Karate | Artist
Karate is an American indie band formed 1993 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Geoff Farina (guitar, vocals), Eamonn Vitt (guitar, bass) and Gavin McCarthy (drums). Bassist Jeff Goddard joined in 1995 and Eamonn Vitt departed in 1997. The band is characterized by fusion of indie rock, emo, post-hardcore, and post-rock, with the jazz influence becoming more dominant in later years. Farina has cited Minutemen, Beefeater, and McCoy Tyner as major influences. Their sound has the tightly coiled energy of post-hardcore, playing angular riffs with clean, spacious guitar tones and adding a technical precision often intentionally avoided by their scrappier peers. Patient tempos and pensive atmospheres made their first two albums border on slowcore at times, but they later began incorporating a heavy jazz influence into their brew of punk-adjacent styles, adding improvisation and post-rock touches to albums like 2000's Unsolved. Farina began developing hearing problems after twelve years of performing and was forced to disband the group in July 2005. The group at that point had recorded six studio albums and had almost seven hundred performances in twenty countries. Their final show was played in Rome, Italy, on July 10, 2005. In 2007, the former band members released the live album 595, which is a recording of their 595th performance, on May 5, 2003 at Stuk, Leuven, Belgium. The recording was sent to them by a sound technician, and Karate were so impressed by the quality they decided to release it as an official live album. During the band's down-time, Geoff Farina developed a solo career, releasing three albums and a number of EPs. He also worked with Chris Brokaw (Codeine, Come), releasing work as Geoff Farina & Chris Brokaw. In 2021, after years of struggling to regain ownership of the rights to their catalog, the band teamed with Numero Group to begin reissuing the long out-of-print albums. The reissue series began with releases of their first single and first two albums, and slowly the other releases followed, as did the 2022 box set Time Expired, covering their output between 2000-2005. In 2022, Karate re-formed to play their first live performances in 17 years. Numero Group continued their revisitation of the band's catalog with another box set, Complete Studio Recordings. In October 2024, the band released a new album, Make It Fit, their first studio set of new material since 2004's Pockets. From their consistently high-quality discography, standout albums include Karate (1995), In Place of Real Insight (1997), The Bed is in The Ocean (1998), Unsolved (2000), Some Boots (2002), and Pockets (2004). Also recommended is the live album 595 (2007), and the Time Expire (2022) compilation. Outside of band activities, Geoff Farina teaches music history at DePaul University, where his courses include That High Lonesome Sound: Bluegrass 1936-1972 and What Were The Blues? 1920-1960. He has also taught music history and music theory at Colby College and the University of Maine, and English composition at the University of Massachusetts. Founding member Eamon Vitt, who left the band in 1997 to pursue a medical career, now has a successful medical practice in New York City, specializing in gay men's health.
Artist Website: karateallston.bandcamp.com
Featured Albums: Karate
Related Artists: Geoff Farina, Ardecore, Exit Verse
