Tarantula Serpent is a musical experience conceived on September 21, 1976. Luigi Airlines, their first album, barely made it into existence and was created over a grueling 7 year stint from 2011 – 2018 in a coastal California city.
A bit about Luigi Airlines…
If you found one of our posters… Welcome! Tarantula Serpent is a… band? Well we record awesome music that is fun to listen to at least. We mostly blend synths, break beats, and guitars with a variety of other instruments; adding some home-brewed lyrics and melodies for accouterments. Pretty much all of our favorite genres of music are included.
A bit more about the process of creating Luigi Airlines:
The beginning of this artistic journey started when Tarantula realized that Serpent had a huge stockpile of half-finished songs. Each of them were different genres or styles and all of them sounded awesome. So Tarantula thought…
Why not collect all the best pieces of songs we had and put them together in album form? Of course we recorded some new ones along the way as well. While we were gathering together all the song snippets, we came to the realization that each of these songs could be blended into each other to create more of a seamless super-album. After 7 years of recording, re-recording, mixing and matching tune orders, tweaking more, mixing, and then sending it to Ken Lee Mastering; Luigi Airlines finally saw the light of day!
During the process, we laser focused on these goals: the songs would be as catchy as possible, and either fun/funny or sentimental. There are lots of ear-worms on this album. (Although it may take a few spins for you to really catch what we were going for here.) Each song is short, to the point, (what the point is we’ll let you determine) and have amalgamated to bring forth an album specially designed for the A.D.D. generation.
The album starts with a more electronica vibe and then takes a quick foray into rock, back to electronica, into funk, info hip hop, into soul, into straight up folk… into… you get the idea. There are synths included a bunch of the songs for some consistency. The whole thing is backed by break beats for that upbeat fun driving feeling. Get your dancing shoes on and turn it up to 11!
The whole album is put together in a “DJ mix” fashion, so all songs bleed together seamlessly. Once you’ve tried it in the intended order, try the album on shuffle. You might be surprised by the outcome. For the best results, download the album to make sure there are no pauses between songs. Here’s a hint as to why the songs blend together so well: it has to do with the BPMs and keys of the songs. (Ok, I’ll just tell you… The whole thing is 98 BPM and the keys of the songs are ambiguous enough to blend well in any order.)
All in all, we aimed at making an album that reflected our personalities: fun loving, quirky, easy going, and thankful for all the great times and good people.
A bit about the guys behind the tunes…
Serpent grew up as the son of a formula one race car driver. He is a photographer and a traveler.
Tarantula was raised on a gold mine. He is a painter and a short distance runner. (Tarantula is also a underground hip hop rapper. His other tunes can be found at https://betarockmusic.com/)
As the legend goes, the two met at the house of an online salesman, where they came to fisticuffs over the purchase of an electronic drum kit. After a gentlemanly brawl, some good bruises, and a few tumblers of whiskey at the local bar, they became very good friends. The rest is history.
Some reviews:
“Tarantula Serpent is like if Beck’s genes were spliced with that of Bob Dylan and the result fornicated with the orphan bastard daughter of Lady Gaga and Michael Diamond. Get ready to be socked in the face by a 12000 lb. gorilla.”
-The Orion
“With a name like Tarantula Serpent I didn’t know what to expect. Then they played and I didn’t know what to expect. When the set was over, I bought their CD sampler, and I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t know what to expect next from these guys and I love it.”
Adam Ferrit – The Daily Aztec
“Their sound is venomously intoxicating, you will get stung.”
Bobby Zim – North County Times.
“Purely a good time.”
Bryan Malia – City on a Hill Press
“Watch out or you will be bitten by the contagious music of Tarantula Serpent!”
Doug Witten – Big Lobes Music Journal