Physics

There are several artists that go by the name Physics: 1. A Swedish deep house duo consisting of Mikael Surdi and Torbj?rn Olsson. 2. An American San Diego-based post-rock ensemble active throughout much of the 1990's. 3. drum and bass producer/DJ Glenn Grip from Helsinki Physics have recently become the name on many a house gourmets lips, due to their unique sound and interesting blend of house beats and deep jazzy grooves.

1. A Swedish deep house duo consisting of Mikael Surdi and Torbj?rn Olsson.

2. An American San Diego-based post-rock ensemble active throughout much of the 1990's.

3. drum and bass producer/DJ Glenn Grip from Helsinki

Physics have recently become the name on many a house gourmets lips, due to their unique sound and interesting blend of house beats and deep jazzy grooves. It is not the blend as such that has given them cred, but the way in which they mix their different components. With a general respect and love for music and particularly the genre within which they operate, Physics aim to please both the club visitor and the fuzzy listener by using live as well as programmed elements in order to convey the true vibes of what house is all about. This is the very foundation on which both their studio-produced and live-performed music are based.

After some 12-inch releases on Deeplay Music, of which the song City Lights has been licensed to Eric Kupper's Hysteria and already been featured on many compilations. 7 AM Sessions is another highlighted making it's way into several compilations, Beach House 2 on Hed Kandi and Klubb Jazz vol 3 on Slip N Slide to name a few.

This album's Don't deny me love has already been featured on 2 different Hed Kandi compilations. Es Vive and Stereo Sushi. Leaving Monte Carlo is out now on one of the best selling compilations ever, French label Pschent's Hotel Costes Vol 5 and if that wasn't enough, Ministry Of Sound took it for their Chill Out Session 2003. Tie Me Down is another track that seems to get a lot of attention, Beechwood's Dolce Vita and Inca's Private Lounge took it for their excellent compilations.This is just an excerpt of all licensing requests that keeps coming in from this album

2. An American San Diego-based post-rock ensemble active throughout much of the 1990's. Membership evolved over time, with many SD luminaries performing in Physics during the course of their existence.

Their recorded output was never quite able to live up to the experience of feeling the wall of sound emanating from the stage at one of their live performances... the usual lineup featured three guitars interlocking in some sort of modal complexity, a couple of synths providing the drone-based foundation and arpegiating in or out of rhythm with the drumbeat, a slow-burning, head-nodding, syncopated stomp, which gradually built to a crescendo before receding into the ether...

Since San Diego's Physics is an instrumental band, it would be easy to compare them to Trans Am, Tortoise, or Godspeed You Black Emperor!, but Physics is neither as verging-on-muzak-jazzy as the first two, nor as pretentiously aggressive as the latter. And unlike heroin-rock bands like Mogwai, Physics doesn't follow the quiet, quiet, quiet, LOUD, LOUD, LOUD model. Instead of assaulting you with jarring noise spasms, they slowly build to a crescendo, steadily mixing layers of guitars, synthesizers, and drums to create songs that are by turns hypnotic, mournful, shrill, and soaring.

Their first album, Physics1, is a collection of singles, live recordings, and studio tracks from 1994 to 1996, all of which are centered around the use of a single chord called the "Physics Chord." In these early projects, one guitarist plays the Physics Chord repeatedly, while the other musicians build the song around him, using looped found-sound recordings, synthesizers, percussion, and additional guitars. Their songs are crafted rather than composed, built from an initial idea, theme, or phrase, and then added to until the layers converge and swirl around in a narcotic tableau.

On Physics2, their second full-length, they continue to craft intricate impressionistic pieces: this is space rock in the most literal sense of the word, suggesting collapsing time and endless journeys to distant galaxies and other dimensions. The album contains both compositions and improvisations, including a 35-minute, half-improvised live piece consisting of three interweaving themes that effortlessly meld into each other, both lulling and building tension. Synthesizers, drums, guitars, and snippets of wave radio come together to create washes of sound evocative of shooting across the Arizona desert in a souped-up spacecraft. The songs are sometimes even painful, as the band manipulates pure tones at unexpected places in these otherwise meditative compositions, blasting the listener with pure sound.

In the five-plus years of their existence, Physics has had more members than the average high school marching band, including moonlighters from Pinback, Three Mile Pilot, Crash Worship, Chune, Heavy Vegetable, Powerdresser, Thingy, and Optiganally Yours, among others. But the whole is greater than (and quite different from) the sum of its parts: the members of Physics are able to explore a musical range beyond the reach of other bands, creating a beautiful and powerful statement about the nature of both science and sound.

Four ex-members of Physics now play in the band Aspects of Physics


3. drum and bass producer/DJ Glenn Grip from Helsinki, a man behind Midnightsun recordings.