Here is an interview I did with the band Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses for Vice Magazine. They feature members of bands like Guapo and the Alabama 3 and they are really good.
Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses
Miasma are genuinely scary. Scary in a goosebumps as soon as you hear them kind of way. They sound like a lost piece from Susperia that Dario Argento thought too terrifying for release being played backwards by King Crimson on repeat forever. Somehow they occasionally get lumped in with the ‘freak-folk’ movement. Probably by people who have never actually listened to them before. They are about as close to Banhart as Comus were to Donovan. I.e.: basically not in the same in the universe. Although they are sort of a supergroup made up of members bands like Guapo and Chrome Hoof the music they make together is pretty much like none of those things. They have an EP available now on Southern’s Latitudes label and a forthcoming full length on Rise Above.
Your music is pretty frightening. What scares you?
Sara: Walking around at night in a dark garden and being alone with your superstitions. That is what I think of when I play.
Daniel: Playing with this band live can be frightening due to the complexity of the material. It is rehearsal-intensive music with a high level of technical rigour. Sometimes though after two or three songs you forget the fear and just play.
Orlando: Positivity and space docking.
You like pretty weird onstage. Do you always dress like that?
Leo: Well…yeah. (it should probably be pointed out here that we are sitting in Negril on Brixton Hill and the Miasma guys are all sitting there eating plantain in their Witchfinder general hats).
Daniel: We aren’t trying to be Slipknot.
Orlando: I just don’t really get the whole corpse-paint thing though. We don’t do that. Those Black Metal guys just look like they are in the Rocky Horror Picture show. We thought about dressing up as white minstrels once and capturing the horror of those old Al Jolson clips but that puts you on slightly dodgy ground I suppose.
You are all pretty strange guys. How did you meet each other and decide that this was the music you wanted to make?
Orlando: I met Daniel at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury where all these old queers and failed artists and junkies hang out and drink and we had a similar outlook on life.
Daniel: We don’t all agree on influences either. Apart from maybe Sabbath. We’ve had long and virulent arguments about certain Kate Bush albums. I’m more into the Sensual World era but they don’t really get it.
Monday 7 May 2007
Rattatat Interview
Here is an interview I did with the band Rattatat for the Vice Web Blog.
Rattatat Interview
Rattatat are these two guys from New York called Evan and Mike who play laptop programmed music with millions of layers of guitars and synths. It sounds like sleazy, robotic, oompah chamber music that’s equal parts Queen and Edwin Collins and makes all the girls go weak at the knees. Especially Kelly Osbourne apparently. If you took it all apart and got real human beings to play their music it would be like one of those Glenn Branca or Rhys Chatham shows with 87 people playing guitars. They used to hang out with people like Paul Banks in New York who got them a support slot on an Interpol tour before they’d even released a record and their new album is modestly entitled ‘Classics’. They also have a bootleg album just out of Hip Hop remixes of tracks by guys like Young Jeezy and Devin Tha Dude. But don’t tell anyone.
You guys look a little the worse for wear if you don’t mind me saying?
Evan: Sorry. We played a show at The Astoria last night. It got a little crazy.
Mike: Yeah we played with CSS and then they took us to this place The End. Durr or something? I don’t know.
Evan: Can you tell these UK promoters to stop giving us Jack Daniels on our rider, that stuff isn’t even whiskey. Its just headache in a bottle. Ugh.
So you’ve gone from playing guitar with Ben Kweller and Dashboard Confessional to making sexy studmuffin albums of your own and remixing Biggie and Young Jeezy. How did that happen?
Mike: The job with Dashboard was just me and it was just that: a job. I was playing in a band on tour with them and they needed a piano player so I took the gig. I did one studio session then Ben poached me. That was more fun but this is what I wanted to do. As soon as we had the opportunity we did this. We met at college and we have been making music together since then.
Evan: The hip hop thing was just something we wanted to do. As well as Queen and this band White Light I really love Timbaland, His production is a real inspiration. The remix thing is just a logical progression of what we do I think. Labels have begun to come to us. We did a remix for the Television Personalities, that was interesting cos I wasn’t too familiar with them apart from like ‘Part Time Punks’. We also did a remix of a track by The Knife. That was weird.
Mike: Yeah the girl sent us this super specific e-mail where she was like: “I want it to sound like this one specific Prince track” and spelled out in the e-mail duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. You know? Like how she wanted it to sound. Weird.
Evan: We heard back from Beanie Siegel and Devin saying that they’d heard the remixes and were into it. That’s nice.
Your music seems highly programmed. Is it not just a case of standing onstage and pressing buttons?
Mike: No not at all. It would be unfeasible to play it all live though. We have a guy called Jacob who plays live keys with us now. And we do live guitars. Lead guitar and lead bass. Haha. Live is always exciting, we’re not jamming out or anything but the live stuff can influences the studio stuff subsequently.
Evan: Yeah, I wanna make more aggressive stuff now. We could maybe do it live as a special one off show in New York or something that would be cool. We have video projections we use too.
Would you cry if your laptop got stolen?
Evan: That would be the worst. We’d probably have to give up music.
Is there anyone out there ripping on the Rattatat sound, any fellow travellers?
Mike: Not really, some people have ripped off our logo font though.
Why call the record ‘Classics’?
Evan: It just sounds funny.
Who is the average Rattatat fan?
Evan: Her (points at elderly lady sipping tea in the ICA café).
Mike: Seems to be a lot of stoner kids in the US.
You seem to always be on the road, do you hate each others guts by this point?
Mike: Nah, we have fun on tour.
Evan: I did get shot in the eye with a pellet gun in Amsterdam. Maybe that was the culmination of tension.
Who would you play with if you could play with anyone?
Evan: A total Hollywood band: Stevan Segal, Russel Crow, Kaenu Reeves.
Mike: And Brian May.
Rattatat Interview
Rattatat are these two guys from New York called Evan and Mike who play laptop programmed music with millions of layers of guitars and synths. It sounds like sleazy, robotic, oompah chamber music that’s equal parts Queen and Edwin Collins and makes all the girls go weak at the knees. Especially Kelly Osbourne apparently. If you took it all apart and got real human beings to play their music it would be like one of those Glenn Branca or Rhys Chatham shows with 87 people playing guitars. They used to hang out with people like Paul Banks in New York who got them a support slot on an Interpol tour before they’d even released a record and their new album is modestly entitled ‘Classics’. They also have a bootleg album just out of Hip Hop remixes of tracks by guys like Young Jeezy and Devin Tha Dude. But don’t tell anyone.
You guys look a little the worse for wear if you don’t mind me saying?
Evan: Sorry. We played a show at The Astoria last night. It got a little crazy.
Mike: Yeah we played with CSS and then they took us to this place The End. Durr or something? I don’t know.
Evan: Can you tell these UK promoters to stop giving us Jack Daniels on our rider, that stuff isn’t even whiskey. Its just headache in a bottle. Ugh.
So you’ve gone from playing guitar with Ben Kweller and Dashboard Confessional to making sexy studmuffin albums of your own and remixing Biggie and Young Jeezy. How did that happen?
Mike: The job with Dashboard was just me and it was just that: a job. I was playing in a band on tour with them and they needed a piano player so I took the gig. I did one studio session then Ben poached me. That was more fun but this is what I wanted to do. As soon as we had the opportunity we did this. We met at college and we have been making music together since then.
Evan: The hip hop thing was just something we wanted to do. As well as Queen and this band White Light I really love Timbaland, His production is a real inspiration. The remix thing is just a logical progression of what we do I think. Labels have begun to come to us. We did a remix for the Television Personalities, that was interesting cos I wasn’t too familiar with them apart from like ‘Part Time Punks’. We also did a remix of a track by The Knife. That was weird.
Mike: Yeah the girl sent us this super specific e-mail where she was like: “I want it to sound like this one specific Prince track” and spelled out in the e-mail duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. You know? Like how she wanted it to sound. Weird.
Evan: We heard back from Beanie Siegel and Devin saying that they’d heard the remixes and were into it. That’s nice.
Your music seems highly programmed. Is it not just a case of standing onstage and pressing buttons?
Mike: No not at all. It would be unfeasible to play it all live though. We have a guy called Jacob who plays live keys with us now. And we do live guitars. Lead guitar and lead bass. Haha. Live is always exciting, we’re not jamming out or anything but the live stuff can influences the studio stuff subsequently.
Evan: Yeah, I wanna make more aggressive stuff now. We could maybe do it live as a special one off show in New York or something that would be cool. We have video projections we use too.
Would you cry if your laptop got stolen?
Evan: That would be the worst. We’d probably have to give up music.
Is there anyone out there ripping on the Rattatat sound, any fellow travellers?
Mike: Not really, some people have ripped off our logo font though.
Why call the record ‘Classics’?
Evan: It just sounds funny.
Who is the average Rattatat fan?
Evan: Her (points at elderly lady sipping tea in the ICA café).
Mike: Seems to be a lot of stoner kids in the US.
You seem to always be on the road, do you hate each others guts by this point?
Mike: Nah, we have fun on tour.
Evan: I did get shot in the eye with a pellet gun in Amsterdam. Maybe that was the culmination of tension.
Who would you play with if you could play with anyone?
Evan: A total Hollywood band: Stevan Segal, Russel Crow, Kaenu Reeves.
Mike: And Brian May.
No Age Interview
Here is an interview I did with No Age for Vice Magazine.
No Age Interview.
No Age are these two guys who were in this band Wives that used to have fights on stage the whole time and do backflips into drum kits and stuff like that. You know. Now they play this cool twist on post-hardcore with all these mad build up’s and break downs that is pretty amazing live. Dean the drummer guy is so good at yelling into microphones that Wrangler Brutes got him in to sing for their final US show. For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about this is like a kid who is really into football being asked to fill in for Ronaldo up front. Or something. I know fuck all about football.
So were you snotty little LA punk kids when were you were younger?
Randy: I wasn’t a punk kid at all, I played basketball and had more of a mid 90’s Philadelphia hip-hop thing going on. I was into Boyz II Men.
Dean: I went through that phase also, I had a ridiculous haircut, this fake high top fade that made my head look like a giant penis cos it had this centre parting. I was also inspired by Kriss Kross to wear my pants back to front. I went to the drive-in theatre with my folks with these backwards ankle length shorts on and really needed to go. It wasn’t easy.
Randy: He was the one that introduced me to punk rock though. We just used to jam in high school, do Living Colour covers and shit. I used to have to get the tablature to play the parts. It was pretty embarrassing.
So what’s with the name? Do you have aspirations of musical timelessness or is it just lifted from the SST compilation?
Dean: Yeah we took it from the comp. It’s this late 80’s compilation of SST guys doing instrumental stuff like The Process Of Weeding Out era Black Flag stuff but a lot if it is actually pretty crap. The name sounds good though and it seemed almost like the most punk thing to do releasing all this instrumental shit, like a big fuck you to any sense of expectation.
Randy: What we are trying to do with No Age is totally different to Wives where the mission was just to destroy stuff. With this we are trying to build something.
Dean: Yeah, with Wives it was the bull in a china shop thing, just get in the room and fuck everything up. This has an equal energy but it’s focused differently. It is more calculated, I can’t get all wasted and do backflips and shit.
You never played drums before this, how come you feel ready to play drums and sing now?
Dean: I just felt that I knew how I wanted the drums to sound in this band. Plus I’m actually pretty good you know! Also I always had this weird Husker Du fantasy where I wanted to be like Grant Hart and sing and play drums at once.
Sure it wasn’t a Phil Collins thing?
Positive.
No Age Interview.
No Age are these two guys who were in this band Wives that used to have fights on stage the whole time and do backflips into drum kits and stuff like that. You know. Now they play this cool twist on post-hardcore with all these mad build up’s and break downs that is pretty amazing live. Dean the drummer guy is so good at yelling into microphones that Wrangler Brutes got him in to sing for their final US show. For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about this is like a kid who is really into football being asked to fill in for Ronaldo up front. Or something. I know fuck all about football.
So were you snotty little LA punk kids when were you were younger?
Randy: I wasn’t a punk kid at all, I played basketball and had more of a mid 90’s Philadelphia hip-hop thing going on. I was into Boyz II Men.
Dean: I went through that phase also, I had a ridiculous haircut, this fake high top fade that made my head look like a giant penis cos it had this centre parting. I was also inspired by Kriss Kross to wear my pants back to front. I went to the drive-in theatre with my folks with these backwards ankle length shorts on and really needed to go. It wasn’t easy.
Randy: He was the one that introduced me to punk rock though. We just used to jam in high school, do Living Colour covers and shit. I used to have to get the tablature to play the parts. It was pretty embarrassing.
So what’s with the name? Do you have aspirations of musical timelessness or is it just lifted from the SST compilation?
Dean: Yeah we took it from the comp. It’s this late 80’s compilation of SST guys doing instrumental stuff like The Process Of Weeding Out era Black Flag stuff but a lot if it is actually pretty crap. The name sounds good though and it seemed almost like the most punk thing to do releasing all this instrumental shit, like a big fuck you to any sense of expectation.
Randy: What we are trying to do with No Age is totally different to Wives where the mission was just to destroy stuff. With this we are trying to build something.
Dean: Yeah, with Wives it was the bull in a china shop thing, just get in the room and fuck everything up. This has an equal energy but it’s focused differently. It is more calculated, I can’t get all wasted and do backflips and shit.
You never played drums before this, how come you feel ready to play drums and sing now?
Dean: I just felt that I knew how I wanted the drums to sound in this band. Plus I’m actually pretty good you know! Also I always had this weird Husker Du fantasy where I wanted to be like Grant Hart and sing and play drums at once.
Sure it wasn’t a Phil Collins thing?
Positive.
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