down MF

Forging a union of post-punk noisemaking and soul-baring angst, down MF starts with a voice that oozes melancholy, contempt, and mordant wit all at once. Combine the voice with the sound of a jagged electric guitar that prefers to avoid the low end and lay it over a steaming bed of stark, pounding rhythms. The result is a singularly powerful band whose accomplishment was often in inverse proportion to their public recognition or commercial success. down MF was formed by Michigan native Scott Sendra in 1991, after his prior noise-punk band Snake River imploded following a brief relocation to San Francisco. Sendra opted to return to Michigan and settled in Ypsilanti, where he soon began forming a new group. The band's lineup featured Sendra on guitar and vocals, Chip Porter on bass and R. Scott Kelly on drums; they settled on the name down ("small-case, pretentious," as Sendra himself described the chosen punctuation of their moniker). After only two gigs, down recorded their first EP, Ride the Pine, which was released on Sendra's own label, Bonehead Rex. A second EP, Royal Crown, was released on Bonehead Rex in 1992 and was the final document of down's first lineup; Porter and Kelly both left the band and later performed with Tim Sendra in his group Veronica Lake. Scott Sendra, meanwhile, relocated to Lansing, MI, and began playing bass with the folk-punk band Apollo 9 (whose leader, Soren Davis, had worked with Sendra in a prior project, Bag of Wire). Sendra recruited Apollo 9 drummer Pat Bills to play in a new edition of down, while Brian Widdis soon signed on as down's bassist. While the new down lineup recorded a demo tape and played a number of live gigs, it wasn't until 1995 that the band released a record, Solid State/Don't Dig the New Breed. That same year, the...