Baltimore native Guy Blakeslee served as bassist in the angular emo-rock trio the Convocation Of... before moving to Chicago in the early 2000s, where he launched a solo career under the Entrance moniker. His somber yet trippy acoustic material soon secured a recurring engagement at the Hideout, the city’s influential dive bar, and those performances drew the attention of Tiger Style Records. The label issued his debut solo album, The Kingdom of Heaven Must Be Taken by Storm, in 2003. Over the following years he maintained a rigorous touring schedule, supporting indie acts such as Cat Power, Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Devendra Banhart on stages worldwide. Two additional full-lengths, Careless Love and Wandering Stranger, appeared in 2004. Although he had previously worked with an assortment of musicians on an informal basis, Blakeslee enlisted drummer Derek W. James and bassist Paz Lenchantin for the 2006 self-released Prayer of Death. By that time all three players had settled in Los Angeles, and the record fused Blakeslee’s acid-folk excursions with the rhythm section’s darkly primal psychedelic grooves. The trio refined its approach, adopted the collective name the Entrance Band, and released a self-titled album in 2009 on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! imprint. In 2011 the group traveled to London for the Animal Collective-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties festival and recorded a Latitudes studio session that surfaced the following year as an untitled three-song EP.
