ON and ON...

After noticing a fairly positive response to the track I posted by ON from the "driving music" post, I figured it would be a good idea to just go ahead and write a bit more about the project. Essentially ON is nothing more than Ken Andrews' solo project, which he started working on after the break up of his previous band Failure. In 2000 the debut Shifting Skin was released through Sony, which displayed Andrews pursuing a more electronic influenced style of music. The songs are still deeply rooted though with Andrews' writing style and touch that was seen in Failure, as the melodies still run rampant throughout both of ON's releases. The album Shifting Skin was all multi-instrumentalist Ken Andrews where as on the second album Make Believe, which would see an independent self release in 2003, featured extra musicians to work on the project. It turns out that those musicians would actually be the future members of Andrews' other project Year of the Rabbit. With that, Make Believe sees almost the complete absence of the high electronic element that Shifting Skin contained. Instead, the album almost serves as a complete predecessor to what would be the sound featured on Year of the Rabbit's eventual debut release. However, I still find some songs to be a bit more interesting and overall better than the material that would be written by Year of the Rabbit, as I was highly disappointed by the sterile and overall boring direction on that album.

ON - Soluble Words [MP3] (Shifting Skin)
ON - Building [MP3] (Shifting Skin)
ON - The Only Thing I Know [MP3] (Make Believe)
ON - Revolution [MP3] (Make Believe)

Since the release of Make Believe, Ken Andrews has gone on to do mostly producing and mixing work for a slew of different bands and projects. He also managed to get married in the mean time and is now in the process of writing and recording yet another solo effort, which whether it will be under the moniker ON or not, is exciting news. He is also tackling a new project dubbed The Los Angeles Digital Noise Academy, which Ken himself describes as a "Postal Service on steroids". You can take a listen to that over at their MySpace located here. You can also check out Ken Andrews' own MySpace here.

You can still purchase both ON albums online or through Itunes.

Purchase ON - Shifting Skin through Amazon.
Purchase ON - Make Believe through CDBaby (Currently out of stock, sorry folks! Keep checking though!).