iron oxide

Iron Oxide is a two-piece music outfit from Cleveland, Ohio. Their purpose as a band is to reflect their decaying, post-industrial, Rust Belt surroundings with sound. As such, they are not easily defined by narrow genre classifications. Iron Oxide has been described as sounding like the end of the world, psychedelic music for an extremely bad trip, or a collapsing steel mill. Iron Oxide’s sound is founded in styles as diverse as ‘60’s psych and garage like the Music Machine; music concrete pioneers like Pierre Schaeffer; the gritty noise and no-wave of bands like Missing Foundation, Dead C, DNA, and Swans; and early post-punk like Public Image, Ltd., The Fall, and fellow Ohioans Pere Ubu.

The standard line-up of Iron Oxide is Jeff Curtis on bass and K. Stewart on Farfisa organ and vocals. Experimentation in music is one of their passions, however, and they have used everything from acoustic guitar to home-made electronic tin-can drums in the pursuit of interesting sounds. While this is K. Stewart’s first musical effort, Jeff Curtis’s resume includes playing bass in My Dad is Dead and Guided By Voices side-project Gem.

The desire to release material and fill the need for an outlet for other bands in the local underground music scene has led the members of Iron Oxide to found their own label, Coffee-Hut Records. All Iron Oxide albums to date, the “Rust Mecca/Sick and Wounded” EP (recorded under the name Black Cabbage), “Flash Gordon Serialism,” and the companion CD of remixes, “Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe,” and their 7” EP, “Bass Response,” are available on Coffee-Hut Records.

Iron Oxide has received several mentions in the Northeast Ohio press, appearing in both of Cleveland’s free weeklies, the Scene and the Free Times. They have also been interviewed in the Daily Kent Stater, of Kent State University, and the zines Utter Trash and Cool Cleveland.

Besides regularly playing live shows in Cleveland and the Northeast Ohio area since forming under the name “Black Cabbage” in 2003, and appearing live on both of Cleveland’s college radio stations, WRUW and WCSB, Iron Oxide embarked on their first, self-booked tour in the fall of 2005, introducing them to new fans as far afield as Toronto and New York City. Future plans include the release of their “Ohio/Periodic Table” double album on Coffee-Hut Records, and continuing to contribute to Northeast Ohio’s experimental music community.

For further information and our online press kit, please visit www.iron-oxide.com and http://coffeehut.ebuh.com. Both Iron Oxide and Coffee-Hut Records may be contacted via Jeff Curtis at jacurtis@cox.net or (216) 227-9117.