In any given day, I’m inundated with music – bars, restaurants, television, radio, other people’s iPods on the bus, at the gas station, in the elevator… so much so that I have become inured to its effects. It barely registers when an oddly Muzak-ed version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is playing while I’m poring over avocados at the grocery store. Even being in a bar while actual musicians are playing actual live music, it can fade into the background. Perhaps because I live in Seattle, and I’m regularly surrounded by heroic quantities of live music, it falls into the clatter and din of daily life – or perhaps I’ve just grown cynical over the preponderance of half-assed music that’s allowed to flourish without benefit of discipline or skill.

So when music truly does catch my attention, I have to sit up and take notice and share it with anyone who will listen. This summer at the Capitol Hill Pride block party event, I had spent most of the day catching the drag shows on the portable stages, and listening to the unnecessarily loud bass pumping out of a coffee kiosk, and trekking up and down the too-long block party checking out all of the goings-on. Happy, energized, then more happy, then ultimately exhausted and ready for the day to end, I headed back north on Broadway to meet my cohort near the Broadway Market to head toward home. But in the air there was a narcotic sound that made me forget the long, hot day and that I’d made a painful shoe choice. It was a buttery, rich, wail of a voice – somewhere between chocolate mousse and crème brûlée – as if Thom Yorke and Andy Bell had a produced a lovechild made out of perfect pitch that enveloped that end of Broadway in a warm, aural embrace. When I found the stage responsible for this sound, my friend was already there, and was transfixed as I was. She looked at me and said “Who are these guys?” To which I responded, “I have no idea. But I hope they’re local.”

They are. The buttery voice was Kimo Muraki, the band is SURREALIZED, and they’re playing Thursday night (November 11, 2010) at Chop Suey.

The faces of SURREALIZED are Kimo, Rob Anonymous and Jay Wilson. The unseen and undeniably essential part of the group are video and light geniuses that put the exquisite detail on top to make a SURREALIZED show a multi-media, multi-sensory extravaganza. It would do a great disservice to try to do the same old “they sound like _______, but with hints of ________ during his/her _______ period” or even to try to put them in a definitive genre. When I sit down with Rob and Kimo, I ask what genre they would consider themselves part of, and even they were stumped. In an industry where re-hashing, trend-driven creative-commodity marketing and categorization addicts rule, SURREALIZED refuses this absolutism. They borrow the best parts of electronic and psychedelic, but incorporate beats and sounds from all over the musical spectrum with impunity and perfect grace. But, this artistic sleight of hand is not all that surprising when you consider the merger of Rob’s history as both performer and producer from the hip-hop, electronic and house music worlds, with Kimo’s near-preternatural ability to tame any instrument that crosses his path… I mean, who else can handle a ukelele, a coronet, lap steel or a sitar and still carry that kind of voice? Where a lesser band would stumble over so many choices and either fall back into comfortable territory or accept these limits and industry dictums without question, SURREALIZED leaves the door open for random inspiration and takes the best of every creative option out there – lasers and fog machines included.

Kimo – Photo Courtesy of SURREALIZED

Like most creatives in Seattle, they are multi-taskers. When they aren’t SURREALIZED, they’re session players, they’re teaching, they’re sound engineering, but when they get together, it’s clear what they most love doing.

Do yourself a favor. As winter is clearly on our heels, go to Chop Suey on Thursday and (at the risk of sounding like a total hippie) wrap yourself in a blanket of audio love, and be warmed. It may just change the way you experience live music forever. Check your cynicism and expectations at the door – you won’t need them there.

SURREALIZED will be at Chop Suey, Thursday November 11, 2010 with Climber, Ladyfriend and Viper Creek Club. Tickets are a paltry $6, and the show starts at 9:00pm. You can get tickets HERE.

Check out their website at www.surrealized.net, and on Facebook. You can also get a sample on their YouTube channel.

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Les Sterling is an artist living in Seattle, and freelance contributor to Seattle Gay Scene.