Contest: Free Division Day Tickets, CDs

Good news, dear readers: We’ve been having loads of fun already this week, but like the first five minutes of the hilarious 1994 Chevy Chase comedy, “Cops & Robbersons,” the amusements have only begun.

If you know Dangerbird Records - the pre-eminent L.A. indie label that Silversun Pickups, Darker My Love and Sea Wolf have all called home - then you might also be familiar with Division Day. And if you’re a dedicated reader of this blog, you should definitely be able to pick them out of a lineup, as we mentioned their new album last week. Think a late-career Radiohead, playing on a much smaller scale; or a darker Gnarls Barkley.

If their name still doesn’t ring a bell, you just wait. By the end of this post, you’ll have had your fill.

The piano-based, effects-heavy quartet have been on the fast track since 2006, when they slipped out their Beartrap Island debut all by their lonesome selves. It didn’t take long for another esteemed L.A. record company, Eenie Meenie, to sniff out the release and reissue it, shortly after DD had been tagged by The New York Times and CMJ as attention-worthy up-and-comers.

Division Day played their record (re)release show with the Mae Shi and Eulogies, even though they don’t sound half as loony as the former and don’t have half as many guitars as the latter (well, at least not anymore). A couple of years later, they cobbled together the moodier Visitation, which just arrived last week. If you haven’t already coated your ears with it, the band’s MySpace profile has a pair of tunes from the effort. And this remix of one of those songs, “Devil Light,” is also up for the taking:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Like what you hear? Good. You’re in the right place.

Stirring up some hoopla for the release, Division Day are taking to the streets with Visitation, starting Wednesday in San Diego. They’ll be doing the caravan thing with Bad Veins (hey, they’re also on Dangerbird - what a coinkydink) throughout the month.

Here’s their full itinerary:

9.1 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
9.2 - Los Angeles, CA @ Spaceland
9.3 - Costa Mesa, CA @ Detroit Bar
9.4 - San Francisco, CA @ Café Du Nord
9.5 - San Jose, CA @ Nickel City
9.8 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge
9.9 - Seattle, WA @ Sunset Tavern
9.10 - Missoula, MT @ Palace Billiards
9.12 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
9.14 - Lawrence, KS @ Replay Lounge
9.15 - Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
9.16 - Columbus, OH @ Skully’s Music Diner
9.17 - Washington, DC @ DC9
9.18 - Allston, MA @ O’Brien’s Pub
9.19 - Brooklyn, NY @ The Bell House
9.20 - Philadelphia, PA @ North Star
9.24 - Austin, TX @ The Mohawk

Now, here comes that whole “contest” part. We’re giving away two copies of Visitation, as well as two passes to the L.A. show, which will go down a week from today. Interested? Just drop a note  to Kurt@IndiePit.com, and let us know if you’d like one of the CDs or both concert tickets.

We want to make sure you don’t get lonely at the show, so we’re bundling those two tix together; the discs, of course, will be given to two separate winners. So, if we’re doing our math right, that makes three winners: two for the discs, one for the tix.

As if this post couldn’t get any more packed with music, freebies and news, we’d be remiss if we didn’t also fold in a couple of the band’s recent videos. Here’s a clip hyping their tour with Bad Veins, and below is their ridiculously entertaining video for “Surrender.” It bites liberally from the 1977 Japanese horror/comedy flick “Hausu” - flying body parts, freaky cats, haunted houses and possessed pianos abound.