Aan

( Photo by Cara Robbins )  

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Bucolic Distortion. A lover’s Indian Burn. An Arctic Sun Tan. Aan’s music is both mordant and gorgeous. It is the product of a boy’s lust for companionship, isolated in the rural confines of a backwards Continental Divide. Aan is the music of someone whose love of love is ever apparent, but whose fear of it is just as strong. What comes from that love and fear is something original, modern, and brutally honest.
Aan’s Portland, Oregon home has been the band’s sonic forum since the fall of 2006, when songwriter Bud Wilson first started recording under the bedroom moniker “Amor Ad Nauseum”. As the songs tightened and enriched, it was necessary for the outfit to expand in number. Incorporating layers of instrumentation and embracing modern mediums, the group's acerbic live performances are quickly becoming the subject of conversation.
Texas transplant Reese Lawhon and Oregon native Jon Lewis lay the foundation for Wilson's vocal gymnastics. Between the swells and low-end synthetic bursts, rich harmonies abound between the boys.
In 2010 Aan released it's first official recording, "I Could Be Girl For You". The EP found quick success among some of Portland's creative luminaries and even it's harshest critics. The release ultimately landed the group status as one of Portland's Best New Bands according to alternative weekly paper, Willamette Week. Several tours have followed in and around the Northwest. The springtime brought Aan across the country to travel up an down the east coast in support of it's latest release, the 7" single "Somewhere's Sunshine".
Aan shares a label with some of Portland's favorite musicians. Infinite Front is home to releases by Castanets, Dragging an Ox Through Water, Ghost to Falco, Ah Holly Fam'ly, Ohioan and others. With a full length scheduled for release in 2011 Aan look to be a band on the rise.

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"The premiere parade for new bands continues as we release the title song Somewhere’s Sunshine from Aan’s upcoming, unreleased 7” of the same name. Both this experimental-pop band and avant-garde track are the brain-child of Portland, Oregon, singer-songwriter Bud Wilson. With a fat-bottomed bass anchoring noodling synths, strummy melodies and sing-song-y vocals yowling in the upper reaches of Antony Hegarty and Jeff Buckley territory, Aan’s Somewhere’s Sunshine feels more like a meandering, Warholian film-short than a pop song. Just when you think it might break into a full-blown disco funk like the Scissor Sisters’ Laura or Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust, Aan instead takes it down a notch; into sparse, vulnerable soundscapes. It’s weird, it’s sexy, and a wry bite of freak-folk at it’s finest. Wilson started out as bedroom project in 2006 as Amor Ad Nauseum, before adding some members, shortening the band name, and heading into the studio to record his 2010 EP I Could Be Girl For You on Infinite Front Records in 2010. Now in the throws of a hectic 2011, he’s busy writing, recording and performing, including an east coast tour and the release of two 7”’s leading up to the band’s debut LP slated for later this year." / My Old Kentucky Blog

"Although Amor Ad Nauseum has been around in one form or another since 2006, what once was Bud Wilson’s bedroom project got its bearings in 2008, when the Portland-via-Eugene, Oregon songwriter added two more musicians to his band. With accompaniment, Wilson’s brainchild manifested into multi-faceted instrumentation drenched in reverb, uniting folk guitar plucking and warbling vocals with synthetic bursts of sound. Aan’s latest 7? (that was released yesterday!), Somewhere’s Sunshine, gives its listeners both sides of the trio’s sound, starting with the digressive, pop-turned-ambient A-side, “Haunted, Million Ways,” and ending with the funky, soulful title track as its B-side. You can purchase a physical or digital copy of the EP here." / Newdust