It's been a few years since we've formed; and it still is like we just started. not in a bad way, just the fact that experimentalism is at the core of our music. While there may be a poppy song or an punk-esque tune, it's still all about pushing the music around like paint. and some songs resurface and form into new sonic shapes.
It's about influence. Not just the many bands we are influenced by, but by environment, change. Like a New York city street where one moment it's musical ambient textures, the next a disharmonic chaos of horns and sirens. That is what we're about. Chords that overlay in washes, then bite and stab and tear the canvas.

The core philosophy of sonic youth is a strong commonality. Lee Ranaldo played with Glenn Branca often, where he learned to play with alternate tunings and create 'white noise'. Branca was a musician/composer who enlisted several (sometimes up to six) guitarists to play his symphonies of noise. Sonic Youth learned much from Branca later, such as using alternate tunings and various non-conventional ways of playing to create their style of noise. - source the Rare Vinyl Network

Though we may not sound entirely like Sonic Youth, we embrace this aspect. The non-convention. Interestingly, non-convention has its own pattern. Chaos has pattern. turn on a faucet a little, it drips water at the same rate. a little more, and the drops start combing with another, erraticaly. But upon closer inspection, there is a pattern. Society is erratic, but the same mistakes happen again. It is all around us. And we try to embody that in our music.

The reason we chose the name, Helvetia, is because it doesn't interrupt. Use this typeface and it somehow embraces the personality of whatever visual it is part of. Without being obstructive. It reinvents itself, like a chameleon, adapting without having to necessarily change. Sometimes light, bold, italic. that's it. And we are that. We let the music be the visual, and we ourselves try not to be brash and corny showmen. The music is the importance. We simply carry the message.

The songs here are a tiny slice of what we are all about. We are still discovering what it is. And that makes it all worthwhile.

SISTER CRAYON

Everyone experiences pain in life. But there are a precious few who know how to turn it into something truly beautiful.

Growing up in the rougher neighborhoods of Sacramento, music was always a refuge for Terra Lopez. But it wasn't until a period of quiet isolation in Long Beach after high school that she first began to write and perform her own songs, armed only with a loop pedal, a classical guitar and her haunting voice. Music was no longer just an escape, but a way of processing and sharing her pain with the world.

Around this time, Lopez wrote a letter to a close friend after a night of drinking. When she awoke the next morning, she noticed that she had inexplicably signed the letter "Sister Crayon." The name seemed to fit perfectly with the new electronically driven songs she would soon develop with Dani Fernandez (beats/programming) and Jeffrey LaTour (keyboards/guitar).

If Sister Crayon's songs reflect the hurt and melancholy of the human experience, their performances represent the inevitable catharsis. The band's live show is an explosion of passion and sound, a plea for the audience to unleash their own troubles into the ether.

After releasing their debut album Bellow in February on Manimal Vinyl Records, the band toured relentlessly with acts including The Album Leaf and El Ten Eleven. They will remain on the road for much of 2012 while continuing to work on material for a new album.