Two years ago, FUR founders Ryan O'Rourke and Michael O'Conner began building the band out of its noise-pop origins. They took years of recordings and began crafting a sound. Wallowing through hissing drum loops and dissonant guitar tracks, they assembled what they wanted to unveil to the public. With drummer Zach Pliska joining the line-up, they set out to play the Detroit scenes. After certain modifications and a year of playing out, they decided to scrap the entirety of their songs and start over again.

FUR defies the lo-fi, gloomy, washed out aesthetic of shoegaze rock and also the freaked-up-firestorm, trippy aesthetic of psychedelic. Pedal-wrung, winding guitar roars and big booming bass may be intrinsic to their dark, aggressive rock, but the group came from humble beginnings: basement writings between O'Rourke and O'Connor where "we didn't even have amps; we had no idea about guitar toning or about pedals.."

They'd met at Champagne family gatherings (as both dated respective sisters, Johanna and Jennifer) and wound up "learning to play our instruments" together, "meeting at Radiohead," and enduring "a series of craigslist misadventures (to find a drummer)" as they pieced together what would become FUR, a propulsive, staticy-shadowed synth-dressed rock that culls melodic sensibilities from new-wave and post-punk but an edge a more metallic, industrial rock provocations.

"For some reason I was under the impression that Detroit was a very sort of blues-based, garage-rock, guitar-bass-drums kinda outlet," O'Rourke said. "So, for the longest time I was avoiding making aggressive, darker music." Through high school and college, O'Rourke wrote/composed constantly, "a lot of sounds and textures" onto his computer. "I listened to a lot of Nine Inch Nails and I think it was sort of returning to that influence and finally coming to terms with it as what I do, and what I like, it was not being afraid.."

With Champagne on synth, O'Connor said, "it gives us a different feel. You have this darker, more cluttered sound then you've got this nice, clean synth on top of it." The synth is key to FUR's enduring melodic sense, conjuring "those great 80's groups." O'Connor and O'Rourke talk about their earlier musical discussions, which Cure album's better, Disintegration or Pornography, or the charm of Modern English records, the elegance of, yes, even the Carpenter's John Denver even.

You can find out more about FUR on their website and MySpace pages.

Devastate the Details

Devastate the Details Instrumental