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Mean Lady Making Their Mark With Eclectic Home Town Sounds

07/29/2013
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(Radio.com) Most people wouldn't consider Newark, Delaware a musical town. But Katie Dill would beg to differ. "It's actually an oasis of music," she explained. "It's not one particular scene. There's rap and jam bands and rock 'n' roll, and psych and hip-hop and pop. It's all there." Which is a good thing for Dill whose band Mean Lady is a mix of it all and a whole lot more.

Their ability to seamlessly meld different genres from jazz to bluegrass to classical into one super genre makes the duo, also comprised of Sam Noble, rather hard to define. Though it certainly hasn't stopped anyone from trying.

Mean Lady's music has been described as tropical and psychedelic, but for the female half of the band, the most head scratching identifier has to be chillwave, a genre that has come to describe music made on a laptop that incorporates '80s-style synths, heavily processed vocals and simple melodies to make something you can, well, chill to. Though in Dill's mind, Mean Lady is just a regular pop band. "Because that's the part that's really intentional," she explained to Radio.com over the phone.

Dill first met Noble�also a Delaware native�when the two were in high school, but it wasn't until they happened to run into each other again a few years later while both attending the University of Delaware that they really formed a musical bond. The pair joined a local psych band called Diego Paulo, but soon found that they were more interested in expanding their musical horizons. "We had this idea to start doing hip-hop at a basement party we were playing," she said. "So we made one beat and then we were like, 'We should make it a band!" The duo's name�a nod to a friend's particularly unfriendly dog� followed shortly after.

Dill chalks up their genre bending ability to their diverse musical background, calling Noble the "magician" of the group. "He just waves his hand and things happen," Dill said with a laugh.

Noble is a jazz man who grew up playing the bass and listening to Miles Davis. He later picked up the guitar and then the piano and now attempts to play whatever other instruments they decide to throw into the mix, which has included a drum machine and a sitar. He handles the arrangements of the songs and recorded their debut, Love Now, using only his computer. The two-year recording process started in Noble's dorm room and was later finished in his Wilmington apartment. more on this story

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Copyright Radio.com/CBS Local - Excerpted here with permission.

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