SIGNAL’s members met in the fall of 2016 and bonded over feeling like outsiders in New York City’s punk scene. They decided to form their own kind of punk band, and found a natural chemistry -- and importantly, trust in each others' playing -- which allowed them to write songs in an open environment that encouraged the members' input and intuition. In their very first practices, they wrote the powerful “Park After Dark,” a song about the protests on the Brooklyn Bridge in 2014 following the deaths of Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice and others. This song was featured on an ACLU benefit compilation double LP released by Wharf Cat Records in 2018 and showed a band fusing influences, breaking punk rules and creating something singular and euphoric. This track, along with sporadic live performances over the course of 2017 and early 2018, introduced an exciting new punk band and left fans wanting more. Good thing they entered Kutch 1 Studios to record their debut EP, recording to tape with Bono Melendrez on the boards, for release on Ramp Local in the summer of 2018. This debut takes listeners on a hell ride around NYC’s five boroughs. It depicts a brutal, competitive landscape filled with rat guts, stampedes and emotional trauma.

Like outsider greats from Bush Tetras to Dreamcrusher, SIGNAL confront the difficulty of NYC living unafraid and with blithe defiance. The rhythm section of Allie Brasch and Beck Kitsis winds and pummels through these songs' unpredictable structures with precision; the high-impact guitar playing of Carlos Salas packs billowing free-jazz noise squalls into a study of punk’s hardest hitting innovators; and Aida Riddle is a powerful singer unafraid to express vulnerability while channeling towering intensity with lyrics both blunt and poetic. This is joyous music for these end-times. It’s already getting hot in New York as we approach summer, and you can almost smell the trash. It’s terrible and exciting. SIGNAL’s debut will take you to these streets -- this is your soundtrack for getting out and burning it all down.