BUZZ BANDS

Glad to have a chaotic career

Two years ago on the Taste of Chaos tour, Saosin was the baby band. “We were the van kids -- we hung out with the production crew more than the other bands,” bassist Chris Sorenson remembers. “We’re in the middle of the game now.”

In the middle and rising. Backed by a rabid fan base that has helped its Capitol Records debut, “Saosin,” sell 161,000 copies, the Orange County quintet arrives at the Long Beach Arena for tonight’s Chaos (featuring the Used, 30 Seconds to Mars, Senses Fail and others) as one of the brighter lights on the hard-core scene.

Not that Saosin has any delusions about getting “big.”

“The term ‘big’ is misconceived nowadays, the way the music industry is ... things are just not as abundant,” says Sorenson, noting with regret that many in the band’s label team were let go in the blood-letting after the Virgin-Capitol merger. “You have to be inventive and creative in the way you promote your music.”

That promotion has certainly not lacked energy. In the days leading up to the Sept. 26 release of the album, Saosin did a series of appearances in retail stores that were, well, off the chain. Upwards of 1,000 fans at a Best Buy in Fullerton? Crowd-surfing? “It was weird,” Sorenson says. “The store people were freaking out, and we were freaking out.”

Making the album -- which features the twin-guitar assault of Beau Burchell and Justin Shekoski, thunderous rhythms from Sorenson and drummer Alex Rodriguez and the searing melodic vocals of Cove Reber -- was a learning experience too, since the band was working with top-drawer producer Howard Benson.

“There were a lot of stories going around,” Sorenson says, “but I think things clicked in a healthy-conflict kind of way. He helped get us to that next step.”

Hitting upon the right ambience

Ambient music can make you feel as if you’re enveloped by fog, torn between the comfort of its womb-like sonics and the anxiety over what might lie beyond the shroud. The aptly named L.A. band In Waves ratchets up the tension considerably, with furious, melodic drums punctuating distortion-laden guitar and reverb-heavy vocals. Ethereal, meet ghostly.

A collaboration between Orange County boyhood friends Jimmy Notorleva and Dean Cooper -- “We’d play old surf songs while our parents talked about mortgages,” Notorleva says -- In Waves landed in local clubs about a year ago with no proper recordings. In stark contrast to many of the bands with which they were billed, the two-piece featured just Notorleva’s echoing voice and guitar (often over prerecorded loops) and Cooper’s rhythms.

“We started as kind of a post-punk band, but we never felt like it was our thing. So Dean and I kept practicing until our own voice emerged,” Notorleva says, not that he is quite sure of that voice’s origins: “But it seems the most subconscious things come from darker places.”

Cooper’s skills emerged as he slowly “learned to articulate things” over a 10-year love affair with the kit.

“The drums can speak a lot more [in In Waves’ setting] than they can in just a regular rock song with a backbeat,” he says. “The rhythms add texture to the songs.... On a lot of our stuff, I just listen to Jimmy’s lead and play to that, either to complement or call-and-answer his parts.”

Bassist Tim Gregorio joined the duo for this month’s residency in Silver Lake, which ends Tuesday at El Cid.

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Fast forward

* Touts: The sixth annual Take Action! Tour (www.takeactiontour.com) hits town this weekend too (Friday in Santa Barbara; Sunday at the House of Blues), featuring headliners the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus backed by Emery, A Static Lullaby and others. The tour, the brainchild of L.A.-based Hopeless & Sub City Records, donates 10% of door receipts to the Youth America Hotline, a suicide prevention and crisis counseling outreach of the Kristin Brooks Hope Center.

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-- Kevin Bronson

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Recommended downloads

For more on these bands and others, as well as downloads and capsule reviews, visit the Buzz Bands blog: latimes.com/buzzbands.

* Stream “Voices” and download “Seven Years” (from Saosin’s 2003 EP) at www.myspace.com/saosin.

* Stream the demo of “A Walk” by In Waves at www.myspace.com/inwaves.