SoCal Punks Audio Karate Return with "Sin Cuchillo" Music Video & "Lost" 2007-08 Album MALO (Wiretap/A-F/SBÄM Records)
Audio Karate were a Southern California-based Latino Punk/Indie Rock band originally active from 1995 until about 2007-08. It's members included four Mexican-American musicians: Arturo "Art" Barrios (vocals/guitar,) Jason Camacho (guitar,) Justo Gonzalez (bass,) and Gabriel "Gabe" Camacho (drums.) They had affiliations with both Kung Fu & Bullion/Underground Liberation Force (ULF) Records and toured across the world with the likes of The Ataris, Pennywise, Social Distortion, Something Corporate, Thrice, and The Vandals. Audio Karate AKA "AK" recorded and released two full-length albums, 2002's Space Camp produced by Trever Keith of Face to Face and 2004's Lady Melody produced by Bill Stevenson of Descendents/ALL fame. Audio Karate played upwards of 250 shows between 2004-05 in support of Lady Melody and were, of course, a bit spent by year's end, but still owed Kung Fu Records one more album under the terms of their contract; Audio Karate soon built their own recording space fittingly called Lady Melody Studio wherein they collectively wrote and recorded 12 songs together between 2006-07.
Although, by 2008, the band had, essentially, run its course and three-fourths of AK eventually formed a new band called India School with new members Eric Wood and Mike Jimenez from Rufio. As fate would have it, guitarist Jason Camacho was asked to fill in for Justo Gonzalez for a few 2016 Indian School gigs, which, ultimately, didn't end up happen, but would have been the first time all four Audio Karate members played together in 8+ years. As Audio Karate themselves tell it: "In 2018, Rob [Castellon] from Wiretap approached Art about re-issuing Space Camp on vinyl. The band agreed and committed to doing a handful of shows to support the release. On a whim, Art reached out to Bill Stevenson and mentioned the re-forming of AK and offering support, if Descendents ever needed any. As luck would have it, Bill was in the process of booking Tourage 2018 and added AK to the West Coast leg." Later in 2018, a fully re-formed and re-invigorated Audio Karate released a 7-inch/digital EP on Wiretap Records featuring two "lost" songs from their from their aborted/largely forgotten Lady Melody follow-up.
Jason Camacho soon dug up his old MacBook, which contained files for 10 additional songs from the 2007-08 Lady Melody Studio sessions that were much closer to complete than previously realized. AK then, recruited Rufio/Indian School's Mike Jimenez to help re-mix said "lost" album, "taking special care to not re-record any parts and rely on the rawness and spontaneity of the original sessions." Now, we have the final, completed, re-mixed new/old Audio Karate album, MALO, which will be widely released tomorrow, Friday, October 18, 2019 on Wiretap/A-F/SBÄM Records. Audio Karate will perform as part of a sold out 25th anniversary show in honor of Fort Collins, Colorado's beloved recording studio, The Blasting Room. It takes place at Washington's FoCo on Saturday, November 23, where they'll perform alongside such acts as ALL, Rise Against, A Wilhelm Scream, Armchair Martian, Wire Faces, and more. Audio Karate's remaining 2019 tour dates are currently available to peruse on their Facebook Events page. Again, Audio Karate's "lost" album, MALO will become available tomorrow through Wiretap, A-F & SBÄM Records.
"In 2007, members of the band started focusing on job prospects outside music and Audio Karate ceased to exist. In 2018, [I] found the MacBook that had the files from Lady Melody Studio and thought there might be two or three songs on there for an EP or split. We were pretty shocked to find that we had recorded a total of 12 songs during the Lady Melody era, eight of which are on MALO. Having been drunk half the time, we, basically, forgot having written and recorded the bulk of the songs. We enlisted our old friend, Mike Jimenez, who played drums for Rufio and stands in as guitarist for Audio Karate side-project, Indian School, to mix the Lady Melody Studio sessions at his studio, Modern Fuzz [Recording Studios] in Pomona, California.
Jason & Mike took almost a year working on the recordings, trying not to add or remove anything and maintaining the rawness and freshness of the band being self-produced and experimenting throughout. MALO is a perfect capture of us at 24 & 25. An International toured band, confident in our abilities to bring our ideas out to recording, close as friends and clumsy at personal relationships. Basically, all of the recordings are first or second takes... we weren't playing the songs live at shows because we weren't playing shows. If it felt good, we recorded it. It was important to us not to change it. MALO is raw and we like that. It's far from perfect.
I'm not sure anyone wants to hear 37 & 38-year-old Audio Karate writing songs about mortgages, day care, and our current focuses... that'd be a sh*t record! We think the record sounds fresh; we didn't join the swoosh hair, lip ring, Mall Punk/Emo Warped Tour trend of 2006 and start screaming and doing stupid stuff. Had we done that, this record would be awful. MALO is a Soul album, we just happened to be suburban Punk guys that recorded did it. The [remaining] songs from that era, "Care Carelessly," "Black Covering," "Lovely Residence," and a currently untitled song, are done and [we're] waiting for the right project to release them. We want to release everything we ever did, so fans can see the progression from kinda sh*tty to not so bad. Then, we'll go away again."
- Jason Camacho (@audiokaratemusic)
