Note: The name alaska! has nothing to do with the state. Rather, it’s about the state of mind. It is always written in lowercase letters and the exclamation point is always included. See above.
alaska!’s first record was called emotions. It was released in 2003 on Flying Nun Records.
Their second album, Rescue Through Tomahawk, is on Altitude Records. The songs are written by singer/guitarist Imaad Wasif (lowercase 1993-2000) and forged into sonic completion with drummer Lesley Ishino (Red Aunts 1990-1998) and former bassist Russ Pollard (alaska! 2001-2005). The trio takes the elements of harmony, discord and beauty that are integral to the songs and evolves them into a thrashing beast. alaska! is alive. It breathes a sound that is pure and heavy. It took two years, four tours, and one near-death experience for this creature to be borne.
The songs on Rescue Through Tomahawk are the culmination of Wasif’s romantic vision. They find light in dark times. The formative years he spent in the wasteland of the California Desert have imbued his songs with a sense for open spaces and a desire to bridge extremes…love & hate, hope & despair, the real & the fake. In the years before alaska!, he recorded three albums with the obscure, heavy drone-rock duo lowercase, which disbanded in 2000.
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