Wages

Science, meet art. Science and art, meet music. The video for Wages’ song “Pull Through” sprouted from songwriter Nick Campbell’s involvement with HATCH, a community of cross-discipline creatives who foster education and collaboration. “Pull Through’s” colorful, inky tale was part of the HATCH 10 installation, filmed by Yarrow Kraner along with Sean McDonald, Andy George, Colin Arndt and Alex Hornbake. The images were also used to create flashcards dispensing knowledge about physics, fluid dynamics, viscosity and chemical reactions with baking soda, vinegar, oils, dry ice and the like. Oh, and did we mention the song was gorgeous too? Campbell, who alighted in L.A. a couple of years ago, released Wages’ “Shady Chamber” EP earlier this year and is working on a full-length for 2014. If only science class came with a soundtrack. - See more at: http://www.buzzbands.la/2013/12/04/video-wages-pull-through/#sthash.FUS3UKdL.dpuf - Buzzbands LA

Science, meet art. Science and art, meet music. The video for Wages’ song “Pull Through” sprouted from songwriter Nick Campbell’s involvement with HATCH, a community of cross-discipline creatives who foster education and collaboration. “Pull Through’s” colorful, inky tale was part of the HATCH 10 installation, filmed by Yarrow Kraner along with Sean McDonald, Andy George, Colin Arndt and Alex Hornbake. The images were also used to create flashcards dispensing knowledge about physics, fluid dynamics, viscosity and chemical reactions with baking soda, vinegar, oils, dry ice and the like. Oh, and did we mention the song was gorgeous too? Campbell, who alighted in L.A. a couple of years ago, released Wages’ “Shady Chamber” EP earlier this year and is working on a full-length for 2014. If only science class came with a soundtrack. - See more at: http://www.buzzbands.la/2013/12/04/video-wages-pull-through/#sthash.FUS3UKdL.dpuf - Buzzbands LA

I’ve had some intense post production schedules before, but nothing as nuts as this one. I had to somehow pull together the entire thing in a matter of days with no budget, which is one of the inherent challenges of composing at the indie level – typically you’re one of the last departments to come on board and too often the production is out of money or time. You generally need at least one of these to make something. Sun Don’t Shine had neither, but it had everything else it takes to make a great movie so I jumped at the opportunity to be a part of it. I ended up piggybacking the recording sessions off another project and got some help from a great musician named Nick Campbell. Nobody slept those last couple days, but we got it done. - See more at: http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/exploring-the-challenges-and-freedom-of-composing-for-independent-films-with-ben-lovett.php#sthash.oO6emhsB.dpuf - Film School Rejects

Pull Through by Wages is a sound installation with conceptual performances interspersed. At its core, the entire piece is about the ambiguous nature of being: the intersection of finite and infinite. Each performed piece symbolizes a segment of the life cycle, with each second symbolizing the space of a day (to illustrate, 365 days = 365 seconds, or a little over 6 minutes to complete a year). The first theme begins at conception, with following themes tracking the life of this imagined individual and their brief experience of being human, ending with a re-entrance into the infinite. - See more at: http://evilmonito.com/2012/10/20/pull-through/#sthash.9NWlRMew.dpuf .... - Evil Monito

Pull Through by Wages is a sound installation with conceptual performances interspersed. At its core, the entire piece is about the ambiguous nature of being: the intersection of finite and infinite. Each performed piece symbolizes a segment of the life cycle, with each second symbolizing the space of a day (to illustrate, 365 days = 365 seconds, or a little over 6 minutes to complete a year). The first theme begins at conception, with following themes tracking the life of this imagined individual and their brief experience of being human, ending with a re-entrance into the infinite. - See more at: http://evilmonito.com/2012/10/20/pull-through/#sthash.9NWlRMew.dpuf .... - Evil Monito

On Friday, March 22, musician Nick Campbell (Wages) presents PERSONO, an interactive sound art installation at Space 4 Art (340 16th St. – East Village).

“There will be a few central sonic elements,” says Campbell, “guitars played by falling sand, by automated motors and also played manually by motors that attendees will trigger. My goal is to create a unique sound-art experience that is conceptual, but also sonically pleasing. I usually approach music from a pop perspective (thinking in terms of songs versus sounds alone), and an installation offers the chance to think in terms of pure sound and how people interact with that sound.”

Campbell says he arrived at the idea while exploring the possibility of recreating the experience of existence using sound.... - San Diego Reader

On Friday, March 22, musician Nick Campbell (Wages) presents PERSONO, an interactive sound art installation at Space 4 Art (340 16th St. – East Village).

“There will be a few central sonic elements,” says Campbell, “guitars played by falling sand, by automated motors and also played manually by motors that attendees will trigger. My goal is to create a unique sound-art experience that is conceptual, but also sonically pleasing. I usually approach music from a pop perspective (thinking in terms of songs versus sounds alone), and an installation offers the chance to think in terms of pure sound and how people interact with that sound.”

Campbell says he arrived at the idea while exploring the possibility of recreating the experience of existence using sound.... - San Diego Reader

Whether you wanna chalk up the invigorating sense a song can give off as the science behind sound or the minds behind music, on thing is for sure, it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world. Those song that just make you sink in your chair, spellbound, waiting for a moment of less clarity to snap you back and let you hit repeat are the one’s that all music junkies alike live for, the perfect storm. Band Wages, with their newest E.P. coming out soon, is a sterling example of such.

The NC natives upcoming release ‘Shady Chambers’, has four songs available to listen to in full currently, all of which bring a certain special aspect to the group. The band serves up sounds of Simon & Garfunkel in the vocals and Beatles-esque guitar-work that mix well with the low-fi undertones throughout. The E.P. is well-balanced, packed with talent, and definitely noteworthy as yet another thing to look forward to in the world of music today. - AVS Music Review

Whether you wanna chalk up the invigorating sense a song can give off as the science behind sound or the minds behind music, on thing is for sure, it’s one of the most beautiful things in the world. Those song that just make you sink in your chair, spellbound, waiting for a moment of less clarity to snap you back and let you hit repeat are the one’s that all music junkies alike live for, the perfect storm. Band Wages, with their newest E.P. coming out soon, is a sterling example of such.

The NC natives upcoming release ‘Shady Chambers’, has four songs available to listen to in full currently, all of which bring a certain special aspect to the group. The band serves up sounds of Simon & Garfunkel in the vocals and Beatles-esque guitar-work that mix well with the low-fi undertones throughout. The E.P. is well-balanced, packed with talent, and definitely noteworthy as yet another thing to look forward to in the world of music today. - AVS Music Review

So the bullet points tell us that Nick Campbell and James DeDakis have piled up a lot of miles (and some substantial credits) en route to Los Angeles. The duo, who make music as Wages, have been part of widely respected acts such as Arizona, Fan Modine and Lovett. Wages’ forthcoming EP “Shady Chamber” was made at two studios in North Carolina prior to the duo’s moving to L.A. eight months ago. What those factoids don’t reveal is the power of “Shady Chamber,” which Campbell says was inspired in part by his witnessing Jonsi perform. Wages’ reverb-heavy, pitch-shifted soundscapes suggest remote places filmed with smudged lenses, hazy and beautiful, amorphous and then not, seemingly accidentally artful. Post-rock, with a narrator. - See more at: http://buzzbands.la/2012/09/24/ears-wide-open-wages/#sthash.hqvz5VEe.dpuf - Buzzbands LA

“Bring me the big knife so I can cut my neck again.”

The line opens “Eternal”, the dramatic lead track on Wages’ Shady Chamber. As the chorus repeats, “The pain is eternal”, things don’t look any sunnier.

This oft-melancholic EP focuses on the enviable falsetto of Nick Campbell. Backed with lush reverb, his lyrics and arrangements make Shady Chamber a solid release from the L.A. duo. Campbell draws inspiration from Elliott Smith's “spider-web thin vocals”, thankfully without coming off as another Smith-obsessed songwriter à la Blake Sennett or Jose Gonzalez. Among the forbearers of grandiose post-rock also heard in Campbell's voice and songwriting, Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Rós easily comes to mind.... - Dead Red Eyes

“Bring me the big knife so I can cut my neck again.”

The line opens “Eternal”, the dramatic lead track on Wages’ Shady Chamber. As the chorus repeats, “The pain is eternal”, things don’t look any sunnier.

This oft-melancholic EP focuses on the enviable falsetto of Nick Campbell. Backed with lush reverb, his lyrics and arrangements make Shady Chamber a solid release from the L.A. duo. Campbell draws inspiration from Elliott Smith's “spider-web thin vocals”, thankfully without coming off as another Smith-obsessed songwriter à la Blake Sennett or Jose Gonzalez. Among the forbearers of grandiose post-rock also heard in Campbell's voice and songwriting, Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Rós easily comes to mind.... - Dead Red Eyes

Wages, from Los Angeles, specialise in making the kind of music that reaches right into the part of my brain marked “favourite new bands” and launches it stereophonically to both ears. I know it’s going to be something special when on first listen I have a hungry yearning for the second listen and that feeling washes over me. Shady Chamber manages to do just that. And then some.... - Echoes and Dust

"Bring me the big knife so I can / cut my neck again," sings Nick Campbell. These are the first words on opening track “Eternal" (from Wages new EP Shady Chamber). And it would be a weird way to launch an album, but Campbell’s vocal is a dusky lullaby, the song a gentle wooing into Wages’ breathy-sweeping-cinematic worldview, buoyed by James DeDakis’ crisp percussion… - Blurt! Magazine

"Bring me the big knife so I can / cut my neck again," sings Nick Campbell. These are the first words on opening track “Eternal" (from Wages new EP Shady Chamber). And it would be a weird way to launch an album, but Campbell’s vocal is a dusky lullaby, the song a gentle wooing into Wages’ breathy-sweeping-cinematic worldview, buoyed by James DeDakis’ crisp percussion… - Blurt! Magazine

Lately what I’ve wanted from music is to have a visceral response to it. To feel it in my stomach and in my teeth, love-at-first-sight like. To be wounded by its beauty. In a way, it’s easy to get that from Wages. I’ve been in-love-at-first-sight (sound?) with that band for years. I was gutted when they went from a trio to a duo — but I was wrong. Wages works as a duo. And then my heart was broken again when Nick Campbell left Asheville for L.A., but (again) it turned out okay. Campbell has been doing some astonishing work on the West coast. And Wages has survived. “Unity," here, is evidence of both.

The song is all whisper and shimmer and a kind of drenching sound, the kind of soft/hard of a breaking wave or a summer storm. The same symbiosis can be sound in the relation of the percussion (James DeDakis) to Campbell’s vocal. The obvious is that Campbell’s soaring falsetto is the soft and DeDakis’s powerful drumming is the hard. But, in turns, it’s the rhythmic tempo, the sticks on rims, the tumble of the snare that rolls the listener gently into the welcome crush of Campbell’s melodies.

So is this annihilation or absorption? I like to think the answer is in the song title. That to listen to the song is to join, at least for four minutes, with that wounding beauty. To be destroyed by it and to be made new.

A song from the album Shady Chamber. More info and downloads at wageswages.com - Alli Marshall

Lately what I’ve wanted from music is to have a visceral response to it. To feel it in my stomach and in my teeth, love-at-first-sight like. To be wounded by its beauty. In a way, it’s easy to get that from Wages. I’ve been in-love-at-first-sight (sound?) with that band for years. I was gutted when they went from a trio to a duo — but I was wrong. Wages works as a duo. And then my heart was broken again when Nick Campbell left Asheville for L.A., but (again) it turned out okay. Campbell has been doing some astonishing work on the West coast. And Wages has survived. “Unity," here, is evidence of both.

The song is all whisper and shimmer and a kind of drenching sound, the kind of soft/hard of a breaking wave or a summer storm. The same symbiosis can be sound in the relation of the percussion (James DeDakis) to Campbell’s vocal. The obvious is that Campbell’s soaring falsetto is the soft and DeDakis’s powerful drumming is the hard. But, in turns, it’s the rhythmic tempo, the sticks on rims, the tumble of the snare that rolls the listener gently into the welcome crush of Campbell’s melodies.

So is this annihilation or absorption? I like to think the answer is in the song title. That to listen to the song is to join, at least for four minutes, with that wounding beauty. To be destroyed by it and to be made new.

A song from the album Shady Chamber. More info and downloads at wageswages.com - Alli Marshall

Video of "Pull Through" installation in which Wages guitarist (and former Asheville-based musician) Nick Campbell makes music by mechanically pulling fishing wire through guitar strings. That's the over-simplified explanation. The full project involves multiple guitars played by multiple machines and is truly inspiring. - MountainX

Video of "Pull Through" installation in which Wages guitarist (and former Asheville-based musician) Nick Campbell makes music by mechanically pulling fishing wire through guitar strings. That's the over-simplified explanation. The full project involves multiple guitars played by multiple machines and is truly inspiring. - MountainX

Wages consists of four “super nice dudes” based in Highland Park who strike a beautiful balance between woozy indie rock and melodic jangle pop. Here’s the first catchy single, “We Reign,” off their forthcoming third EP, Sacre Coeur, which is the second release of a conceptual trilogy. - Free Bike Valet

Since making L.A. their home base, Wages’ music has ranged from cinematic art-rock to boundary-pushing experiments, such as their recent “sound art” installations. The band — founders Nick Byron Campbell and James DeDakis, along with Dustin Robles and Matt Rumley — release their second EP of the year this week. The follow-up to June’s “L’oeil” EP (and sticking with the French titles), it’s called “Sacre Coeur,” and the two songs teased so far see Wages settling in for a bout of churning, atmospheric indie-rock. The new song “Rattlesnake” is as close to a pop single as Wages has ever released; it’s a 3-minute purge that was a mix of home-recorded samples and sounds and material captured at Boulevard Recording in Hollywood and engineered by Clay Blair. Here, Campbell urges life’s pain away in a cathartic blast that warns against “using self-destructive behavior to soothe yourself in the moment rather than deal honestly with the pain.” Sometimes, turning up the volume helps too. - Buzzbands LA