Del Rey (band)

Del Rey was founded in 1997 after two of its members, Eben English and Damien Burke, moved from Maine to Chicago.[2] The group added drummer Mike Johnson in 1998 and bassist Chris Cowgill in 2003, and began playing instrumental music partly because none of the members were adept vocalists.[2] Del Rey's first full-length album, Speak it Not Aloud, was released in 2001 on My Pal God Records, and its melding of jazz and alternative rock drew comparisons to fellow Chicago band Tortoise.[3] Darkness & Distance followed in 2003, also on My Pal God.[4] The group kept a weekly rehearsal space in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood from 2005 to 2009, but left it after a robber stole several of their instruments in October 2009.[5] Their fourth album, Immemorial, was issued in 2010, and featured use of Asian instruments such as guzhengs and taiko drums.[6] This album saw the band's greatest commercial success come as an accident; in late 2011, the band was routinely confused by German shoppers on Amazon.de for the singer Lana Del Rey as her songs climbed the German charts.[7] The album repeatedly entered Amazon.de's top-sellers list, at one point becoming the online retailer's seventh-best-selling album in Germany.[8] The label that released Immemorial, Golden Antenna, re-pressed the album to meet demand as singles from Lana Del Rey's Born to Die became Europe-wide hits.[8]

• Eben English - guitar (1997–present)
• Damien Burke - guitar (1997–present)
• Michael Johnson - drums (1998–present)
• Chris Cowgill - bass (2003–present)
• Jason Ward - multiple instruments, production (2001–present)

• DLRY (Dirigible Recordings, 1999)
• Speak it Not Aloud (My Pal God Records, 2001)
• Darkness & Distance (My Pal God Records, 2003)
• A Pyramid for the Living (My Pal God Records, 2006)
• Immemorial (Golden Antenna Records, 2010)
• The Backbone of Night (Self-released, 2017)