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Michael Angelakos

Michael Angelakos
Michael Angelakos (2015).jpg
Angelakos performing with Passion Pit at Lipton's Be More Tea Festival at Riverfront Park in North Charleston, South Carolina in 2015
Background information
Born (1987-05-19) May 19, 1987 (age 29)
New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.
Origin Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Musician
  • singer
  • songwriter
  • record producer
Instruments
  • Vocals
  • guitar
  • bass guitar
  • synthesizer
  • piano
Years active 2007–present
Labels
Associated acts

Michael Angelakos (born May 19, 1987) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the frontman of the indietronica band Passion Pit.

The first Passion Pit songs, which would later become the Chunk of Change EP, were written by Angelakos at Emerson College as a belated Valentine's Day gift to his then-girlfriend. At first, he wrote and performed all his material alone using a laptop. After one of his solo shows in the Boston area, Ian Hultquist, who was attending Berklee at the time, approached Angelakos and expressed interest in creating and playing music collaboratively. They formed a group that consisted of Angelakos, Hultquist, Ayad Al Adhamy, Thom Plasse (bass), and Adam Lavinsky (drums). The band spent a considerable amount of time trying to flesh out a collaborative format and structure that would work best for them. Jeff Apruzzese and Nate Donmoyer joined the band shortly after they signed to Frenchkiss in 2008, replacing Plasse and Lavinsky, respectively. In 2012, Adhamy was replaced by Xander Singh.

The band's debut EP, Chunk of Change, was released on September 16, 2008. The first four tracks were those that Angelakos had written as a gift for his girlfriend, which had already become popular throughout the Emerson College campus, where Angelakos was attending classes at the time, and had been passing out his own, self-produced copies.

The first and only single to be released from the EP, "Sleepyhead", received a good deal of exposure through its use in numerous media campaigns and advertisements, while the video for the song, directed by The Wilderness, was included on Pitchfork's Top 40 Music Videos of 2008 list. The song contains samples of "Óró Mo Bháidín" by Irish singer and harpist Mary O'Hara.

Other songs from the EP received some exposure as well. "Cuddle Fuddle" was featured in E4's second series of The Inbetweeners and "I've Got Your Number" was used in an advertisement for the cash card from O2, Money in the UK.


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Wikipedia

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