Americans UK

Americans UK performed their first show on New Years Eve, 2001 in Austin, TX in a backyard house party. Jeffrey Burandt brought the idea and songs to college friend Craig Montoro, who soon recruited bassist Andy Sharpe and drummer Bill Brown. Their early sound borrowed from the 1970's American garage movement personified by The Stooges and then re-formalized with a new kinetic fury and fashion by millennial bands such as The Hives. AM/UK performed regularly until fall of 2003, recording a 5-song EP just before Jef UK moved to Brooklyn, NY to earn his MFA in fiction writing.

Americans UK performed their first show on New Years Eve, 2001 in Austin, TX in a backyard house party. Jeffrey Burandt brought the idea and songs to college friend Craig Montoro, who soon recruited bassist Andy Sharpe and drummer Bill Brown. Their early sound borrowed from the 1970's American garage movement personified by The Stooges and then re-formalized with a new kinetic fury and fashion by millennial bands such as The Hives. AM/UK performed regularly until fall of 2003, recording a 5-song EP just before Jef UK moved to Brooklyn, NY to earn his MFA in fiction writing.

Soon after, Craig also moved to Brooklyn, and by summer of 2004 AM/UK was performing again, this time with Austin rock alums Paul Ahern and John Thomas Robinette III on bass and drums, respectively. Americans UK added a keyboardist in Peter DiBari Jef and Paul began collaborating immediately, becoming primary writers for all of the New York-based Americans UK material. Their songs began to embrace more elements of dance and post punk as influenced by their mutual affections for bands like Devo, Adam and the Ants, and performers such as David Bowie, Beck and, again, Iggy Pop. The band gigged and worked on a full-length album that would include all of their songs from both the Austin and NYC incarnations.

The band worked in fits between members' hectic schedules that included Jef's finishing graduate school, Craig and JTR3's frequent touring with other bands, and Paul's long stints in Austin working on film projects. Relations between Jef and Craig began to crumble, and by late spring of 2006, Jef cancelled shows as Craig stopped working on the album. Jef and Craig parted ways, the album was scrapped and Americans UK seemed to dissolve. Over the next year, Jef began to produce a comic book narrating the rock n' roll, science fiction adventures of Americans UK, all the while cooking up new songs with Ahern. The fictional band line-up consisted of characters Jef UK, Paul A-Hole, JTR3 and guitarist "Sweet" Keith Scavenge.

By fall of 2007, Jef, Paul, JTR3 were performing as AM/UK again, first with Bryan Bruchman filling in on guitar, and then with David Cloyd playing bass and Ahern taking up lead guitar duties. In spring of 2008, Ahern and Cloyd moved away from NYC, but the four began working on a new album together consisting of songs primarily written by Jef and Ahern, posting wav files on fttp servers from their homes across the country, now with JTR3 at the production helm. Americans UK released their first full-length album ROCKTRONIC in the spring of 2009 and continue to produce comic books and perform with various line-ups. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL..