The music group that call themselves TRANSCENDENCE is a tough nut to crack. Like a lot of incestuous rock bands around America, the group is made up various members of a long-standing local scene who play in many different bands at the same time. Taking it a few steps further out, though Transcendence originally formed in Miami and is normally considered a Miami band, one of their two or three (depending on who you ask) drummers lives in Atlanta, and their singer lives in New York, while the rest of the band resides in Miami still. Tricky.

Currently the entire band is holed up in the infamous indie-rock sanctuary known as Dungeon Recording Studios in Miami, FL finishing the mixes for their soon to be released new CD All your heroes become villains. In another room at the same studio they are in the middle of tracking a new new CD that will soon follow called The Transcendents. While the former sparks of a heavier more modern Pink Floyd, Radiohead, or U2, a sound which the band is already well known for, the newer new CD they are crafting sounds like it could be the Raconteurs or the Strokes, or the Stones for that matter. The two albums couldn’t sound more different. But they are being made by the same group of guys. At the same time. In the same studio.  

"In Transcendence, you have a group of five or more (laughs) totally hyperactive, obsessive, insane guys with severe cases of ADD and an extreme passion for music, all running around trying to make sense of everything they are listening to and each wanting to create their own personal artistic statements -- the chances of that translating into any two albums sounding remotely similar is going to be pretty slim,"  [New Times Magazine 2004] says lead singer Ed Hale, in a recent interview explaining the wide variety of musical boundaries the band has covered in their three CD releases since 2002's eclectic world-music-meets-modern-rock debut Rise and Shine. 

The musical group known as Transcendence is a tight-knit collective of some of the most notable musicians from the Miami and New York music scenes who first came together in 2000. The band is known for their reverence for melody, and an often eclectic and sometimes unnerving yet enticing tendency toward stylistic changes. "Smoothing across genres like a skater on ice, Ed Hale and company show amazing songwriting skills throughout Rise and Shine. They have just released a debut on TMG Records that is one I cannot listen to less than twice a week... Fusing such styles as brit-pop, Brazilian, R&B, rock, new wave and classical - among others - Transcendence create a wild array of songs but somehow hold them together with left-field bite.” [Marcus Pan, Legends Magazine]

The band was originally put together by singer/songwriter Ed Hale, who first came to local prominence with the legendary Broken Spectacles in his teens and a few solo albums. Drummer Ricardo Mazzi (Tereso, Prole) joined because of their shared interest in world-music. The already infamous guitarist-extraordinaire Fernando Perdomo (DC3, Fulano, Christian Castro) joined just out of high school because of his shared passion for early seventies pop and rock with Hale. Soon followed the cute, quiet, and multi-talented bassist Roger Houdaille (Lofi, BJ experience) who is the youngest member of the group, who also happened to share their passion for early seventies glam rock. This seems to be the core of the band.

Boston native Jon Rose (Jon Secada, Fulano), studying music at the University of Miami, acts as the group’s musical director and pianist. New York native and Brooklyn Academy of Music graduate Allan Gabay (Jorge Moreno) then joined, adding additional piano and keyboards, contributing a more avant garde element to the group’s already eclectic sound. University of Miami music school grad Bill Sommer (Blinking underdogs, the Shut-ups) signed on as a second drummer a few years later, adding a more modern and indie-rock vibe to the band.

Various other “fifth member” local notables regularly contribute to Transcendence albums as well including Derek Cintron, Tony Medina, Zach Ziskin, and Karen ‘Trophy Wife’ Feldner, making the group more of a musical collective than your standard ‘rock band.’ “Basically what it comes down to is if people from the scene hear that Ed is down from New York and we are tracking a new album then they stop by the studio just to hang out or catch up, and then they end up adding something of their own to whatever we are working on. It’s like that,” bassist Houdaille comments.

Discography

Hot on the heels of the genre-defying Rise and shine, released in 2002, which garnered the band international media and fan attention with its unique blending of multiple styles tucked into a tasty alterna-rock all their own -- along with the two college radio hits Better luck next time and Do you know who you are -- the band then released Sleep with you, turning the musical tables with a Brit rock swagger reminiscent of Radiohead, early David Bowie, or Lou Reed. Sleep with you featured the college radio favorites Minnie Driver, Vicodin, and Girls. The controversial new CD was produced by Fred Freeman of Dungeon Recording Studios, who had just recently completed work on another South Florida break out band, Dashboard Confessional.

The CD was filled with over the top rock guitar and soaring vocals, pounding bass and drums, and sex and drug allusions galore, keenly observed by the closing statements of the CD's review in All Music Guide which gave the CD 4 out of 5 stars, "rock & roll from the Paris Hilton set, out to lunch, out of time, and unconcerned about anything but their own vanity. So yes, it's deluded and occluded, but it still rocks like nothing else out there. Get it." (Thom Jureck)

The more straight-ahead modern rock of Sleep with you earned the album regular rotation on college radio stations nationwide, top ten status on XM radio (I'm not the only one), best indie band in Florida status from the Bigtime talent awards, national distribution, then management, then booking contracts, and charted for weeks on the Specialty Show charts throughout 2003.

But it was the single Superhero girl released to commercial alternative-rock radio in the summer  of 2004 that pushed the group over the edge. The song was added to regular rotation on stations all over the country charting as high as #5 in some cities. It also guaranteed the band feature slots in the music festival circuit including the NEMO Music Festival in Boston and the CMJ Music Festival in New York and a tour of Europe during the summer. 

A flurry of buzz continues to surround their latest CD, released in late 2004, entitled Nothing is cohesive, a bold and beautiful collection of post-modern garage rockers and lush seventies-style piano ballads that the band recorded in their garage studio. The album has received rave reviews across the board, earning the band enormous street-cred with critics. Five-star and A+ reviews, and being lauded as “one of the most important breakthrough albums of the year” by Hellfire Promotions in 2005, it is easy to understand why some call it their best effort to date, which says a lot coming from the very prolific group.

Nothing is cohesive is raw, unrefined, and surges with an honest musical sensuality that gloriously demonstrates how much the band loves making music together. It mixes a variety of classic and modern rock styles in a surprisingly cohesive listen --despite its title-- for how far out the band was willing to travel in their sonic explorations to achieve something completely different from last year’s Sleep with you.

Besides the critical attention, Nothing is cohesive topped the charts on many college radio stations across the country and hit the top forty of many more upon its release.

In November the band released their first live DVD, Transcendence: Live at Jazid. There is also the new one–hour documentary by Asheville, NC based Journey of Dreams Productions about the band and the making of their new CD entitled Transcendence: Everything is cohesive, that can be viewed on youtube.com or google video.