Photo: WENN
Avi Buffalo have announced that they have split up, citing that the 'pain' and pressure of their success as the reason.
The Sub Pop indie heroes had achieved great critical acclaim and a dedicated cult following with their two records, their 2010 self-titled effort and last year's At Best Cuckold.
Now, Avi Zahner-Isenberg has taken to Facebook to announce their demise.
"The Avi Buffalo project went too far, and I don’t think this project was meant for even the minute exposure on a “professional” scale that it got, as it ended up causing a lot more pain and drained my creative energy," he wrote. "It makes me wake up sick, confused, depressed, out of touch with myself and irrelevant to current music’s existence."
Read his statement in full below:
"The Avi Buffalo band is over; done with my 2-record-contract with SubPop and available to be anyone’s guitarist/songwriter/producer/engineer/whatever works, gonna keep makin’ music left and right. I have very much appreciated touching good people with this music, having a cool avenue through the world to perform it, getting to meet you whether it was in the USA, Canada or Europe, and working with some awesome musicians.
"I started it when I was a wee-15 year-old and it went WAY farther than I thought it could. In fact, the Avi Buffalo project went too far, and I don’t think this project was meant for even the minute exposure on a “professional” scale that it got, as it ended up causing a lot more pain and drained my creative energy. It makes me wake up sick, confused, depressed, out of touch with myself and irrelevant to current music’s existence. I know ya’ll wouldn’t want me to stay like that!
"Other more exciting and meaningful creative endeavors are what I have sought after instead, and as I am a spritely, young 24 year old, I’ve gotta lot of work to do and no time to be devoted to a sluggish incarnation of my teenaged self. Another long story short: touring sucks and isn’t worth it, even though I love having been able to play shows to people I live far away from who have heard my music(thank you for coming, glad you caught us and sorry I will NOT be returning), it completely detracts from what I have always wanted to do as a musician since I started at age 12 which is: play with a lot of different people all the time instead of concentrating on one band, work and write in the studio with people and also to experience things like romantic relationships and live in one place at a time such as Los Angeles or New York or anywhere else with a large and exciting concentration of beautiful artists to work with and learn from every day.
"I have a few projects now brewing including the debut Litronix album(Kevin Litrow of Dance Disaster Movement and 60 Watt Kid, one of my heroes since I was a teenager) I’ve been producing with J.P. Bendzinski and playing on for months(!) and we are wrapping it up, it sounds magnificent and I am so proud of all of us involved. It is a rich and beautiful album of Kevin Litrow’s music, stocked, packed and decorated with some of the areas most interesting and talented musicians. It will be released on Porch Party Records, a local Long Beach label that has graciously funded the studio time to record it…Other guitar playing+more with different folks happening all over town and exponentially into the future. There are in fact too many to count! I am trying to stack the learning opportunities on top of each other in hopes that they will lead me to something good. Currently looking for: Great teachers and true, evolved inspiration.
"Perhaps also after a while of working on other people’s stuff I could come up with something else of my own again, put it out on a label, tour, etc. It’s just gotta feel free if that happens. I will probably honestly be 40 or 50 when that happens and extremely fat."
