I scooped Kanye.

Kanye West (or a nameless minion thereof) has apparently taken notice of Providence's Triangle Forest. Sure, the copy underneath the picture is nothing more than an exact rip of the band's Wikipedia page, but still. At least it's not a direct rip of the "About Triangle Forest" section of the band's own MySpace page (see for yourself, lazybones).

For what it's worth, I was one of the judges at the WBRU Rock Hunt these guys won, and they are the realest of real deals. And I said as much way back in April of 2007. Booyah.

Kanye: 282763458264, Mike: 0 1

Triangle Forest playing NYC, new song.

Triangle Forest, who I've said before would already be blog-huge if they lived and played in New York instead of Providence, will be playing a few dates in the city this summer:

Jul 27 2007 | 8:00P Galapagos | Brooklyn
Jul 30 2007 | 8:00P Cake Shop (w/ Mixel Pixel) | New York
Aug 9 2007 | 9:00P Club NME New York | New York

I'm out of town for both the July ones, which blows, but you can count on seeing me 8/9 @ NME.

Details on these dates and a bunch of Providence dates at Triangle Forest's MySpace page, where you will also find this new song:

Triangle Forest - Robot Sings for the Master (mp3, right click --> save as)

Triangle Forest: Mind-to-ass blowin' beats

This weekend I went to Providence to judge the final round of the 2007 WBRU Rock Hunt. The winners, a three-piece electronic group called Triangle Forest, completely blew me away. I'll stop just short of saying it felt like my "mind being pushed through [my] ass with a triangle wave," though. Which is a good thing, because the bathroom situation at The Living Room leaves much to be desired in the privacy department.

I'll admit feeling a little skepticism when they didn't set up any drums. Or sound check any guitars. And although I was put at east a bit when I saw a keytar make its way onto the stage, nothing prepared me for what was to come when the lights went down.

Brendan Britton (vox, keys, MIDI guitar), his brother Ben (drums, kinda), and Alexandra Kleeman (keytar, other less exciting key-based instruments) are each immensely watchable in their own way; the combination of the three is mesmerizing. Their sound, pop-sensible electronic dance rock with the occasional vocoder appearance, brought members of the audience who didn't know what to expect from WTF to OMG in about half a song. A straight-up rocker crowd began to dance. I moved in for a closer look. I took my earplugs out. I kept trying to make eye contact with people I knew, to shoot them "can-you-believe-this?" looks. And before I was able to fully wrap my head around what I was witnessing, their 30 minute set was over.

So today I do an elbo.ws search for Triangle Forest to see what everyone else is saying. And I find...nothing. One quick mention from the Boston Phoenix. How can a band this good be under everyone's radar? It's not that they're too new; when I asked them at the afterparty how long they'd been together the answer was two years.

A quick mental review of the NYC area bloggers I think would do backflips for these guys yields...well all of them. I don't know why nobody's talking about these guys yet (maybe they need a manager to beat on some doors for them) but here's me doing my part to get the buzz rolling. Remember where you read about them first.

Their record is streaming at triangleforest.com but to get a better idea of what I fell in love with, listen to these two live cuts (1, 2)from WBRU before the show. And check out the video below for "An Empty Love."