Hey Lovey Dovey: Conquerers of Chaos

The new CD from Hey Lovey Dovey, a hardcore band made up of hardscrabble students from Livingston High School, comes on with a chaotic surge of writhing guitars, indecipherable lyrics and manic percussion painting the sonic canvas.

This is, at least, the audio representation of the personal chaos the band went through during the time they took to record their debut EP entitled "We Are Sincerely Disconnected."

"I'm very proud of how it came out considering the kinds of hardships we went through," said guitarist Dan Stone, 15. "It's a very accomplished feeling, especially because it was two years in the making."

The band fought losing members, cancelled gigs, different producers, disillusionment, and even the death of a friend, all while searching for an artistic direction for their project.

Recording on the eight-track disc started two years ago when Stone, then barely into his teens, started jamming with bassist Ian Eckstein and drummer Brandon Lipman. He said their early experiments, "weren't really music," but the group was spirited in their attempts.

A short time later, Ian and Dan got word from Lipman that his older brother Justin Lipman wanted to jam. Justin Lipman, several years older than the other members of the group, was dealing with the demise of his hardcore band Six Lined Antidote.

In the younger band, he saw in the younger trio an opportunity to work up some of his more experimental material that was rejected by his old band. He also saw an opportunity to play guitar, which he took to with gusto.

"We have a joke that Justin manipulated his way into the band," Stone said.

But the new lead singer made a big contribution early by naming the band. He said he was inspired by overhearing a classmate in the hallway of Livingston High School greet another by saying, "Hey, lovey dovey."

"I thought it would make a weird name, because what kind of music would a band called 'Hey Lovey Dovey' make?" Justin Lipman said. "I want people to wonder what it sounds like."

Thus the core Hey Lovey Dovey line-up was solidified, but their trials had only just begun. Having written the song "2P41W," the band found a local producer in December 2008 and began work on the album. But the producer turned out to be a flake, Stone said, and that spring the band dumped him.

Then Brian Berman, the singer, quit.

Rather than cancel gigs and recording sessions, Justin Lipman agreed to be the group's vocalist.

The band developed its own sound.

"I would describe it as psychedelic hardcore experimental grindcore," said bassist Eckstein, 15. "The first gig we played people were like, 'Whoa, what is going on here?'"

Hey Lovey Dovey then recorded the songs "It Was Dark, There Were Candles," and "Lovey Dovey Dove," at Backroom Studios in Rockaway with another producer, but soon ran out of money.

By then it was the summer of 2009, during which time the three youngest members of the band went away and Justin Lipman stayed home and kept writing. When the members reunited that fall, they took several months off, each member searching for inspiration and direction.

They found it in December of 2009 when Stone acquired gear to build a recording studio in his home, giving the band complete control of its creative process and freeing it from paying an hourly rate at an outside studio.

The band set about re-recording all its old songs, plus new ones including "I Watched The Ball Drop" and the title track.

However, the band was crushed by the news that Cody Landrum, an artist they'd tapped to overhaul their MySpace site, had died.

The final push of inspiration came from the EP's cover art, done by Chad Lenjer, who took the band's concept of a man playing piano while his brains explode and turned it into a vivid, colorful piece of artwork.

"We cut it pretty close," Stone said. "We sacrificed every weekend, every spare moment we had to finishing our CD."

The band's sense of accomplishment was palpable at a show at the Knights of Columbus in Garwood on June 19. Justin Lipman, tattooed and pierced, carried a backpack of his band's CDs and happily hocked them to anyone interested.

"It's psychedelic hardcore," said Lipman, who will go college in Bangor, Maine in the fall. "It's like nothing you've ever heard."

Stone said he too is proud of the CD.

"Maybe it's because I'm a kid, but to have something you can hold on to and say, 'This represents two years of the best times and the worst things,'" he said. "I mean, people died in the making of this record. Not many people can say that."