Cell

Hailing from New York, Cell centers on singer-guitarists Ian James and Jerry DiRienzo, with drummer Keith Nealy—formerly a guitar technician for Sonic Youth—and bassist David Motamed, once a member of Das Damen. The quartet crafts thick, overlapping post-punk guitar textures in the vein of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., first captured on the 1992 debut Slo-Blo. Its 1994 successor, Living Room, appeared on DGC. Guided by producer John Agnello (Buffalo Tom, Jay Farrar, Steve Wynn), that album introduced finer gradations absent from its predecessor, softening the earlier dense roar into more elastic forms whose guitar lines approached Crazy Horse territory. Cell disbanded in the mid-'90s, after which DiRienzo launched Ugly Beauty and released the album Sweetness in 1997.