Abandon the Earth Mission

Macha's Josh McKay finds his muse in Cara Beth Satalino

originally published April 9, 2008

The band Macha drew a decent amount of attention from the independent music press in its brief life, releasing several albums a little less than a decade ago. The Athens-based band combined textural, ebb-and-flow indie rock with hypnotic Southeast Asian instrumentation. After a few years’ break, the band released the album Forget Tomorrow in 2004, played a handful of loose reunion gigs and then faded out.

Multi-instrumentalist Josh McKay, one of Macha’s founding members, has kept a low public profile since the dissolution of Macha, infrequently performing with his projects Seaworthy and Tenderness, or the ESG “tribute band” Tiny Sticks, and touring for much of 2007 with New York band Mice Parade. He says he’s hoping to change that course and set behind him what he, over drinks at the Manhattan last week, calls his hermitage. This weekend sees McKay bring his new band Abandon the Earth Mission to the Athens and Atlanta stages for the first time after years of writing songs on his own.

He says the impetus to launch Abandon the Earth Mission - a long-in-the-works recording project that dips into spacey sounds and ethereal electronic ambience - into the live arena came about now for two reasons: an invitation to play a well-paying gig at a film festival in Mississippi, and finally finding the vocalist he’d spent years looking for.

“I’ve been wanting to get the band rolling for a while because I’m nearing completion of the recordings, and I’d found Cara Beth Satalino,” he says. “That was a huge turning point. I’ve been looking for a woman singer for 10 years. More than 10 years! And I was holding off on my recordings until I could hear what it was like to get somebody, anybody! And it got to the point where last year the only conversations I’d have with people were like ‘Is your girlfriend good at karaoke? Does your roommate sing in the shower? Is she good? Is she passable?! Does somebody know somebody who sings who’s not already playing in like three other bands?’"

Satalino is a guitarist and vocalist who moved to Athens from New York a few years ago and has since only made tentative steps into performing in clubs, despite impressing many at house shows and on recordings. McKay says he was pointed in her direction by former Elf Power/ Paper Lions drummer Josh Lott, who hadn’t even heard her play himself, but had heard from some friends that she had a good voice, and passed along that secondhand advice to McKay. “I was thinking, okay, I’ve gotta get this ready to go,” says McKay. “This is a really auspicious moment that I’m being activated like this.”

Taking the invitation to the festival as motivation, McKay assembled his band, only to have half of the prospective members drop out recently. The current lineup will include McKay on guitar, hammer dulcimer, vibraphone and vocals; Satalino on keys and vocals, and eventually on guitar; and Winston Parker of Down with the Woo handling live remixing and beats, and eventually bringing bass and saxophone into the mix. “And I’m daring to believe that I may have one more person for the first show here,” adds McKay.

The two songs McKay had available for preview prior to this weekend’s show indicate two divergent possibilities for the band’s sound. “Cult of the Pearl Diver” is as out there as Abandon the Earth Mission plans to get, McKay says, and features Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound providing falsetto “mermaid vocals.” It’s a looping, loping, skittery number, part aural painting, part mood manipulator, both rhythmic and fluid.

“Close your eyes and watch a movie of a coastal villager canoeing out to sea, diving in and encountering a mermaid who emerges from the depths with a basketball-sized glowing pearl,” wrote McKay, when he emailed me the song. “Diver returns to shore, and nighttime fireside rituals ensue, with mermaid reappearing as apparition from above, as dancers and drummers party.”

The track “Midnight Sun,” on the other hand, features a lush interplay between the vocals of Satalino and McKay. Spacey and dreamy for sure, but more song-ish than “Cult of the Pearl Diver,” with its heavily structured electronic soundscapes and ringing hammer dulcimer melodies. McKay says, however, that he hopes the songs themselves can remain organic entities when introduced to live performances. “The songs are so elaborately constructed when I’m writing and assembling, so for the live show I’m kind of interested in seeing what can happen and making it different, maybe stripping things back to find the beginnings of things,” he says. “I mean, we could just have a kick drum and Cara’s voice and I would dig that show completely. Her voice is just so luminous, and yet, really raw and human.”

Plans right now are for Abandon the Earth Mission to book some more shows here in town, though perhaps not for another couple of months; McKay has his hopes set upon an outdoor performance at this year’s AthFest. Touring, he hopes, will follow. “The live thing is maybe gonna have the most swift legs of all things I’m doing right now, so I want to keep it going,” he says. “I’m trying to not have a real drum kit and a whole bass rig. I’d rather rely on some standup percussion and keep the beats on the laptop and then go all over the world with this. Why not? We’re in a crash-and-burn phase right now as gas prices increase, air fares increase, whatever, so why not try for something now? Of course, it all has to do with what the other people in the band are doing and their schedules, but I’d like to be ‘a band’ as much as possible.”

Chris Hassiotis

WHO: Abandon the Earth Mission
WHERE: Caledonia Lounge
WHEN: Saturday, April 12
HOW MUCH: $6 (21+), $7 (18+)