About The Disco Biscuits
The Disco Biscuits are an American jam band from Philadelphia. The band consists of Allen Aucoin , Marc "Brownie" Brownstein , Jon "The Barber" Gutwillig , and Aron Magner . The band incorporates elements from a variety of musical genres with a base of electronic and rock. Their style has been described as trance fusion.
The Disco Biscuits formed in 1995 at the University of Pennsylvania. Brownstein, Gutwillig, Magner, and the original drummer, Sam "Sammy" Altman, bonded over a shared affinity for psychedelic rock, electronic music, soul, blues, jazz and classical music. This eclectic mix of interests helped inspire their distinctive style of live electronic music, which is sometimes called 'trance fusion'. The term references the band's choice to incorporate elements of trance music - specifically the driving, rhythmically repetitive drum beats and melodic sections that repeat and evolve over time - into the instrumentation and conventions of a live jamband where guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums play structured songs with sections for exploratory improvisation.
The band honed their style while playing at bars and fraternity-house shows in the Philadelphia area in the mid-1990s. Bassist Marc Brownstein credits the improvisational ingenuity demonstrated by the jamband Phish during the 95-97 tours as a particular inspiration for the Disco Biscuits' unique sound. He recognized that improvisation-inclined bands needed to differentiate their sound in meaningful ways in order to stand out in the underground mid-to-late-1990s live music scene, and the Biscuits members' interest in electronic music provided an excellent opportunity to explore a unique sound.
The band received particular acclaim from fans during their 1999 tours for the thoughtful setlist compositions mixed with exploratory improvisation. This era featured energetic musical improvisation that incorporated new musical elements while still remaining enjoyable to more mainstream jamband audiences whose tastes tended to gravitate towards folk-rock and blues.
The first inklings of what ultimately became trance-fusion emerged during shows played by the band shortly after keyboardist Aron Magner incorporated a Roland JP-8000 into his live setup in late 1997. This analog-modeling synthesizer supplied sounds that lent a distinctly electronic flavor to jams that were in most other ways typical Phish-inspired blues-rock improvisations. The Halloween 1997 set at the Phi Kappa Gamma fraternity house near the University of Pennsylvania campus is unofficially recognized as the first show that incorporated the JP-8000, helping cement the Biscuits' connection to live, improvised electronic music.
In 2005 drummer Sammy Altman left the band to pursue a career in medicine. The band began a search for their next drummer ending with a two-night, sold-out drum-off concert at the Borgata's Music Box in Atlantic City. In December 2005 Allen Aucoin was announced as the newest member of the band. Aucoin knew members of the Biscuits' road crew and had opened for the Biscuits with his previous band, Skydog Gypsy, in the past. In 2006 the band purchased the Old City Philadelphia studio space that had previously belonged to DJ Jazzy Jeff. The space became a place for local musicians to congregate and work, culminating in the unique collaborations recorded in recording studio efforts known as the Planet Anthem sessions. Around the time Planet Anthem was released, the Biscuits also collaborated with noted hip-hop producer Damon Dash working on a variety of projects.
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