About The Airborne Toxic Event
The Airborne Toxic Event is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 2006. It consists of Mikel Jollett , Steven Chen , Adrian Rodriguez , Daren Taylor , and Miriam "Mimi" Peschet . Anna Bulbrook and Noah Harmon were formerly members of the band.
Named after a section in Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, the group is known for its blend of rock music and orchestral arrangements, having performed frequently with the Calder Quartet, a string quartet based in Los Angeles. The group has also played concerts with the Louisville Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.
Initially a writer and essayist, Jollett began seriously writing songs with an acoustic guitar following a week in March 2006, during which he underwent a break-up, learned his mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and was himself diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease that led to the development of two cosmetic conditions: Alopecia areata and Vitiligo. This quick succession of traumatic events spurred a period of intense songwriting, and it was around this time that he first met Taylor through a mutual friend in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Taylor had previously been a drummer in the Fresno area band Pinkeye.
Throughout the summer of 2006, Jollett and Taylor rehearsed several of Jollett's songs, including early incarnations of "Wishing Well," "Missy," and "Innocence," which would eventually appear on the band's debut album. After a few months of rehearsals, Jollett ran into Anna Bulbrook one night at El Gran Burrito, a popular outdoor Mexican restaurant in Silver Lake. Trained in orchestral and chamber music, she had just moved to Los Angeles from New York City. Though they were just acquaintances at the time, he remembered that she played the violin and asked her to attend one of his and Taylor's rehearsals. Afraid to bring her more expensive violin to a rock rehearsal, she agreed to bring her viola instead. Jollett then asked Harmon, a Tucson native and graduate of the Herb Alpert School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts, to join his fledgling band, having seen him perform in Los Angeles with other acts and been impressed with his background in rock and jazz, as well as his skill with the upright bass. At the time, Harmon was performing with multiple rock and jazz bands while teaching guitar to children both in East Los Angeles as part of CalArts' Community Arts Partnership, and at Arroyo Seco Park as part of its "Art in the Park" program. He refused at first, and it wasn't until months later—after several shows—that Harmon agreed to join the group full-time. Chen and Jollett, meanwhile, had already known each other for five years. They first met through a mutual friend while both were living in San Francisco and working as writers. After a few years of living in New York, Chen made a return to his hometown of Los Angeles, upon which Jollett contacted him and asked if he'd be interested in playing the keyboard in the band. Chen replied that he, in fact, played guitar and eventually filled the role as lead guitarist.
Prior to the formation of the band, and to supplement his fiction writing, Jollett supported himself as a freelance writer, contributing to NPR, Los Angeles Times, Filter and Men's Health, among other organizations. Soon after the formation of the band, he concentrated only on fiction. In the summer of 2008, McSweeney's issue 27 published one of Jollett's short stories, The Crack, which appeared between short stories by Liz Mandrell and Stephen King. In keeping with his literary background, Jollett named the band after a section of the postmodern novel White Noise by Don DeLillo, which won the National Book Award in 1985. In the book, a chemical spill from a railcar releases a poisonous cloud, dubbed by the military and media as an "airborne toxic event." The reason for choosing this as the name of the band, he has stated, is that the event described in the novel triggers a fear of death and a sense of mortality that fundamentally alters the protagonist's outlook on himself, his family, and his life. The band was born of a similar life-altering sequence of events, and thus, the themes of mortality and media consumption that arise from the novel's toxic cloud serve as a major impetus for the band's creative drive.
The Airborne Toxic Event played its first show at the Echo, a venue in Echo Park, in October 2006—less than a month after it was fully formed. The show was well attended, and the following month, the band played the CMJ Music Marathon. In December 2006, Rolling Stone named the group one of the "Top 25 Bands on MySpace." The band went on to receive positive feedback and reviews from music blogs and press, most notably the L.A. Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, the latter of which named the group one of the top three L.A. bands to watch in 2008. Previous bands to receive this distinction include Cold War Kids and Silversun Pickups.
In the summer of 2007, the U.K. indie label Square Records released a 7-inch single of the Airborne Toxic Event song "Does This Mean You Are Moving On?" To support the release, the band embarked on a ten-day tour of the U.K., playing shows in London and Brighton. Upon returning, the band recorded 14 tracks with producer Pete Min at his home studio in the Atwater Village, Los Angeles, while continuing to perform around Los Angeles. Ten of the tracks recorded at Min's home would later comprise the band's debut album.
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