NAME: Nick Thorburn (Islands, Human Highway)
PROGRESS REPORT: Recording Islands’ third LP at Stratosphere Studio in New York City; recording a solo LP, I Am An Attic at home; releasing a comic book, This Is Howie Doo, through Bodega Distribution.
Nick Thorburn fits the same overachieving Canadian trope that we’ve bestowed on Spencer Krug and Owen Pallet. But Thorburn’s a more self-conscious musician, one who satisfies his self-diagnosed ADD by feeding new ideas, playing with perceptions and expectations, caring a lot about what people think, then claiming to not care at all. He’s Twittering progress on the next Islands record. You might not realize from his cryptic Tweets, but he’s working very differently than he did last album around. “It’s a new configuration in line-up, and it’s electronic-based, with plenty of drum machine and programming,” he says. “[It’s a very stripped down affair, with minimal instrumentation and sparse arrangements. This is not Arm’s Way II.”
Islands @ Cedar St., SXSW ‘08 [Photo by Amrit Singh]
