Tim Hurley
vocals, guitars, accordian, trumpet, korg, keyboards, manipulations
Danni Iosello
drums, percussion, howlings, organ, korg, harmonium, rocks, jangles.
Sin Ropas has a way of making the familiar strange. Alumni of Red Red Meat and early Califone, Tim Hurley and Danni Iosello find buried truths and turn them into something essential and new, making music so resonant and evocative that their records are simultaneously featured on Top 10 Alt-Country lists while appearing on "Best of Rock" reviews and psychedelic music websites. Elements of all music are there, seeping into the long-dark places where it meets everything you've ever heard or have longed to hear.
Sin Ropas' first CD, Three Cherries (Perishable Records 2000)
was received in this way:
From Puncture: "It's easy to imagine each of this records' eight juggernauts as a deconstructed and slightly decayed version of a conventional pop song, falling apart at the seams and unraveled at both ends...If this sounds to you like words of highest praise, you heard right".
From Faster Than Sheep: "Three Cherries is unique in that it sounds both old-fashioned (in a sittin' on the porch watching the dust bowl fill itself to the brim kind of way) and new-fangled (all the parts that sound like snake charmers playing plastic horns while on mesculine) all at once"
Sin Ropas' second CD "Trickboxes on the Pony Line" (Sad Robot Records 2003, Konkurrent Records 2004) was a turning point for them; a foray into more mainstream music and media.
From Pitchfork: "Trickboxes' abstract song-movies rely heavily on a series of unfixed, user-provided images--pictures replace sounds, sensations supplant rationalizations, everything goes a little blurry...It's hard to establish a stanch reference point for any of its cagey tracks: the perpetual puzzle is part of what makes this record so endlessly intriguing...It has far less to do with mechanically processing a series of notes than with establishing abstract, pre-linguistic relationships with art".
From Ink 19: "There are razors inside these tumbleweeds...f---ing country My Bloody Valentine or Spacemen 3 reincarnated as The Carter Family"
From Rolling Stone: "Red Red Meat alumni Sin Ropas create mesmerizing sound on their second album. This collection of beautiful, interweaving off-the-cuff riffs and slow-motion observations suggests a futuristic Appalachia".
Sin Ropas' third CD "Fire Prizes" was first released in Europe only on Konkurrent/ Zeal Records in 2005. Released on vinyl as a picture disc in the US on the specialty label Shrug Records in 2007 with art by filmmaker Brent Green.
John Schacht, All Music Guide: "Throughout this remarkable recording Sin Ropas conjure catastrophic landscapes and threatening scenarios, but deliver them in music so timeless and urgent, hearing it is like a purifying rite of passage..there were few, if any, better American-made records in 2005.
Coke Machine Glow: Tim Hurleys guitar sounds strange, sick, and glorious-- think the sort of tooling and multi-tracking that goes on in a Built to Spill album but shying away from orchestrated nirvanas in favor of messy Down by the River wanderings. That Neil Young & Crazy Horse influence is also something apparent... meaning that if you want to hear what Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969) sounds like in the 21st century, Sin Ropas might be the only place to look".
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