen.)

Scurlock has now settled around a four-piece band for Sharks’ Teeth and the group has a new LP It Transfers & Grows out on Sept. 2. Don’t Touch My Feet is the album opener, a woozy and funky exploration of misspent anger, and I can’t stop listening to the thing. - USA Today

Sharks’ Teeth have dropped 16 albums in the last seven years, and have taken up many different shapes and size to do so, but they’ve settled into a four-piece, seven-synthesizer setup for their latest full length effort It Transfers & Grows. They bend and warp synths with the precision of a glassmaker shaping an intricate lamp, so much so that their songs become difficult to categorize.
The album opener “Don’t Touch My Feet” is the perfect example of the wonderful genre confusion they induce. A cosmic-funk feel plus pop-sensible melodies, random ambient-like interjections, atmospheric sweeps, and a dash of psychedelia evoke the feeling of retreating into yourself when in a touchy mood. Feet can be a sensitive area to people, downright disgusting to some, so they’re the perfect analogy for folding in on yourself as a result of being overly sensitive in a situation. Scurlock offers a simpler, more personal explanation: “This song is about taking something the wrong way and being offended for no reason, then cleaning your house or apartment to reduce the anxiety over it.” But it rings loudly with a much broader truth. - Stereogum

“impeccably orchestrated moments of electric bliss that harken back to the finest pop of New Wave acts such as Duran Duran, the Psychedelic Furs, or Depeche Mode while still managing to sound fresh thanks to the band’s underlying indie and post-punk sensibilities”
New Orleans’ synth-wave extraordinaries Sharks’ Teeth like to describe their sound as “Christmas in space,” a strange but fitting genre tag for a band comprised of four synth players and their organic mutant pop. They make electronic music that’s equal parts club bangers and introspective indie, drawing influence from artists like Kate Bush and Sufjan Stevens. IMPOSE Magazine are sharing the band’s new single “She Teaches Art” today, the second song to be taken from It Transfers & Grows, the highly anticipated upcoming record. Due out September 2nd on Gigantic Noise (vinyl) and Community Records(cassette), It Transfers & Grows is the part of a long prolific line of Sharks’ Teeth albums and yet it feels like a fresh start with the Tyler Scurlock led band creating a cohesive unit of shape shifting collage pop beauty. - Circuit Sweet

Sharks’ Teeth, the synth heavy quartet out of New Orleans, have debuted the second single from their 17th studio album It Transfers & Grows, which was recorded in their New Orleans home studio and made using organic samples and their personal electronic equipment. The song is entitled “She Teaches Art” and it is an exuberant digital creation that propels itself along with such joyful force, it can’t help but elicit feet to start moving and heads to start bobbing. While the crystalline synths and crashing metallic percussion would sound at home both on some sweaty, summer dance floor or as the fully realized soundtrack to a classic 8-bit side scroller, the lyrics themselves are an intimate look at the human condition and social interaction.

“The verses…drift between memories of friends I’ve had that left long lasting emotional effects. The kind of people who you only knew for a short period, but think of often. The only commonality between them all was that they were all going through some sort of existential crisis,” explains Sharks’ Teeth’s Tyler Scurlock. These brief moments of interaction are memorialized beautifully in the song’s impeccably orchestrated moments of electric bliss that harken back to the finest pop of New Wave acts such as Duran Duran, the Psychedelic Furs, or Depeche mode while still managing to sound fresh thanks to the band’s underlying indie and post-punk sensibilities. - Impose

“Top Songs of 2015 - it was one hell of an year & out of hundreds of recommendations we’ve managed to pull out 37 eclectic gems that spread from a huge variety of genres & styles.” - Audio-Camp

Here’s the fifth and final instalment of our Favourite Free Music of 2015 list. Check out the other parts here. Remember, while it’s always tempting to put a big fat zero for ‘name your price’ releases, you can give a little something. Bands need to eat too, and would doubtless appreciate even the smallest donation for their efforts. It’s the least they deserve. - Wake the Deaf

New Orleans’ Sharks’ Teeth and Giddings, Texas’s SomeBodyParts collaborated together on a split release titled Jaundiced Views available July 28 from Single Color Fields. The self-sustained multi-discipline artists take their own customs of musical creations to provide an assist for one another to enhance the fullness of their respective sounds. The result is a cohesive mesh of experimental exercises that sharpens the American independent primitive take on the time tested truths of home recording ethics.

First we give you a debut listen to “Tropic Orchid Damp” where the sound of the southern swamps sweet a smooth selection of melodies on Sharks’ Teeth’s single. Tyler Scurlock (aka Sharks’ Teeth) gets an assist from SomeBodyParts’ Steve’d Mondo where Scurlock’s own knack for synthesizer and keyboard wizardry gets some added abstract twists from Mondo’s own idiosyncratic and original order of chaos that Tyler keeps in control of running over his sparkling note cascades. - Impose

It’s soothing, accommodating, and at times it is evocative of an outer body experience allowing the listener to inspect every element of their own mise en scène.... The kind of record worth paying attention to the little sonic details."

Fancy an out of body experience?

Sharks’ Teeth began in 2009 as an outlet for the solo recordings of Tyler Scurlock, songwriter and guitarist of New Orleans guitar band, Sun Hotel. Six years and six synthesizers later, and Sharks’ Teeth are ready to release their 17th album ‘Wissenschaftslehre IV or Opinion Crisis’. The new album will be the fourth instalment in a sequence of ambient collections known as ‘Wissenschaftslehres’.
Borrowing its name from the German Philosopher, Johann Fichte, who used the term to mean something along the lines of “this is the way I think”, ‘Opinion Crisis’ comes to us in 22 tracks of pleasing yet dark, and dejected synth waves, maintaining a sense of otherworldly beauty across the board, with gorgeous pads and arpeggiators making their way across the stereo field in a hazy, oxymoronically lo-fi, cassette-recorded fashion.
We're premiereing lead track, ‘Jade Oscilloscope Screen' blending dark, melancholic and swelling drones, with beguiling piano and subtle sweeps.

Right, I'm off to get that outer body experience from this little beauty. - The Ransom Note

Sharks' Teeth may sound threatening, but the project has a lush, beautiful, engrossing feel.

A solo endeavour, the producer is influenced by cult American composer Raymond Scott as well as the artists surrounding the Erased Tapes and Leaf labels.

Clash is able to premiere the video for new track 'Absence Of Malice' and it's a stunning introduction to this deeply individual talent.

Gently lapping against the speakers, the song is smothered in reverb with teasing shards of melody lurking amidst the gloom.

A flittering electronic haze, the accompanying visuals are every bit as idiosyncratic as the music itself. - Clash Music

Today CLASH have premiered the new ambient/sound art video from Sharks’ Teeth’s forthcoming album ‘Wissenschaftslehre IV or Opinion Crisis’ (due out 17th March 2015). This is one for fans of Raymond Scott, ENO, Olafur Arnolds and could just as easily be coming out on Erased Tapes or The Leaf Label…It requires some concentration and it’s incredibly minimal but the subtle changes in mood and tone are what makes this such an deeply interesting and idiosyncratic listen/watch. Whilst the video seems to almost explicitly depict joyous moments from childhood, the music carries the mood and tones, and whilst it can make the most mundane of days seem incredibly significant, it can even make Christmas seem incredibly dark and almost dissonant. It’s a lush experience, with flittering electronic haze and zero vocal work, seeming to allude to leisure and faith.
Due out on 17th March 2015 via Paco Tapes http://www.sharksteethband.com/ //https://www.facebook.com/sharksteethsounds Sharks’ Teeth began in 2009 as an outlet for the solo recordings of Tyler Scurlock, songwriter and guitarist of New Orleans indie band, Sun Hotel. Six years and six synthesizers later, and Sharks’ Teeth are ready to release their 17th album‘Wissenschaftslehre IV or Opinion Crisis’.The new album will be the fourth instalment in a sequence of ambient collections known as ‘Wissenschaftslehres’. Borrowing its name from the German Philosopher, Johann Fichte, who used the term to mean something along the lines of “this is the way I think”, ‘Opinion Crisis’ comes to us in 22 tracks of pleasing yet dark, and dejected synth waves, maintaining a sense of otherworldly beauty across the board, with gorgeous pads and arpeggiators making their way across the stereo field in a hazy, oxymoronically lo-fi, cassette-recorded fashion. True to its heritage ‘Opinion Crisis’ isphilosophical in its execution. There is something almost cinematic in its design. Scurlock says “I think about how when the score enters a film, it can make a scene of an everyday task such as grocery shopping, folding your laundry, or just staring out the window appear to be an emotional and deeply meaningful experience, depending on the musical tones”. Lead track, ‘Jade Oscilloscope Screen’ exemplifies this perfectly by blending dark, melancholic and swelling drones, with beguiling piano and subtle sweeps, which seduces the listener into forgoing any distractions and gives them a bespoke feeling of significance. It’s soothing, accommodating, and at times it is evocative of an outer body experience allowing the listener to inspect every element of their own mise en scène. This is more than just an album of pleasing synth driven tracks, it’s a collection of emotions and moods bestowed on to the listener for his/her own subjective delineation. ‘Wissenschaftslehre IV or ‘Opinion Crisis’ will also be the first release to feature the use of Scurlock’s very own design for a light operated delay device, the ‘Alter-Echo’. This unit, designed and distributed by Scurlock’s small time circuit bending operation kindinstruments.com, gives the tracks on ‘Opinion Crisis’ a new quality, made possible through a new way of controlling the expression of tone. These unfamiliar textures reveal themselves in the warped strings of opening track ‘Reader’s Digest Go Unread’ and in the bending and bouncing melody of ‘Gray Court’. - Rhythm & Booze

Sharks’ Teeth will be releasing his Wissenschaftslehre IV or Opinion Crisis album on March 17 via Paco Tapes. The first single released from the album is “Jade Oscilloscope Screen”, a beautiful, ambient track that sounds like it could’ve totally been in Interstellar. It’s sounds like a cross between Sigur Rós and Jon Brion’s compositions for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. "Jade Oscilloscope Screen" is peaceful, delicate, and eerie, the perfect song from a bildungsroman indie film. There is something so nostalgic about this song…it’s simply brilliant. - Abduction Radiation

This split album by SomeBodyParts ​& ​Sharks’ Teeth is just what I needed to hear these days: dreamy, sometimes eery & experimental indie-pop-rock ventures. don’t miss this one! - http://audio-camp.com/

New Orleans’ synth-wave extraordinaries Sharks’ Teeth are excited to announce their new album It Transfers & Grows today via Stereogum with the premiere of the record’s first single “Don’t Touch My Feet”. Due out September 2nd on Gigantic Noise (vinyl) andCommunity Records (cassette), It Transfers & Grows is the part of a long prolific line of Sharks’ Teeth albums and yet it feels like a fresh start with the Tyler Scurlock led band forming into a cohesive mutant-pop synth quartet.
It Transfers & Grows was recorded using nothing but a room full of synthesizers and a keen sense for arranging rhythms from samples of just about anything. You will hear all kinds of sounds that these machines are able to produce, but the songs are formatted in a familiar pop style, hopefully grounding all the other worldly textures. Up until this record, the past 16 albums, EPs, and various recordings (there’s over 60 releases on their Bandcamp) were put together primarily by Tyler Scurlock, but over the past two years Sharks’ Teeth has grown to include the help of Devin Hildebrand, Emily Hafner & Shelby Grosz. What started as Scurlock drafting songs and suggesting parts for each member to play live, quickly became a collaborative process in which each member developed there original contributions, eventually leading to this album, the first to be recorded as Sharks’ Teeth: the band.

Speaking about “Don’t Touch My Feet,” Stereogum noted the bands ability to warp genres, calling it “A cosmic-funk feel plus pop-sensible melodies, random ambient-like interjections, atmospheric sweeps, and a dash of psychedelia evoke the feeling of retreating into yourself when in a touchy mood.” - Circuit Sweek

New Orleans synth-pop outfit Sharks' Teeth has made over sixteen albums within the last decade, and this September 2, as a four-piece are putting out their first physical release, It Transfers & Grows. Within the album are seven different synths that weave with samples to create a sweetness of melody reminiscent of Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot's Wesley Miles's electronic-rock project Discovery, and sparkling refrains that conjure Tears For Fears.
“We recorded It Transfers & Grows at home, in a room filled wall to wall with synthesizers, drum machines, Laurie Anderson records, vocoders, and more," the band's Tyler Scurlock wrote in a note to The FADER about the new record. "Each sound either comes directly from organic samples of the real world or from our array of electronic equipment. No soft synths were used, no midi synchronization, just some hands on some synths twisting and turning the knobs into space.” - The Fader

Synth pop and New Orleans aren't sound that are generally synoymous with one another. But veteran quintet Sharks' Teeth are out to change that. Now seven years and after an incredible 16 albums, the band is gearing up for another release next month. Ahead of that, however, comes their entertaining video for "It's Bad For You." The three-minute track is action-packed with a guy who slowly peels off clothing as the song's pace picks up.

"The inspiration for the video was a dream I had," Devin Hildebrand says of the clip. "I dreamt I was watching someone strip off endless layers of clothing while walking forward and glitching in rhythm to this song. I woke up and texted Tyler immediately and we made it happen shortly after." - PureVolume

The human mouth has 32 teeth; the piano, 88 keys. This means that at any given Sharks' Teeth show, New Orleans' chairman of the keyboard, Tyler Scurlock — encircled by four interlocking synths — is surrounded by the equivalent of 11 beaming instrumental grins. That ecstasy manifests in his music, a retrofuturistic, ebony-and-ivory orgy that recalls vocoder first love in the backseat of Gary Numan's "Cars." Last year's Dream Full of Dreams EP dropped off Radiohead's "Kid A" at Skate Country; the new It Transfers & Grows (Gigantic Noise/Community), for which this concert serves as a reveal party, tunes up James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem ("Don't Touch My Feet") and waxes Air's Moon Safari to a mirrored shine ("It's Bad For You"). - The Gambit