Paradise Island

Begun over ten years ago in small-town Michigan, Paradise Island is now a California dream in sound and performance. With Paradise Island, Jenny Hoyston has abandoned the hyperactive pop music kinetically spat out by her other main musical project, Erase Errata, choosing instead to explore and create with the barest elements of solo musical experimentation. Taking the dark, psychedelic sound of 1960's San Francisco as her starting point, Hoyston uses a vast array of instruments and musical genres to create songs that whisper of the passage of time, the temptations of love, and her own journey to a higher consciousness. Paradise Island has been described as haunting, intimate, and unavoidably intense. Self-recorded entirely on four track, the songs betray Hoyston's analogue sensibilities, her love of bluegrass, folk and country, a background in gospel music, and a life of revelatory mind-expansion.

Hoyston's instrumentation includes an unprogrammable and outdated Mattel drum machine, an organ played by John Lee Hooker, a ukulele with curative powers, an electric guitar bought for her as a child in Southeast Texas, and a best friend called the acoustic guitar. With these tools she has created innovative and unique soundscapes that disconnect, digress, get lost, and follow tangents to another, perhaps unearthly, world of boundless, musical freedom. This world, where Sun Ra and Steve Earle party with Alan Vega under the towering palm trees of a tropical Eden, where Joni Mitchell and Grace Slick shoot guns and drink white lightening in rural Iowa, where ecstasy and art and love is the state of mind, is Paradise Island.

Paradise Island has toured throughout the country, playing shows with such fellow travelers as The Gossip, XBXRX, Devendra Barnhart, Gravytrain, Cobra Killer, Ted Leo, King Cobra, El Guapo, Christina Billotte, and Dynasty. Hoyston's live shows are spontaneous and surprising, ranging from delicate acoustic sets to hour-long noise skronks, from sharp and danceable electro beats to powerful emotive ballads, from sober quips to drunken, blazing ramblings.

Hoyston lives in Oakland, California with her girlfriend, Lisa. Current and past musical projects include Erase Errata (vocals, trumpet), California Lightning (vocals, guitar), Anxious Rats (vocals w/ Kim Gordon), FF, Girls in Trouble, Subtonix, Day 28, and Titty Sandals. Hoyston is also a guest trumpet player on the upcoming King Cobra album.

Dim Mak Releases:
DM054: Paradise Island "Lines are Infinitely Fine"; BUY LP/BUY CD
DM048: Paradise Island "Get Up"; BUY 7"/BUY CDsingle

Partial Discography:
Paradise Island - 7" (Troubleman)
Erase Errata - 7" w/ Sonic Youth (Narnack Records)
Erase Errata - 7" w/ The Gossip (Kill Rock Stars)
Erase Errata - Remix LP/CD "Dancing Machine" w/ Kid 606, Adult., & others (Troubleman)
Erase Errata - LP/CD "At Crystal Palace" (Troubleman and Blast First)
Erase Errata - LP/CD "Other Animals" (Troubleman in US/Can & Blast First in World)
Erase Errata - 7" (Inconvenient Press & Recordings)
Erase Errata - 7" w/ Black Dice (Troubleman)
Erase Errata - 3" CD w/ Numbers (Tigerbeat 6)
California Lightening - 7" (Inconvenient, re-released on Troubleman)
Subtonix - LP/CD "Tarantism" (Troubleman)

Press

Updated 10/30/03
LINES ARE DEFINITELY FINE REVIEWS

LIGHT UP THE SKY
Similar Artists: Merzbow, Erase Errata, Scissor Girls
Rating: 7 out of 10

Jenny Hoyston of Erase Errata fame is back again, this time with her first full length, Lines Are Infinitely Fine, on Dim Mak Records. On the new release, Hoyston has refined her craft and landed herself miles ahead of her Getup EP, while still maintaining her eccentric sound.Her odd arrangement of songs and styles make this one of the most unique sounding records of the year, as it defies all conventional categories and comparisons.

The album bounces from wall of sound to wall of sound, like on the throbbing opener "Mindwash" all the way to the disc closer, an uncredited, noise-loop. On the former, Hoyston toys with IDM's frequency shifts and tone warbles, while on the latter, she methodically deconstructs tape loops to deliver a psychopathic ambiance.The only somewhat straightforward songs pop up toward the mid-section of the disc. On tracks like "Everybody's Cussing" and "We Ate Until We Ate It All" a gentle guitar line offers a pleasant resting point from all the electronic bumps and bruises, providing some semblance of structure. Meanwhile, "Got a Light" and "I Came 2 Party" slice up lo-fi dance beats and serve 'em up hot alongside static infested vocal mutterings.

The end result is a record that channels Throbbing Gristle's early ideas and filters them through Eno's abstract methods. With all the pitch bends, delayed effects and gritty production,this record perfectly provides a soundtrack to a mental meltdown. Right down to the name, Jenny Hoyston is proving Paradise Island is just as smart and relevant as anything on popular radio.
Reviewer: MA

ROCKPILE
Paradise Island is Erase Errata singer and trumpet player Jenny Hoyston. On Lines, Hoyston takes Erase Errata down a notch to create a record of Lo-fi, electronic bliss. Like an edgier Secret Stars, Hoyston plays with style and feel-songs are incongruent and messy, but always maintain a melodic base. This lady knows what she's doing and does it well. Lines may falter a bit, but shows Hoyston can certainly make it on her own.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN

Island girl
Erase Errata's Jenny Hoyston finds solo paradise.

By Jimmy Draper

NO MATTER HOW tough it may be to step into the solo spotlight, it's even tougher when you're already in one of today's most prominent Bay Area bands, and many of your fans : for whatever reason : are expecting you to sex them up. Just ask Jenny Hoyston.

"A lot of people are just waiting for Peaches," the Erase Errata singer-trumpeter says, laughing dryly at the absurd notion of her breaking out a stage persona akin to Berlin's booty-beat mistress. After all, Paradise Island : the lo-fi, low-key electronic and folk project of which she's the sole voice and visionary : could pass as the intimate antithesis of the '80s-style, bump 'n' grind debauchery embraced by the likes of Peaches and so many other trend chasing musicians of late. "So if anybody likes this stuff besides me," she continues self-deprecatingly, "I'm just amazed."

We're sitting in the living turned recording room of Hoyston's storybook cute Oakland house to discuss her solo music, and our conversation has inevitably turned to the expectations placed on a singer of an established band when she goes it alone. Still, considering how overwhelming such outside pressures can be, Hoyston seems surprisingly comfortable with the fact that many fans of Erase Errata's no wave rock might not appreciate what transpires when she's left to her own devices.

"I just don't feel like I have to be supernice or live up to anyone's expectations. That's the good thing about this : I can be myself," she says. "It's like when Kid Rock did that duet with Sheryl Crow, and he actually sang. Everyone was like, 'Oh my god!' 'cause he totally sounded like Ronnie Van Zandt singing some old ballad. People had never seen him explore that part of himself before."

With Paradise Island, the Texas via Michigan native forgoes the rock format of Erase Errata and California Lightning : her duo with E.E. drummer Bianca Sparta : for a far more introspective, musically unpredictable approach to recording. Incorporating such jarring juxtapositions as ukulele-laden gospel numbers and Suicide al noise aberrations next to spacey instrumentals and country folk dirges a la Buffy Sainte-Marie, the project finds Hoyston indulging in an impressively eclectic multitude of songwriting styles.

"Who wants to listen to the same thing all day?" she reasons. "I hate genres, and I feel like you shoot yourself in the foot as an artist [if you follow them]. My mind is open to infinite possibilities and musical and lyrical combinations, and my songs are totally like weird sound experimentations : a freeing of form."

It's unsurprising, then, that Hoyston's excellent if erratic Lines Are Infinitely Fine full-length and Get Up EP : both released earlier this year on Dim Mak and culled from four track recordings made since 2000 : are dictated by mood, not by structure or style. So while songs like "Gold Digger" and "Mind Wash" lurch menacingly and other tracks, such as the strummed-and-sung "We Ate Until We Ate It All" and "Get Up," could pass for Will Oldham hymns, it's the overwhelming sense of unease permeating the music that makes Paradise Island such a uniquely compelling and discomforting experience. That's not to say she isn't recording songs of strange, disorienting beauty, but, as Hoyston explains, "it's not coming from a place that would usually lead you there."

The recordings reward patient listeners, and indeed, many of these atmospheric soundscapes need to sink into the subconscious before fully revealing their charms. Yet Hoyston's somber live shows can be even more demanding. Though she's put on truly moving performances with little more than a ukulele and drum machine, Hoyston : who's sometimes accompanied by Lisa Charbonneau, her girlfriend and "part-time" Paradise Island collaborator : has also been known to leave audiences frustrated with her occasionally awkward rambling and early departures from the stage.

"I've gotten really nervous onstage," she allows. "I've quit [some shows] 'cause I'm just like, 'People hate it. This is dumb. I'm just gonna go home.' But it's just me being an idiot, because I forget it's not the kind of music that people jump up and down to and ram into each other and yell. It's not like Erase Errata, and I'm really used to that constant validation of the dancing and the partying all around us."

It's understandable, considering it's the first time Hoyston has released her home solo recordings, that it might take some time for her to adjust to her music's public reception. Still, regardless of whether listeners fully embrace Paradise Island, she's happy she's decided to share this part of herself. "It was almost like an experiment to release this stuff and see what happens," she says. "This is my mad scientist project. It's not supposed to be popular. It's not supposed to be critically acclaimed. It's not supposed to be formulaic. It's just what it is : my obsession."

GET UP EP REVIEWS

VENUS ZINE
Paradise Island
by Rebekah Meek

Paridise Island is the side project/alter ego of Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata) and her firstt release, Get Up, is (almost) indescribable. The three-song EP covers alot of ground in less than 10 minutes ; it starts out with programmed drum beats, ends up with fuzzed-out guitars, and brings in a ukulete somewhere in the middle.
Teh highlight oh the disc is this quirky "Getup". It's a little bit gospel and a little bit rocknroll, but still holds onto the lo-fi, post-punk sound that brings the whole EP together. The only problem with this disc is that's too short. I wanted to hear more, but I guess I'll just have to wait for the full-length album.

CRIMINAL CONVERSATION
The ladies of Erase Errata have been quite busy lately, as you can probably tell by the three E.E. related reviews this month. This particular release is a solo project from vocalist Jenny Hoyston. The term “no-wave” has been thrown around a lot lately in relation to a variety of different bands, but Paradise Island may actually be taking the ideas of no wave to heart on this release, as apposed to simply copying some long gone band’s sound. Among the three songs here there’s everything from guitar droning to a solo banjo and vocal track. Definitely “eclectic”.

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