“Pure, agile, hedonistic pop music”
Mary Anne Hobbs (BBC Radio 1)
8.3 / 10 – Pitchfork.com
Lemonade played their first show with roughly two weeks of preparation in late 2006. The idea formed a month or so earlier when Alex Pasternak and Callan Clendenin were in Barcelona enjoying their time listening to Rai and Khaliji CDs they had bought at the Raval record shop “Nasifon”, laying on the beach drinking and going to squat raves until well after the sun came up. Collaborating with Ben Steidel upon their return, they mingled together crude technologies, battered percussion, live instruments, and limitless disparate influence, including: grime, early house and techno, samba, dancehall, island musics, and scary psychedelic noise. The show was mostly improvised, and ultimately a success with throngs of dancers mesmerized by their pulsing beats and clamorous crescendos.
From then on Lemonade became a fixture in San Francisco’s underground, playing everything from basement shows to warehouses, dance clubs to DIY venues, art galleries and rooftops. Their eruptive and exhilarating live experience can be at times unnerving and chaotic, as well as transporting and blissful, but still manages to unify diverse crowds in rapturous euphoria.
The band have since moved to Brooklyn and there they remain making music and creating havoc as they go.
Their self-titled debut album, recorded by Chris Coady (TV on the Radio, Blonde Redhead, etc.), comes out in the UK on Sunday Best on 27th July 2009, preceded by the single ‘Big Weekend’ on 20th July 2009.
