Ethan Tufts doesn’t need a band to make indie rock albums. For the last seven years, alone in his room in L.A., he’s been busy creating music under the name State Shirt, and collecting a lot of praise for it.

Ethan must have listened to his fair share of Depeche Mode, U2 and other mainstays of 80s pop in his youth. He blends that heritage with a strong American indie rock culture, with all the fuzzy guitars and emotionally charged melodies that implies. You’ll find all those elements craftily intertwined in the three albums he’s published on jamendo and that have owned him “nice press and college/indie radio attention” in the US.

State Shirt came into existence in 2001, when Ethan picked up his old run-down tape recorder and started using it as the base for his first home studio. Technically speaking, he’s come a long way since then. As a keen user of web-supported creative exchanges, he’s posted all of the audio tracks used in his new album, This Is Old, on his website in order to run a “Call for remixes”. “I have been fortunate enough to have over 40 remixes come in so far”, he enthuses.
If, as we strongly recommend, you want to hear the original album, released mid-november, you’ll find it here and in the widget below. As for the future, Ethan is planning to push his web-fueled creative experiences one step further by recording an album entirely made with Creative Commons-licensed audio samples submitted by internet users. “It will be a process of merging, tweaking, remixing and piecing together work from people all across the world.”

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