Heavy Sigma is an instrumental experimental rock band that formed in Antioch, California in 2011. It was founded as a solo project for guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Lew, whilst his band the Patrick Lew Band was becoming more of a construction of an actual band with other musicians involved sporadically. Heavy Sigma also features musical collaboration and performances by other Patrick Lew Band members including Faith Marie and Dave Arceo. Playing music under pseudonym 'guises' in an attempt to preserve their low-key ethnical and musical approach to musical enterpreneurship and to thwart mass media hype, Heavy Sigma mainly plays abrasive, loose, and raw non-conventional sounding rock & roll and garage punk. Following the same promotional tasks that Patrick Lew Band took to get their music heard, the Internet and local San Francisco Bay Area social-media were methods to getting themselves out there.
Heavy Sigma 411
1) hometown: San Francisco East Bay, California, USA
2) genres: Experimental Rock, Post-Rock, Garage Punk, Grunge
3) years active: 2011-present
4) record label: Unsigned (fuck record labels...)
5) related bands: Patrick Lew Band, Band of Asians
6) band members:
TWRebel85 (AKA Patrick Lew): Guitar, Electronics, Lead Vocals
Angel Eyes (AKA Faith Marie Lew): Drums & Percussion
Stitch (AKA David Arceo): Electronics
Patrick Lew and Faith Marie met on a free dating website and became a serious romantic couple despite long-distance separating one another, especially because of personal priorities in life. Lew and Dave Arceo met at Skyline College whilst Lew was taking a few music courses, and played together in the now-eponymous Band of Asians from the San Francisco post-hardcore scene. Prior to forming Heavy Sigma as a Patrick Lew solo project, with credited contributions with close ones musically, Lew was experiencing the sudden critical cult-like success and was playing music frequently in the Bay Area with the Grunge/Punk self-prolcaimed buzzworthy band the Patrick Lew Band. Brushing off the critical success and experiencing immense pressure from sudden cult-like fame for his music in the PLB Army, Lew decided to take a brief hibernation from the Patrick Lew Band to focus on other musical activity as an artist and rock guitar player. Aware of the overwhelming experience with how to follow-up the critically acclaimed "Murder Bay" recording with PLB while making music, Lew chose the other method of being a musician, by going more low-key in his approach to recording and marketing his music alone experimenting with more second-rate songwriting ideas and instrumentals. Which was the genesis of Heavy Sigma as a Patrick Lew solo project.
Heavy Sigma's material mainly consists of chaotically raw and unpolished produced music featuring unfinished musical ideas Lew experimented alone, feeling no need to record it with the Patrick Lew Band considering he felt it was not his best music as an artist and rock guitarist. A lot of Heavy Sigma's music is experimental post-rock, but dabbles with other styles closely associated with the Patrick Lew Band such as Grunge and Garage Punk. However, on the Heavy Sigma studio demo which was published and posted via Internet as of early 2012, many of the musical ideas wounded up becoming instrumental-only produced rock music. Lew's guitar playing skills were also at the time artistically challenging, as he felt his lead guitar playing sound was suffering on record given his experience and limitations as a musician. Many of the songwriting ideas that were rejected by the Patrick Lew Band in the music making process were given its presence in Heavy Sigma, which were still unfinished yet reasonably listenable post-rock/garage punk band recordings of Lew's music. Lew is pretty much, the only lone guitar player in Heavy Sigma, both in the studio and sporadically onstage for local gigs. With today's digital technology and computers with fast-speed Internet or WiFi, online collaboration between Lew alongside Faith Marie and Dave Arceo via webcam when making the music on Skype and social-media website juggernaut Facebook enabled some of Marie and Arceo's musical performances and contributions on record in the studio. Recording bits and pieces of the music in their own home studios and computers, emailing back the multitrack files via WAV to Lew so he could Frankenstein the music on record.
Between October to December 2011, Heavy Sigma began making music in the studio. It resulted in their recorded EP, Studio Demos 2012 (also known as Oddities). Which later after they finished making the music, was posted on the Internet as a free download on PLB-related band websites. Usually, Lew hands out printed pamphlets of Heavy Sigma locally at gigs and elsewhere to get his new solo project out there. But most of it was musical entrepreneurship based methods on the Internet itself. Lew intends Heavy Sigma as more of a solo project hobby for his passion for playing rock & roll music, but doesn't discount any prospects of performing live shows under the 'guise' Heavy Sigma sporadically.
WATCH THIS GROW! ENJOY THE MUSIC AND PLAY IT PASSIONATELY.
The Patrick Lew Band formed whilst the musicians were still in high school as teenagers, and began posting their music on the Internet in May 2001. Regularly busking and freelancing individually and together in the San Francisco Bay Area via jam sessions and busking live performances. The following year, the band recorded their first album Psychotic Love on a 4-track Portastudio. While seriously dedicated to their music and remaining focused and persistent, the band gained some degree of notoriety revolving around Lew's personal problems at the time and Bandalism. It would be four full years before the Patrick Lew Band was able to record a follow-up to Psychotic Love, aptly titled Revenge (2006) with new members Dave Arceo (drums) and Zack Huang (keyboards). Patrick met his girl Faith by late 2006 on a free dating website, and began dating before she re-located back to Texas in the Bay. 
