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Album Review

Flies On You – Nothing To Write Home About

I’ve been putting off writing about Flies On You for ages now, much to Doug’s discontent. I can give you the standard ‘life stuff’ reason blaming work and study and suchlike for limiting time I can devote to AE (sorry, AE, I still love you, you’re my baby, mwah). Or I can give you the real reason – I’m sort of scared.

(But wait a minute – who’s Doug?)

We’ll get to that.

We have another //orangenoise situation on our hands. Once again, I have to walk the fine line between cutting edge insider scoop and TMI.

From the start Flies on You have been labelled post-punk. I can’t recall whether this was their own doing (‘DIY post-punk’ proclaims their bio) or something imposed on them by an over-eager fan, but where that idea came from remains a mystery. In response to your question, Doug (Aikman) is the chap to whom I owe most of my coolth (except for the shoegaze bit – that one’s me and Richard Ashcroft). He’s the one who saved me from the classic rock abyss for which I am eternally grateful. He gave me my first tastes of My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, Killing Joke, Big Black, Sonic Youth, Julian Cope and The Teardrop Explodes, Luke Haines and the Auteurs, and, thankfully, never shared a Radiohead song with me throughout (ILU, Doug). Despite this behemoth of musical expertise living in his brain, how he and Andrew (Watkins) could so grossly mislabel their own band is inexplicable. They’re only post-punk because they were once punk, I proudly declared one day. Then I declared it a few more times in the coming days because I was that proud of the line. D offered to make it the band’s byline in an attempt to get me to stop repeating it, but that idea never took off, possibly because last.fm tags are set in stone.

You see, Doug used to be in a punk band of his own back when post-punk was just winding up. When zines, not blogs, kept you cool. Nerve Rack were post-punk punk, which means they, like Flies on You, weren’t very post-punk at all. So if they aren’t what they say they are, what are they?

Indie?
What does that even mean? No.
Alternative?
Ew. No.
Shoegaze?
There are pockets, but not really. (maybe with some convincing?)
Experimental?
Nice try! No.
Dubstep?
Maybe the next album, right now – no.
Reggae/Dub?
Yea…. we’re not getting anywhere.

We’ve no choice but to rely on our own observations. Egad, I can’t remember the last time my dependence on genre pigeonholes allowed me to do that.

There’s a (predictable) preference, on Nothing To Write Home About, for talking over singing. There’s also a lyrical tendency to narrate rather than emote. The words to ‘Spain’, admirably accomplish both by following up a personal narrative with the emotionally-aware chorus ‘you fucking cow’. But that’s where the sentimentality ends. Don’t try to pass off ‘You’re Shite’ as emotive, when it is simply fact. None of the tracks on this album really look you in the eye. They don’t look at you at all. Each one appears to be talking to someone else. These aren’t empathetic songs, they’re reality (real life doesn’t know you exist).

I wish I could label them ‘punk’ and be done with it, but alas – they’re far from that simple. Listen to ‘Slashing it Down’, f’rinstance. Is that a hint of – it couldn’t be – REM? The harmonies – they’re straight off Out Of Time. That’s not very punk (post or otherwise) at all.

Listen to ‘Muh-m-m-m-m-muh’ – the descriptive title does nothing to warn you of the climactic little cannonball within its one and a half minutes.

And no punks in their right mind would, even ironically, ever use the word ‘pop’ in a song title.

And no punks have ever had a song as mellow, as sophisticated, or as long as ‘The last pop song’. Five whole minutes! You spoil us, FoY!

But, if in your cramped life, you find you can’t squeeze in the time to listen to the entirety of Nothing To Write Home About, do me just this one favour. Listen to ‘Yeah, wild I know but, nonetheless’. Pay no attention to the misplaced comma – it means nothing. Or does it?

Flies On You are the “b-side babies” of whom Adam(Ant) wisely spoke. They merely tolerate the anaemic epithet “DIY post-punk” as a descriptor of their oeuvre. Needs must, etc.

Them’s the band’s own words. If you’re listening on bandcamp, play each track from its individual page, just so you can revel in the delicate little stories subheads they’ve provided for each. Ah – how we’ve missed having album liner notes to lose our vision to.

Oi, hang on – I just noticed I’m thanked for ‘a fragment of a lyric’ – what lyric?

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Album Review

//orangenoise – A Journey To The Heart of Matter

I don’t see how it could make any sense to anyone else. Perhaps if you possess the selfishness of an only child you’ll understand. Maybe if you tend to adopt and nurture inanimate objects and abstract concepts, you’ll understand. Could be you’ll understand anyway.

I was there when //orangenoise formed. Well, that’s not the clearest statement. Technically, I was ‘there’ when Slowdive formed, but I can’t speak about them with the same intimacy as I’m about to. No, by ‘there’, I mean I watched //orangenoise come together. The very name was created in front of my eyes (on the 1st of June 2010, fyi) (I was a bit iffy about the ‘orange’ bit the way I’m iffy about all major decisions).

FUN FACT: //orangenoise was almost called //Feedback before suspicions led to double-checking and the unsurprising discovery that the latter was already taken.

I’d known Talha Wynne for all of three months then. We’d become friends thanks to a ‘gaze community we both milled about in. He was putting together a new band in the wake of the dissolution of the last. Two years on I’ve watched //orangenoise be created and named, I’ve listened to them record and put out an EP (Veracious), remixes, some stuff in between, as well as work on solo material (Toll Crane, Alien Panda Jury). And I’ve done it all while, for the most part, not even being on the same continent as the band.

This is the point where I have to ask you to go back to the first paragraph and try, really TRY, to understand, why //orangenoise are ‘mine’.

Now I’m back where I belong and they’re RIGHT HERE (border control begs to differ) and after all this, I want nothing more than to just be able to reach out and be where the analog sounds are.

But I can’t because visas and politics, so I’ll make do by just talking about it.

Veracious was a astounding album, no doubt. If you’re not from Pakistan or India, you have to bear in mind that access to some of the amenities that many take for granted isn’t quite as natural in these parts. The power doesn’t stay on, recording studios aren’t terribly common, equipment is expensive, audiences are nicher, and, most significantly, music production isn’t a common or an encouraged skill. Veracious stoutly defied whatever would have held it back. Until I heard A Journey To The Heart of Matter I thought Veracious had achieved the almost impossible. Hooks, clarity, diversity, and (shoegazey) tradition – it was all there.

But Journey is jaw-dropping. We’d had a teaser a few months back in the form of ‘Clipped’, and then, more recently, they dropped the opener ‘I Don’t Know‘. At the time we heard ‘Clipped’, we had no idea there was an album coming up, but it was obvious that Veracious was long gone. The ‘Clipped’ we heard was recorded live for LussunTV and even in that unforgiving setting it was proof positive that //ON had hit and crossed its adolescence with astonishing velocity. What paranormal hormones gave ‘Clipped’ its barely believable maturity so soon after we’d heard Veracious‘s to-be-expected innocence?

Wait till you hear the album version, though. Re-recorded and re-produced, it enhances nuances you didn’t realise existed as it spins, churns, and tumbles, with something hypnotic in its agility. It’s follow-up, ‘Chaser’ is similar and endowed with less of a hook, and more of a somersault – it twists and winds into itself, rolling itself out just before it gets caught up in tangles. Aforementioned opener ‘I Don’t Know’ is a the pinnacle of sophistication. You can tell there’s sophistication in a song when it remembers that there’s sound in silence.

I could go on, speaking about each song in turn. But given my obvious bias, perhaps it’s better if you do some of the work yourself.

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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 SlowdivePygmalion [!!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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Dead Can Dance – Anastasis

Australia is a funny place. In the third of my four years living there I discovered something peculiar.

There are no successful Australians in Australia.

It seems that if you were born in the lucky country, you’re destined to live a life of mediocrity unless you get out.

Call it ‘tall poppy syndrome’ or call it ‘crab mentality’ or call it any of the sociological terms that no doubt exist specifically to describe the phenomenon wherein success is undesirable unless it is available to all.

It’s possibly to do with the fact that, despite being a monster of a landmass, its population is nearly negligible and there’s unlikely to be anyone doing what you are (or interested in what you are doing) and so, in the absence of competition and the prevalence of unending, unconditional, indiscernible praise for anything ‘local’, there isn’t really an incentive to improve.

So I thank the heavens Dead Can Dance got out of there before they had even put out their first album. Here is is a band that a nation should be proud of. There are plenty of good Australian bands, but DCD are among the few that can be put up on global display.

Only – not while they’re in Australia. No one knows them there.

It could be because their style is so diffuse. ‘World Music’ some say. A label that is almost offensive for how it divides music and instrumentation into ‘from the developed world’ and ‘from the not-as-developed World’. Others take the names This Mortal Coiland Cocteau Twins in the same breath. And here’s me, stubbornly stuck (we presume) on labelling anything that is even REMOTELY exotic, operatic, and noisy – shoegaze.

Pigeonholing, shoeboxing, we should all give it up.

What a relief it is when Anastasis opens up. It’s absolute subjectivity and total partiality but O – the comfort that comes with hearing something that sounds like what you would have heard in your childhood. Perhaps on a mixtape one of your aunt’s friends made for her while she was at university that she left behind after she married and that you adopted as your own and played till the tape unwound and you had to wind it back with a 2HB pencil before putting it back in again and falling asleep to it till the songs were all etched into your brain, except that the handwriting on the case was illegible so you never remembered the names of the tracks, only the sounds and so you turned the rest of your life into an RPG where you set out on quests to rediscover each of them knowing only a melody and a line of lyrics.

Totally would ace that game if one of Brendan Perry’s tracks was as on this hypothetical (really?) mixtape because, pffft what is Google if not an IRL cheat code? However, if it had been one of Lisa Gerrard’s numbers on this hypothetical (REALLY??) tape, then we’d be sunk. You come to expect Cocteau Twins comparisons for the shared glossolalia and voice modulation. A natural train of thought, except that I hear my grandfather’s Gregorian Chants CD (more nostalgia). Gerrard’s voice seems far more elastic than Fraser’s with neither appearing to exist independently of each other, with no sign that fate had deemed it necessary for their paths to cross.

Anastasis is not a difficult album to warm up to. It maintains its uniqueness throughout, but it’s also got a welcome, throwback familiarity. Watch out for the closer (‘All in Good Time’), though… an excessively languid pace runs the risk of dulling the taste that the brightness and novelty the rest of the album brought you.

Speaking of familiarity, allow me to present ‘Opium’ to you. Where is the percussion from? We’ve heard it somewhere before…

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Interactions in Installments: Mansions and Junipers Part 3

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.

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.

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Interactions in Installments: Mansions and Junipers Part 1

Hey, remember this?

That’s the first song by Mahogany I ever heard and to this day it remains my favourite. Light, lilting, liberating, it’s a baby bird measuring the distance between branch and earth before its first, overwhelmingly successful, leap.

Tesselation is the reason why the only word I saw in the first email Matthew ofMansions and Juniperssent me was ‘Mahogany’. I am so uncivil that Matthew had to give me a gentle prod a couple of emails later to remind me that he was writing to tell me about M & J (and presumably not to hear me ramble on about Mahogany as… I am doing here).

As anyone can tell, this was a PERFECT OPPORTUNITY for another round of…

*thunderous drumroll*

Interactions! In! Installments!

*gong*

Before I get started, I’d just like to say that this is probably the most organised III I’ve had till date. You can tell Matthew is or has been a university student because of how he neatly sorts responses under appropriate subheads making my job about 10,000 times easier.

And before Matthew gets started, it’s probably best he introduce us to the other constituent of the the M & J compound – Monocle (because god knows I’ve done enough for Mahogany):

Before I get into Mansions and Junipers, I can point you towards Monocle. Monocle is the brainchild of my close friend Rich Bennett. He was the primary songwriter on the debut EP, Lounge Act, and the LP, Outer Sunset (I composed two tracks on OS and play guitar on everything). We’ve put that band on hold for several years now, but Rich is finishing up a new Monocle LP which I am not involved with. You can check out Monocle here: http://music.hiddenshoal.com/artists/monocle/

And you should. OK on to business:

Matthew Filler:

Mansions and Junipers is me (Vocals, guitar, all songwriting), Rich Bennett (keyboards), Salvatore Boyd (Bass), and Robert Vaccarrelli (Drums).

In April 2010, I started writing a recording the debut LP, Mansion Beach. This was before I had nailed down a band. I recorded and performed most of this record myself, with some help from Sean Marquand (producer/songwriter of Phenomenal Handclap Band), and drummer Andrew Frawley. It was finished in September of 2010 and self-released. I subsequently put together a temporary band. We performed the Mansion Beach songs until I started writing prolifically again in the spring of 2011. Although I am very proud of Mansion Beach, it doesn’t really reflect what we do now.

In June 2011, I hooked up with Salvatore Boyd. Sal is an absolutely brilliant young musician from Allenhurst, NJ, my home town (although I’ve lived in Brooklyn for 12 years). The Boyds are old family friends. They’re a musical family, unlike mine. I used to jam at their house when I was 17, the middle bro Sam was 14, and Sal was 8 [crivens! – ed]. The age difference is such that Sal and I were never friends growing up. But he graduated from Berkeley School of Music last spring as a brilliant composer and multi-instrumentalist and I immediately wanted to get him in the fold. He had just built a beautiful suburban garage studio (Super Owl)… a real legit one, and I was ready to work with him. We spent all of last summer laying down tracks every week, early mornings, late nites, drinking beer, and recording a ridiculous amount of music… he matched my energy and productivity and then some. We recorded about 30+ tracks – Sal on drums, me on bass, both of us playing guitars, recording various percussion, playing Nashville tuned guitars, experimenting with contact mics inside the baby grand, putting guitar amps outside – basically trying everything. I was really trying to rid myself of the regimented recording process I had done so much of for so long in small confined studios on tight budgets in areas of Brooklyn. We were trying to capture real unbridled performance, whether it was a tambourine or a grand piano. (also Bob and Rich did play on these recording later after I and Sal had really established our process).

During this time, the core of the band was developing. Rich Bennett, my perpetual music partner (we met in college at NYU and initially had a band together called Friendly Bears), and Robert Vaccarelli (who’s also a childhood friend whom I started playing music with when I was 14 but lost touch with for several years) were added to the fold. We immediately began to gel, as we all had deep histories and connections with one another. A post-punk energy started to develop within all of the psych detail and Scott Walker abstractions…

y so grumps

In late 2011 and 2012, we’ve done live shows with Laetetia Sadier (Stereolab), and friends like Religious To Damn, The Stargazer Lillies (Soundpool) [zomg!! – ed], and Apollo Heights… although, shoegaze is really on the periphery of what we do…

During this time entire, I’ve been perpetually overdubbing and mixing in my studio in Brooklyn, Pralaya Records and Productions. The plan is to break down this material into a series of EP’s. The first is the Plastic 57 EP, to be released June 5th. The others will follow in 2-3 month intervals… each EP will have 6 songs, so there will be plenty of leftover b-sides. June will also see our debut video by Eric Bintner, producer / animator / designer…

Since it’s well past June in all hemispheres, meet Mansions and Junipers first video:

More soon…