The sea and cake
The group formed in the mid-1990s from members of The Coctails (Archer Prewitt), Shrimp Boat (Sam Prekop and Eric Claridge), and Tortoise (John McEntire); the group's name came from a willful reinterpretation (as the result of an accidental miscomprehension) of "The C in Cake", a song by Gastr del Sol.
Starting with 1997's The Fawn, the group has relied on electronic sound sources, such as drum machines and synthesizers, to color its music, but has retained its distinctive post-jazz combo style. The band has shied away from releasing singles, preferring the album format. Contrary to his multi-instrumentalist role in Tortoise, John McEntire almost exclusively plays drums in The Sea and Cake.
Members Sam Prekop, Archer Prewitt, and John McEntire each have released solo albums. The cover art of The Sea And Cake's releases are largely paintings by member Eric Claridge and photographs by Prekop. Prewitt has been involved in publishing his own comic books and doing graphic design.
In 1995, the band contributed the song "The Fontana" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Bothered produced by the Red Hot Organization. The band was on hiatus from 2004 to 2007. Their most recent album Any Day was released in May 2018.
Cake (stylized CAKE) is an American alternative rock band from Sacramento, California, consisting of singer John McCrea, trumpeter Vince DiFiore, guitarist Xan McCurdy, bassist Daniel McCallum and drummer Todd Roper. The band has been noted for McCrea's sarcastic lyrics and monotone vocals, and their wide-ranging musical influences, including country music, Mariachi, rock, funk, Iranian folk music and hip hop.
Cake was formed in 1991 by McCrea, DiFiore, Greg Brown (guitar), Frank French (drums) and Shon Meckfessel (bass), who soon left and was replaced by Gabe Nelson. Following the self-release of its debut album, Motorcade of Generosity, the band was signed to Capricorn Records in 1995 and released its first single, "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle", which hit number 35 on the Modern Rock Tracks music chart and was featured on MTV's 120 Minutes; French and Nelson then left the band, and were replaced by Todd Roper and Victor Damiani. Cake's second album, 1996's Fashion Nugget, went platinum on the strength of its lead single, "The Distance". Following a tour of Europe and the United States, both Brown and Damiani announced they were leaving Cake, which led to speculation about the band's future; McCrea eventually recruited Xan McCurdy to take over on guitar, and persuaded Nelson to return.
Prolonging the Magic, the band's third album, was released in 1998 and went platinum, having shipped over one million units; this was followed three years later by Comfort Eagle, the band's first album on Columbia Records, featuring the single "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" which hit number 7 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart. Following a series of tours, including several versions of the Unlimited Sunshine Tour, the band released Pressure Chief in 2004, its second and last album on Columbia. After creating its own label, Upbeat Records, the band released Showroom of Compassion in 2011, which became its first album to debut at the top of the Billboard charts, selling 44,000 copies in the first week after release.
Cake incorporates a wide range of genres into its music, including country music, mariachi, new wave, college rock, jazz, funk, Iranian folk music, Brazilian music and hip hop. McCrea himself cites Hank Williams, Tom Zé, the Golden Gate Quartet and Sly and the Family Stone as particular influences. The band is most often noted for three things: the prominence of DiFiore's trumpet lines, McCrea's ironic, sarcastic lyrics, and his "droll, deadpan ... monotone" vocals. DiFiore's trumpet work originated with McCrea's desire for a second melodic instrument to go with a song he had written; "A lead guitar playing those lines would have been really hokey. I like it when it's a contrapuntal thing, where the guitar is doing one melody, the vocal is doing another melody, and the trumpet plays this third melody. If the music can be transparent enough, you can hear all three at the same time".
The sea, the world ocean or simply the ocean is the connected body of salty water that covers over 70% of Earth's surface (361,132,000 square kilometres (139,434,000 sq mi), with a total volume of roughly 1,332,000,000 cubic kilometres (320,000,000 cu mi)). It moderates Earth's climate and has important roles in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. It has been travelled and explored since ancient times, while the scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly from the voyages of Captain James Cook to explore the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779. The word sea is also used to denote smaller, partly landlocked sections of the ocean and certain large, entirely landlocked, saltwater lakes, such as the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea.
The most abundant solid dissolved in sea water is sodium chloride. The water also contains salts of magnesium, calcium, and potassium, amongst many other elements, some in minute concentrations. Salinity varies widely, being lower near the surface and the mouths of large rivers and higher in the depths of the ocean; however, the relative proportions of dissolved salts varies little across the oceans. Winds blowing over the surface of the sea produce waves, which break when they enter shallow water. Winds also create surface currents through friction, setting up slow but stable circulations of water throughout the oceans. The directions of the circulation are governed by factors including the shapes of the continents and Earth's rotation (the Coriolis effect). Deep-sea currents, known as the global conveyor belt, carry cold water from near the poles to every ocean. Tides, the generally twice-daily rise and fall of sea levels, are caused by Earth's rotation and the gravitational effects of the orbiting Moon and, to a lesser extent, of the Sun. Tides may have a very high range in bays or estuaries. Submarine earthquakes arising from tectonic plate movements under the oceans can lead to destructive tsunamis, as can volcanoes, huge landslides or the impact of large meteorites.