“Life, in general, is noise,” says Geoff Hunker, lead singer and founder of Satellites & Sirens, a band on the brink of releasing its self-titled debut album on Word Records this fall. “We get up and we fill ourselves with so much stuff. You know, I go to sleep with my TV on, and I wake up with my TV on. So it’s noise all the time. And we busy ourselves so much that a lot of times we miss out on hearing what God’s direction is.”
But wait a minute, Geoff. One of the songs on Satelites & Sirens is called “All We Need is Sound.” I’m confused. In that song, you’re telling us listeners that “time is running out” and that our voices should “rise up from the earth and shake the ground.” And those swirling synths and relentless guitars are pretty noisy themselves. So on the one hand you’re saying that the noise of our 21st-century culture is keeping us from contact with the divine, and on the other hand you’re saying that sound is “all we need.” Isn’t that kind of . . . a contradiction?
Yes. And no. It would be too easy to stereotype Hunker as one of those musician types who just love hearing themselves make abstractions—mainly because he actually has a handle on what he’s talking and, more importantly, singing about. There is, after all, tension inherent in the amount of noise our culture makes: that noise can indeed be overwhelming and oppressive, but it can also be expressive of the human experience and, therefore, beautiful.
S&S, which consists of Hunker, Jonathan Dimmel (drums), Chris Mullins (guitar), and Brandon Owens (bass/synth), embody that tension—both through their music and through their experience. They are a band both defined by and concerned with what it means to make music in a world filled with the deafening voices of the information age. And there are three main reasons why this is the case:
ONE. The band formed on Craigslist. Seriously. After Hunker moved to Nashville and began working with producer Rusty Varenkamp on what would become Satellites & Sirens, he realized he needed to assemble a band. And he decided to try out the possibilities of 21st-century interconnectivity by posting a want ad for band members on one of Cyberspace’s most popular bulletin boards. “I just put up an ad looking for guitar, bass, and drums to just see what happened,” he says. “Probably 80 percent of the stuff that came out of it was just absolutely horrible.”
But luckily, the remaining 20 percent included drummer Jonathan Dimmel, who impressed Hunker both musically and personally. Then, shortly after Hunker brought Dimmel on board, Dimmel introduced both Owens and Mullins into S&S. The band was born, then, out of the noisy information overload of online advertising. But what’s interesting about S&S’s origins—to get back to their embodiment of the noise/beauty dichotomy—is the fact that they have bonded together organically to form a band of people who are not only coworkers but also close friends. Dimmel remarks, “A lot of bands don’t have that. Especially when they don’t go back further than, you know, two years off Craigslist.”
TWO. Their music is an interesting, personalized take on the recent emergence of rock informed by 80’s synth-pop. Satellites & Sirens is full of songs that artfully balance the electronic buzz of synthesizers with modern rock guitars over the top of interesting grooves.
“I think it makes people our age like feel like a kid again,” says Dimmel, commenting on the rise of the synthesizer from its technicolored grave. “It brings us back to things that we enjoyed when we were kids—like the Nintendo-type sounds and the 80’s pop, Michael Jackson beats. All these things that make us think of when we were kids.”
Yes, members of S&S’s generation grew up with the whirring and bleeping sound of computers in the backgrounds of their childhood, so it stands to reason that now, as they are making music, they are including those sounds in their artistic palettes. So when you listen to S&S’s music, you can hear the collision of 21th-century technology with music, humanity’s timeless mode of artistic expression. And the result is nothing short of illuminating. The anthemic “Breaking the Noise,” for instance, uses synthesizer atmospheres to elevate an excellent rock song to an even higher level of emotional poignancy. By transforming the noise of technology into the beautiful accompaniment of an updated hymn, the music compliments Hunker’s call for God to “break the noise” of postmodern society.
THREE. Thematically, Satellites & Sirens is an album that deals with faith and human community in light of the noise of contemporary society. “Come On” is a song that deals with the tragedy of broken families. “All the Same” is a critical statement of our culture’s idolatry of celebrities. “Anchor” affirms the value and necessity of faith in a higher power in the turbulent world we live in.
And all of the songs, whether explicitly or implicitly, point the listener upward, away from the confusing din of our world, toward God. “Take Me Back” is a perfect example in that it outlines a repentant return to God from a heart weary of experience away from Him. “Take me back is basically like a prayer. It’s that realization—coming to that point where you’re like ‘the path that I’m going down is not right.’ It’s saying, ‘I’ve come to that point where I know I need God—I know I need grace and forgiveness,’” says Hunker. As an artistic statement, then, the collection of songs that is Sattelites & Sirens answers the noise with more noise, crafted into music, asserting the everlasting truth and goodness of God.
S&S, then, take the ever-present sound of contemporary human culture and use it to edify and critique that culture. They are both satellites—heavenly bodies that circle the world from above, observing and advising it—and sirens—emanators of loud warnings and calls to action. They were born out of sound and now live in sound, using it to communicate with the people who produce it.
