The average drunkard looking for a cock-rock party at a bar will probably look dumbly confused at a Purchase New York show – and that's definitely a great compliment. The five slightly awkward guys standing on stage peer intently down at the blinking lights of their multitude of haphazardly placed effects pedals and contraptions reminiscent of the half-abandoned remains of a Ukranian space program control room.

photo: dániel perlaky

The band begins a soft hollow drone, gradually increasing the volume and compounding the layers of proto-melodies until finally all the sounds and effects liftoff with a ball of flame into some cerebral stratosphere – total sensory overload. So why is your average Purchase New York song nearly as long as an average catholic mass?

"It's supposed to be music as progression (not necessarily progressive music)... i'm fond of writing music that you have to listen to and not just have in the background," primary songwriter Stephen Khoury says.

Crafted through the expert orchestration of three guitars, drums, keyboard, bass, a laptop, and effects processors the band's compositions morph (on a good sound system) into a towering concrete tenement building hiding audiences in its shadow and threatening at any moment to crack and crumble onto them in a hail of dust and cement.

In late April of this 2005, Purchase New York released their debut full-length, In Vitro Veritas, on Austin's Indierect Records. Though the complexity and refinement of the record escaped the attention spans of early critics, the album soon racked up glowing praise from national and international music press, garnering the band comparisons to Radiohead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Mogwai.