SXSW 2012

El Ten Eleven is a Los Angeles-based instrumental indie rock duo consisting of Kristian Dunn and Tim Fogarty. What separates El Ten Eleven from their musical peers is that they are only two musicians on stage creating pounding landscapes of sound with no laptops or sequencers. Dunn switches off (sometimes mid-song) between a double-neck bass/guitar and a fretless bass, while his feet dance on an extensive floorboard of looping devices and effects pedals. He plays everything live, loops himself and juggles all the layers of tracks on top of each other. Fogarty switches between traditional acoustic drums, roto toms and electronic drum pads, usually within each song. To add to the insanity, Fogarty will occasionally loop himself as well. The densely textured, atmospheric instrumental sounds of their first two full-length albums (the self-titled debut El Ten Eleven and their follow-up Every Direction Is North) have been praised alongside the work of such post-rock elite as Tortoise, Explosions in the Sky, and Sigur Rós. With their third album, These Promises Are Being Videotaped, the duo took a leap in a new musical direction more akin to the work of dance-rock envelope pushers Ratatat and Soulwax.
For their fourth full length, It's Still Like A Secret (November 9, 2010), the duo has taken the best elements of their first three albums and combined them into something extraordinary. "On each record we learned a lot about what works and what doesn't,” Dunn explains. “This is hopefully the perfect amalgamation of everything we do.”