Purchase Dubbed a Music Scene
In a profile of the group Cende, San Francisco Weekly recently posed the question “Can geography and proximity still inspire and galvanize a music scene?
“The good news, is that the answer to these questions can still be “yes” — just look at the recent music scene that has stemmed from a small college in New York. … Purchase College has produced an outsized number of exciting young musical acts, many of whom live in close proximity to each other and frequently collaborate on their various ventures.”
“’There is no doubt that we are inspired by our friends in our little community,” says Cameron Wisch, the group’s singer and guitarist. “I don’t think it’s necessarily hearing what they’re playing and trying to emulate that sound. But just being surrounded by creative people makes you want to go out and create yourself.’”
Also, read more on NPR Music’s Songs We Love.
Members of Cende include Cameron Wisch ’13 (studio composition); Dave Medina ’13 (photography); Bernard Casserly ’14 (creative writing), and Greg Rutkin ’11–’13.
Vérité
Read about another product of the Purchase music scene, VÉRITÉ, aka Kelsey Byrne ’12, who is also on the rise.
Sheer Mag
Sheer Mag also has roots at Purchase. The DIY rock band have released a debut album Need to Feel Your Love after several EPs.
They were recently profiled by Rolling Stone magazine, which wrote, “These days, this sort of fervent response seems to be a common reaction to Sheer Mag, who formed in Philadelphia three years ago and, over the course of a trio of self-recorded, self-designed and mostly self-released seven-inch EPs, as well as growing word-of-mouth buzz around their cramped, high-energy shows at small Philly bars and clubs, have quickly risen to become one of the brightest lights in the American rock underground.”
They’re the August cover story for Spin Magazine, which writes, ”Need to Feel Your Love is an excellent record, one that reveals a band wonderfully out of step with their contemporaries.”
Band members are Tina Halladay ’09 (liberal studies: arts), Matt Palmer ’12 (new media), and brothers Kyle Seely ’13 (new media) and Hart Seely ’11 (studio composition).
The band’s roots literally grew from a Purchase class assignment—Kyle Seely conjured a seventies rock band with a full back story, D’s Licks. As his story goes, the band never succeeded yet had a catalog of music that a dying original member asked Seely to keep alive.