The Racquette

Issue date: 10/3/08 Section: A&E

Media Credit: Amanda Stockwell Cities Over Seas performing "National Phantom" in Hurley's last semester.

The Potsdam music scene is inherently a victim of the inconsistency a college environment offers, where graduating and transferring students often cause the downfall of bands. While most groups tend to break up, Cities Over Seas overcame the exception when member Matt Durkin departed for graduate school.

"We decided to take the opportunity to add Marshall Hughes to the band to play the synthesizer parts. He does not replace Matt, but having him in the band has really been the best thing that could have happened to us," said Alex Butler, the bands bass player and all-in-one businessman, producer, and songwriter. Butler, who together with Craig Marrer, Doug Campbell, Joe Parker, Matt Durkin and Marshall Hughes form Cities over Seas, started an electronic project in the summer of 2007 that came to be a rough blueprint for debut album, National Phantom: "Craig and I decided we wanted to take that music further. We took it to Madstop's studio in the fall of 2007 under the name Cities Over Seas and added Doug Campbell to the group on vocals. Matt of course joined us in the writing process and Joe Parker joined us on drums. We got really lucky with the album and how that turned out and we've been playing together since last autumn."

The recording process of National Phantom was conducted in a rather unconventional manner. Butler and Marrer went into the studio before having any completed tune, recording scratch tracks, upon which Parker recorded the drums. Subsequently, the tracks, though still on a demo level, were given to Campbell who wrote and recorded lyrics and vocal melodies while the final electronics and guitar parts were added, completing the songs one by one. The band met the first mastered mix of the album with a general state of dissatisfaction. They managed to get it remastered at SubCat Studios in Skaneateles, New York, and were pleased with the mix that finally came to be the album.

With a wide range of influences hailing from intellectual bands like Radiohead, the Dismemberment Plan, Modest Mouse and Elliott Smith, but also less organic alliances, such as Aphex Twin and ambient music from Brian Eno to the Album Leaf; Cities Over Seas form their own unique sound. Even though electronic aspects shape a firm core throughout National Phantom, Campbell's soft exquisite vocals and the tastefully delayed guitars vibrate like a layer of final breaths on top of the dense beat, forming a sum greater than its parts.

Continued...

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