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The Little-Known History of Klimty Favela:

Griddle's Klimty Favela has a most unusual biography. A series of open-ended jams were recorded for internal use (as fodder from which to draw song ideas) onto a small digital recorder using a single mono source: a Shure SM 57 placed haphazardly in the room. Singer/Keyboardist Kevin Seal sifted through tapes, found good bits, and spliced them together.

Options began to reveal themselves: collage together songs, relearn them as performable pieces, re-record them, hoping they retain some of the excitement the spontaneous performances OR use the collages themselves, dressing up lo-fi recordings with acoustic instruments, percussion, 808's, mellotrons, synths and stacked vocals.

An off-hand comment Griddle colleague, Joel Elrod, made about A City Made of Teeth bubbled up through the humor mill, became a short story, and finally a proper narrative: Drugs, Money, Villains, Anti-heroes, Crooks, Cavemen and Cannibals. They're all here in the Klimty Favela, a reference to the beauty of the lawless yet Byzantine slum that is planet Earth.

In late 2005, Griddle shared rough mixes and story snippets with another colleague from the visual art world, Stephen Tompkins. Tomkins' art has always revered comics and cartoons. The Klimty project coincided neatly with Tompkins' desire to take a swipe at comic creation. Thus was hatched the concept of a CD-soundtrack to a comic book rendering of the story the CD tells of the comic book which illustrates it.

More Turning Violet Reviews:

Skratch magazine, November 2005 by David Barker
Listening to Turning Violet brings to mind all the amazing bands that Dischord Records and Washington, D.C. have provided over the years. There's a similarity to the Dismemberment Plan, but Griddle is more radio-friendly than that. The vocals are superb, the songwriting is outstanding, and the musicianship follows suit. An undeniable pop element is at play, but the music transcends that of typical power-pop. Not to underestimate what the band's label is capable of delivering, but it's beyond me that this band isn't more well-known. Turning Violet pulls off being groovy, interesting, and memorable by changing it up in each song without losing any focus. In the end, Griddle proves to be trippy pop that isn't afraid to both experiment on some levels and turn entirely to cater to the average music fan

West Coast Performer magazine, April 2006 by Krystal Iaeger
The rock quartet Griddle has an interesting mix of musical sounds in store for their listeners. So odd, but to fans of Griddle the combination is naturally so right. The band opens their sophomore release with an eerie solid note on "Boxcars" that you'd find in a science fiction thriller like The Langoliers. The eeriness fades to the back of the boards as a more light-hearted sound comes through the guitars, drums and vocals. As contradictory as the interests are in each of the personalities, the music itself has just as many contrasts. Hearing "Boxcars" is quite a different experience when you read the lyrics, and it is then that the cynicism becomes apparent. Downbeats on bass and more emphasized keyboards give the standout song "Ain't It Good to Be Alive?" a feel of funk, rhythm and blues and garage rock. Though the music has taken a turn, the cynicism still remains with verses like, "Ain't it good to be alive / If you spit on the meat / Then it gets in the gravy / So pass the peas / If you don't want none, baby."

The Original Beak Artwork: