I’d like to formally introduce the newest addition to the Buddyhead family…

Please welcome LA’s own DIOS!

Buddyhead #30, Dios – “Cosmic Rays” EP, is a solid 6 song collection (as well as three videos and countless photos) from these Angelinos.

Stream/download/share = http://www.buddyhead.com/recordshop/Dios/CR.html

This $4.00 digital-only EP is meant to tide you over until we drop their third (and in our opinion, their best) full length, “We Are Dios”, in the next few weeks. Keep it in you’re pants until then boss.

For press or interview requests, please email travis@buddyhead.com.

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I feel lucky to be working closely with such talented people as the members of Dios. Real musicians. Real songwriters. Real performers. I was told that Dios originally stood for Do It Our Selves, that is until someone broke the news that “ourselves” was one word and not two. Now that could be a lie, sometimes I can’t tell when Joel is lying to me, but either way it makes for a good story. Plus that IS what Dios is doing… they’re doing it all themselves. They write they own songs, they record their own songs, they make their own t-shirts, do the art for their records, play their own instruments live and now they’re even putting their own records out with my help on Buddyhead.

I really got to know the band Dios after I booked them on a train-wreck of a Christmas party Buddyhead threw this past holiday season. We hit it off over a bottle of Jim Bean and the fact that they were one of the few bands who played well and didn’t cry about the clusterfuck of a show that was happening around them, not to mention we shared the simple joy of a few laughs at other people’s expenses. When I asked what they were up to, they replied that they were looking for a new label. I had no interest in running a record label (in the traditional sense) so we together we said a collective “FUCK IT!” And with that, we decided to put their record out together. So for the time being were stuck with each other so we’re gonna make the most of it. We’re also gonna build a psychedelic rainbow made out of all the ugly colors while weird looking French children run up and down the sandy beach cursing at god in their native tongue for making everything backwards and for making them smell weird too.

Where Dios are from has a lot to do with who they are. Yeah they’re from Los Angeles. In fact I think they represent this city better than any other band their age. They are true Angelinos and understanding the city where they’re from will help you understand their entire approach to making music. The members of the band all hail from the legendary South Bay of Los Angeles. Everything and anything south of Imperial Hwy is what I’m talking about. But I could ramble for days on ends but you should get the dirt straight from the horses mouth… and with that, I give you, Joel Morales.

“Don’t give in to the music business!

Dios are from a part of L.A that is usually disregarded for its artistic contributions to the city’s culture. The South Bay isn’t the suburbs you see in movies or T.V. It’s beachfront ghettos, airports, refineries, ports, you name it. It’s a pretty diverse part of town – Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Polynesians – all going to the same schools and working the same jobs at the mall. We’re friends with surfers, skaters, gangsters, musicians, artists and 9 to 5ers we grew up with. It’s a good place to experience people.

A few of us grew up near the fabulous forum in Inglewood, home of the Showtime Lakers, minutes from the Beach Boys’ childhood home in Hawthorne. Our bass player grew up near some of the raddest tide pools and cliffs in Southern California, minutes away from where Black Flag practiced and played their first shows. And our newest recruits grew up in and around Long Beach, from Cerritos to San Pedro occasionally seeing Mike Watt driving down the street to buy lottery tickets. There’s musical history here, and we’re very proud of that. Because of that musical history, and I guess, to some extent, the isolation from the better known artistic areas of L.A., we had both a lot and a little to learn from. When your world is scaled down to a 5 mile radius, money and transportation are scarce you don’t want a 9 to 5, you suck at school and you don’t like shitty Westside and Hollywood douche hotspots your options become very limited. You stay home, get drunk in the backyard with your friends, smoke pot, and listen to music. You form a million and one bands and if you’re stubborn you actually may do something with one of them. Which is exactly what we did.

For being in what seemed like an artless cultural bubble I’m still surprised at how our tastes in art and music represent such a wide range of colors. We definitely have punk rock to thank for instilling in us the idea that art and music is freedom. Freedom to explore what it is we like as long as we are being genuine to ourselves. Having a great college radio station like KXLU didn’t hurt either, because without that source of alternative musical options lord knows my musical education might not have developed beyond Jim Ladd and his so-called “free form” rock radio. Our influences range from Chavela Vargas to Os Mutantes to Karp. I grew up listening to Rap through its first golden age on K-DAY, to its late 80’s dichotomy of NWA and east coast Afrocentric rap up until the early-90’s with Ice Cube and “The Chronic”. Other members of the band grew up listening to South Bay punk like Black Flag and The Minutemen to stuff across the pond like Northern Soul, The Small Faces, and Wire. I’m sure it all comes through one way or another in what we do now.

As for the “sun-kissed-California-easy-breezy-beach-pop” label we were plastered with in the past, we feel it’s always been tremendously shortsighted, clichéd and misrepresenting. We’re probably at fault for giving lazy journalists those Beach Boys, and every cliché relating to California, taglines because we constantly gave The Beach Boys and Hawthorne huge shout outs. But they never really got it. Our connection to the Beach Boys is very simple. We respect the Beach Boys for Brian Wilson’s experimental compositions. It’s about “Heroes and Villains”, not “Fun, Fun, Fun”. Hawthorne isn’t Surf City. Pat isn’t playing bongos at a fire pit. Our existence has absolutely no resemblance to an episode of The O.C. (gotta pay rent) If our sound is reduced to a catchphrase, or some California postcard-like description, the range of mood and innovation in our albums is lost. We’re just trying to write good songs and dress them up or down, creatively and interestingly. Satisfying ourselves first and last.

In the past few years we’ve played with many great bands and played some really big shows that we never expected to play. We’ve had the opportunity to travel around the country, go to the UK and Mexico City on someone else’s dime, and we greatly appreciate that. Now we just want to record the rest of our backlog and continue to write bigger and better things. We want to find new ways to play our recordings live, be as good we can be and hopefully not self-destruct in the process. We are still trying to get our act together, we’re still evolving, trying to figure out who we are and what we’re doing. Hopefully we’ll never figure it out, because we’ll always be doing something a little different. Never forgetting that a good song is first and experimentation is a must.

We aren’t into fads. We like things that are genuine, soulful, and dirty. We’ve definitely had many good years being in this band and we’re gonna be doing it for many more. We’re liferz. All in all, not bad for a shitty little band from the South Bay. ”

Love,
Joel Morales of Dios

Dios website – http://www.wearedios.com/
Dios myspace – http://www.myspace.com/diosmalos
Dios twitter – http://twitter.com/wearedios
Dios Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/wearedios
Buddyhead – http://www.buddyhead.com

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