PEACH WEEKENDER | THIS WEEK'S BAND

The Scene Spotlight: Blue Midnight Highway

5/22/2014

Lineup: Blue Midnight Highway has been mostly a solo endeavor by Erich Burger aka (ERB)

The full-length Entropy features guest artists such as MC Tony Ray, Natural, Raine Wilder, and we're currently working Jeremy Liebat into the show.

Year formed: 2005

Style of music: Many. We refer to the style of BMH as sonic Alien Graffiti, but it's a mixture of many different genres: alternative, space rock, electronic dance (EDM), trip hop, dark dub, industrial, world, etc.

The general music foundation of BMH utilizes the song structure of classic and alternative rock, combined with urban break beats and world rhythms, and sound-scaped with the most cutting edge electronic sounds and production techniques, topped off by story heavy lyrics.

The music is very cinematic and visual, the comment we hear the most is this sounds like a movie. But overall it's a very polished sound, the bar in the studio is goose bumps. Meaning it's not good until everyone gets goose bumps from the performance both during tracking and playback. The other standard that everything must adhere to is listening pleasure.

The live performance is a visual wonder. The light show, the design, and construction of the UFO gear stand, the intensity and energy of the performance leave people dazzled and it's clear that you're seeing the next level in live performance. The experience is like the UFO encounter sequence in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's so unique and so much fun.

One common misconception BMH regularly faces is that we are DJs just doing karaoke over samples or loops. Although most of the music is being played back from prerecorded tracks, we are, however, performing our own original compositions, and playing as much live as we can. No samples or loops are used in BMH's music.

Sounds a little like: Imagine Dragons, Groove Armada, Gold Frapp, Muse, NIN, Jane's Addiction, Pink Floyd. To name a few, every song is a new sonic experience. Very seldom is a sound-scape repeated.

Biggest influences: Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Front 242, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, KISS. But really anything and everything, if it has a great melody, performance, a fresh sound or style, or if it touches me. I'm also influenced by art, books, movies, life, and BMX stunt riding.

Favorite local venue: Valentine Theatre, BMH was invited to perform there with Toledo School for the Arts for their Kaleidoscope 2010. I was so impressed with the Valentine and the execution of the production by TSA and their students. I'm kind of salty TSA wasn't around when I was in high school.

CDs/online releases: Entropy Dbl single of Devil in a Red Dress Drive-by, and Galaxy, and another dbl single from Entropy will be released sometime this summer.

Upcoming gigs: Frankie's on May 30th, and at the GlassCityCon on July 26 and 27 at the Seagate Convention Center.

Web site: bluemidnighthighway.com and Facebook.