413

413 is the debut EP by Exist Elsewhere, a four-piece from USC Thornton’s Popular Music Program in the early 2010s:

Noah Benardout (lead vocals, guitar, keys) · Luke Francis Walton (lead guitar, vocals; co-write, co-produce) · Brandon Michael Woodward (drums, vocals; later half of FEiN) · Nick Petrou (bass, vocals), per Andrew Gant’s Tokyo credits

Origin: Exist Elsewhere started when Luke joined Noah Benardout’s backing band. After a residency at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood, the group evolved into a full band. Two early songs were recorded at Blue Microphones’ corporate studio in the Los Angeles area; those recordings are preserved on SoundCloud via the engineer who tracked the sessions.

The band won a competition to perform at the Macworld/iWorld Indie Innovation Conference; their sound was tagged as Daft Punk-meets-Phoenix / Muse-meets-Coldplay, with layered arrangements and four-part vocal harmonies, self-produced in Pro Tools and Logic.

The EP landed August 2, 2013: four tracks, about seventeen minutes, on Spotify and Apple Music: Tokyo, Can’t Fall, Unwhole, Genesis. Can’t Fall later synced nationally in a Pantene commercial featuring Zooey Deschanel, the band’s PR Newswire bio names the placement. The Tokyo music video, directed by Andrew Gant for Private School Entertainment: got an unusually tech-forward treatment for the era. Gant’s portfolio calls it the project that split his career toward narrative film and volumetric/VFX capture (RGBDToolkit / Kinect lineage); No Film School and Kotaku featured it (per his credits page). A behind-the-scenes featurette documents making film and art with the Xbox Kinect as capture device. Other public footprints include sessions at Olympus Audio Studios and a live Tokyo performance on The Artie Lange Show.

Live archive: A primary live record exists on Isle of Wight Radio (Bandcamp). A formative early live source: Exist Elsewhere performing Noah Benardout’s “Luna” (YouTube). Early work is also archived at Luke Walton Music on ReverbNation and Noah Benardout on ReverbNation.

In the Luke Walton timeline, Exist Elsewhere sits after The Luke Walton Band (San Diego → USC, 2009–2011) and before FEiN (2014 onward): Walton and Woodward’s first Thornton band together, a four-piece production unit before the later duo. Song-meaning notes: Tokyo · Can’t Fall · Unwhole · Genesis (4/4).

Noah Benardout (1995–2019) went on to record as LOVR®; he was killed by a drunk driver in August 2019. May he rest in peace. The Noah Benardout Foundation advocates DUI prevention in his memory. Please consider a donation there or to similar causes.

Listen: Spotify · Apple Music · Tokyo music video · Andrew Gant: Tokyo · Can’t Fall: Pantene commercial · Tokyo Kinect BTS (Vimeo)

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