“oOo (that’s my type)” and “omg” out now

MGMT: 
af@loyaltmgmt.com

BOOKING:
N/S America, Asia, Australia: 
mmarquis@paradigmagency.com
max@amonly.com 

UK/Europe:
nick@codaagency.com 

Act One, the debut full-length from songwriting duo Marian Hill, was written and produced in its entirety by Jeremy Lloyd (music/lyrics/production) and Samantha Gongol (music/lyrics/vocals). The multi-talented duo, who have been collaborating in one form or another since high school, have shifted the classic paradigm of a woman on a stage and a man with a piano to a woman on a mic and a man with a laptop -- and the results are seductive and vivid. Tempting paradox with a blend of blues and bass, acoustic and digital, classic and modern, Marian Hill have arrived.

Two years ago Sam and Jeremy wrote and recorded “Whisky” over spring break in Jeremy’s parents’ basement. When they released it for free on Soundcloud later that summer it was the only song they’d written for the project, and in a little over a year’s time they had recorded their first EP in a bedroom, amassed millions of plays on various platforms, sold out shows across the country and featured in high profile commercials. They signed to Republic Records in early 2015, released the Sway EP, and settled in to write and record their debut album over the course of the following year with a plan to push their unique sound to its fullest potential.

For the first 50 seconds of “Down” you might think you’re at a supper club in the 1920s, but when the bass drops out of nowhere you couldn’t be anywhere but 2016. Act One then takes you on a journey through the complexities of modern relationships, with each song inhabiting a specific and charged relationship lyrically, melodically, and sonically. “I Know Why” constantly transforms and reinvents itself as the vocals grapple with a secret while “Mistaken” is the hardest of sax trap with a classic songwriting backbone. “Same Thing” is the saddest part of the album, a haunting ballad depicting serene resignation of a doomed relationship, but castanets rise from the ashes as “I Want You” closes out the night in a pure moment of optimistic electricity, a glance across a crowded room that changes everything.

Marian Hill’s one of a kind sound is present throughout — blues harmonies blend with sparse hip hop drums, horns blast under classic vocal melodies, and soloistic vocal chops sit side by side with clear, intimate lyrics. You’ve never heard this before, yet it’s surprisingly familiar. And it’s only the beginning.

POWERS is Mike Del Rio & Crista Ru.

CONTACT:
General: Ian@rebel-one.net
Bookings: DavidGalea@theagencygroup.com
Press: paul@whiteboardproject.co.uk

Here’s a partial list of things that have inspired L.A.-based alternative duo POWERS in recent months: found recordings of ancient Peruvian tribal music, a centuries-old Swedish hymn, a PBS retrospective on the making of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and a 1993 Baywatch episode titled “Island of Romance.” “Songs can spark from anything,” says Crista Ru, who co-founded POWERS with co-vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Mike Del Rio in 2014. “It’s just like love — it hits you out of nowhere, you can’t ever predict it. But when you feel it, you need to do whatever you can to hold onto that feeling and follow through and bring something good to life.”

For POWERS, bringing songs to life means tapping into their own eclectic backgrounds from playing in underground punk bands in New York City to co-writing for the likes of Kylie Minogue and Selena Gomez.  Citing the cut-and-paste art of Robert Rauschenberg and Terry Gilliam among their longtime influences, they’ve taken a collage-like approach to constructing crystalline pop. Working to achieve this vision, POWERS has been praised by LA Weekly for creating a sound “as classic as it is cutting-edge,” matching their expansive musicality with genre-blurring ingenuity. As heard on their debut album Alpha, the result is an endlessly shapeshifting breed of pop that’s both intricately composed and graced with timeless simplicity.

In creating songs for their forthcoming album, POWERS continue to embrace their oddball inclinations and exercise their pop instincts while shaping a more lavishly arranged sound. Along with working from a musical palette now filled with world-music-inspired rhythms and tones and textures, the duo have achieved that bigger sound in part by building off their recent experiences touring with bands like DNCE and X Ambassadors. From the brilliantly warped vocals and gospel-like harmonies of “Sunshine”, to the late 70's New York bass line of "Heavy", and the life-affirming, anthemic gospel of “Real” (featuring Sam Harris of X Ambassadors), the new songs match POWERS’ natural magnetism with an arena-ready grandeur. “Whenever we have an idea, we always ask ourselves, ‘How would this feel for a live audience?’” Crista says. “If something feels really good to us and we’re excited and it’s all flowing, it usually translates that way to people’s ears and turns out to be something special.”

Partly recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound studios with mixer/producers Rich Costey (Vampire Weekend, Chvrches, Bastille) and Mark Rankin (Iggy Pop, Florence + the Machine, Santigold), Alpha is an emotionally ambitious look at "the process of growing up in your twenties.” According to Del Rio the album embodies, “those characters you meet and the characters you become, the left turns and right turns all while learning how to celebrate the full color spectrum of your individual story.”  Lead single “Dance” is a gloriously bombastic and frenzied defiant anthem described by Crista as “our way of coping with the social and political environment of the world right now. It is our state of the union”. With “Man on the Moon” — a song about “the paradox of being simultaneously connected to everyone and everything via the internet, but still in complete solitude of real contact" as Del Rio explains — soulful grooves and spacey psychedelia both warp and heighten that sense of euphoric isolation. Meanwhile, on the disco tinged “Georgie,” POWERS animate classic lovesickness from a more carefree perspective. “‘Georgie’ is a fictional character inspired by real friends of ours going through the motions of love and rebound ,” says Crista. “The idea behind the song is to get out of your own way and enjoy life, know that something good can come from all the heartbreak even if it is just for one night”.

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