BLACK FLAG is an American band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, CA by guitarist, primary songwriter, and sole continuous member Greg Ginn. Their discography includes seven studio albums and two live albums. The band has released all of their material on Ginn’s independent label, SST Records beginning with 1981’s Damaged. Vocalist, Mike Vallely, first sang with the band as a guest vocalist in 2003, before becoming the band’s fifth vocalist and touring with the band in 2014.

BLACK FLAG is currently recording new material for a future studio release and will be touring in the Summer of 2019 on their 2019 SUMMER TOUR.

“I try to play what I would like to hear,” Greg Ginn explains the electronica sound of his latest project, The Royal We. “If it feels good to me then there’s other people that might enjoy it. Everybody isn’t in the same place at the same time.”

Greg Ginn is an innovator. “I like a lot of hybrid bands. Different trance, electronica, and a lot of House. Most of that music doesn’t have guitar. And that’s had a lot of impact on my guitar.”

Greg Ginn and The Royal We’s We Are Amused is set for release on November 8th, 2011 on SST Records.

Greg has been making music professionally, successfully, but not always publicly, for over 3 decades. “I became less excited about what was happening in rock in the 90’s and 2000’s. There are rock bands I like, but I like wilder stuff.”

“Skrillex. I like him a lot.” Greg describes the evolution of electronic music from techno forward. He has appreciation for all if it, from Jumpstyle to Dubstep. Among the acts he likes, he names some of the more intense and less commercially successful artists: Lotus, The Glitch Mob, Signal Path, and most notably The String Cheese Incident. There’s a specific commonality there regarding inventive creators moving on, leaving a past experiment and progressing forward to something new without trying to meld one project into the next.

For the last three and half years Greg Ginn has been breaking ground and experimenting with his own brand of electronica, combining his ear for jazz, his sensibilities to truly crafted-work, and his thorough acceptance of noise. The Royal We is his one man band and show. “It’s something new, for new people.”

The freedom of writing and recording alone means round the clock hours for Greg’s creative process to flow. “Other people’s schedules don’t interfere. I can play anytime.” Greg explains that this limitless schedule has been conducive for him. “I’m recording all the time. I have a lot of unreleased stuff.”

Greg is well known for his guitar work and has often played his own bass lines in his recordings. Not surprisingly, he does so here in a very electronic format along with some other instruments that might surprise you. Greg plays the theremin, a device that goes back to the 1920’s. It’s an instrument that you’ve heard many times but probably didn’t know its name. It sounds like a futuristic harp, and looks like you might have found it on the Starship Enterprise. “It’s the most primitive electronic instrument. It’s an oscillator. You control the frequency with your hand.”

A 40 inch LED monitor screen is perched on top of the equipment on stage, displaying perfectly synced video of Charlie Chaplin and silent film cuts. The videos were meticulously crafted by engineer and drummer Mike Shear. Every live song has its own video for a total of 2 hours worth of streaming symbiotic sensory ambiance.

Among the new recordings is an outstanding piece called “Eavesdrop.” Remove all constraints of the expected and accepted that has tamed your ears and remember what it’s like to be new again. This is the sound of Steampunk: it hasn’t been invented yet, it is still being dreamed. It’s a glimpse of the future through someone else’s imagination. It is impossible to listen to this hypnotic pulsating innovation without bouncing your head along involuntarily in universal agreement.

“Laundering Reality” presents another soulful beat incessantly tickled by the theremin, made to do things we didn’t know it could. Somehow this song’s intoxicating groove reintroduces itself to you almost our minutes in, all over again, despite a repetitive essence. It remains as familiar as it is surprising.

“Baiting,” “Refuge,” and “Gilded Entry” all make you stop and question, absorb, and then ultimately click repeat again and again. These are powerful instrumentals. One of the best parts about a completely unique sound is that every time you hear it, you’re free to misinterpret it again and again. What is it you’re hearing? A slightly Chinese sounding melody? Am alien instrument? A King Crimson inspired lick, a Phillip Glass meter that was too perfect for the Photographer, The Dust Brothers playing Deadmau5 backwards, a classic Chick Corea moment? Yes. No. Just play it again, please. And all of it electric, and bouncing, and fresh.

By the way, if you think you’ve heard the words “Greg Ginn” and “Innovator” in the same breath before, you’re right. In 1976, at 22 years old, Greg Ginn founded a band that changed the way music would be perceived, forever. As the principle songwriter, guitarist and unequivocal mastermind behind Black Flag, Greg Ginn taught us that music is subjective, inspired, and ever evolving.

And 35 years later we are re-learning that lesson all over again.

Shattered & heavily-treated guitars pound into focus by a primal assault
of beats and shifted tempos. A vocal delivery, honest to its bloody, shredded
core, forces the attention of listeners. Not a moment of pause prevails; an improvised journey from one song structure to the next weaves incessantly throughout the live performance.

These are just some of the elements that comprise the Brooklyn-based “freak-out, fucked-up” experimental duo CINEMA CINEMA.

After wrapping up a tour of 140+ shows behind their 2009 debut full length, “EXILE BABY”, the pair, cousins Ev Gold and Paul Claro, headed to Inner Ear Studios in Arlington, VA, to record their new album. Earlier in 2010, they had been offered the elusive chance to work with legendary producer/engineer Don Zientara, who has been renowned worldwide for his work with Minor Threat, Fugazi, Bad Brains, and Bikini Kill, to name just a few. Their debut LP, which ranked at number 17 in “CMJ’s TOP 20 New Adds for the Week of April 20, 2009”, was one of only two self-released records in the Top 20 that week, and went on to break into the “CMJ Top 200 Albums Chart”.

The results of the Zientara sessions yielded a double record’s worth of material. “Shoot the Freak” is an initial peek into the expansion of the band’s sound–integrating exploratory moments culled from their sprawling live show, with a newfound focus regarding both song structure & melodious intent. Seasoning their sound with bright flourishes of volume and fury, the band succeeds in creating work so novel, it defies genre-identification.

Cinema Cinema’s first touring cycle saw them conquer hundreds of stages on the American East Coast, at venues ranging from the historic Southgate House in Kentucky, all the way up to Toronto, Canada, for the NXNE Festival in 2010. Functioning fully under the DIY umbrella, the band (who handle all their own booking), found themselves opening for bands such as The Giraffes, The Dirtbombs, Witch, King Khan & the Shrines, Lions, and Goes Cube. To top off their accomplishments, the band headlined a show at the Gramercy Theater in NYC, an esteemed concert hall which has a 600-person capacity.

To cap off the touring, CC engaged in a week-long stint in the Northeast, opening for Greg Ginn (SST founder and Black Flag guitarist), during the Spring of 2010. This invaluable experience blossomed into a new relationship for the band, leading to more dates scheduled with Ginn for 2011.

A New York borough notorious for its attitude & rough streets, Brooklyn is currently over-populated with foreign, rural bands appropriating it as their “home scene”. In this seemingly-compromised community, where image often overrules content, CINEMA CINEMA continues to stand alone in its artistic integrity and punk ideals.

Brooklyn-born. Brooklyn-raised. Genre: Unknown.