Today marks the launch of Infinite Channel, a new web-based video platform created by a collective of local musicians and FAU commercial music students to "present and preserve real music."
With the goal of providing "content and exposure for bands that are invaluable to the South Florida music scene," the mostly Boca Raton-based group started filming their favorite bands performing live — right in the middle of their living room.
"We’ve all talked for a long time about starting some sort of label to release our music under," the team behind Infinite Channel tells New Times on how the idea for the project first came about. "Having a medium to release our music is a principle we all thought that we could get behind, and we thought it was a good way to help others who might be interested in doing the same. We brainstormed more, and when we started shooting videos and getting more bands involved it started gaining some momentum."
The Infinite Channel was formed by Carissa Giard, Jake Stuart, Ryan Huseman, Dale Pohly, Austen Erblat, Thomas Tarpey, Martin Pomareda, Lisa Fearon, Brandon Fuentes and Ayrton Fuentes. In different combinations, they form the local bands Peyote Coyote, Fuzzhound, Black Cousins, Citadel, and Süpr Mün. Huseman, Giard, Tarpey and Fuentes jointly take on video production duties.
Mostly shot in the intimate living room setting of the home where a few Infinite Channel members live, as well as at their practice space at a warehouse in Boca, the videos offer a unique glimpse into the South Florida music scene coming together and collaborating in real time. So far, the Infinite Channel collective has shot six bands and plans to release new videos weekly as an ongoing project.
As for the platform itself, theinfinitechannel.com is "a clean and simple design featuring news about the bands behind the Infinite Channel, and live videos of local bands that we filmed in our living room," they tell us. Though they didn't build their own video player from scratch (videos will be hosted on YouTube and Vimeo and embedded into the site), "Every person involved in the group has some technical audio and video training, [and] Ryan has been the main audio engineer for the video sessions. Ayrton is a professional graphic designer with a lot of web experience, so he’s been helping to get the site off the ground."
Featured bands are decided upon as a group — "Usually we talk about who we want to reach out to and message them on Facebook." For now, the HD videos are performance-based, but they're looking into expanding and have some "bigger plans" on the horizon as well. "Some things we’d like to do are start hosting events every month featuring the bands that we work with, expand to add radio or a video podcast, and release a compilation album highlighting local acts," they tell us.
The Infinite Channel website is currently live with videos featuring performances from local favorites such as Tame the Lyons, Killmama, Shorty the Giant, Smith Sundy, and others. Tune in to check out "the music we like, the music we make, and the music you didn't know you liked."
