Crawdaddy Interview: Fang Island
Fang Island is how art school students rebel against art school. First off, it’s hard to believe there exists a band that plays pop-punk instrumental math-rock that, if represented as a graph on the Cartesian plane, would show pretension and quality in an inverse function. It is equally confounding and refreshing that a band that started as an art project at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design would have the gall to take their name from a fictional place featured in an Onion article.
It’s possible that Fang Island guitarists Nick Sadler and Jason Bartell could have gotten away with describing themselves as pioneers of the re-appropriation of arena rock. They could argue that, much in the same way that Girl Talk allows hipsters to unironically appreciate radio rap, Fang Island provides a prism through which to enjoy all the anthemic qualities of a band like Boston or Journey. However, they would never say that, which simultaneously reinforces that they are the best art project ever and makes me a douchebag for trying to intellectualize something so pure and fun.
Sadler and Bartell lent Crawdaddy! some time out of their busy schedules to provide insight into Fang Island’s origins, new musical direction, and bold sartorial decisions.
OPENING: "Blessed Is The Infinite" Pete Watts / Jason Bartell
RABBITHOLESTUDIO is pleased to present BLESSED IS THE INFINITE— a two-person exhibition of drawings and installations by Jason Bartell and Pete Watts. Rendered in meticulous detail, the works featured in the exhibi- tion explore the dynamic between order and chaos—creating a space that re- flects the entropic descent of organized systems, and the quiet emergence of order from the chaotic void. The imagery and techniques evoke the aesthetics of the sublime- the push and pull between attraction and repulsion. Scenes of destruction and entropy are rendered in exquisite detail, at once drawing in the viewer and confronting them with displays of overwhelming scale and power.
