Press Release - Patrick Lew Band Hiatus (as of October 2011)

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. 

The band set out on a tour locally in 2007 (as Band of Asians) sponsored by KLC Productions as an opening act for Tinkture, Scarlett Bombs, and former lead guitarist Eddie Blackburn's other band Nocturnal Rock Turtles. After the tour concluded, the band underwent another difficult period of rehabiliation, losing Huang on keyboards. Blackburn re-signed from the Patrick Lew Band by the end of 2007, to focus on his own bands he was playing music in at the time. 

During this period, the band underwent a change in sound, discarding their post-hardcore style from their first two albums, and began experimenting more with new broader and eclectic sounds on record. By this time, the band became an inter-band freelance activity and presumably a solo project for Lew. Original Distorted Harmony guitarist Jeremy Alfonso joined the Patrick Lew Band by mid-2009, and Lew reconnected with his long-time girlfriend Faith Marie, who also became an auxiliary contributor and group member of the Patrick Lew Band. In the studio, they created two more albums, Let It Rise And Against (2009) and Murder Bay (2011), which expanded Lew's music and recognition through the indies locally and via Internet. Becoming the first major success for the Japanese & Taiwanese musician and guitar hero Patrick Lew. In addition, the last two Patrick Lew Band albums also developed and solidified Lew as a garage punk "fused" prototypical hard rock act. Combining grunge and various punk influences and creating their own distinct sound while playing and making rock & roll music. During the Murder Bay sessions, Alfonso mutually departed the Patrick Lew Band to focus on college mostly before re-locating to Toronto, Canada. 

In October 2011, Patrick Lew announced the Patrick Lew Band will be going through an "indefinite hibernation" to experiment more in the home recording studio as a solo musician under a "TBA" band name, alongside jamming freelance with other musicians in garage bands. For the time being, the TBA band was under the infamous name Chaos in Chinatown for a few months. The former name was given as a recommendation from an estranged former friend on Facebook named Candace. However after much deliberation, the name Chaos in Chinatown was quickly dropped due to rising concerns of raising the anger of the Asian American community. The then-TBA solo rock band was given the name Heavy Sigma, reportedly as a pun on another local band that Lew did not get along with, primarily their bassist by the name of Damien. During the last two months of 2011, Lew and Arceo rented a recording studio in Antioch, California, and began taking their unfinished musical ideas and rehearsed cover songs they were jamming to, and recorded a demo EP. Called Studio Demos 2012 (sometimes referred to as “Oddities”). It was self-released via Internet as a free download on the Heavy Sigma websites. 

While there is no word when the Patrick Lew Band will return to the Bay Area music scene, Lew insists when his musical ideas are not as creatively stagnant or “filler” even, he would return to recording another album with the PLB. It could be an instrumental punk record, or even more experimental leaps from Murder Bay. For the time being, Lew is investing his time and creative energy to Heavy Sigma and making music alone there. Lew also set up his own indie record label, Heavy Sigma Records, to handle the distribution of Patrick Lew Band and Heavy Sigma albums and related merchandise for America. Lew is busy making music, playing guitar, and rocking in the free world. And it’s a good time indeed to be content with it all.