Pregnant is the decade-long experimental venture of avant-garde electronic pop alchemist Daniel Trudeau. Spawning from Placerville, California, the band is fronted by Trudeau with added instruments and vocals by friends Daniel Ramirez and Molly Raney. The dreamy, complicated sound is perfectly pieced from a tangling array of samplers, drum pads, effects pedals, MIDI-loops, guitars, and synths. Submerge Magazine explains, “As a live act, the trio become a kind of living sound exhibit…reproduced seemingly out of thin air, filling the corners of any living room, stage venue, or theater with music that’s as much visual as aural.”
Pregnant has vinyl and cassette releases on a handful of labels. He recently finished his 100th track for his Your Song project- in which people donate $7 or more and Trudeau writes a song about them. They have played in houses and venues across the US, and also toured Japan, Korea, and most recently the UK in September of 2014. His “open-ended pop symphonies” have been adored around the world. In a review of their last vinyl release Inconvenience, Impose Magazine writes “Daniel Trudeau's Pregnant project has entered its prolific stage, in which we can look back upon his work and note the evolution from loop pedal virtuoso to Placerville family band to its current incarnation of three-piece band.”
For several years, Pregnant has blossomed a following in Long Beach, California. On a house show tour in September 2011, Pregnant performed in the living room at what would later become Porch Party Records. Trudeau's enthralling set captured the attention of the local music heads. Two years later, the house show hosts at “The Porch” decided to start a record label, appropriately named Porch Party Records. Re-connecting with Trudeau, they signed Pregnant to release the album Inconvenience as a rare 10” colored vinyl. In March 2014, two months before it came out, The Porch invited Pregnant to once again share their mesmerizing live show with the LBC.
March 29th, 2014 was an enchanting evening for this urban-beach scene. In addition to Pregnant, the stacked lineup included Porch label mates Dustin Lovelis and Joel Jasper, and touring Oakland songwriter Electrician. The Porch house hired recording engineer and multi-instrumentalist JP Bendzinski (Crystal Antlers, DeLux) to capture audio from the entire evening. They placed a dozen microphones in the living room connecting back to a pop-up mixing studio in the master bedroom. Meanwhile, show-goers began shuffling into the DIY venue. As headliner Pregnant began to setup, hundreds of curious eyes watched as Trudeau and electronic-drummer Daniel Ramirez pulled out a multitude of noisemakers and a spaghetti mess of cables, connecting all the elements of their digital maze. Pregnant masterfully took the crowd on a seamless sonic journey. The sweaty room was washed back and forth between their ambient build-ups with Trudeau's soaring vocals to the hypnotic sliced samples with Ramirez’s infectious beats.
The captivating performance can be forever re-lived with the release of Live at Porch Party Records, out August 4th on limited edition CD.
PRESS:
“Whether by prophecy or design, Placerville’s Pregnant has managed to craft a body of work that lives up to its name. Its songs are open-ended pop symphonies captured in utero, without true beginnings or ends—kicking, stirring, filled with ideas that promise to crystallize at any moment. This isn’t to say at all that the music is incomplete; rather, it’s a living thing, dynamic…you almost get the feeling that the music keeps changing every time you play it, the brilliant hooks and melodies blooming over multiple listens, as if they’re gestating in your mind.”
-Submerge Magazine
submergemag.com/featured/pregnant/12315/
“The stuttering use of jazz samples, and instrumental cut-n-paste work that warms his project through the familiarity of hip hop production. He's found a middle ground in which his weirdness may exist without sacrificing his pop appeal.”
-Impose Magazine
www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/new-music/stream-pregnant-inconvenience-lp
"Forehead" - Track Review on Impose Magazine
www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/new-music/pregnant-forehead-inconvenience-lp
"Only Me" - music video premiere on Dublab
dublab.com/pregnant-only-me/
House Show Lineup -- March 29th 2014
-- Joel Jasper
-- Electrician
-- Pregnant
-- Dustin Lovelis