Maybe I’m somewhat old-fashioned in my approach to the internet, or that I really like the payoff of delayed satisfaction, but this is true: I don’t listen to music before it is released on a record. I am perpetually behind-the-times. Maybe, I am not someone who should be writing for a music blog because I really like the thrill of going to the CD store and picking up new releases on a Tuesday. I like evaluating an album as a whole, and my somewhat neurotic personality prevents me from doing that if I imprint a couple songs on my memory before listening to all of them, in the sequence that the artist intended.
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But, try as I might to delay eventual payoff, I had heard a bit of Beach House’s latest offering before its release date. I blame a little trip to the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago last July, where they played a bunch of their self-titled Beach House, and a bit of their follow-up Devotion, which was released on Carpark on Tuesday the 26th, but recorded in August of 2007.
Last night I went to Beach House’s record release party for Devotion at the G-spot off Falls Road (and just a short shuffle down a very steep hill from my house in Hampden). G-spot (2980 Falls Road) is one of the many new, DIY performance spaces to “open” in the Baltimore area over the last year or so. G-spot, like its brethren Floristree, Metro, and CCAS, has a somewhat-legal status. This means a few things to the average concert attendee: it’s BYOB, the bathrooms are tiny, and the sound guy isn’t a professional. That being said, the Beach House show last night was phenomenal. The place was packed with people who wanted to be there… on a Thursday, at a difficult to find place.
Geoff and Cricket of Baltimore-based Diapensia opened. These two New Hampshire explants seem to incongruously play very pretty Americana folk music. While both members of the band are very gifted musicians, the music didn’t fill the space in the old-industrial-space turned music venue. I blame this solely on the layout of the G-spot, which seems primarily affiliated with the visual arts, rather than the aural. Nonetheless, they were quite talented, and deserve the attention they deserve in a dedicated music forum.
The second act was Papercuts, from San Fransico, California who will continue on a national tour with Beach House. While 90% of Papercuts’ act was enjoyable solid Alt-Country (with a bit more reverb than standard on a Whiskeytown record), the last bit was a little too much meandering noodling. These guys are definitely an act worth following in the future. If they can drop the bolo-ties and hone their craft, I’m reasonably sure that they’re on their way.
Finally, Baltimore heroes Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally came on for an hour long set (no encores). They both appeared on stage in solid white (if only my inadequate camera could have captured this), as if they were christening their new album, Devotion. The audience responded with equal measures of applause and heckling, which Legrand handled with self-assurance. Her balance of grace and crassness makes her my number one girl-crush-of-the-month.” At one point, she suggested the audience form a “circle jerk”, and she wished everyone in attendance a “good weekend”. I love her. I also love her music.
Beach House put on a fantastic set comprised of all of the expected tracks off of Devotion as well as “Apple Orchard” and “Master of None” off of their self-titled album of 2006. They also preformed a fantastic (IMO) cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Some Things Last”. (Admittedly, I was not in attendance at his show on Sunday at the Ottobar). Weirdly, or somewhat apropos (depending on your point of view), this cover also appears on their most recent album.
In somewhat premature summation, if you missed the first show on their month+ long tour last night, you should definitely check our their dénouement at the Rock and Roll Hotel in DC on April 4th, 2008. Check back with us on the regular as we plan to interview Victoria and Alex in the very near future.
(Have a good weekend, all of you).
Editor's Note: Our second review of the show is up on DC blog BrightestYoungThings.
Photo from Flickr user iconqueredthecube
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Show Review: Beach House at the G-Spot
Friday, February 29, 2008
Black Cab Sessions are genius...and Beach House "Heart of Chambers" video
So...fancy yourself a Daytrotter fan? Well they've got nothing on these guys. Welcome to Thunderdome. The gauntlet has been laid, my dear friends.
The gist is this: grab your favorite indie artists, including Spoon, Daniel Johnston, Okkervil River the National, and Elvis Perkins...stick them in the back of a cab and have them play. Whilst driving around. Genius.
In other news...Beach House's record release went swimmingly last night at the G-Spot. Check out their latest video, just released, for track "Heart of Chambers" after the jump.
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Thursday, February 28, 2008
Say Hi (To Your Mom) Interview (w/ Eric Elbogen)
Here, I present to you, dear reader, our latest exclusive interview with Eric Elbogen aka Say Hi (To Your Mom). Say Hi produce some of the most endearing glitch-pop to be gleaned from Casio equipment. Elbogen's patented, slightly off-key vocals combined with his impeccable sense of melody make for many beautiful moments...even if a large proportion of his back-catalog is about topics that are generally perceived as less-than-serious (vampires, robots, Star Trek).
Currently, he is on tour supporting his 2007 release The Wishes and the Glitches, and took some time out on Thursday to chat with us a bit.
Enjoy! And don't forget to catch his show Backstage at the Black Cat in DC next week, Tues Mar4. $10, 9:00PM doors.
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Aural States- Thanks for taking time out to talk to us. You are probably a little tired of this question, but I've gotta ask. Could you say a little about why you decided to drop the end of Say Hi (to your mom)?
Eric Elbogen- Well I really wanted to. I've been meaning to do it for a long time. It just seemed a perfect opportunity with the new record having alot less songs about stuff like robots and vampires. It just seemed appropriate to me.
AS- Yeah, I had heard some crazy rumors and stuff about lawsuits from Norway?
EE- No, I alot of times will make stuff up if I'm feeling in a fun kind of mood. I think I put some lines in the FAQ on the website about being sued by a Norwegian death metal band from the 70s.
AS- Hahah OK. Good to clear that up. You moved to Seattle fairly recently?
EE- It's been over a year actually. It was December 06 that I moved there.
AS- What prompted you to move out of Brooklyn?
EE- You know, I still love New York, but it was just time for me to take a break...from living with 7 roommates and not really being able to park our van on the street. I just wanted to move somewhere that had a bit of a slower pace.
AS- Are your roots on the East Coast?
EE- No I actually grew up in southern California, Los Angeles. After I graduated college I moved to New York where I lived for 7 years until I moved to Seattle.
AS- How are you finding Seattle so far?
EE- Oh it's great. Exactly what I was looking for. The people are really great, there's a nice little music community there. And for the first time in my life I can afford my own apartment without roommates. It's just a really beautiful part of the world.
AS- Great. So moving on, could you tell me what your musical background is like, you know, like when you got your first Casio?
EE- Wow, my first Casio...that was probably age 9 or 10. I got one of those, I think it was SK1? The one where you could record a little 4-bit sample through the microphone built-in. My friends and I would make burp or fart noises and play little melodies with it.
But I didn't actually get a guitar and start writing songs until I was about 13 or so.
AS- Were you a band geek or anything more formal?
EE- You know, no. I am still fairly illiterate at reading music. I think I bought the guitar and took one lesson then quit. I just started listening, playing along to Guns N Roses and Motley Crue records and taught myself how to play the guitar. Really focused on writing songs as opposed to getting better technique-wise.
AS- Do you think that has influenced where you've taken Say Hi?
EE- I do, I think that everywhere I've taken my life as it relates to music is based on the fact that I am a former songwriter. Throughout the process of making several records, I've taught myself to play a few other instruments as well...but I am certainly not excellent at any of those. The focus has definitely always been on songwriting.
AS- What artists have been major influences musically?
EE- Early on I was into the Beatles and a huge U2 fan for a long time. And I still am. Maybe not as much on the last couple records, but there's definitely some of those records that I can still listen and consider some of my favorite records of all time. And Radiohead and the Pixies.
AS- Do they also influence you lyrically?
EE- Mostly musical inspirations. I don't really know what my lyrical style is influenced by. I was an English major in college and certainly I use some of the tricks that I learned about how to write when I was in school when I am writing lyrics. But I don't otherwise base it on any other bands.
AS- Other than your more classic influences, who of your peers is really inspiring you, who are you really into?
EE- I am always buying records and getting into new stuff. Right now, the new Black Mountain record, the new Hot Chip and MGMT records. I don't know. I'm sure I'll get bored of those and move onto whatever else comes up.
AS- Have you seen any good live shows recently?
EE- You know I've never seen any of them live. Several months ago I saw Grizzly Bear and Deerhunter play. That was one of the better shows I've seen in the past couple years.
AS- Anyone you interested in touring or collaborating with?
EE- Well like I said before, I am a huge Radiohead fan...as I'm sure anyone who makes music similar to what I do is. Playing with them would be a dream come true. But at this point it's more about touring with people you like to hang out with and respect their music. We've never been the sort of band to be opening huge tours...so...that would be nice but I don't know that I have my sights set on anything at the moment.
AS- OK. So you just put out your fifth album, The Wishes and the Glitches. How do you feel about it? What went right and what is really different from your other albums?
EE- I feel really good about it. People have been responding very well, which is nice. There have been a lot of great opportunities happening because of it. It is a bit different of a record. I tried to change up some of the ways that I go about songwriting. I also tried to sing a little bit louder, instead of doing the whisper singing that I did a lot of on the previous records.
Overall I'm really pleased with how it's being received. But there's no way for me to be objective about it. The only way I can tell how good a record really is is by other people's responses once it is out.
AS- I find it is definitely, as advertised, a more personal album and like you said before, you have pretty much ditched singing about vampires and robots. But I think, maybe as a consequence, the tone is more somber than say Blahs.
EE- I think a big complaint certain people had in the past was that there was a lack of a personal nature to some of the records. It's in my opinion, not a good or bad thing to have that. But I wanted to try something new. I don't know that I've abandoned writing concept records about vampires forever, but for this one, it felt appropriate. I tried very hard not to make it over the top in terms of gushing about all of my fears, desires and dreams. Which, I think, I ended up doing for the most part. But yeah, I would agree that it is a more personal and somber record.
AS- The one track that stands out as possibly "bridging the gap" between your old content and the new is "Before we were brittle." You can interpret it multiple ways, in a sort of fictional way like your previous material and in a deeper, more personal way.
EE- That song has actually been kicking around for a very long time...since the second record. I never found an arrangement and all of the lyrics that I was completely happy with. I think part of it actually exemplifies what I was going for with the record. Starting fresh, there's a line about "maybe we should move someplace new" which is saying "oh yeah, our life was great in the past but it isn't anymore...let's figure out what we can do to fix that."
AS- Other than the tone change, how do you feel the album has changed musically?
EE- You know, I don't know. The hope is always to get better as you go along. I certainly paid attention to writing better arrangements, better songs, better melodies. I'm happy with what I got done. Anytime I finish a record, I've spent so much time with it that I think I grow musically beyond the songs that make it on the record. So I'm already looking forward to using what I've learned on the next record.
AS- I've probably seen you 3 or 4 times now live. Each time, I think you've had a different line-up, be it solo, backing guitar and bass or just backing keyboard. Is this reflective of a changing view on where you want Say Hi to be going?
EE- I think one reason is just a logistics thing. Sometimes the musicians I really want to come on tour aren't available. It's also sorta me, excited sometimes to make it a different show on each tour. Particularly songs that I've been playing for so many years, adding a new musician or changing to a different incarnation really changes how those songs sound. And you're right, it's been a very long time since there's been a consistent line-up between two tours.
AS- Have any of the touring band members affected your recorded output? Or has that been just you solo...kind of like your baby?
EE- It's been my baby for the most part...but the girl who was with me for a couple tours sang on the latest record...but really it just depends on where I am with the recording and writing process and where other people are at and what the songs call for.
AS- I feel like, listening to each new album, that "this is the album that Say Hi cements into a bigger band." Are you aiming for that eventually?
EE- No actually, I mean I like the idea of that. But I don't think this project will ever lend itself to that. Just because of the way that I work and my personality. I would love to be part of something like that, maybe for a different band.
AS- You're almost 2 weeks into this tour. How's it been going, show attendance, audiences?
EE- It's been great, probably the best headlining tour ever. A lot of people coming out, very responsive.
AS- What are your plans for the rest of the year?
EE- More touring, but once we get back, writing more for the next record. Just sketching out some songs and themes for that.
AS- Great! Well thanks for taking time to chat with us, Eric. Any parting words for Baltimore/DC area fans?
EE- No, just I'm looking forward to the show and we always have a good time in DC. Come on out!
The Death Set - "Worldwide" album review
The Death Set are about to make Baltimore's next major foray into the happy areas of indie minds everywhere with their release of their debut LP Worldwide (after 3 EP releases).
If you've ever wished for an ass-load more drum machine or laptop-sourced glitchiness with your punk music...you need to be into this band. Originally hailing from the Gold Coast, Australia, Johnny Siera and Beau Velasco hoofed it to our shores a few years ago, landing first in Brooklyn, then high-tailing it to our fair, charming city and buddying up with Wham City, Dan Deacon and their ilk while residing and recording in the Copy Cat.
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Fitting since their material is exactly what you'd expect out of the wacky collective.
The Death Set have a sound similar to many of their glitch-pop peers like Dan Deacon, bleep-blooping their way into your pants. But the punk edge they give their music really sets it apart, giving it a whole other level of energy and purpose. Their specialty is injecting deceptively simple, catchy melodies with ample amounts of distortion, digitization and adrenaline (or maybe coke) and just going with it.
And boy does it work.
After a disposable, short intro track, the album opens with two of the Deathset's strongest tracks. "Listen to Collision" delivers a frenzied laptop synth beat that gets the blood flowing, while "Negative Thinking" lays down ridiculously simple-yet-catchy guitar/bass work over top of a gently walking MIDI keyboard line. Vocals on both tracks feel like an entire room shouting in one synchronized, joyous freakout. The tracks ooze positive vibes and a sense of uplifting hope and community. And isn't that all a dance-crazed punk kid needs in this day and age?
"Around the World" is an excellent showcase that the band doesn't need to turn tempo and volume up to 11 in order to be effective. Tracks "Peak Oil" and "Day in the Wife" veer over into some slightly asymmetrical, thrash/post-punk that are just as catchy and crazed as their glitch-punk.
The band can falter when it tries to go for a more pure sound, like on the relatively straight-ahead punk tracks "Heard it all before" (boring punk song, or boring Mega Man level soundtrack, I can't really decide) and "Cold Teeth" (the only thing that sort of saves this song is the strangely appealing, wailing, childlike, wordless chorus).
Their club-influenced instrumental tracks, while competent, serve mainly as filler that really break up the flow of the album. But I'm fairly certain they work wonders live.
The only other problem one encounters with the Death Set is that their sound just doesn't vary enough for extended listens. Obviously not a problem live, but one can only freak the fuck out alone in your room/car for so long before you get a little bored. I guess it's good that most tracks clock in between 30 seconds and 2 minutes in length, eh? I recommend you get to a live show near you once they start touring in support of Wordlwide, or just buy the album and pop it in when you really need to go ape-shit crazy.
Beach House and Wye Oak shows this week
Just a friendly reminder to one and all that two of Baltimore's Pitchfork-approved superstars, Beach House and Wye Oak, both have hometown shows this week.
Beach House kicks off their tour tonight with a record release show for Devotion at the G-Spot. Doors at 8, show at 9. Tickets are $8. Papercuts opens.
Wye Oak has a show this Saturday at the Creative Alliance over by Patterson Park. Also $8 at 8PM with LO MOdA opening.
Support local music and see these kids before they REALLY blow up.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Stars Interview (w/ Amy Milan)
Aural States- What impulses fuel your work? AS- How did the latest album materialize? AS- How do you feel it differs from your previous work? AS- Describe the general themes, as you see them. AS- You're lyrics are very much narrative-driven. What draws you to this structure of song-writing? Major lyrical influences? AS- There was a fairly well-publicized scuffle between Torquil and the Microsoft of indie-web-coverage, Pitchfork. What are your feelings on that situation now that things have cooled? AS- Torquil once commented that he thought the idea of pop was partly an exercise in the ridiculous, that "It should be simultaneously beautiful and profound and ridiculous." Could you say a little more about that concept and how you think this perception informs your brand of pop, specifically on the latest album? AS- You've mentioned a lot of your canonical influences like the Smiths and New Order, but what are some peers that you feel are really knocking it out of the park, in any genre? AS- How was your European tour? AS- Do you prefer international or North American tours? AS-Parting words for Baltimore-area fans and readers?
Stars are one of the many indie darlings spewing out of our more caring and common sensical neighbor to the north known as Canada.
Amy Milan (also of BSS), while touring in Australia, took a few brief moments to briefly, yet whimsically, answer some questions I emailed over to her.
See what she had to say/text/email, along with a few vids after the jump...
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Amy- Sad faces, alcohol, light, dark, death, sex
Amy- In bedrooms and basements. Late nights and forgiveness.
Amy- I never know how to answer that question-stars is a band that has a certain flavour that is present on all of our records. We love hooks.
Amy- Drug dealer love, sex love, gay footballer rough sex love, ambiguous sex, ambiguous desire.
Amy- People are interesting. Every person has a story that could break your heart.
Amy- Oh god, I honestly can’t even remember the whole thing.
Amy- Its ridiculous to care about two crack dealers who are in love. But it is the most beautiful thing in the world for them. It is ridiculous to have a sample in a keyboard called “sounds of time” but maybe in fact it IS the sound of time.
Amy- You go “domakesaythink”!
Amy- Lots of love from the peeps in the towns with many steeples.
Amy- I love it all.
AS- Have you played Baltimore?
Amy- NEVER!!!
Amy- The Wire is the best television show in history. I hope that Bunk comes to our show.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Matmos Interview Part 3 of 3 (w/ Drew, Martin)
In this, the final installment of the Matmos interview, Martin and Drew talk about what makes an action art, and about working with Bjork.
Hope you all have enjoyed it!
For refreshers, goto Part 1 and Part 2
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AS- It seems to me, and this is just my take on it, that the Matmos live show has some performance art characteristics. Would you agree with this? What is performance art to Matmos?
Martin- When we first started doing this, when we first started making music, and then someone liked our songs…well if you make music in your bedroom, and you talk to someone at a bar and you say “Oh yea I make music.” Among their first questions is always going to be “Well when and where are you going to play?” Because this business of playing music live is part of making music, in people’s minds. If you’re going to sell CDs you have to play music live, or generally that’s considered a good thing to do. We were faced with the question of what would we do live, because so much of what we do is about hunching in front of a computer, and editing stuff. Or at the most exciting playing a keyboard…not the most fascinating thing to watch live.
Drew- Because we don’t really have musical chops, we don’t have performance chops in the way that real musicians do. We’re self-taught.
Martin- We can’t juggle. Watching someone play guitar really well is like watching a great trick. It’s like “Wow. That person can do all those things,” and you see it live. Neither of us are musicians at all. Fortunately we had this built in shtick of we make the music out of the objects. So, it seemed fairly obvious to us that what we should do is make the sound of the object live.
Drew- Play the processes that generated the composition. So that it is like a cooking show where you’ve got the cooked thing as a sort of structural spine to play against, but you’re also re-enacted the whole process that made the piece in the first place.
Martin- And so it becomes performance art, which is to say there is someone doing something on stage besides playing a musical instrument.
Drew- That whole “Why is it art” thing is an old strategy. Warhol shoots a film of someone sleeping, or someone kissing, or someone eating, and why is it art? Well, it’s the act of putting a frame around it. And it’s the same of any real action. If you give someone a haircut at home, you’re giving them a haircut. If you do it under lights on a stage, in front of an audience who are being asked to look at it through this proscenium arch that sets it aside, it becomes art. And maybe it activates people’s way of listening to it and trying to hear it as music, that’s our goal—to process the sound of a real action. So, I’m dialing in, and filtering the sound of Martin shaving someone’s head. It’s real action, but it’s also an art action, because it’s being turned into sound.
Martin- And for me that piece is about, I’ll try to keep it brief-- the reason I used that was because when I was a punk rocker, and that song is supposed to be a portrait of Darby Crash, a hugely important part of being a punk rocker was cutting your hair. In the 70s long hair was the thing, and punk was a sort of revolution against that. And so, getting you hair cut requires a lot of eeerrrrrrrr…like holding this thing up against your head, which buzzes, and activates your head like this giant microphone. The process of someone buzzing your head…I’m performing that live, but by amplifying that sound, and enveloping it, it reminds you when someone is doing it to you. And hopefully triggering, and re-triggering that whole experience, and referring to the history and actually enacting the experience…I don’t know with that sound system.
Drew- Well there was a lot of low end in it. You don’t get the buzz, but you get the boom.
Martin- It’s a good shtick. It beats the fuck out of someone checking their email live, on stage. Which is what so much electronic music…I was always shocked that people actually, even some of my friends, musicians I really enjoy, actually had the fucking balls to go out there and stand on stage with a lab top and do nothing.
Drew- But some people you sense from the way they seem to be listening and changing what they’re doing, a lab top performance can be responsive live…
Martin- There’s some conceptual art right there. “I believe your doing something…”
Drew- But I’ve seen good and I’ve seen bad. I mean I’ve seen lab top shows were I was quit satisfied, and lab top shows were I was quit frustrated. It all comes down to how was the sound system, how responsive and flowing did the performance seem to be? But yea, you are taking it a little bit on faith that their process is real, and they aren’t just pressing play. With us that is less of an issue, because we are showing people gesturally what we do. But we are going to have to face it again when we start to play the all-electronic material. But for us…
Martin- It’s also why I show videos.
Drew- Yea, to shut people up.
Martin- Yea, well there are pieces when I am not doing any shtick.
Drew- Well you’re playing synthesizers, and I’m playing sequencers. That’s the other thing. People get this mistaken notion if you use sequencers, therefore it is not live. But the way we reproduce a song is to have all these options, and to decide on the fly which ones come in when, and for how long, and how do we manipulate them.
Martin- To a certain degree. But we are trying to reproduce the song that…
Drew- Yea. It’s sort of a halfway point between structure and improv…It’s not improv, it’s not free music. Which we can do, but I’m not very good at it. Martin is much better.
Martin- I disagree. I think that is your primary problem, is that you don’t believe that you are…
Drew- I just can’t avoid wanting to cheat, and prepare a bunch of stuff ahead of time, that I know sounds cool. Which is to not to be truly in the moment. But it’s cultural too. I mean think about the way church organists are always expected to improvise the way that they embroider a pawn, like a melody. It’s the same with ragas in Indian music. There is a very clear progression, and a very clear scale, but there is also so much freedom inside it. So I think a lot of these issues about what’s free, and what’s formal are oversimplified anyway.
AS- You probably knew this was going to come up, but talk about some of people Matmos has worked with.
Drew- We’ve been at it so long it really runs the gambit.
AS- Hit on some of the big names.
Martin- What, you mean Bjork? She’s pretty much the only one…well I guess the Kronos Quartet, and Terry Riley…
Drew- And Antony…
Martin- Very different with each of them.
Drew- It’s always a challenge to not show up and kind of spray paint your style onto somebody else. There have been some occasions when I really felt like we were trying to make something 50/50. But in every case it’s different about how that pans out. The work for Bjork was very much…she had written songs and we were doing sound design to kind of take them further in the direction they were already going. Which was really fun, and really scary. With a commission from the Kronos we were totally free to make whatever we wanted for them, but then we also had to realize “Well it needs to be in a kind of conventional tuning,” so that they can keep playing their string instruments and not have to pick up a different set.
Martin- Yea, it’s funny with things like that, you bring your limitations. Even if someone said “Do whatever you want,” it’s really difficult to help going “Well, of course they are the Kronos Quartet, so they’ll want something like this. Insert assumption here.” It’s hard not to do that.
Drew- Even like when we wanted Antony to sing on our song, but it’s a little bit lazy of us to send him the song and say, “Just do anything you want.” Because so much of the skill of being a singer is phrasing and intonation that you put to words, but he’s not going to feel comfortable just writing whatever lyrics to our song. So we wound up writing a kind of skeletal frame of lyrics for him to bounce off of, but then we basically chopped him up, and sort of de-languagify it, like removed the meaning and just kept the sound. Every time it is always new about how pushy you get, or they get, and about whether the chemistry is working. With Bjork, I feel in a way the real collaboration was starting when we were all together and were talking about how to arrange these older songs. In a certain way Verspertine was pretty fully formed by the time we were working on it. She was very open to having us add…
Martin- There is a live CD of shows we did. I think it’s probably pretty fucking obscure, really. She released fifty fucking things in the last two years of old stuff and its one of those.
Drew- It’s in the live box set.
Martin- That’s probably the most Bjork and Matmos together of things. It’s the recording of the way we orchestrated a bunch of her songs. And we really did re-orchestrate them in a major way.
Drew- And that was down to her being very flexible. She was like “Go for it. Change it up.” That’s why she wanted us involved in the band, to make it valid, and not make it just a by-numbers here are these songs from these albums that you already know. So many people on her level are just doing a kind of delivery system, or a retro-package. She’s somebody who can’t help but keep it changing.
Martin- I would have to say that the live recording would be even more genuinely a collaboration than even the live show, because her live engineer didn’t like what we did, and was mixing us out, and mixing in the dullest parts of the prerecord…which has always offended me.
Drew- Often people will play something at our studio. They’ll come over and think we’re all going to jam, but it’s much, much close to a photo shoot. They sit and make individual sounds. We take them, and months later a record comes out where these sounds they made very much on the fly, in isolation, have taken on a form…
Martin- Have been woven into this song.
Drew- In a certain way we are kind of bullies, in that we take a tiny amount of material from people and then we grow a huge thing, but it often isn’t there playing. Or it’s a very selective and imperialistic take over of there playing.
Coincidentally, Martin’s phone rings, and its long time Matmos collaborator J Lesser. This seemed like an appropriate time to end the interview, so we did. --Bez
Monday, February 25, 2008
Show Review: Daniel Johnston, Lizz King and Jason Dove @ the Ottobar
He started off playing a stuttering guitar cadence, then layering on his characteristically hesitant vocals. His seemingly faltering performance and frail appearance is striking. I liken its role to a meat tenderizer preparing a choice cut of beef to be easily infused with the chef's choice of flavors. From the moment But when phrased this way, one might think These things ebb and swell with the tone of the song, and it breaks your heart to see someone so genuine and earnest in communicating their emotions through song; the fact that every song seems to take an exhaustive toll on Johnston mentally and physically only magnifies his tragedy and inspiration as an artist. This is likely related to Johnston's storied history of mental illness, struggling with bipolar disorder. But I have a feeling that this only serves to intensify Johnston's inner artist; I truly believe he is, at his core, one of the most pure examples of an artist in our age. Johnston single-handedly upturns all we have come to expect from a phenomenal live show. The prevailing concept of rock super-stardom is firmly entrenched in popular culture, all this talk of “stage presence” and effusive charisma and stage antics to distract and entertain…But when you witness someone performing raw, naked, and primal emotions, you realize that all these things are not necessary for a captivating performance. All you need is a man brave and willing enough to bear it all through only his brutally expressive and earnest lyrics and music. 
This review almost didn't happen. I was hemming and hawwing over whether to shill out the 17 large for the day-of tickets, with my interest mainly being to see Lizz King and Jason Dove. Headliner Daniel Johnston was on my radar, but in the most peripheral way possible. I have not seen the Sundance-lauded film The Devil and Daniel Johnston so my knowledge of his life and music was very limited when making the decision to goto the Ottobar this past Sunday.
I probably made one of my wisest choices so far this year.
If given just one word to describe this show, I would have to choose genuine. The quality of music on this bill was outstanding, far and away one of the strongest I've seen in years. As I walked towards the Ottobar, a few minutes after Lizz King's set time, I was hopeful that she had not come on. The place was dead silent. But as I walked through the door, I could see the reason. King was on stage and delivering a captivating performance that had the room so silent you could hear the floorboards creak. Nobody even tossed away beer bottles. This was going to be something special...
Lizz King is a pixie and an angel. It's a shame that in this day, in order to get noticed, you have to have a strong gimmick in addition to a gorgeous, timeless voice. For all the Winestones that get attention, a deserving gem like King is swept under the rug.
Let's remedy that, shall we? King's music is some of the most barebones, heart-wide-open stuff I've heard...in a good and completely disarming way; she goes from banjo to ukulele to what I think was an electric tenor banjo, alternating playing some groovy, delicious computerized beats track as the musical foundation of some of her songs. Her voice is warm, like Billie Holiday and the best voices of old found on gramophone records or streaming through the vacuum-tube radios, and haunting like Fiona Apple and the other female vocal prodigies of the present. The whole picture is distinct, something I imagine sounds not unlike an electrified, breaking music box mating with the aforementioned gramophone jazz records and a healthy dose of desolate country and blues twang and instrumentation likely inspired by her time in West Virginia. She is a unique sound that is nothing short of refreshing.
My theory on Jason Dove is that he listened/listens to and loved/loves him a lot of Elvis Costello. On a normal night, Dove and his Whips would likely be a highlight of the show. His deftly arranged rock, influenced strongly by Zeppelin, Rush and 60s and 70s rock in general, has impeccable pacing and culls from a wide variety of rock's sub-genres. But sandwiched between two master manipulators of heart and soul, the act comes off as less-than-inspiring.
And finally, there was Daniel Johnston.
All in all, Johnston's performance was an inspiration as an artist and a human being. He captures the essence of great music and great humanity. It is no wonder he has become such an influential and revered figure to so many other more recognizable names in music, from Bowie to Bright Eyes to Eddie Vedder, Spiritualized and more. He simultaneously defines and redefines the status of icon.
Bez's Take on Daniel Johnston:
Bring up Daniel Johnston, artist and musician, and I can’t help but think of the analogue of William Blake, artist and writer. Both Johnston and Blake are sparked by that intense flame of inspiration that overshadows natural ability. But, also, both are unfortunately viewed in the context of mentally ill people for whom artistic creativity was a mere manifestation of inner demons. This idea may be overly simplistic, or even flat out wrong. Like so many other common sense beliefs, the notion that mental illness, a troubled past, or a tendency toward introspection makes a person more creative, just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Sure, there may be precedent for this belief based on fictional characters. Aren’t King Lear and Hamlet closets to the truth when others think they are insane? Doesn’t Durer make it absolutely clear how tortured, troubled, and tormented...yet so divinely genius the artist is in Melencolia I?
A huge obstacle in rethinking mental illness is this mistaken belief that somehow the most creative people are also the most sick. And mix this up with the artistic/bohemian predilection toward subverting ideas of happiness, and you can get a whole sub-culture. Just look at Goths. Aren’t they just aesthetes playing at mental illness? Or take Ian Curtis as an example. Now his suicide is viewed in the context of his lyrics, and his lyrics are viewed in the context of his suicide. His legacy has been twisted into a tale of martyrdom. In short his depression, and subsequent suicide, has became so crucial to anyone’s understanding of his music.
I am an avowed formalist. I can’t stand any contextualizing, historicizing, etc. In the end any biographical detail about the performer’s life doesn’t factor into my understanding of the music. Like D. H. Lawrence said of Nathaniel Hawthorne, trust the tale, not the teller.
Listening to Johnston it never occurred to me what his mental health history was like. It just didn’t come into my head.
His lack of singing ability actually worked as a positive, placing such emphasis on the words, rather than the manner of delivery. His stage presence was nonexistent, but again this actually works for him. This too stresses the words. Johnston performed solo for the first two songs, with just a small guitar. Again, his musical chops aren’t really there, but his strumming somehow carries more weight than ten prog rock guitar solos.
Johnston’s musical work has such purity. Middle aged and obviously suffering from Type 2 diabetes, he’s not going to win the hip award, nor do you get the impression he’s in it for fame. Rather his intentions seem to be purely to perform some songs he wrote, that others might find interesting, too. No need to be musically innovative, or put forth some powerful political message. Just simple songs about motorcycles, cartoon ghosts…but man, those songs were good.
Highlights of the night:
Johnston covering John Lennon’s "You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away"
Johnston performing "Casper the Friendly Ghost" from the Kids soundtrack
As Johnston mentioned something about the next song being about a motorcycle, a rather drunk, but still enthusiastic fan standing by stage right yelled “OH SHIT!!!” In a weird way his excitement was contagious.
Siouxsie Sioux “laughs in the face that is vulture law”: A Look at the Mantaray tour, 2007-2008
From that point forward, Siouxsie Sioux would continue to harness that contentious punk ethos, and alongside musicians Severin and later collaborating husband Budgie, ingeniously fuse that early punk-i-ness with a noted penchant for poetic tendencies, creating anything that ranged from artsy pop-esque hits like “Kiss Them for Me” to haunting socio-political beauties like “Israel,” and of course dark, synth-layered ditties like “Face to Face.” Thus she became supreme of a variety of deities, sometimes called Queen of the New Wave and Queen of Goth. Her music and style, give or take, have influenced the likes of The Cure, Morrissey, U2, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Tricky, Shirley Manson, Jeff Buckley, P.J. Harvey, LCD Soundsystem, and of course decades of aspiring musicians and club-goers. It’s safe to say, if Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones influenced anything that lays claim to punk, for better or worse, Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees remain a stimulating force in a lot of post-punk that aims to avoid sticky labels. Perhaps the Banshees purists didn’t venture to the Highlights were the mantra-esque “Into a Swan,” “Here Comes that Day,” the atmospheric “Heaven and Alchemy,” and the danceable “Cish Cash,” from her collaboration with Basement Jaxx. Even as a solo artist, Sioux has held onto her passion for taking certain hits and making them her own, with a very intelligent cabaret-sense that sometimes comes off as deliciously tongue-and-cheek. Adding to her repertoire, she covered “Hello I, Love You” by the Doors, as well as the Banshees cover-classic “Dear Prudence.” Apart from the stylistic polemics of Solo Sioux, even if certain dyspeptic critics are liable to demote the tracks to the “pop-rock” bin due in part to their stylistic variance and ambiguity, Mantaray does attest to Sioux’s creative prowess. Tracks like “Loveless” resonate with a Creatures feel, with plenty of drone and marimba, but also rendered with distorted industrial-fed guitars—heaviness not toyed with, to my knowledge, until now. And while the more overt intimate lyrics of certain songs like “Into a Swan” may cause some to be uncomfortably reminded of Madonna-goes-brunette phase, in the art world—“Ive felt a force I’ve never felt before…feeling so strong, can’t be ignored”—one only has to actually listen to the lyrics to uncover Sioux’s well-oiled employ of her poetic license. She pokes the audience with a few coy questions in the song’s entrance, unabashedly answers them in crescendo, shuts up any town-crying, and backs the whole thing by stating that public opinion is irrelevant—“laugh in the face that is vulture law”— and in fact, finds it amusing either way. Daring for a first solo album? More like Sioux is confidently laying claim to her status and abilities, and it ain’t nothing to fuck wit’. So love her or leave her, until the next go-round. But honestly, that raw but expertly controlled voice of hers and her knack for covers could make most any old song sound worthwhile, even conventional-unconventional Disney songs and French Christmas carols, which she has done. And so far her Mantaray performances are testament to her viable force in the music community. She should be as house-hold as Bowie, but I’m glad she still has something of a cult-following, at least in New York. Otherwise she’d be playing those awful arena shows. 
It’s common knowledge these days that not all of music’s most innovative entrepreneurs have been able to keep up performances that don’t bank on nostalgia.
But there are some musicians who have taken time’s withering effects, and given it a good spanking.
Siouxsie Sioux is one of them.
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Thirty-one years since the Banshees’ debut performance, Siouxsie Sioux has been unremitting throughout the years, performing, creating, and re-creating her bad self. The release of her solo debut Mantaray has spawned a western tour, which so far, has met with packed venues and positive reviews. Beginning in Europe in late October, she is currently seducing the
Hailing from the Brit punk explosion of ’76, Sioux was first seen with a group of early Sex Pistols fans, titled the Bromley Contingent, and was noted for her outlandish punk stylings, bedecked in bondage and cabaret-style makeup. She is seen with the Pistols on the infamous episode of the Bill Grundy TV Show when the boys insulted the perplexed host and made front-page history. Notable among other members were Tony James and Billy Idol, and Banshees co-founder Steve Severin. Together, Sioux and Severin, (with Sid Vicious moonlighting on drums), created a make-shift band whose lineup didn’t last past the night—The Banshees— for a spot at the 100 Club in London, a gig arranged by Pistol’s manager Malcolm McLaren. Inherently instigative, renditions of “The Lords Prayer,” Led Zeppelin, and the German national anthem were heard.
And now, Siouxsie Sioux, solo? Judging from the performance she gave at Irving Plaza in New York in early February, two things are certain: she continues to deliver knock-out performances, and her voice and her trademarked hair are still intact, if not better and bigger. Yet Mantaray content has met with mixed reviews, some regarding the album as Sioux showing her true pop-leaning colors, and straying from the Banshees and the Creatures more chaotic energy. This reception seems to hail from some kind of minority purist contingent, chastising the lyrics and music for being too glammy, and so soon lost to Banshees lore.
Early live footage of Siouxsie & the Banshees
Siouxsie Sioux - Into a Swan music video
Siouxsie interview with the Bromley Contingent
--Danielle Commisso
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Matmos Interview Part 2 of 3 (w/ Drew, Martin)
I had originally intended to post this interview in two halves, but I am now opting to post it in thirds. So, here is the second segment.
At this point in the interview my mini disc recorder failed, and the rest was taped on a cassette over a recording of Martin destroying his father's speakers...just thought you'd like to know.
For a refresher course, see Part 1 of 3.
--Bez
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AS-How did Matmos form?
Drew- Well, we became a couple and a band in the same sort of process. I had seen Martin’s band at a punk rock warehouse on Gilman Street, and he had seen me perform solo doing noisy cut-ups of lounge music with a sampler.
Martin- No. You were doing techno.
Drew- It was all lounge samples. We met in a gay bar where I was a go-go dancer. Martin was putting money in my g-string. This was at Club Uranus. Pretty soon he was teaching me how to edit sound on a computer, which was very rare to do at that point. I was going out with somebody else then, but our partnership kicked off and the other relationship died out in the space of about a year. Pretty soon I was moving in with Martin. We were living in the Tenderloin, a really rough part of San Francisco. But in a lot of ways it was cheap and beautiful and weird. We just spent hours making endless repetitive looping music that was sometimes trying to fit in with techno, and sometimes just trying to see what our software could do. I was learning a lot. Martin really taught me how to sequence, and how to edit audio. I had just fucked around with tape recorders and samplers.
Martin- Well he was super, super good with his keyboard sampler. I had one for years, but I had never dedicated the time and the obsession to the one thing. Like when I met him, when he was 19, he was a fucking master of this one sampler. I wonder about the specific machine, it was a Roland W30. The sampler I had gotten was a Sonic Mirage, which literally had its readout in hexadecimal. So, everything was expressed in two digits. So the recording levels, and every other thing that you knew about what you were doing…who had to read hexadecimal to do anything with it. Which was hard for never-strong-in-math Martin.
Drew- Yea, I benefited from newer consumer electronics. The Roland W30… MC Hammer used it, a lot of the people that did jungle used it. At that time I was listening to a lot of drum and bass, and early techno, and acid techno. My background is really noise and electronic music and industrial music. But the sort of language was changing to rapidly in music at that time. That was really cool for me. Now we kind of laugh at rave and techno and certain cheesy 90’s things like Burning Man.
Martin- Everyone laughed at what came just previous.
Drew- It’s an era that when we look back at it we think of big, bad floppy hats and cheesy chart techno.
Martin- The Chemical Brothers, ecstasy.
Drew- But if you went to a gabber party, like I djed at one called Technical Support in England. We went to one together that was with that industrial strength dj Lenny D. You heard stuff that was so crunched out, and distorted, and fast, and strange, that to me in really felt like a new way for noise music to develop. Like it wasn’t about any of the older musical values what so ever. It really seemed pretty amazing…formally fucked up, and full of implications.
So, the unfortunate thing that happened evolutionarily is that IDM turned into this brackish delta of people drawing on, but de-saturating and whimpifying something that had a kind of integrity. Part of that was about “is this for the dance floor or not?” and a lot of doubletalk about whether people were making records for one setting or another. I don’t think that home listening or rave listening are inherently good or bad. It’s about how you work inside your form. But a lot of what was cool and fucked up was happening at raves and parties. It’s not that case that listening to something at home necessarily makes it deeper, more complex, or more formally brave….But nobody even cares about IDM now.
Martin- It was a seriously unfortunate moniker. We proposed again, and again in the 90s that we change it from Intelligent Dance Music, and start calling it Super Music. How many nicknames for music include praise in the title? You know it’s not called Profound Blues; it’s just called Blues. It’s not called Fabulous Rock Music.
Drew- Maybe it should be Fabulous Rock Music for bands like Roxy Music, Queen, T. Rex.
Martin- But not Deep Purple, or Black Oak Arkansas
Drew- No. They are not fabulous.
AS-What is the compositional process like for Matmos now, and how does it compare to the past?
Martin- When we started out, like Drew was saying, we wanted to make noise music. Then Drew introduced me to this stuff called techno, and, I’m going to short handed it, rave. He had a great interest in making stuff that worked for the dance floor. We tried making both separately, and kind of failed…I don’t know, we liked it.
Drew- But nobody else did.
Martin- And we kind of came to the conclusion that no one gives a shit about what we do, but we enjoy doing it. So, we did it for our own pleasure. We started combining the two, and making really noisy…what we considered dance music combining the idea of taking really weird recordings and cutting them up to be rhythmic.
Drew- So there would still be bass lines and beats, but they would be made out of the raw material that could be noise music.
Martin- And what do you know? That is still what we do. That went well.
Drew- I think the way that the compositional process has changed is that just over time you get more self-conscience and more paranoid about not repeating yourself, and you also develop a deeper relationship with your gear and what it can do. Software changes, the environment you’re responding to changes. So, for us it is now freer in certain ways, because I feel that I have a little more under my belt now when I’m trying to think about the form of a song. But it’s constraining in other ways, because the more times you have made a record, the greater the suspense about whether you still have something to express that’s worth taking up people’s time and money.
Martin- I don’t know. I just don’t think about it
Drew- You’re freer in some way. And that’s not something you see going into it. We never thought that anyone would care. We pressed ourselves. We put out our records… we made a thousand, and we thought that they would just sit in boxes in our basement and that would be that. And instead there was this weird charmed life that kind of snuck up on us. We didn’t see it coming, and that is still kind of hard to believe. We would sit and listen to Terry Riley, and the idea then, that 10 years later we would play in an ensemble with him. And actually not just meet him but sit and make music together a little bit, was just unthinkable. And it is still shocking.
I guess Martin is right though, because in a certain sense nothing has changed, because you still start from a blank slate and try to figure out what you have to say. It doesn’t get any easier to make interesting music; it does get easier to make something, you know what I mean?
Martin- No…but I don’t want to give you a hard time.
Drew- After eight albums I know how to take a field recording and chop it up, lay it out on the keyboard…
Martin- Oh, you mean you know how to do what you’ve done before, exactly.
Drew- Yea. I know how to repeat myself, and that gets easier. But what you don’t learn is how to make a good song, because that is infinite and endless. And that task of making something worth someone’s time is never a given.
Martin- You ever bowl?
AS- Yes. I have, but around here we do duckpin bowling.
Martin- I’m sorry for you. In bowling, at least in my experience—there was a time in my life when I bowled a lot. When you bowl six games in a row, by the sixth game it’s still very difficult to throw a strike, but it gets easier and easier to pick up spares. Because picking up spares is about throwing the ball into this place. Like I can always put the ball into the upper-right hand corner of the thing.
But a strike requires this perfect placement, not just placement, speed, torque. It has to have spin and be coming in from this…it’s a whole different thing from picking up spares. Picking up spares is a dumb activity. I think that is a good analogy for it. By your sixth record is easier because you’ve practiced and done all the stuff, it’s easier to pick up spares. But throwing a strike is still the real art form. Boy, sports analogies, that’s what we need more of.
Drew- But there is a poet that was saying that to really write a great poem is a little like getting struck by lightening. You can practice by standing out in the rain in a big empty field, but you won’t necessarily get that lightening.
AS- Do you know what poet that was?
Drew- I don’t want to misattribute. I’ll look it up, but I thought it was Randall Jarrell.
Martin- Oh, you like that better than my bowling analogy?
AS- That was the best bowling analogy I have ever heard, and I’m sure it will go down in history as the best bowling reference ever.
Drew- I think it was Randall Jarrell, but let me check so that I don’t get it wrong. That kind of luck you can’t script, and you just sort of hope to be receptive to…
Martin- Which, incidentally, I’m not saying, “We throw strikes.” I’m not saying “And we figured it out.”
Drew- It’s the difference between having technique and inspiration. For us that is even harder to quantify because I don’t really feel like our music is expressive, in the way that I don’t view Matmos as the way I manifest my emotions. That is totally different from a singer/song writer model in a certain way. For us we propose a concept, and then we come up with a list of objects, we acquire those objects, we try to see what sounds they make, and then we try to see what songs remerge from those sounds.
But at no point is it like “Oh, I’m angry, so I’m going to make an angry song,” or “I’m feeling really positive, so I’m going to make a positive song.” It isn’t emotional in that way, it’s about what the sound it doing. So it’s not about inspiration, in that direct manner. Though you can have work flows when the material feels very responsive, and you’re getting the result you’re really happy with. I mean people hear Blood on the Track and they’re like “It’s the divorce album,” and they hear the divorce through the lyrics. Obviously that is an allusion because it is still art, it’s still been edited. But usually with Matmos…our baggage is different. It’s not that we don’t have baggage, but our baggage is often some anachronistic weird historical scheme, or some biographical list of some famous people’s lives, or…
Martin- It’s not about loneliness.
Drew- It’s not emo. But hopefully it’s not this dry white cube of abstraction either, because it is always referential…tied to objects. And that’s what’s scary about the new album. The new album is us finally even giving up on that, and just starting from a total blank slate of electronics and seeing what emerges. For a long time I think that if people wanted to, you know, kick the tires of what Matmos is doing, they could say “Oh well you’re really just putting together this list of signifiers, and the music is secondary. It’s really about ideas, and you’re coasting on the fact you sound interesting as a press kit.”
Martin- Which is important.
Drew- Or “There is blood and semen. Ha ha!” You know, that like your going at it in this scatological, IDM fart joke level. Which, if it’s funny why not.
Martin- Alright, enough. Let’s get to the next one.
AS- For Matmos is the emphasis placed on the process, or on the end sound?
Martin- What do you mean by “process”?
AS- The source of the sound, and process creating the sound.
Martin- I like that we have, at least historically, have had listeners….well when you face the reality, some of them are going to know and some of them aren’t. Some of them are going to be the kind of people that investigate. I have always enjoyed the fact that we tried to provide more information for those that want more information.
Drew- But it’s not mandatory.
Martin- But hopefully it’s not necessary to enjoy it. Someone listening to the radio and one of our songs comes on, hopefully they can still derive some pleasure from it, and maybe some of the meaning…or maybe content would be a better word than meaning. But the person who purchases the cd can read the liner notes, the person who purchased the cd reads the liner notes and looks us up online, and can get even more, and so on and so on. Whereas I kind of feel there is a dead end…well the dead end comes sooner with a lot of music. We’re so librarian-y, also teacher-y…teacheresque?
Drew- Pedagogical?
Martin- Well that makes it seem…
Drew- Pedantic?
Martin- I like that what we do connects to a bunch of things, and those things connect to other things. And some of those things are curated by us, and some of them, of course, are going to accidental things. People frequently come up to us and say “Oh the --- connects to the ----.” I’m like “ No, that actually wasn’t my intent, or our intent, but if it leads you off in the directions that’s fine.”
Drew- We get pigeonholed as control freaks who want people to have studied a syllabus to get an album. That’s definitely not the intention. I want to produce curiosity about the sounds. I would hope that if you hear the song, it would make you listen and sort of cock your head to try to figure out what those sounds are. Hopefully the imaginative response goes beyond my little wish list. Hopefully it’s richer than that. It’s not like it’s a game of guess-what’s-in-my-pocket. Is the meaning of the cake the recipe that made it, or is the meaning of the cake the set of feelings that you have when you eat it?
Martin- it’s a primary joy in life, that sort of that process of educating your self. I like connecting things to other things. I like…you remember, I guess this isn’t a popular thing anymore. In the 80s they buried this bejeweled rabbit somewhere in England. And they published this book of collages, or paintings that were clues to where the rabbit was buried. It became this international mystery, where you had interpret this Old Celtic language and art in order to find clues that led to other clues, and so on. And that had a very concrete objective—you get the $10,000 rabbit at the end. But I like the sort of treasure hunt aspect.
Drew- And it’s more about the desire and the wondering, than about the thing at the end of the process. I had that book as a kid and I thought it was great, and I never really needed to find the rabbit. There are certainly details in our music that we don’t include because we don’t think they are significant, or we don’t feel like shutting down what a piece means. I mean it’s so long ago that it’s fine to talk about, but on our first album there was a piece that had recordings of trains. We identified it in the liners notes as “Polish trains,” but they were actually the trains that went to Auschwitz. I felt that if we included that detail…
Martin- Then it makes it all about Auschwitz.
Drew- Yea, and in a way it’s just too on the nose. It’s just too limited. I like the esotericism of knowing more than the listener at certain points
Continue to Part 3 of 3 or go back to Part 1
