Fremont is a suburb in the East Bay, an hour away from San Fransisco and close to Silicon Valley. The Tesla factory is the biggest employer and despite it being home to the largest Afghan American community in the United States, you get the sense there isn't a lot of interesting music happening on a regular basis. It seems like the kind of place were chinos and pressed shirts are basic attire. Basically a good location for an Office Space sequel."Fremont is pretty much one of the most boring towns among suburban America", explains Ilya Shkipin, vocalist and bassist of local band The Laytcomers. "People come here to die of old age. And also eat. Suburbs in America are population graves."Since forming The Laytcomers after graduating high-school in 2008, Shkipin and vocalist and guitarist Cye Husain have been holding down Fremont's 'weird New Zealand pop' mantle. There seems to be few challengers.The discovery of New Zealand pop came through a compilation that a Russian friend made for them. "It pretty much had all of the bands: Tall Dwarfs, The Terminals, The Clean," explains Ilya. "At that time we were mostly just listening to shoe gaze and dream pop and getting into darker post-punk. New Zealand style of melodic harmonies, noise and lo-fi recording was very refreshing to our ears."Following a number of home-recorded releases that mixed experimental pop tunes to post-punk, psychedelia and even noise rock, Shkipin and Cye Husain, with addition of John Lee and Sam Hardy on sax and drums, are set to release Basic Sharpie. One of the tracks "Population Grave", is an older song that has been reworked and is a good indicator or where the band are coming from at the moment explains Ilya."The song is pretty much about hipsterism and death of a trend. Since we started making music we've been hopping from genre to genre: some poppy stuff, some noisy stuff. I feel like this song really marked a formation of our sound and style. It's angular, erratic and sarcastic."
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