Chicago-based rock quartet The Audians released its first full-length CD, titled "Aliens and Friends," in the summer of 2008, featuring new material written and recorded over the past year at Riverbend Studios with Jeff Oliver producing and engineering, along with six others recorded earlier at Engine Studios with producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Califone, Iron and Wine.) The Audians, Sima Cunningham (piano, guitar and vocals), Dorian Gehring (electric guitar, violin and vocals), Jonah Geil-Neufeld (drums and vocals), and Jake Saner (bass), came together at Whitney Young High School in Chicago and have been performing together at Hideout, Metro and Uncommon Ground since 2005. Their songs draw on diverse influences ranging from roots rocks, Cajun, blues and country to folk, jazz, and classical. Sima Cunningham has been writing and publicly performing her own material since the age of fourteen. She has studied piano for a decade and has been a member of the Chicago Children's Choir since 1996. In April 2006, Sima Cunningham, Gehring and Geil-Neufeld released a six-song CD also produced by Brian Deck, “Squeeze,” under her name. Saner joined the band just after Squeeze was recorded and they renamed themselves the Audians. Before teaming with Cunningham in 2005, Gehring, Geil-Neufeld, and Saner formed SmazE in 2003 as a Cajun-soul band. They performed at coffee shops and clubs and released a CD, "All the More Reason to Spend These Years in a Tree." The members also perform with a traditional Cajun band, The Cajun Vagabonds. Geil-Neufeld also plays guitar, sings and writes songs for Busted Peach, a world-folk combo that issued its own CD last year, Brown Paper Bag. Jonah Geil-Neufeld currently attends Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Dorian Gehring attends Cornell College in Iowa. Sima Cunningham and Jake Saner attend New York University. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.