Artist bio

This Bloomington, Indiana-based group has built a respectable body of work informed by Louisville post-punk outfits such as Slint as well as the avant-garde compositional panache of Steve Reich and Brian Eno. The instrumental trio of guitarists Dan Burton and Chris Carothers and drummer Rory Leitch favored brutal soft-to-loud transitions on its earliest material, encapsulated on 1996’s Pills Vs. Planes and the “Modern Gang Reader”/"Larkin" single, the latter of which inaugurated an association with Bloomington label Secretly Canadian. The group (and particularly Burton’s nascent engineering and production skills) had evolved significantly by 1998’s German Water, which teeters along the dream/nightmare soundscapes of such instrumentalists as Windsor For The Derby and Analogue. Ativin paused after 1999’s Summing The Approach, allowing Burton to open his own Bloomington recording studio and rear his more song-oriented Early Day Miners project, which has since released two excellent albums. He and Carothers, minus Leitch, regrouped as Ativin for 2001’s Interiors and plan to continue collaborating.

Albums by this artist

Summing The Approach (1999)

German Water (1998)

'Modern Gang Reader' b/w 'Larkin' (1997)

Pills Vs. Planes (1996)

Ativin

'Modern Gang Reader' b/w 'Larkin'

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» JONATHAN COHEN | SENIOR EDITOR

Ativin 'Modern Gang Reader' b/w 'Larkin' Secretly Canadian, 1997 RiYL: Windsor For The Derby's Calm Hades Float, Sonic Youth's Evol, Slint's Spiderland

Ativin's scary noise-rock is evolving. And during the group's single on Bloomington, Indiana, record label Secretly Canadian, it's happening as we listen.

"Modern Gang Reader" first lulls listeners into a trance with riffs that give the impression of some impending catastrophe. The song's warped, winding midsection spins heads even further, morphing next into chromatic fret slides by guitarists Dan Burton and Chris Carothers.

Drummer Rory Leitch keys the dynamic change that follows, lightly tinging his cymbals before the song explodes into a raging finale.

"Larkin" is another dose of well-conceived guitar interplay, as wicked riffs suddenly change moods, cascading into a bubbling waterfall of notes that close the piece. Increasing creativity demonstrates here that Ativin is anything but one-dimensional.

JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"