WILKES-BARRE — New York-based band Paris Monster will be performing Friday at the River Street Jazz Cafe located on 667 North River St.
The show, which will be theband’s first performance in Wilkes-Barre, is presented by Astrology Day.
Paris Monster is comprised of Geoff Kraly, bassist and modular synthesist and Josh Dion, drummer, lead vocalist and keyboardist. It is just the two of them creating and writing experimental, avant-garde, rock and electronic-based music.
“We’re musicians for life,” said Dion. “It’s just like a journey, you go through so many genres when you form a band, so many things come out.”
Kraly and Dion have played together since the late 1990s in various other projects, some of which were other people’s projects. At some point they realized they worked together enough, and they thought about starting a band together.
“For awhile we tried doing the band with guitarists and other instrumentalists but we kind of just liked the challenge of doing it just the two of us and coming up with creative solutions to the problem of (Paris Monster) being a duo,” said Kraly. “Doing everything ourselves resulted into the sound that we now have.”
The duo has been around since 2014. Their first performance took place in southern New Jersey at a festival called the Pine Barrens.
Also, Paris Monster is independent and built their fanbase around the internet, as many other bands and solo artists do in this day and age of technology. They found they had a following in different parts of the world.
Together as Paris Monster, Kraly and Dion have performed at venues in New York, California, Chicago, Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana and many more states. Overall, they have been from coast to coast in the United States twice.
So far, the band has released an EP called “It Once Had Been Kind” and a full-length LP called “Lamplight.” All their music can be found on any music streaming service.
At their show at the River Street Jazz Cafe, their opening act is The Brendan Brisk Band. Kraly and Dion are excited to be working together with this band.
“It sounded like a good blend that the two bands would have,” said Dion. “We tend to lean more toward bands that have some kind of synth element but we also work well with bands that jam and have guitars and songwriters.”
As for their own performance, Kraly and Dion plan on playing a lot of new music that they are writing and working on at the moment. They will also play some songs off their EP and their album, “Lamplight.”
Paris Monster’s show will start at 9 p.m. and doors to the River Street Jazz Cafe will open at 7 p.m. Advance tickets cost $12 and day of show tickets will be sold for $15.
“We’re excited for this upcoming performance,” said Kraly. “It’s been so long since we’ve done any consistent playing that it’s great to just be out there in the swing of it again.”
