The Sky Drops

The Sky Drops – The Sky Drops are Delaware gaze-rock duo Rob Montejo and Monika Bullette.

Rob was the founder of Smashing Orange, an American shoegaze band that quickly gained notice and notoriety in the early nineties. The band graced the pages of NME and Melody Maker with its UK releases, recorded a Peel Session for the legendary BBC John Peel Show on Radio 1, and later signed with MCA. Monika Bullette sang in the alternative band NERO and was one of the first musicians to capture the power of the Internet by releasing the Bullette debut album The Secrets on the web in 2005.

Forming in fall of 2005, Rob’s original concept of The Sky Drops was a trio. But when the bass player to be was a no-show, Rob and Monika decided to play on and a sound was born – an ocean-size sound that is at once beautiful and brutal. With a fluid mix of shoegaze, grunge and psychedelic rock, The Sky Drops released their debut EP Clouds of People in July of 2006. The self-recorded EP garnered critical acclaim on the blogosphere which led to a UK tour in 2006 and a performance at the first Clean Air, Clear Stars Festival in Joshua Tree in 2007.

After touring the US for most of 2007 and shooting a video for the single “Hang On” in a classic Richard Neutra House in Los Angeles, the band began work on their full-length recording Bourgeois Beat at the end of the year. Due to an unforeseen medical condition, Rob was unable to play guitar; recording and performing came to a halt for all of 2008.

Fortunately, the band was able to get back on track in early 2009 and Bourgeois Beat was released later that year. The record featured the song “Truth Is,” and a cryptic Super 8mm beach motel video was shot for it in Atlantic City.

"(Rob and Monika) might have waited three years between their EP Clouds of People to release their debut full-length album, Bourgeois Beat, in 2009, but the wait was worth it. The band is classic shoegaze at its best, with dreamy vocals and sublime droning fuzz that will make you forget the genre ever drifted away."  - Ian Rasmussen, Portland Wilmette

"The Sky Drops bring some of the freshest fuzzy psych-pop I’ve heard in quite some time, a sonic smoothie blended together with equal parts Film School, Neil Young, and Blinker the Star.” - Citizendick Singles Club

Rob and Monika regularly packed up the Volvo wagon in 2010 and toured throughout the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard. Upon returning they started tracking songs for a new release.

In 2011, The Sky Drops released the EP Making Mountains on Custom Made Music, and their US tour included a performance at the Black Angels’ PsychFest IV in Austin, Texas.

"Dynamic and enchanting, Delaware’s Sky Drops fashion a sweet tapestry of garage, psychedelics, and shoegaze. I’m talking the real stuff here, the good stuff. The swervedriving lush swirls of heavy noise. But the shadows are only there to keep the songs grounded, because melodies fly high and rhythms push up against the harmonizing vocals until all is full of sound. These songs from Rob Montejo, ex of Smashing Orange, and Monika Bullette are almost instant classics, but timeless. This music is now, pulsating between ethereal glory and desert rock. Sometimes catching like a collision between Loop and the seasick swagger of My Bloody Valentine. This EP, which is only disappointing because it’s too short, ends with the slow paisley dream of “Together-ing”, and I’m left feeling complete, but wanting more."
- Review of Making Mountains from The Big Takeover (spring 2011)

Self-managed and self-booked, The Sky Drops have played with Dead Meadow, Wye Oak, Cold War Kids, The Dirty Projectors, A Place to Bury Strangers, Asteroid #4, Adam Franklin & Bolts of Melody, Bloody Knives, Chairlift, and Spindrift, amongst many.

The Sky Drops are currently working on a 2012 release.

"i f**king LOVE it" – Kramer

See the videos on http://www.youtube.com/user/theskydropsvideos