Crash Test

Aderbat has been divided and deleted, but not defeated.

by John Vettese

BAT MAN: Matt Taylor and Aderbat got their start in New Hope and Doylestown. They've since expanded to Brooklyn and Philly.

For a band with lofty ideas, Aderbat tends to arrive at minimalism. Their ambitious arrangements and plans often lead to rock music that's stark, autumnal and spare.

Now, it seems, minimalism is being thrust upon them.

Bred in New Hope and Doylestown, the indie troupe has recently split into factions: Last fall, Matt Taylor moved north to Brooklyn and drummer Craig Hendrix headed south to Philly. Guitarist Todd Schied and bassist Brad Kunkle remain in Bucks County. The distance has fixed Aderbat's weekly rehearsals with concentrated focus and less time to dawdle on pileups of sound, followed by protracted cuts.

"From the onset of the band, it's definitely been a process of reduction," says Kunkle. "It's kind of like, when you first start anything, you're really excited — 'Wow, these are all the things I can do!'"

The nervy, anxious space that made last summer's We Belong to the Sea so striking came from nearly two years of editing by the band and producer Andrew Weiss. The Man Overboard EP, recorded and released as a stopgap between the Sea sessions, was also pared down from more top-heavy arrangements. The result had somber, muted horns and wispy strings haunting the shadows.

"We'd always worked before in this kind of build-everything-up, have-a-million-ideas, do-a-production process," Taylor says. "This time maybe it's the times, you know? We rarely get together because we're all really broke. Everybody in the world is really broke right now. So we had very little baggage when we went in for recording."

The plan for recording album No. 3 was straightforward. One week, basic tracks, hardly any overdubs. Then in January, some bad luck: a hard drive crash in the band's Wassergrass studio. No backups made. Over half the album lost.

When the band and I met for drinks at Johnny Brenda's last week, Taylor and Kunkle apologized that they didn't have a copy of the album for me. "We've always been ragtag," Taylor chuckled. "But now ... "

Aderbat isn't turning away in defeat, and fans can still hear the new music. They handle new material the same way as The Walkmen: Once it's ready, into the setlist it goes, meaning their show at Johnny Brenda's this weekend should be mostly unreleased songs.

But with the new recordings in hard drive limbo, the band isn't quite sure how to proceed.

One option is to pay for file retrieval. IT companies have quoted the job at over $1,000, Taylor says. Or there's a guy who advertises on utility poles in Williamsburg who will "go in himself" and get the data for half the price. The latter is still not cheap, and brings to mind rusty screwdrivers and parts strewn about a greasy kitchen table.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

The other option is rerecording. Since the band has its own studio, it seems the obvious choice. But Taylor is uneasy. The November sessions were conducted when the music was still being learned, when the songs were still new and fresh. "There's something about recording a take of a couple songs, where it was the first time we went through," Taylor says. "Nobody knew what we were doing, so we couldn't start overthinking. Things become kind of even and square when they're so fresh, just hanging on to keep it together."

It was different when everybody lived in Bucks County. The band had all the time in the world to record, tinker, edit, overdub and generally build and deconstruct tracks until the right level of impressionistic ambiguity was reached.

Now that openness is achieved by instead pinning down the tracks when they're just barely sprigs of ideas, before they require lengthy knockdowns. Kunkle points out that of the half-dozen lost songs, only one has been rehearsed and played since the original sessions.

They'll all have to be relearned, they'll still be fresh. And the process is a challenge more interesting than slowly assembling arrangements in luxurious comfort.

"It forces us to ask, 'Are we just getting tricky now? Or does this really need to be in the song?'" Kunkle says. "It's easy to be tricky."

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)

Sun., Feb. 22, 9 p.m., $10, with Obi Best and Caves of Mercury, Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.