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Interactions in Installments: The Microdance Part 2

Having had quite enough of promo-babble, we move on to the SERIOUS BIT – the one with all the opinions and profundity. Sadly, at this point I cannot think of anything to be opinionated and profound about beyond a long drawn out variation of: ‘so… Bandcamp, huh?’

Until we got signed, we tried to play off people’s kind hearts and offered our stuff for ‘pay what you want’ – about 10% would pay above the going rate of a dollar a song, or whatever it is and 90% would pay nothing. I guess we also knew that we were offering a slightly compromised version of what we are capable of (due to time/money restraints while recording) and perhaps felt bad demanding a set price; but giving away music with no other revenue stream from your art isn’t sustainable. What really gets me is at the start of this ‘collapse’ when people used to complain that £15 was extortionate for a CD. I was in a bar one evening and my friend who happened to be buying a round of drinks while talking to me said something to the effect of ‘I would buy the new Deftones album but it’s £15 in HMV, that’s ridiculous!’. Anyway, it turns out the round of drinks he was buying cost something like £22, we left the bar an hour later and that album Saturday Night Wrist is still regularly bringing me great pleasure, healing great pain and helping me finish runs with a sprint seven years later! The political argument behind that is something else; but if it’s straight up quantifying the worth of great music, no £15 is not too much for an hour of wonderful art which is available to you in perpetuity. Another valid point: if you don’t like it, don’t buy it!

A lovely thought, just the place to toss out an optimistic chestnut like: ‘it’s great that you’re making music, but how long do you think you can keep it up?’

Musically, I genuinely believe that this band has the capability for longevity. And if that is the case, whether the money is coming from record sales, licensing or slightly inflated concert tickets doesn’t really matter – the industry has to recalibrate, that’s obvious. I like to think that we make music with a bit of substance and that lends itself to loyalty. I am fiercely loyal to those bands I grew up listening to; the guys who provided me with a soundtrack to my life and shaped my musical appreciation. Those bands worked on a number of levels – the singles drew me in and the deep cuts kept me there. I think we have that too: if something like ‘We Are Made of Evil Things’ draws people in to listen to ‘Fucking Fucker’, then hopefully the latter will become their favourite in time. What else is encouraging is that a band like The Joy Formidable is now enjoying transatlantic success. I’d liken us to them in the sense that they do big, emotive music with enough barbs to catch the ears of the radio indie kids but more under the surface to keep the deep lovers involved; we’re not quite at their level when it comes to production yet – The Big Roar was HUGE – but I think the LP is a critical move for us and I have a feeling we’ll play it well.

This seems as good a moment as any to get a bit meta. Where does the music come from? Why do some people create music while listening keeps the others content? What’s the difference between the two kinds?

I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference, that’s to say I definitely loved music just as much before I began to make it. The difference is that it felt unobtainable; I equated everything to ‘that magical sound’ now, after years in a studio, it’s more like ‘if I dissect this enough, I can work out that he’s running that guitar through 3 phasers, some tape delay, reversing it and only tracking the feedback!’ – I wouldn’t say it’s lost its magic, it’s just magic science that I understand now, rather than something preternatural. I’m almost certainly the least naturally musical person you’ve ever interviewed – so this has been very difficult for me, and it’s hard to explain to someone who loves music as much as I do why I HAD to do this, but those days of practicing guitar for 8 hours were not much fun!

I think that after years of recording, I’m just finding my vocal range and getting comfortable with it. I’m really looking forward to bringing back those super complex 9 minute songs I wrote when I was 20 but didn’t quite have the chops to execute. This band right now is a monster, absolutely the first time I’ve thought to myself – ‘here’s a real opportunity to get those sounds/feelings in my head out there and do them justice’.

I’m the kind of guy that likes to be up there with my idols; I hate the thought of admiring something and not aspiring to it. There’s a lyric in our song ‘Goodbye Lily Laser’: “I punch the sky, I’m ready made, No need to dream, I’m that awesome kid” – Lily Laser is the female personification of that part of me (how clichéd!) that was so complacent with what it was blessed with naturally that it kind of let me become crap and lazy. I woke up one day and realised that the world will overtake you if you let that slip in. So, that song is kind of a message to the part of me that wants to make a life out of music. I’d still rather have been a professional footballer though!

Background noise or sacred vibrations: any hard and fast rules when it comes to listening?

If you’re making toast when Siamese Dream is on, we’re over.

OK – so what should people be doing when listening to Yo Yo @26?

Somehow improving their lives. If I’m really out of shape (which is most of the time these days!) and I know it’s time to sort it out, I’ll put Pantera, Slowdive, Kate Bush, M83 or Deftones on my headphones and go running. I’ll hold my hands up to the sky, you know like I’m some boxing protagonist in a Hollywood film and and feel Godlike – almost immediately after feeling like I can’t even get out of bed; that’s the power of music. Music is an elixir in so many ways, it can heal the mind and the body and I hope ours can do that to at least one person.

Besides that, if it’s hot girls – making out!

Bonus Picture

BONUS QUESTION 1
What is a Yo Yo @ 26?

Yo Yo is a person who lived in Shoreditch, east London at the same point that I did and I met her when she was 26. I think the less said about her, the better. Although, she did provide me with a cool song title. I hope it goes on to become someone’s password!

BONUS QUESTION 2
There is no question
(give your own answer)

We rehearse next to a Brazilian waxing parlour on Brick Lane. We often get girls ringing the buzzer on our rehearsal room and have to politely tell them that they probably want to go next door, unless they can play synth – in which case they’re welcome; before or after their ‘treatment’ – preferably after! We try to politely allude to exactly what establishment they’re looking for without grinning too broadly. It’s a dangerous situation for four men who are going to be in close proximity to each other for four hours trying to make serious art. It’s a surprise we haven’t started to cover Barry White while our minds run with thoughts of what’s going on (or coming off!) next door. There may or may not be a five minute spoken word description of this running through one of our more elegiac recordings!

You’ll find ‘Yo Yo @ 26’, its B-side, ‘Devour’ and much, much more over on TMD’s Bandcamp. If you play synth and want to be a part of The Microdance, there’s nothing stopping you – leave them a note on Facebook, or just get in touch here and we’ll put you through.

Meanwhile, here’s ‘Devour’:

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Interactions in Installments: The Microdance Part 1

Alex Keevill, Gavin Mata Hari, Thom Browning and Caleb Clayton – peddlers of sonic smoothies, delicious and rich in fibre.

They may only have a single out but Alex tosses out names and a byline as if the Microdance have existed for a decade or more. They haven’t. Not just that, but they’ve got the blandest formation story in the world. Nothing like ‘we met at art school, brought together by our shared love of pointillism’. According to A:

All TMD members have been complete strangers to me prior to joining the band. There have been quite a few lineup changes in the few years that there has actually been a band. I say ‘actually been a band’ because our first two releases were recorded with just our former drummer, James Davies, and me. Well, we had help with some awesome female vocalists… but the point being, I played all the guitars, bass, synth etc. For a while I had neither the energy nor inclination to put a band together; I just kind of forgot about the dream. Then one day I woke up with the renascent desire to do something massive and magical and the live version of the band was born. Finally, now I can say we’re doing the grand vision justice. This is a killer crew!

If it’s a story you seek, just ask about the paradoxically childlike name meant to represent an expansive, introspective sound. The explanation rocks up before the question’s even left your virtual lips. Now you know – before the band, there was the Microdance.

My wife (then girlfriend) and I used to listen to the Postal Service and we’d try to dance, rhythmically, with the smallest possible movements. A particular favourite for this was the ending of their song ‘Clarke Gable’. We called this ‘Microdancing’. Around about that point I was ready to start a new musical venture and the name just fell into place.

You’ll have heard of the Microdance before. You may have seen them pop up on Twitter, or noticed Alex poking around one of the infinity shoegazer pages on Facebook. They’ve been around for a while, but Yo Yo @ 26 is their very first Official Release (they’re on a record label and everything, egad).

The reason you’re only hearing what you’re hearing now is because these are our first releases through a label. That shifts the focus because we now have a commercial vehicle to drive the music with; so we’re no longer talking about our ‘pay what you want’ releases because we have a bona fide commercial strategy in place. I am immensely proud of all of the stuff I have released; those songs are all brilliant to me for different reasons: The Her Ride To The Stars EP was the first time I ever went ‘pop’ and I love the ‘feel’ of that EP. The level of sophistication on some of those songs was way beyond what I wanted to project. Some of those chords and the amount of guitars going on were crazy. But, no matter how wonderful those songs still sound to me, there’s definitely something missing. I didn’t sing it all that well, some of the guitars weren’t biting enough and the end result is one of partial regret. I guess that’s the case with all of those EP’s: Her Ride, Get Dark and Enemies of Love. I’d say I’m somewhere between 50 and 60% satisfied with them. I’d still love for people to go and check them out because the songs are of a very high calibre and there are those moments of real pride when listening back to particular parts, but there’d always have to be that caveat!

EPs upon EPs – is there a full-length in the offing?

Yes! We are currently in pre-production and I can tell you that it’s shaping up to be very special. We really hope to get it out at some point this year;

He breaks into the press release:

It’s gonna be a bright, hopeful sounding record with a million kaleidoscopic guitars, female/male harmonies that will make love to your soul and drumming that will have jazz fans rockers squirming with delight in equal measures.

Then he remembers he’s now got a label to do PR for him and slips back into Artiste Mode:

Basically, it’s gonna be a PROPER, cohesive album, the like of which we don’t see many of these days. We hope that the record will spawn some kooky b-sides and outtakes – because we really want to convey a focused vision with the long play but have those different avenues to explore the other facets of what we do. Kind of what Devour was to Yo Yo @ 26, I guess.

Haven’t heard Yo Yo @ 26 yet? Put this on loop as you wait for the next part of this thrilling I-i-I

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SULK – Graceless

Things I love about SULK:

  1. Their name, my constant state of being
  2. Their hair – moptop (who needs a field of vision, anyway), sideswept (left), sideswept (right), long (enough), rufflable (c’mere, you)
  3. Their sound – brazen and unafraid.

Every review of Graceless out so far can be summarised thus: SULK sound like the Stone Roses.

It’s possibly an oversimplification, but not a lie. In addition to the smoky monkey man vox, Graceless is a firm devotee of the Britpop sound, flaunting crisp guitars, hair-flippable drums, and such flowery song titles as ‘Diamonds and Ashes’, ‘Back in Bloom’ and, well, ‘Flowers’.

The question – in sounding like our Madchester/Britpop/Acid House/C86 heroes – are SULK any good?

The answer – surprisingly – yes.

For eras as revered as these, it’s a wonder their derivatives have never come anywhere close to the original sound. Books and movies and journal articles have all striven to capture the essence of what made Madchester/baggy, acid house, and Britpop the sensations they were. Still, the Britpop offspring, never really captured the sound and were, despite the technicalities of their success, unbearably insipid.

Britpop itself – a style, a scene that based its success on sounding like everything that had come before it – was unselfconscious enough not to suffer from banality. Half of Elastica (the album) may not even have been composed by Elastica (the band), but we still listen to ‘Waking Up’ every morning (‘make a cup of tea/put a record on’). We still sing along to ‘Champagne Supernova’ with the same conviction that Liam instills into Noel’s ‘slowly walking down the hall/faster than a cannonball‘.

That’s the ‘swagger’ everyone talks about – the obnoxious self-confidence with which the blatantly inane and/or unethical are not only forgiven, but celebrated.

GracelessSULK are the first group I’ve come across to have it. While I can’t quite catch any plagiarism on Graceless (apart from the passing similarity between the opening of ‘Marian Shrine’ and German group Selig‘s ‘Ist Es Wichtig’, which I can’t imagine is intentional), and the lyrics seem innocuous enough,  SULK radiate poise and self-assurance. They wind 1989-1994 around their fingertips as if the years were their own creation (no pun intended).

It’s not plagiarism, it’s inspiration – or so I react to ‘Marian Shrine’ (aka ‘Manchild’, for those of you not keeping your eyes on the tracklist) the most Roses-y of the lot. A track that prances around a sticky chorus you’re sure you’ve heard before (“maaaaaan-chiiiiiild!”), completely oblivious to the decade it’s in.

Wait, no, it’s clearly ‘Sleeping Beauty’ that’s the most Roses-y. It’s funny how all of us review types are throwing around the word ‘Madchester’ as if there’s some sort of revival going on, when really SULK only sound (exactly) like one of the three bands that defined the sound. Not a sign of the shameless grooves that made the Mondays or the broody mantras of the Carpets. Again, we’ve got a song that sounds so familiar it hurts – but just try to place it… it can’t be done.

Have mercy – from this whirling opener we’re thrown into the breathless ‘Flowers’ whose endless chorus overflows with all the jingle-jangle and ba-ba-ba’s in the world, ensuring you’ll spin around and around till your head flies off. A little later, a song made up of the ocean – ‘Back in Bloom’ (if your eye’s not on tracklist, you’re hearing this as ‘Black and Blue’). Waves of reverb, waves of ricocheting space-vox, and waves of a chorus that spirals in and out of focus (‘she’ll be back in bloom’).

I didn’t ever expect an album like Graceless to come my way, or even to exist. Nostalgia aside, it’s worth admiring the album for the quality of its production (Ed Buller worked on albums by Suede, Pulp and White Lies – SURPRISE!). It’s also worth noting that, despite their FANTASTIC hair, I am praising SULK on the worth of their music. Graceless must be good.

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Discover: Last Leaf Down

Word of mouth is an amazing thing.

Forget banner ads and social networks, forget mass mix-tapes and mix-CDs and mix-m3u-s, forget advertising budgets and marketing spends.

Because what power could lights, colours and rapid frame rates possibly wield over the influence of a simple “Hey, listen to this – it sounds like you”.

The intimacy of a phrase that you know has come to you and no one else.

That’s how I found Last Leaf Down.

This one’s got the echo chamber acoustics that make it feel like it’s coming from within you, so you feel the deception it does when it cries out:

‘Fake lights in the sky’

Thanks, Jim.

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Interactions in Installments: Echodrone Part 3

There comes a point in every I-i-I where Æ, having established a rapport with the hapless interviewee, feels brave enough to move on to more personal subject. Such as… what is your cat’s name?

I didn’t ask that this time – I had another invasive question for Eugene, Brandon, Meredith and Mark. Apart from the standard query viz. – who are you?

You’ll be surprised.

Brandon: I’m a librarian at a California State University. I’m married with 4 cats (so, a pro-level cat lover). Besides music, my hobbies are MMOs and reading baseball and punk/postpunk music history books.

Meredith: I go to medical school so I’m in Oregon right now and spend all day at the hospital. I don’t know anyone in town so i’m just the new kid on the block–working hard during the day running around, trying to somewhat look like I know what I’m doing. There’s been some comedic mishaps; it’s a very humbling experience. I miss my chihuahua–I left her with my mom in California. I miss my band—they’re scattered everywhere. My life is good–but in constant flux.

Mark: I live and breathe music right now. I am working as a freelance audio engineer and also play in some other bands that allow me to keep my musical muscles in shape so when Echodrone gets together I’m not completely pathetic in terms of musicality. I have had to do corporate work and stuff in the past but currently I consider myself very lucky to be able to survive solely on music while living in sunny California which is not a bad life at all.

Eugene: I’m currently attending pharmacy school in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s my last year now, so I’ll be joining the working world soon enough. I recently got engaged to a wonderful girl I met in pharmacy school and we’re getting married in December! So, basically my life now consists of studying, songwriting, and wedding planning. I have two crazy cats that get in fights all the time and eat my scrambled eggs when I’m not looking. My family is spread all over the U.S. – my mom lives in California and my sister lives in Austin with her husband. Besides music, I enjoy traveling, reading, stock trading/economics (weird, eh?), video games, and movies. My favorite directors are Dario Argento, David Cronenberg, and Lynch.

Æ – [No I-i-I is complete without a single innocuous question that we can get all judgmental over. Favourite alcoholic beverage.]

Brandon: A toss between a cuba libre and a vodka and sugar-free red bull 🙂

Meredith: Craft beers for just hanging out. Whiskey on the rocks or a 7&7 if I’m out seeing a band play.

Mark: Love Beer! Especially the good stuff! Oh and I love the whiskey too…Bullet and Four Rose’s Single Barrel…Hooooooooooo!

Eugene: I’m always down for a good bourbon neat. Someone recently introduced me to Old Weller Antique, and I’m a huge fan now! Oh, and I remember having lots of vodka/red bull with Brandon during the early days of Echodrone.

Æ – [No G & T?]

You can give Bon Voyage a listen, and buy it if you dig it. Below you’ll find a classic Echodrone track – because you know I’m perpetually stuck in the past.

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Interactions in Installments: Echodrone Part 2

Something I said led Eugene to give me the story behind ‘Cold Snap’. Like almost every person on the planet, I love stories. Like  a spoiled child, I asked for more. Eugene passed the mic to Meredith.

Meredith:

[on writing lyrics for ‘Under an Impressive Sky’, ‘Hypnogogic’, and ‘Infinite Arms’]

I was kind of inspired by the movie Super 8 for ‘Under an Impressive Sky’. Sometimes not even particularly good movies make a big impact on me. ‘Infinite Arms’ maybe about the memory of people who have died. I think the track that made me the most excited from ideas sent around by Eugene was ‘Hypnogogic’. I was just completely mesmerized and in love with the sound of it the first time i heard it. That song just made me feel a flood of emotions so that one I just sang exactly what I was feeling: “its been a long day, and I’m back from the grave. I never thought I’d be this whole again. It’s been a long year, and strange without you here. I never thought I’d see your face again. Now I’m whole.”

Æ – [demands more stories] [fears coming across petulant] [politely asks about changes in band dynamic]

Meredith:

I would say band logistics have mostly changed the sound. Life is always changing but the music has been always pretty constant for me. Whether things were good or bad, I think the output has been pretty similar.
Brandon:

Relationship changes have been huge, both negative and positive. More huge, to me, is how we have been able to keep our bond so strong with one another. Eugene and I were talking about whether we had any stories to share from writing/recording the last album. While I don’t have any that are funny or whatever, the overwhelming feeling I have in memory is how incredible it felt to be able to walk into a room with you guys and immediately rekindle the energy and connection we had before folks went off to grad school – it was really comfortable and so easy to lay down music we had frankly barely rehearsed. I know we had some trepidation about how recording would go so it was funny that we finished tracking etc. so ahead of schedule.

Brandon:

So I think my story is that we’ve been able to keep our connection going strong against so many reasons against it – relationships transitioning, major life changes, distance, time etc.

Æ – [compelled to ask about past work – part of the No Release Left Behind act. You’ll find the best stories here]

Brandon:

What I remember from the Echodrone EP recording was the sound engineer’s pot use and diminishing mixing abilities as he smoked more pot over the course of the day. But he was a great guy to pop our recording cherry with.

Eugene:

The engineer for our first album really was a great guy and had some very interesting sound engineering techniques. That was one of my first recording experiences ever, and he did an excellent job making it feel like we were just hanging out at our practice space. That being said, there really was a lot of discussion about dinosaurs and Nacho Libre quotes once the pot use increased over time. Oh, that vaporizer!

Brandon:

As for The Sun Rose In A Different Place, because things were so crazy with ES and MG’s personal lives I don’t have any real stories from that. I just remember how quickly we worked and how decent the stuff sounded at the time when played back and the excitement around the general process.

Mark: The album (The Sun Rose in a Different Place) actually took a lot longer to make since we recorded it in chunks over the course of several months. We got the basic rhythm tracks banged out for half of the tunes at a local studio and then did most of the guitar overdubs and vocals at our rehearsal space in Oakland at the time where Eugene and I spent weeks being mad scientists, along with doing Meredith’s lovely vocals and then had it mixed which took a few more months so it started to feel like we were never going to finish, but we eventually did and we were all very happy with the results!

Eugene: We also approached the songwriting for The Sun Rose in a Different Place from an entirely different angle than Bon Voyage. At the time, Meredith and I were both getting ready to go to grad school. We weren’t sure if The Sun Rose would be our last album ever as Echodrone [gleep! – Æ]. As a result, we wanted to cover all the different aspects of Echodrone in one album and make it our definitive statement to the world. So I was challenging myself with each song to try something different. ‘Seeing The Forest for the Trees’, for example, started off being heavily influenced by The Sea and Cake. I listened to a lot of Slowdive – Pygmalion [!!xoxo!! – Æ] when I was writing ‘Sympathetic Vibrations’. We approached ‘Sway and Drown’ as our “classic” shoegaze tune. ‘Pack of Wolves’ was our indie pop number. etc. etc. Thus, we had a certain theme/end-goal for how each song would sound on The Sun Rose. This was a totally different songwriting process than Bon Voyage. For Bon Voyage, we really didn’t put much thought into having pop songs, ambient songs, loud songs, etc. We just wrote what we thought sounded good.

Æ – [gathers up the nerve to get a bit more nosy.]

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Interactions In Installments: Echodrone Part 1

Echodrone – a band. Echodrone – an album. Shoegaze – not known for its vivid imagination. Shoegaze – the scene that (sometimes, inadvertently) celebrates itself.

Meet Eugene and the introduced-in-installments rest of Echodrone. I’m going to start this series by asking for a response to the following implied accusation:

BAND NAME :: WHERE IT IS FROM (maybe)

Slowdive :: Siouxsie and the Banshees song

MBV :: 1981 slasher film

Sennen :: Ride song

pinkshinyultrablast :: Astrobrite EP

Highspire :: Hometown

Echodrone :: Skywave album

Brandon:

Well, our name came from the band members at the time – Eugene, me and “the other Mark” – putting together words that we thought were indicative of our sound together to form a name. We loved delay and droney music and Echodrone sounded the best when put together. We knew about Skywave but not about that album – we only found out that the names were the same when one of the band members contacted me on Myspace to mention it!

Eugene:

Yeah, I really wish there was a deeper story to how we came up with our name! I’ve gotta say though, it was pretty cool to be contacted by one of the Skywave guys. Anyways, as far as shoegaze bands sharing names with various songs/movies/albums…I think, overall, the shoegaze/dreampop community is very respectful and we’re all more than willing to pay homage to influential artists of the past and present! Sennen is a perfect example of this respectful mentality.

Æ: [brief, but necessary rave over ‘Cold Snap’]

Eugene:

‘Cold Snap’ actually holds a special place in my heart. When I moved to Baltimore, I got caught in one of the worst snowstorms in Baltimore history (Winter of 2010). It was an absolute nightmare! The entire city shut down because all the roads were covered in three feet of snow. Because the city had shut down, I was basically stuck in my apartment for over a week with very little human contact. I was fine with this situation at first. I watched movies, read books, listened to music – basically indulged myself in all the activities I didn’t have time for when the city was “active”. But, after about the fourth day of being stranded from all my friends and family, I became a pretty huge sad sack. I started to lose interest in everything. My loneliness became palpable. I even celebrated my birthday alone that year because no one could make it into the city. Anyways, rather than just sit and around and mope, I thought the best way to deal with these emotions would be to capture them in a song. So, fueled by feelings of loneliness and isolation, I powered up my laptop and recorded the basic sketches of  ‘Cold Snap’.

Æ – [unnecessarily detailed commentary on how ‘Cold Snap’ sounds a bit like a story of lost love and/or love lost] +  [wise observation that Droneecho is a much cooler name and why couldn’t one of  the bands have picked that]

Eugene:

I think a lot of people heard the “lost love” story in the Cold Snap lyrics. There are definitely elements of that type of story in the lyrics, for sure! But yeah, it’s more of a story about the loss of all important human relationships in one’s life. That was one of the major ideas behind the ‘Cold Snap’ video.

Dronecho is a fantastic name! Maybe the perfect name for an Echodrone side project 😉

Æ –  [filled with (possibly false) hope]

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Incoming: Echodrone

Echodrone. It’s a band. It’s an album. I’m here to talk about the band. No, I’m here have the band talk about itself. Because I’m a lazy bum.

I’ll talk about the album a little bit too. I’ve always wondered if band and album were related. There’s a little story there, but you’re going to have to wait a little bit before finding out what it is.

A new Interactions In Installments coming up very soon – this one is with EVERYONE in Echodrone.

While you wait, here’s my favourite from their latest – Bon Voyage:

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Interactions in Installments: Mansions and Junipers Part 3

GreeKneel

ZOMG so guess what I just worked out! (i.e. was told)

Those apparently random dots underneath the name in the Mansions and Junipers logo (look!) are, in fact, Braille!

Considering I know how to write two alphabets in Braille (which I’m assuming is more than most people) I’m feeling a bit stupid for not having realised that myself.

Oh well, I don’t think it comes as much of a surprise that I’m a bit of a tubelight.

So just a shoutout to their creative designer Evol before we get to the final segment of this III series. If Evol had a website, I’d link to it, but let’s see you do a google search for it and what luck you have.

Now – on to all matters EP-ian, before we moving on to the Really Important Things e.g. pets’ names, pet names etc.

Matthew:

The EP: Plastic 57

As I mentioned, we’ve recorded an amazing amount of music in the last year. Because we have our own studio/s, we record perpetually. To be honest, when we started, we were kind of recording without any traditional intent. I really wanted us to take our time with the vibe — let things come together naturally. Most of the songs feature me and Salvatore Boyd (Sally) but the other members, Robert Vacarelli (drums) and Rich Bennett (synths), do appear on the EP’s and their styles and energy have become totally vital to the group’s developing sound. Nonetheless, Sally and I sort of laid the groundwork for the EP series.

Sally and I both grew up in Allenhurst, NJ, a tiny beach town just north of Asbury Park. It’s a unique little time capsule revolving around a quiet little beach club. Anyway, Sal is 9 years my junior, so we never had a chance to get to know each other until May 2011, but he was always on my radar as a brilliant young musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. In short, Sally graduated last year and built out a really serious garage studio called Super Owl. I immediately seized the opportunity for us to finally work together.

Sally’s energy is anything but rigid. He takes risks… it’s simply in his DNA. He’s all feel. Even though he’s technically our bass player, he plays loads of drums, percussion, some guitar, and so forth on these EP’s. His energy made me really comfortable, especially with my singing. I’d be laying down vocals and he’d just be sitting there freaking out. It really pushed my performances 1000x past where I’d ever been before. We really embraced the spirit of the garage. It didn’t matter if we were recording tambourines or baby grand – it was always a group effort and we were always freaking out! It’s one of the first times I’ve been in the studio where the only priority was to capture moments of grandiose magic with little regard for accuracy. Our intent is to channel music – not make it or build it – it’s church.

The other funny and weird thing is that Sal’s studio is literally 3 feet away from my great aunt’s (who passed a few years ago) house. I have some wild memories of going there on holidays as a child. She was a very strong in every sense of the word – in family, religion, professionally at a time when women weren’t really accepted in the corporate order of things, and so forth. I remember walking though rows and rows of tall tomato plants in her garden, eating tomatoes right off the vine. And we were literally recording within steps her old house… childhood memories lingered like ghostly dreams the entire time. The feeling caused me to often re-write lyrics for entire songs on the spot. If you’re not taking your own ego too seriously, then it makes all the sense in the world to throw what previously felt like your masterpiece to the wayside in favor of capturing the overwhelming energy of the moment.

This is basically the kind of spirit-driven process that we needed to develop Mansions and Junipers from a project to a band with an identity and a focused social compass. I don’t think our recording approach will ever quite mirror that of 2011 / 2012 again, but I’m really excited that we were able to document the energy of this group in its infancy, and that we’ll be able to share these songs in themed collection format over the course of this year.

On Not-Music

Well, if we’re not working on the music, we’re basically making filthy jokes. We practice at Bob’s (drummer). He has a cockatiel named Birdog that flies around the house while we’re practicing. She likes to land on your shoulder while you’re singing. She also likes to ‘do her business’ on the floor tom. She’s actually quite the drummer in addition to being a fantastic singer, obviously! She also lays eggs that look like little white jellybeans.

I do lots of stuff on the side. I’ve done composing, producing, and sound design for TV, video games, online platforms, and such. It’s a lot of fun to occasionally get outside of myself and my own visions in order to create something with a specific pre-established aesthetic in mind. Sound design is challenging. Sometimes it’s more difficult to create a single sound for something like closing out an application than it is to compose an entire piece of music. Try being interesting, original, engaging, and relevant with one or two syllables!

Social-wise, I like cooking, eating, and drinking, especially barbecuing. I’m a summer person through and through, and I grew up surfing pretty seriously. So, i’m into anything ocean and beach-related as long as it doesn’t involve an engine. I like gardening as well, but I really don’t know what I’m doing. I also drink my martinis dry, shaken, with 3 olives — and I like amaro after dinner. I’d also like to give a shout out to my cat, Fifi. [important information emphasised, as always – ed]

I’m also finishing my MS in Energy Technology and Management. Ive basically studied energy conservation, renewable energy technologies, sustainable practices and designs, green building, transportation planning, and so forth. Right now, I’m writing a thesis on high-speed rail and it’s influence on the compact development of sustainable communities, moderating consumption, and improving quality of life [PROTIP: use the “<snappy, subculturally relevant phrase><colon><excessively long explanation>” format for your thesis title – ed]. I’m really trying to look at it from the perspective of an industrial designer or a futurist like Jacque Fresco —- understanding the need to identify and practice a symbiosis between nature and design —- liberating humanity from the mundane by creative design that enables us to reach our potential as human beings.

And while I indulge, I supplement the bills by bartending in Fort Greene, Brooklyn a couple nights a week. [sic ‘im, chicks – ed] 

Bob, our drummer, is a hair designer and a tailor. Sal (bass) and Rich (keys) teach music.

Back to the Music

Mansions and Junipers have just released their first EP. You can pick up Plastic 57 anywhere. This here Soundcloud widget will let you try out all the songs, and keep two. Links to pick up or pull down the album are after the cover art.

PLASTIC 57

You know, I just realised I never asked about the name of the EP. Wonder if it’s any relation to Muffin 57? Anyhoo:

Plastic 57 on Bandcamp for ONLY 8,847.5 Colombian pesos!

Plastic 57 on iTunes for ONLY 466.84 Japanese yen!

AND

Plastic 57 on Amazon (under ‘psychedelic rock’, lol lol) for ONLY 526.68 Nepalese rupees!

FYI, these are all perfectly reasonable prices, so if you like it then you should put a ring on it.

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Interactions in Installments: Mansions and Junipers Part 2

Listening to Mansions and Junipers, I come to the unavoidable conclusion that you’d find them under ‘indie’ in your nearby music shop/record store, provided, of course, that you still frequent these places. In all fairness, though, I have not once seen a ‘shoegaze’ section.

I have seen a ‘beer’ section though. Of course, this was in Australia:

beer in mind, this is Australia
Yes that CD reads ‘Beer, Blokes and BBQ’

If there was a parallel world where shoegaze sections exist, though, I wouldn’t expect to find Mansions and Junipers there. There is definitely an aesthetic reminiscent of the scenes, new and old, in there, but it’s not the dominating feature. There are clear vocal harmonies, the instrumentation is distinct and individualistic, and, most tellingly, I can comprehend every word.

In this section of the interview, Matthew sheds some light on the story behind Mansions and Junipers’ sound. I also find myself quite intrigued by the name so decided to ask about that as well. In the process I seem to have revealed that I am not as well read as I appear to be. This is also the place to marvel at M’s Subhead Skills.

Matthew:

The Name

In May of 2010, I was deep into the writing and recording of what was to become Mansion Beach, the first MaJ LP. I had taken a lot of time away from writing, as I had devoted so much energy into playing other people’s music, and I was grabbing at every bit of inspiration I could for lyrics, themes, and so forth. At the time, I was getting really into John Barth, an American postmodernist novelist. I was reading his first novel, The Floating Opera, which he wrote when he was 24 years old (1955). While reading, I would write down all sorts of phrases, words, sentences, or inspired ideas. In fact, I was constantly taking notes on everything during this time — I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted this band to be, but I was really really open and everything around me appeared to have a ‘creative sheen’. Anyhow, Mansions and Junipers was derived from the following passage:

 “The sheer oppositeness of his enthusiasm from anything I myself could conceivably have been enthusiastic about at that time — though I had been interested enough in social reform not too long before — drew me to him, and, as I learned later, he was attracted by my “transcendent rejection” (his term) of the thing that meant life to him. In short, we were soon friends, and walked blindly to my rooms at dawn for more drink, singing the Internationale in French through the mansioned and junipered roads of Guilford.”

The image struck me — the language, the phrasing, the pace gives this feeling that the mansions and junipers lining the streets are just these hazy, peripheral accessories, or these distant bystanders or onlookers. Barth gives conveys this comforting feeling of being alone in company. It just felt so basically and profoundly human.

The Style and Development of the Sound:

This is always a difficult thing to explain. When I was conceiving of the group in 2010, I had no conscious compass for what type of band I wanted us to be. In brief, I just kept writing and recording, we tried out different potential members, played shows, took lots of risks etc. and now an identity is emerging. In my experience, this isn’t something you can force. We all start by referencing our influences, but until you’re able to really locate your voice, it’s difficult to stand out as something unique. I think it just comes from time and repetition and being together. That being said, I think our most relevant influences right now are Depeche Mode, Pixies, Bowie, Scott Walker, OMD, Siouxsie… as for contemporary bands, I’m really digging Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, A Place To Bury Strangers, Crystal Stilts, and  Chairlift‘s new LP is fantastic.

As a songwriter, one of the most difficult things I come up against is trying to convey more with less. I think we’re getting much better at writing meaningful parts for each instrument rather than just to make things dense or harmonizing just because that’s something we generally do. It’s very difficult to be objective about your own music. Subsequently, it’s very easy to bury your hooks and themes under density, simply just because you might not even know what your hook is! But I think that lack of clarity is most often a symptom of trying too hard to be something. At this point with MaJ, I feel strongly that we’ve found our thing… it’s become super easy. The creative choices that once seemed so daunting simply make themselves now. I think that social elegance is often conveyed through simplicity, or more accurately, the appearance of simplicity. The goal is to simplify everything that we do — from the way we write to the way we rehearse to the way we perform to the way we record — so that we might continue to eliminate any boundaries that might exist between us and potential listeners. We have a ways to go, but that’s the point… it’s an infinite process that’s extremely gratifying.

Emphasis added.