Electric Turn To Me
I’d like to quickly memorialize an amazing band called Electric Turn To Me. I can’t imagine very many people have heard of them. Have you? I doubt it!
In 2003 The Mars Volta released De-Loused In The Comatorium. This is definitely one of my top ten favourite albums of all time. It totally blew my mind (and still does)!
I recall sometime in 2004 I was in Ditch Records and filed under Mars Volta was a “if you like Mars Volta, try this” note referring me to Electric Turn To Me. (The connection between the two was Blake Flemming.) That is how I discovered the four song self titled Electric Turn To Me EP, so I gave it a try. I was impressed. I started following the band’s website and (I think, back then) their MySpace page.
This was a small indie band from New York City, so I never had a chance to see them play live, and back then YouTube didn’t even exist yet so it’s not like I could find bootleg clips of live shows or anything else online. All I had were four songs on their CD and basically monthly blog posts from afar which told the story of a promising band just starting out.
I was eagerly anticipating the release of their first full length album. I was sure they would make it big (well, for an indie band). One day in October 2005 I routinely visited their site to check on their progress when I was met with the sad news that they had mutually decided to break up the band. :'(
The silver lining was that they decided to release the album that they had “put their heart into for the past year” as a free download for friends and fans. That album was titled Scrape The Sky, and I had to dig pretty deep to find any information about this old .zip file I still have on my hard drive, but I found that it is still available through the Internet Archive.
I also found a good write up about the band.
I got some new headphones recently and have been revisiting the deepest depths of my music collection. I re-discovered ETTM and fell in love with them all over again. Unfortunately this material was only ever released in 128kbps mp3 format, but it’s definitely worth checking out.
RIP, Electric Turn To Me. Perhaps there are others like me out there who miss you too, or perhaps I am your last fan, but regardless, your memory lives on in me! I wrote this so I could more easily share your legacy with others who might enjoy your work too.