Dolphins Into The Future Interview

by Ida Griesemer

On his site, Cetacean Nation Communications, Lieven Martens writes, "My music is a landscape. A ku'ono for your mind to hike in. For the exploration of a personal jungle. For the atonement of a world out there, above there, in there. A spring of harmonies. A bay of sound. A natural and abstract composition, rooted in romance and subconsciousness." Martens is a Belgian artist, based in Antwerp, who recently toured in the US with Monopoly Child Star Searches and Floris Vanhoof. Before his performance at Sarah Lawrence College on April 11th, we talked about his inspiration, process, sonic sources, and plans for… the future. Below is a picture of us ("You should be in it too - the interviewer is just as important," he said) and below that is our conversation.

LL: Can you talk about your musical history; how long you've been with this project and projects you've done before that? LM: I've been doing this since 2006 I think. Or 2007. That's under the name Dolphins Into the Future. But I've done similar stuff, but more deep manipulation, for I don't know, a bunch of years. LL: More deep? LM: Not more deep, but more… rusty. It was more just pure music. Dolphins into the Future is supposedly more centered through specific ideas and theories. It's not just music. It's more like a complete thing. The earlier stuff I did was just music; music of life. LL: And your more recent stuff is informed by philosophy? LM: Yeah. Theosophy. It's a movement that started in the mid-1800s. They do thesis of all the spiritual information in the world. She's called Blavatsky and she wrote a book called The Secret Doctrine. It's about, actually, just the past future and present of mankind. Mankind both in a physical way - like, we were born - but also in a ritual way. They use old pre-religious doctrine style writing. Pre-Christianity. LL: As it relates to your music process, how do you bring in those writings? LM: When I do an album - like I did an album called Music of Belief. Because I'm interested in how religious music is being created. You know, Buddhist music or even Christian music. For half a year I only read devotional texts. To see how that affects my brain, and what I make. And so that album sounds quite different from all my other stuff. But I have other albums. I made an album called Ke Ala Ke Kua. That's about the Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, and all the things surrounding there. So it's not purely philosophical. It's one of the inspirations. LL: What was it about that place that drew you to make an album about it? LM: It's a heavy power stop for the Cetacean Nation. It just attracts a lot of activity around it. People who want to establish communication between man and dolphin. It's also just a place that looks like artwork from Caspar David Friedrich, the German painter. Just the colors and stuff and how it's all caved. I've been there. I did field recordings and camped there with a bunch of friends. LL: Do you use your field recordings as your samples in your music? LM: Yeah. LL: Are all of your samples things that you've recorded? LM: Mostly. Not all. But I started using them because I was interested in the musicality of - like when you record birds singing, instead of a surround-image it's a 2-D image. An aural image. And then if you listen to it, as a kind of music, there's a different, non-human, mathematic part to it. It's like classical musical done by an alien presence. A non-human presence. LL: There's something mathematic to it? LM: When you're a person and you write music it's mathematically like - you have octaves, or if you play certain notes and divide it, then it's another note… but birds their sound is a non-human mathematical sound. And it's just like listening to ocean waves, or birds, that affect me and how I start playing music. I try to create music that sounds more like it's coming from a non-human entity or whatever. LL: Do you always start with some sort of sample from the natural world? LM: A lot of times. Not necessarily always, but a lot of the time. I try to not overdo it, because when I look back through the last three years I've done music, it's been basically all filled with nature samples. I'm going to try to cut down a little bit on that. I mean, I don't want my music to sound like a formula or something. "Oh yeah it's that guy, with his ocean waves and eerie melody." I just think it's inspiring. LL: So that's one of your aims for your next album is to move away from… LM: I don't know. I'll just see what happens. It could be. But now I'm gonna go live in Portugal on these islands called The Azores and I'm going to record an album there. So I'm afraid it will be the same thing again, because it's surrounded by ocean and wildlife. LL: Well it won't be the same thing… LM: No, probably not. But definitely the latest compositions I made are purely only instruments. Not like the live show, because you will hear it's filled with that whole sound. Exaggeratedly. LL: Your live show always is? LM: No. For a while I didn't do it but now I'm more into it because a lot of times my live shows are disconnected from my LPs. So in this show I try to create almost the exact environment that I do on my records. Which is filled with animal sounds and water. LL: Who is releasing your next record? LM: There's a record with installation music I've made for the art of Ada Van Hoorebeke coming out with Aguirre in May. Beyond that I'm not sure. I have to be in the right mindset. Sometimes, for half a year I cannot make music. When you don't have ideas you cannot do it. Or at least have the strength to combine and finalize ideas. To listen to a Dolphins Into The Future live set click here.

Ida is one of the founders and editors of this website. She tweets for Low Log and also has a tumblr. You can contact her at idajane[at]gmail.com.

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Woven Bones Interview

by Ida Griesemer

Andy, Carolyn, and Matty are in the Austin, TX band Woven Bones. When I was there in August I was talking to Andy about where we were going to meet for the interview. He said I could come to their practice space. He said there was a giant moon rock out back. I said that sounded good. When I got there, the trio took a break from playing and led me to the moon rock. Together we orchestrated a conversation, and below are the stories that came out of it. I edited out most of my prompts and left Andy's words, because that's how my man Studs Terkel used to do it. The band will be in town next week for CMJ so feel free to check their dates and catch a show.

Andy: As far as like a, "what is the coolest thing is the world that you could do?" kinda level, always in the back of my mind I think, "being in a rock band." Giving your songs to people. Having people like your songs. It's been a fantasy of mine.

Nivana, the Cure, fuckin Sonic Youth, fuckin Weezer. I mean, Jesus and Mary Chain. Velvet Underground is one of our bigger influences but I didn't even really know the Velvet Underground until I was like a senior. In high school. I grew up in a real - I got into everything through 120 Minutes on MTV. That or whatever my skater buddies listened to. My parents liked the Beatles and the Mamas and the Papas and the Kinks. And Tommy James and the Shondells. That was their biggest contribution to my record collection. Nothing too far out or wicked cool or underground or anything.

I grew up in Jacksonville, in the city, five minutes from downtown. I grew up skateboarding and playing basketball and riding my bike. Doing all kinds of shit. Skateboarder forever. My parents moved out to the burbs, far out, when I was 13. Kinda like the country. I didn't want to at the time. Because all I did was skate. And we were an hour away from downtown. But it was cool because - they were few and far between - but the kids that I met there were all really cool. I met people, and driving an hour back to town and having older friends that could do it ended up not being a problem. I did that whenever I could. And there was actually a cool punk scene of, not house parties, but more at veterans' halls and crazy shit like that, in the area where my parents lived. It was a weird time. Veterans' halls – they would just rent out a space and throw a show for a band that was on tour. It wasn’t total hickville. It was, but it was a different day and age. It's backwoods Florida but there's a beach there. There's a beach, there's a downtown, there's an urban area around downtown. It's a legit city. It's not as far behind as some people think Florida is. I mean it is, but it's not.

There was an old place called Einstein a Go Go that was on the beach. And I mean, The Breeders and Nivana and The Pixies, and The Melvins, and Arches of Loaf - all these cool bands, like Luna, right before they got big - they would come through and play Einstein a Go Go. All of the people that were older, in their late teens to mid-twenties, a lot of them are still around in Jacksonville. They've always done nights in Jacksonville. So from when I was able to go out, there was always really good indie rock/rock and roll/punk rock dance nights. Those don't exist in Austin, or lots of places. Where they just play really fucking good indie rock, and a sea of people dance. It was different places, after Einstein a Go Go. When that place went down, everybody filtered into the urban neighborhoods around downtown. There were a few places that had that kind of thing. Thursday and Saturday nights. There were two different places. Every hip kid - that's where we were all at. And we'd just get wasted. I mean, whatever 90s indie rock to whatever's cool now. They'd play all that. And all the hits. And everybody just danced their asses off and has a good time. Old school dudes would dj. It was fun. It was what we did. Compared to Austin. I mean I like dancing. You like dancing, huh Carolyn?

Carolyn: I love dancing.

Andy: Yeah, I mean I like dancing and having fun. We all like – from shitty new pop music to - I mean they'd even play whatever crazy hip hop was rad. It was just good shit that kids like. Just the regular shit that everybody loves. It was not genred-out or anything. It was just the shit and everybody danced.

Besides really crappy punk pop bands - like Limp Bizkit is from Jacksonville, really crappy shitty stuff like that - there was never really any cool bands that played good stuff. That's kinda why I moved out. I went to college and I went through a bunch of shit, and came back home and wasn't really doing anything. Everyone was still there. Everybody goes out and parties and has good taste and are good artists, but they're all armchair critics, and I mean it in the kindest way. I love everybody from there. Everybody's an armchair critic, they talk about everything, the good and the bad, smoke shitloads of weed and get wasted, but nobody ever actually participates in creativity in a fashion that they actually try to go out, and get it out. A lot of people don't do anything. They're just lazy.

I had sort of a panic attack. Actually, it was the worst job I ever had. I was working at Guitar Center. I went through a bunch of dark times. I broke up with the girlfriend I was with for years when I was in college. And then a few months later I lost myself to drug-fueled abandon. When I got my head out of that I was living at home just to get my feet on the ground again. I worked at Guitar Center. When you first work there you work in accessories. So I just knew about guitar pedals and a bunch of stuff. I knew about the stuff because I was interested in it. A lot of people work there and don't give a fuck. They're ex-musicians who were used car salesmen and got fired from that, and now they're selling musical instruments as if they were used cars.

You work on commission. You have to fade your pay. That's what they call it. To get commission on what you sell you have to outsell your hourly wage, and then you get a percentage of what you outsell. And if you don't outsell your hourly wage, your job is at risk. So they make you make these annoying phone calls to people, which I never did. I just acted like I was doing it.

I did really good and they tried to move me to guitars, which is a more money-making side of the job. I did really good the first day and as soon as I did good all the old dudes who worked there, all the sharks – I'd be talking to a customer, trying to give them the right deal for what they needed and get them out of the store. It's like, moms shopping for their sons and daughters. The kids, either they know what they want but it's too expensive but they can get something that's just as good, or they don't know what they want at all, and you want to get something that is proper for them. And all these other guys wanna do is make as much money as they can and they don’t give a fuck. You know what I mean? So they would cuss me out or try to make me look like an idiot and get loud and then swoop in and steal my customer. And I was like, "Well, I don't give a fuck. Hey, brother, I'd just rather be king shit of my little shit-fuck mountain in accessories and work back over there." I don’t give a fuck about competing with some dude who used to play keyboards for Gloria Estefan back in '85.

I was starting to write Woven Bones songs and I had a lot of stuff going. But it was so soul-sucking and fucked up. I started having all these like – the economy was just starting to fall – and they started having all these sales meetings. And they were talking. And there was all this shit. They were crazy sharks and weird shit. I was just stoked to work around instruments. Even if it was at fuckin shitty ass guitar center, it was cool. Then I worked every day of the week. I only had one day off. I basically worked from 10 until 8 at night, and I drove an hour to work in the morning and an hour home. I didn't ever get to do the stuff that I wanted to do, that I thought would be more possible because I worked in a music store. Then shit just keep getting more and more corpo and sales-oriented and weird. I sort of had this panic attack one day. I and talked to my friend in Orlando and I was like, "Dude, I'm just getting the fuck out of Jacksonville. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but all I need to do is get out of here." It's only an hour away. It's a quick move. I moved to Orlando. I worked at a vegetarian café that was family-run. I was the only employee besides the family. And I played music with my friend Curtis. We started Woven Bones up as a two piece band. When the economy crashed, a bunch of shit went awry at the restaurant. A bunch of equipment broke, like the air conditioner broke and shit. They were all kinda like, bumming around. I was like, "I know I'm the only person who's getting a non-family paycheck. A legit paycheck. I don't wanna beat around the bush or be a burden on you guys. Let me know. Because I've got some friends in Austin that told me I should move there. And I'm sure it wouldn't take a lot to move there." They were like, "Yeah. We were gonna tell you that we might need to let you go." I was like, "Well let me work until next Friday and just pay me out in cash and don't give me a check and I'll be out and everything will be cool." So that's what happened.

I've been able to get by. I get by by the skin of my teeth a lot. There's a lot – I dunno. It just seems each easier here right now for me. And it has since I moved here. I think that I was lucky that things kind of took off for our band in whatever way they took off. It's given me, even in a miniscule way, opportunities to make money doing design work and stuff like that. Just freelance. It's cheap here. I haven't lived in the best places. I haven't been as comfortable as I have been in the past. But I've been able to get by. At least for me and Matty. Carolyn's just now stepping into the role of casting aside things to play in a band. It's enabling. To get by and keep up. The town is supportive of music. We're lucky enough to have - for whatever strange reason, right when we started people paid attention to our band.

LL: How did that happen?

Andy: I dunno, do you?

Matty: I dunno. We're good?

Andy: Maybe we're good, I dunno. I had people who wanted to do our record – like Hozac – when it was just me. They heard songs on the internet. I moved to Austin with a bag of tools that enabled us to do things. A bag of tools that a lot of people don’t have. Record labels that wanted to do records. I told them to wait, that I would find a band and we would tour. There's a lot of bands these days that never leave the bedroom. They write cool records and it's 7 inches and stuff, but they're just bedroom projects. I was like, "I really don't wanna be one of those. If you want to spread my music around to the world or the internet or whatever, I would love to be in a real band and actually support it and try to do as much for you as you can do for me." It's worked out. Everything we have right now has been a successive thing of people hearing what we put out. I've never sent off demos to anybody. There's a lot of small record labels around, and we've tried to pick the best ones to work with who wanted to do stuff for us. It ended up being, as far as we can see right now, the right decision. We signed. Now we're on a label called Hardly Art, which is part of Sub Pop. Which is cool. We're all stoked on it. We're not rich. We didn't take a bunch of money, agree to get a big advance or anything. We're happy to have a home with a really good team of people behind us who genuinely like our band a lot. We signed for two records. So if our first record that we do with them totally tanks, they can drop us. But as long as we work on it, I doubt that will happen.

Ida is one of the founders and editors of this website. She tweets for Low Log and also has a tumblr. You can contact her at idajane[at]gmail.com.

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Interview with Sam Herring: Part 2

by Ida Griesemer

I met Sam Herring, the front man of Future Islands, on April 4th before his show at Glasslands. We strolled around a corner and sat on a little ledge and talked for a little while. This is the second and final part of the interview.

View: Part 1

LL: Who was writing the songs?
SH: Gerrit and William worked out the songs, and then I would come in and write to them. It was never successful with me writing words first and then coming to those guys, because I don't know how to speak in music language. And that kind of goes back to my hip-hop roots of freestyle, feeling a song, feeling how it makes me feel and translating that emotion into words. And also just riffing off something. Because usually when we play songs live they aren't completely written yet. It's kind of fractured. I'll have a chorus, or a first verse and a chorus, and we'll just play it and see what comes out of my mouth. If there's melodies that work I might hold on to them.
LL: So a lot of it is improvisation?
SH: Well, definitely in the beginning process of writing songs it's a lot of improv and I don't wanna say jamming, but definitely jamming and feeling things out. I mean, Gerrit's the principal songwriter now. Because now that we don't have a drummer - for the last year and a half we haven't had a drummer – so Gerrit's had to do double duty. He's doing drum programming and keyboards. That allows him to go in and take over the structure. And then William comes in. It used to be that Eric would kick something simple and those guys would work together and figure something out, but now Gerrit's taken that over. That's been interesting because Gerrit has his own mode. But it's good because we really just need things to write with. For me, I just need some music.
LL: How did the more pop feeling come about? You said that it was a little bit sloppy at first, but did it become something that you were all very comfortable with and excited about?
SH: Well, I don't know. It was always kind of shaky. I mean it was fun, no doubt. Our first band was three keyboards and a bass guitar. And then we immediately went from having the electronic drum beat to having a live drummer behind us. And for me personally, as a performer, that propelled me in a different way. I was already very charismatic and frenetic lead singer, but having the drums was dynamite under me. It became more of a punk band at first. It was much faster and much – William's bass playing style changed a lot in the very beginning. But we slowly started writing deeper songs, with Eric. But I really feel like it was after Eric left, when we got back to the three of us, that we started writing at the pace that we wanted with the songs. Future Islands really sped up. But we'd always been a pop band. Since the beginning we were making pop. Even if we weren't trying or didn't realize it, we were making pop music. It was like, catchy choruses and keyboards and dance-y drum beats – stuff like that. It was interesting for me because it allowed me more space to go as a performer, having the drums behind me. Because when that got taken away, when we were without a drummer after two years of having one, it felt really alien to not have that behind me anymore. And then I had to fight to get back to who I was before. And then I've finally found a medium between then. That power, and also that poise, as a performer. To move like I have a drum kit behind me. To know what that was like helps me to tap into that. So that's important, to me personally. I've never really thought about that before.
LL: What brought you to Baltimore?
SH: The Wham City scene. Those are really good friends of ours. Of course Dan Deacon, who is the most instrumental member of Wham City. I think the first time we played with Dan was either late 2003 or early 2004. So it was right in the beginning of Art Lord. And you know, when we got into town there were only a couple bands that were really doing anything. Valiant Thor who is now a huge warp tour band, they were like touring with Motorhead and they've done tours with the Misfits, just like, really crazy shit. They were the dudes who had been around town for a while and they were like the band. Then there was the Kick Ass, who I was a big fan of. Instrumental. At their best, they sounded like Tortoise. Really intricate metal. It's kind of like jazz-metal. And then we came along, and the scene was kind of dead and we started something up. Just started up a house party scene again. Because there had been one in the past, but nobody was really doing anything. So we started a band because we wanted to play a party, play for our friends and bring people together. So we started a small scene, a house party scene, and became pretty quickly – thanks to the Kick Ass, they put us on our first club bill, opening for them in Greeneville – and we started to get a following. So when Dan came around, his first time a guy in town booked him and asked if we would headline the show to bring this guy in. This weird noise guy. And that's when we met Dan. It was his first tour ever. We didn't really become friends that night. We met, and he enjoyed our set. It was kind of funny, because his set was so weird to me. It was different than anything I had heard or seen, and it was just kind of like – I didn't know what to make of it. And it wasn't until another six months after that when we played with him at this noise fest in Hampton, Virginia at this place called the Rat's Ward that I got to see him perform as a performer. That’s the thing – Dan's taken back the stage now, come to present time, but until we were on that tour with him this time last year, he hadn't performed on a stage in something like four or five years. He would be out in the crowd. And you don't really get to see Dan, but he was one of my favorite performers. Extremely - he just had so much energy and movement, and was a very strange, enigmatic character, like he is. But I was really drawn to that and we became friends doing that thing. And he started coming down to Greenville a lot because he was blown away by Greenville that first time, and then the subsequent times, because we had something really interesting going. We did tours with him and we would play to nobody, but in Greenville, you know, we were kings. And Dan would come and we'd just have these crazy parties and just have a good time. So we became really good friends. And then basically he moved to Baltimore in the beginning of '05 or late '04, and shortly after that we did our last tour as Art Lord and the Self Portraits with Dan. And then we broke up. Even back then he was pushing us to move to Baltimore. That was at the very beginning of Wham City and Baltimore. It was kind of an entity before it was in Baltimore, at SUNY Purchase. So we eventually just got to Baltimore. When I moved to Baltimore, I thought that Future Islands was just gonna break up, because I was living in Ashville, North Carolina, Gerrit was in Greenville, William was in Raleigh. We weren't making any music. Eric had quit the band. Partly because I was a dickhead. It was a bad thing. I kinda fucked up. And I just thought it wasn't gonna happen, because Gerrit didn't want to move. He didn't want to move to Baltimore. And I was like, "I'm gonna move to Baltimore and I'm gonna start a new band and I'm gonna do my thing. There's musicians there, I'm gonna go do that. This is what I want with my life." And then William's like, "Oh, I'm gonna do that too!" And we're like, "Awesome! We can start a band!" So William actually beat me up there, he got there in November '07 and I got that January '08 and then shortly after that Gerrit split up with his long time girlfriend and was like, lonely as fuck in Greenville, North Carolina. And we're like, "Move to Baltimore!" and against his will power he moved to Baltimore. And things have been great for us. It really changed – well of course we're all finally in the city for the first time in almost two years. I was cleaned up, doing really good, was happy about stuff, and had my friends again. And it was interesting because I had to re-learn that friendship. My oldest friends, but it was kind of weird at first because I had been away for so long. I mean you know, you change, you grow. It's weird to think, because I'm turning 26 next month, but that was only – I was 23 when I moved to Baltimore. Because I felt so much older. I felt like an old man. But I wasn't that old. So we got up there and things were cool. We had a lot of friends. It was mainly because of the friends, and just knowing that something was going on there. But it really helped us because we didn't really fit into North Carolina. We were always just seen as this weird dance band, because we were a dance band and there aren't really a lot of dance bands in North Carolina. Or bands that don't use a guitar. Everybody would write us up and write us off as weirdo, bizarre musicians. And then when we got to Baltimore is was like, "These guys are the new serious guys in Wham City." And we were like, "Whoaaa! We're serious, man!" We were so happy. And now we go back to North Carolina and they're like, "The prodigal sons have returned! They're coming back!" So we get a lot of respect now. But it was like, us going away was us trying to get out of a comfort zone. Trying to get out of that comfort zone of our college town, or our hometown, or anything that would suck us in. And Baltimore kind of put us on edge. We were a little afraid when we moved there. We were all afraid. Not only of the city but just of the circumstances and being outside a comfort zone, and that propelled us and pushed us to do something. But also it a little bit pushed us to get out of the city and go on tour! Hahaha. But also made us stronger friends, because we had each other. I do feel that that element of fear or that element of struggle does bring people together and creates strong bonds between people. You know, when you're all in it together. I mean, just getting by in general. Then again, in New York I can only imagine it's so much harder to get by because it's so fucking expensive. Baltimore is chill as far as that goes. Prices are still pretty low. I mean it is going up, because there's a lot of gentrification going on too. A ton of gentrification. So the city's being cleaned up. And that's good and bad.
It really did work. We were trying to be more serious. We went to Baltimore and we just went on tour. In the first year and half that we were there, we were gone for a year of that on the road. And that was what we wanted to be doing. We didn't have jobs, we were out of school, our girlfriends had left. It was like, "This is your life now." So it was kinda interesting.
LL: Has Baltimore remained a city that has a lot to offer for you as a creative community?
SH: Yeah. You've got the school feeding a lot of that. You've always got fresh, young kids, art students coming in, and they start their band or grab a warehouse spot and they're always making art or going to shows, and that's important. But then again, there's a huge transplant just from the outs, and I didn't really know where that started. I mean, I still feel new to Baltimore. We've only been there two years. I definitely can't speak for Baltimore, like what the city is or what it has been, because I am still one of the newbies. It's interesting. Like my friend Denny from Double Dagger, the drummer, he's one of the only musicians in Baltimore I know that is from Baltimore. And he tells me crazy stories about going to shows when he was 13, 14, 15. Just kinda wild.
It really is a hub. You have to pass through Baltimore going between the South and New York. It's always been a hub. But there's tons of musicians, a lot of artists, interesting people. People are doing things, and that's what's cool. There's always something going on. Sometimes you have to get out. I miss North Carolina a lot. We definitely won't get out of Baltimore for a little while. But we do all miss the South. That vibe. If we moved back home now it would be a bad move. We'd fall into old spells. But it's comforting. Like, "One day I shall return."

Ida is one of the founders and editors of this website. She tweets for Low Log and also has a tumblr. You can contact her at idajane[at]gmail.com.

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Interview with Sam Herring: Part 1

by Ida Griesemer

I met Sam Herring, the front man of Future Islands, on April 4th before his show at Glasslands. We strolled around a corner and sat on a little ledge and talked for a little while. I told him I grew up in New Hampshire and so he started out by telling me about his experience there seeing "one of the greatest musical performances" he's ever seen. The interview will appear in two parts. Sam and the band will be back in town this weekend to play a show at Silent Barn on Saturday, June 12th.

View: Part 2

LL: What was the crowd in Portsmith like?
SH: It was awesome. There was this band called the Texas Governor. It's a really interesting story. The guy who was the Texas Governor, his band, he had this band in the mid 90s in Boston called the Elevator Drops, and they were getting kinda big, they were touring with Blur, it was either Blur or Oasis. When they were big in the U.S. they were opening for them, and when they got into Texas - cause Dave grew up in New Hampshire – as Dave tells the story, he was blown away by all the space. And he decided right then and there that he was gonna move back to New Hampshire and marry his girlfriend. He wanted to be a father and a husband. So he quit the band in the middle of this tour, that probably would have made them take off, and then he later did the Texas Governor as a solo project. But so, the whole crazy thing was that William, our bassist, was a huge fan of the Texas Governor in high school, because he saw them open for some band, either a Frank Black show or a Smashing Pumpkins show, he saw them open and it blew him away. So William contacted him, and asked if he would play with us, so dude set up a show, and the whole thing was we got there and we thought we were gonna meet this guy, this big star, and he was just this older really sad looking guy. And he tells us this crazy story about how he just had to take his step son that day to the insane asylum, because he had a breakdown, and he's saying it in this deadpan. And we had just met him and we're like 18, 19 years old like, "Oh, man! I'm so sorry!" And then he's like, "Oh, I'm just joking," and we're like, "Haha…uhh," and he's like, "No, I really did have to do that, " and we're like, "OH FUCK!" And it was crazy, because we played in this upstairs bar. It was the first show he's playing in 2 years and he'd assembled a band just for this show, just because William was this huge fan. But it really cool though, because we became good friends with him, and because of that show he started doing more stuff and was really inspired by us, because we were making weird pop music, and he got more into writing pop songs again and having a good time with music. The show was in the Red Room in Portsmith, New Hampshire, and it was one of the greatest musical performances I've ever seen. It was really watching a man who was affected. Because we knew that he was hurting, and he still went on with the show. He was a true performer. I can only imagine seeing him in his prime. I got to see him later, but that night seeing him was like seeing a man break down. Fuckin'… It was really powerful. I mean, I try to channel that with my own performance, and I was very young at the time and impressionable, and that has always struck a chord with me, watching that show. It was amazing.
LL: Did you stay in touch with him or see him perform another time after that?
SH: Yeah, we played up in New Hampshire at least two or three more times with him, and those guys also put us on in Boston once and did a big show with us. And that was pretty cool because at that time hadn't really – and I'm trying to think – that was Future Islands. That was a Future Islands show.
LL: Where were you living at this point?
SH: This was when we were still in college in North Carolina. We were like, freshmen in college during this first tour.
LL: What was your school like in North Carolina?
SH: It was a public university. East Carolina University. Me and Gerrit, the keyboardist, we grew up together, we were best friends in high school, on the coast of North Carolina. All three of us in Future Islands are from North Carolina. Me and Gerrit grew up in a small town called Morehead City on the coast, and Willam's from a small town called Wendell. And so me and Gerrit went off to the same school. We never made music together in high school. Gerrit made music. I was into hip hop. I was an mc, and went off to college I was trying to find somebody to make beats for me, and me and William met because we have all the same art classes. ECU is a big school. It's now the 2nd biggest college in North Carolina, which is kinda crazy because it's in a small town. The town in maybe twice the size of what the university is, like the town in maybe 40 or 50 thousand, and the school is now like 30 thousand, it was like 25 when I got in. And so we went to school, and me and William met, and I found out that he made weird music, and he gave me a cd that he had made that summer called Computerness, it was one those 2 and half inch CDs, they're like the little discs. I don't even know if they make them anymore. It was a really cool thing when they came out. They had like 22 minutes of music. And William made this album that was 38 tracks, 22 minutes, called Computerness. It was a really weird album. It was kinda like Kraftwerk making music on the first Apple computer, or like, Kraftwerk's little brother making it. Like Ralf and Florian's cousins got together and made this music on their first apple, and it blew me away. Me and William started shooting off ideas, we were instant friends, very similar in what we wanted to do. So me and William had the idea and we started the first band and Gerrit came in really right after we started. We played one show and Gerrit was in, and that was as a five piece at that time. Kim was one of the musicians, and she's the girl who does our artwork, she lives in New York, she's a working artist, and an amazing artist, but she went off to graduate school and we kept going. And then our friend Beeby, who when he left Greenville after two and half years of hard work, we moved on and started Future Islands. The first band was Art Lord and the Self Portraits.
LL: So that Computerness album really struck a chord with you.
SH: Well you know, when you're 18 you're very impressionable and just into everything. And it was something different that I heard. We didn't really listen to the same things. He was really into 80s music and dance music, and I just listened to hip hop and jazz, and was just getting into post-rock like Tortoise. Lots of underground west coast hip-hop. Global Floatations, Freestyle Fellowship, CVE, a lot of weird things, and then jazz and stuff. But it was kind of that thing like, William turned me on to Kraftwerk, and I had heard of Kraftwerk but I'd never heard their music really, but I knew that Kraftwerk was the band that the first break came from. I knew the history of hip-hop. I was deep into hip-hop, and I knew that Afrika Bambaataa created the first break using that song to create Planet Rock. So I was like, "Kraftwerk! Yeah! Those dudes started hip-hop!" And William's like, "No…I didn't know that."
LL: Right. So you were making the connections. How did Future Islands, as it is now, come to be?
SH: When we started Future Islands that was the very beginning of 2006. And then actually the Texas Governor comes back into play. Art Lords started in February of '03 and we played a few shows, and when our keyboardist left - because it was the three of us and then our friend Adam Beeby – when he left town in September of '05, so we had been together for two and a half years, we just decided to quit doing Art Lord. It was a concept band and we were trying to get away from that and be more serious. Honestly, I wanted to keep going with Art Lord, but Gerrit wanted to get out of it. I think Gerrit felt like it was holding us back. And then William kind of sided with Gerrit. And then it was just the three of us, and we try to run as a democracy so I said, "Whatever. I just want to make music with you guys. I don't wanna fight over –"
LL: What did they want to do?
SH: Well, the whole thing with Art Lord was that I, you know, was a character on stage. I spoke in a German accent. I slicked back my hair. I played this character. It was a performance. And you know, my character wasn't – he was kind of a silly, asexual, narcissist figure. Just in love with himself, knowing that the world loved him. It was fun. It's a very fun thing to do.
LL: Was acting something you were interested in?
SH: I was interested in acting, but when I went to school I was trying to study performance art. I was wanting to get into conceptual art. I applied to a lot of – ECU is the only public school I applied to. I applied to San Francisco Art Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, MICA in Baltimore, where we live now. I was accepted into those schools but couldn't afford it in the end, didn't get enough scholarships to make so my parents wouldn't die. So I went to ECU. I'm glad now, but at the time it was hard for me to settle, because I had really high hopes. And ECU didn't help me with that. They're much more of a technical school. A great fine arts school. I had some really good teachers. I only really had one teacher who pushed me in a conceptual way, and I had him later in school. I dropped out after three and a half years. Art Lord ended. I had some really bad drug problems. Future Islands started up shortly after that in February of '06. That was like four or five months after I dropped out.
LL: So you left school, and then you reunited at some point?
SH: Well, it's really funny. So, in August of '05, right before our keyboardist left town and we ended Art Lord, William was talking with the Texas Governor about them coming down, because they always put us up when we play in the Northeast, but they had never come down. So William told them in August that we were gonna set up this tour for them to come down South and play with us. Then the next month Beeby left town, we broke up Art Lord, and we forgot that these guys were still expecting to tour in January or February. So they called up William in January and were like, "We're wondering how the tour's coming. Have you booked some shows?" And William's like, "Fuuuuck! I forgot! I forgot! We broke up. We're not playing together anymore." And they're like, "What?!" And we're like, "We'll get something together." So Future Islands started - out of necessity. Exactly. So we had this friend Eric who was a bassist in this technical metal band called the Kick Ass, it was in Greenville, North Carolina. And we loved Eric because he was a metal head but loved our music. Him and his girlfriend would always be in the front row dancing their asses off at our shows. So we're like, "This metal dude!" And he's an insane bassist. Amazing. But he always wanted to play drums for us. So we call up Eric and we're like, "We have to get this band together. Do you still want to play?" And he's like, "Yeah!" And the funny thing is that he had never really played drums before. He had this old electronic Simmons drum kit from like '84 or '85, which is like if you see those old videos, that's what the guys rock. They're the hexagonal pads. So it's the perfect look. Still electronic, but live. So I was working at the time as a dishwasher, and those guys got together, Gerrit, William, and Eric, and started writing songs. Then I came in one day and heard what they were doing. We basically wrote six songs in a week and a half. And did a tour a week and a half later. Just did it. And that's how Future Islands started. It was kind of this forced thing. It started off a little weird. Because Art Lord had started off as a joke, and then it became serious. It was supposed to be a conceptual art piece where I was playing this character. It was supposed to be social commentary on how we treat our pop icons and our rock stars and our art stars. And it actually works. Because the whole thing was that I was supposed to be this huge dickhead who's in love with himself and just talked down to people. And people loved it. They were just like, "This is great. This is hilarious. This is awesome." And then my character became a much sweeter, kinder, ridiculous egotist. It was hard for me to be a dickhead to my friends. The first couple shows I was trying to be rude, but it was funny, so I would just laugh. But then it got really serious because once we got past the concept and we wrote all the songs without the concept like "Little Line Drawing" and "Art School Dropout" and "Too Many Artists" and many other songs. We got into our personal feelings. And the musicians got better. Gerrit had never played keyboards before Art Lord, and now he's a fucking wizard. William had never played bass before; he'd just played guitar. Beeby had never played any instrument. I'd never played any instruments. I'd never sung in a band before. So we were just kind of feeling it out and learning things. But then Future Islands started, and it just started really fast, kind of sloppy. Really basic pop music. Synth pop.

View: Part 2

Contact Ida at idajane@gmail.com.

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Death

by Nate Blanco

Interview by Michael Pollock

Download - Death

I talked to Nate about his music in his Brooklyn apartment while his roommate hammered at a guitar pedal, trying to fix it. "Hell" will be posted next week along with part 2 of the interview.

LL: When did you record these songs?
NB: They were made at a similar point. They are actually recorder a few days a part. So “Death” was recorded a couple days before Christmas, then “Hell” was recorded a couple days after Christmas while I was in Pennsylvania at my mom’s house.
LL: Are they Christmas songs?
NB: I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t say that Christmas feels like death or hell to me. I kind of enjoy it, but some people might get a kick out of that.
LL: Are they home songs? Do you think you wrote them because you were at home or were they something you were thinking about before and that is just when you happened to have time?
NB: “Death” was definitely just on the spot. I was actually having a pretty crappy day. It was the first full day I had been home. I had gotten there the day before and no one else was there yet and I was really bored all day. I couldn’t leave the house because I didn’t have a car to use so all I was doing was watching T.V. and using the Internet. I started to feel a little crazy by the nighttime and couldn’t sleep. I was almost going out of my mind and needed a way to channel it I guess. Something to do to distract me from the way I was going crazy and it all went into the song.
LL: How did you make the song?
NB: The song is done in two parts - both parts were completely improvised. The part that I did first is the noise that you hear.
LL: The static?
NB: Yeah that’s done on the spot with my computer. It’s actually a recording of a bunch of different videos and I was switching back and forth between them really quickly. I was trying to make something out of it, kind of in that death mind frame that I was in, kind of going crazy on it. And then I improvised the piano on my computer.
LL: So it was all done on the computer?
NB: It was all done on my computer, yeah. None of those sounds are real instruments.

Contact Nate at nathanblanco@gmail.com.

Contact Michael at michaeljpollock@gmail.com.

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Interview with Luka Usmiani: Part 2

by Ida Griesemer

I talked to Luka (of Fluffy Lumbers and No Demons Here) on Saturday, April 3rd. This is the second half of a 2 part interview.

View: Part 1

LL: Does Liam [the Younger] play in a band, or is he always solo?
LU: He has a band. We're actually playing at Swarthmore. I play bass with him, I think at this point.
LL: What is it called?
LU: It's just, Liam the Younger. I think he comes up with a new name every time, so I don't want to say anything in case it's wrong. My friend Ian Dykstra usually plays drums, but he's in Italy right now so Sam's playing drums for Liam for the time being.
We were all going to go down to South by Southwest, a bunch of us, but it ended up just being Fluffy Lumbers and Big Troubles.
At this point, with this generation who is four years younger than Real Estate and Titus, it's just like, everyone has their own band, and we all play in each other's bands.
LL: That's similar to what they're doing too.
LU: Yeah, that’s true. Fluffy Lumbers and Big Troubles, and then the few times that I've played with a full band, it's the same people. It's Fluffy Lumbers and Big Troubles, with us switched around. Now this new lineup that Liam has, it's two guys from Fluffy Lumbers, and his other guitarist has played in Fluffy Lumbers numerous times, so it's a just a rearranging.
LL: Who are the other similar members between Fluffy Lumbers and Big Troubles, besides you?
LU: Alex Craig plays guitar.
LL: Is he coming tonight?
LU: I don't know. Because there's a Big Troubles show tonight. Hopefully he will come up. My friend Ian Drennan is also in Big Troubles, he's the other half. He usually plays guitar with us, but he lives in Boston, so it's hard for him to come down for shows a lot, so we have my friend Sebastian to fill in for him. And then my friend Ian Dykstra who plays with Liam, used to play drums for us, but he lives in Pennsylvania when he's in school, and now he's in Italy, so we're currently without a drummer. But our friend Andrew came down from Massachusetts to drum for us tonight.
LL: So there's a lot of shuffling happening because everyone's in different places.
LU: Yeah. They're not really bands. They're just projects that we all help out with. It's fun that way. To have a shuffle. To hear Fluffy Lumbers tonight might be different than hearing Fluffy Lumbers ever again.
LL: What was the dynamic like at South by Southwest with the two bands? Was it hard to coordinate?
LU: It wasn't hard to coordinate, because we only had 3 or 4 shows each. It was weird because we were supposed to have a drummer for South by Southwest for Fluffy Lumbers, but he got too high and got caught by the cops and had a lot of court dates, and just said, "I can't do it." So me and Sam tried to do a dual thing with a buttload of pedals. And according to Sam it worked, twice, in New York. And then for some reason it didn't work in Austin, and the shows were mediocre, to say the least. It was very last minute. We tried to organize what we would do, but I feel like it's very hit or miss for how long we practiced, which was not very long. I think we just lucked out the first two times, and the last few times were pretty bad.
LL: Do you think it was the setting too? Do you think there's more support in this area?
LU: Definitely not. I mean, there were a lot of people at the first show at South by Southwest, so I guess the “support” was there. I don't know, I don't find a lot of support in Brooklyn, or anything like that. They just look at you. So you just look back. It's fine.
LL: Was it a different feeling in Texas?
LU: No, not at all. If anything I liked the second show better because I think we played to three people. It was more interesting to watch three people watch us, like actually watch us, than to look at a dark room.
I liked playing shows when we were on tour. I liked playing in Memphis. As Big Troubles we were playing in Memphis, and the kids really like it when a band comes by. In Charleston - this is Fluffy Lumbers now - we played in a t.v. museum. A media museum. We played among old projectors and t.v.'s that they had from the 40s or earlier. We played to like, twenty kids, but all these Charleston kids always hang out. They were really nice. Those were some of the best crowds. They really come out for it.
LL: They're more attentive?
LU: Well, you just feel like you're actually playing for people, as opposed to like, playing a show. I went to that show thinking, "I'm playing for these kids in Charleston," rather than, "I'm going to Brooklyn to play a show, and then I'm going home."
LL: So you feel more connected to the audience?
LU: Yeah. Especially when you're trying to get a place to stay that night. It works that way too.
LL: What do you think the show will be like tonight?
LU: I don't know. Last time I booked a show here, I had Fluffy Lumbers and Pants Yell! play, and no one came. It was a Wednesday though. I don't know. I don't have much faith in kids coming out here. I'm trying to get more shows here. I think I only see two shows a year here, tops. It's hard to get anything done here. People don't answer your emails.
LL: So your No Demons Here project, was that what you started recording on your own, and then you got involved in these other projects as people heard that music?
LU: I just started it on my own, planning it to be just on my own. I wrote a bunch of songs, and I was told that they were good, and I kept doing it.
LL: Who gave you that feedback?
LU: My friends. Liam and Sam. The Ians. I had a lot of support from them, so I kept doing it, and playing in Big Troubles and playing in Fluffy Lumbers has really- it changes the way you write a song, or the way you hear a song, being in a band. Sam writes really good pop songs. I wouldn't normally say my songs are pop, but I’ve tried to go into a mindset like that when I'm writing new songs. I try to think, Let me try to write a pop song, because this is what I hear a lot, playing his songs over and over again. And Big Troubles has a specific element to it, so I try to think, Let me try to do this. Let me see what they do, and let me try to do it too. Because playing those songs over and over again, it almost becomes second nature. Like, I'll play the song, but let me play it this way. Because I hear it so much. It turns into this weird, hybrid. From the pool that they're grabbing from, I start to grab from. None of this has been recorded yet, though. None of my new songs. We'll see how it translates on tape.
LL: When are you planning to record them?
LU: Over the summer. I'm too busy now.
LL: It's interesting that you said that they're not really bands, and more projects. What direction do you see them taking? Do see one group becoming more solidly like, "This is a band"?
LU: We're all friends, so I think we'll stick to each other. But if someone can't do it I don't think there are any hard feelings. I feel like I am comfortable to say, "I can't do this." I don't have to consider the band as a priority in my life. It's fun. I don't want it to become a job. I just think it's fun. As long I do it with friends. I mean, it's fun to play big shows, but I'd rather just have fun doing it, than stress out about it, or worry about making money off of it. So that's why I like it being a project and not a band. Even though I think some people like seeing a band. Looking at a group of people and knowing that it's a solid thing, a packaged thing almost.
I think it's nice to keep the same members sometimes, if anyone's paying attention.
There's a certain easiness to look at a band and say, "It's this." I feel like there's a weird mystery when you have one person doing it and everyone shuffles in the back. There are great bands that do that, and I find those bands interesting. I find the person interesting then. Like that band the Lilys just has the main guy and his backing band always changes. And I find that cool. It's his project and every record sounds really different, but it's still the Lilys. And Cass McCombs, every time I saw him he was playing with a different backing band. So that was cool to see.
The stasis is cool, though. You could go either way, now that I think about it. I like seeing the same people all the time.
LL: What about for your own project?
LU: I record songs and then if someone makes a suggestion and I usually go back and rerecord it and see what happens. I'm open to that. But I've never had the experience to actually sit down with a band like, "Let's write this song," or something like that. My songs definitely translate differently as a live band, which has only happened three times. I played with Sam and Alex and Ian from Big Troubles. I've never actually reached any content-ness with what I wanted the live band to sound like. But I'm in no rush. Everyone's busy with their stuff, and I'm content with just recording and not having to worry about it.
I've been trying to work out a solo set, which I'm trying out tonight. I'm opening.
LL: So it's you and then Fluffy Lumbers?
LU: Maybe.
LL: What do you mean, "Maybe?"
LU: Well, depending on when Alex gets here.

Ida is one of the founders and editors of this website. She tweets for Low Log and also has a tumblr. You can contact her at idajane[at]gmail.com.

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Interview with Luka Usmiani: Part 1

by Ida Griesemer

On Saturday, April 3rd, I went up to my (and a lot of LL's) alma mater, Sarah Lawrence, for a Fluffy Lumbers show. The plan was also to interview Luka Usmiani, bassist in the band and guy behind No Demons Here. It was a warm evening, we sat on the steps behind Marshall Fields, talked about fireworks and bad album names. We also talked about the following. The interview will appear in 2 parts.

View: Part 2

LL: How long has Fluffy Lumbers been playing together?
LU: I guess since last summer. At the beginning of the summer Sam asked me to play, because we were going to Miami. So those were our first shows. He didn't want to go alone, so he wanted to get a band together.
LL: So Sam was already calling himself Fluffy Lumbers, and he had something booked in Miami?
LU: Well, he had been doing Fluffy Lumbers for maybe a year and a half at that point, and it'd just been solo stuff that he did on keyboards. Then he released a 7” on Weird Hug Records, which is based in Miami and Chicago. They had a festival in Miami and they invited him to play.
LL: What made him decide to bring a band?
LU: I think he didn't want to drive alone. And I guess he wanted to try out the whole band sound. I guess that's the ideal set up for him.
LL: How did you meet each other?
LU: The summer prior to being in the band, we just had a lot of mutual friends, so we just started hanging out. And then we became internet friends through the year - he went to school in Boston, now he transferred here - but we would just talk all the time. We had a lot of interests in common, so he asked me to play bass.
LL: So this was just last year?
LU: Yeah, I finished my freshman year, and then I met him over the summer. Well, I knew who he was, I saw him maybe once or twice, but people always said that we were very similar, so it was weird to finally start hanging out with him. Because I still don't see it.
LL: You'd seen him play before?
LU: No, I mean I have seen him play in other bands he was in, like some pop/punk band he was in, and this band Frat Dad, I saw that. I knew who he was. And he liked a lot of the bands that were happening in Glen Rock.
LL: Can you talk about what Glen Rock is like?
LU: Yeah. It's a suburb in New Jersey near New York. I guess it's an average suburb. It's mostly upper middle class to upper class it's cool, I mean, when I moved there when I was in fourth grade it felt like a t.v. show, almost. I almost felt like I was in "Happy Days." The architecture of the schools was still in the 1940's. So it was very weird to come from - I had lived in another town over the George Washington bridge called Fort Lee. The school there was very 70's and 80's looking, so it was weird to go back in time like that. And just the general demographics of my home town changed, so I felt like I was going into this weird, fabled, New England American dream type thing. I hadn't really come into contact with that, other than t.v.
LL: When did you start playing music?
LU: I had taken piano since I was five till I was fourteen or fifteen. And then in between that I learned how to play guitar. But I didn't really start writing music till my sophomore year.
LL: Did you play in bands in high school at all?
LU: No. I played in one band briefly when I was in eighth grade. But I hurt my hand and they said they didn't want me to play anymore. I hurt my hand in volleyball in gym, and I said "I can't play today," and they said, "Well, if you can't play today, you can't play at all." They were trying to be serious about it.
LL: So you mainly just played on your own, took lessons…
LU: Yeah, I took lessons on my own in the beginning high school. Then I just faded out of doing music really until my freshman year of college. I was bored in my room so I just started playing again.
LL: What made you get back into it?
LU: I guess talking with Sam really helped. My friend Liam was doing four track recordings through high school and that was inspiring to me.
LL: Liam went to Glen Rock High?
LU: Yeah. And having the band Titus Andronicus loom over us in our town was like, "I wanna do this, I wish I could do this." And then by sophomore year, I would talk to Sam, and I guess he egged me on to try recording, and I recorded, and got better at it, and bought more equipment, and kept doing it.
LL: Did you go to shows locally when you were in high school?
LU: Yeah, I went to a couple local shows towards the end. I didn't really come into my group of friends until senior year of high school, so they know more about it. I hear stories about them. Pat from Titus Andronicus would have these concerts called Pat Stock, which was a response to Glen Stock, which our high school had to support yearbooks or whatever. So his band Seizing Elian would play, which was his band prior to the band that was prior to Titus Andronicus. The whole Glen Rock / Ridgewood music scene, quote unquote, like the guys from Real Estate and Titus Andronicus– I guess that all happened and went. So when they graduated high school they were doing their own things. So it almost segregated again. Cause there was a lot of shi- I don't know. Whatever the Ridgewood kids my age were doing at this point, was really not happening in conjunction with the Glen Rock kids. It was just that we weren't really hanging out with the guys in Ridgewood, in terms of music. And at that point in Glen Rock it was some punk bands that had their own scene that was kind of aside from us, and then my friend Liam was in a band called VCR with this guy Sarim who is in Liquor Store now. There was a metal band too, Cranial Damage. Not that it fell apart, but the towns were more separate communities then.
LL: So there was a period of time when the towns were more connected?
LU: I guess. I don't know, I was too young. I was a freshman in high school and I didn't really hang out with those kids. It was happening more when they were in high school, really in high school, and I was in eighth grade. And then freshman year they were all seniors, so they were finishing that up.
LL: But it felt like there was a crossover? People from Glen Rock would go to those shows?
LU: Definitely. There were house shows that people would put on, and it would be before kids had drivers' licenses. They would walk to the next town, which is kind of a hike, to get to the houses. That was a scene that I spectated, cause I wasn't really part of that group of friends yet. And it - I guess not fell apart, everyone just went to college and did their own thing.

View: Part 2

Ida is one of the founders and editors of this website. She tweets for Low Log and also has a tumblr. You can contact her at idajane[at]gmail.com.

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Family Road Trip

by Hank May

Interview by Hannah May

Download - Family Road Trip


The first time I ever heard my brother's song “I'm Going Home to Night” was back in the summer of 2005. I was about to start college and Hank had just turned fifteen, and we were in the car with my mom heading somewhere on the freeway. Hank had played some of his songs for me before but this one was stronger and more confident than his earlier recordings, and it marked a new beginning in Hank's lifelong commitment to rock and roll. This time, his voice didn't shy away from his articulate, surreal lyrics. Over the past couple of years I’ve heard Hank play “I’m Going Home Tonight” in backyards in Studio City, at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, on Arkansas porches during family reunions, in a loft in Bushwick, and most recently in the basement of a bar in Flatbush. Sometimes he’s accompanied by a trumpet and drums and an upright bass and his best friend on guitar, and sometimes he’s all by himself. Sometimes he screams so hard he has to pause the show to puke, and thankfully there’s usually a friend nearby prepared with a plastic bag.

Now Hank’s about to wrap up his Sophmore year at Bard College and over the past few years he’s created a collection of gorgeous, passionate, intelligent songs. Even though he spends most of his time in the woods of upstate New York, the songs on the upcoming album belong largely to the city where we grew up. Hank describes the beauty of pigeons, asphalt, and broken glass, and the songs are complex and intricate enough to accurately mirror life in Los Angeles. L.A. becomes a "treacherous city," full of crooked cops and privileged kids with selfish grins, but it's also home, a place where “the sound of traffic keeps you safe at night.” I got my brother to answer a few questions about his song writing process and what's in store for Rock Dove's future.

LL: Hank, when can we expect an actual album? Or does making a real album even matter, in terms of how you've been distributing your music so far (mostly online through your website)?
HM: I really want to make an album, but I'm growing tired of the songs that i had originally planned to include. The album loses songs by the month. Songs are discarded quicker than they are written.
I think a real album does matter. I'm not happy with the way I've been sharing my music, throwing up half-ass recordings that I never completed.
LL: So the songs on your website might not make it onto the album?
HM: Those will probably make it onto the album. Maybe not "Passing Out Coupons on Hollywood Blvd."
LL: No! I love that song. Anyway, how do you think being in college has affected your song writing?
HM: College is not an atmosphere conducive to prolific songwriting. It has slowed me down. Living in a building with lots of kids and paper-thin walls keeps me from screaming my songs, and I scream them at home in Los Angeles in May Day, the room my father carved out of the garage for me and others to use as a studio. That sort of freedom to scream inspires the lyrics a lot of the time.
But living in the woods has brought the plants, animals, and tranquility into my lyrics, "City Boy" and "Speed Trap" as clear examples.
LL: Yeah, I was going to ask about "Speed Trap" in particular because it seems to be about ambivalence to city life.
HM: Yes, and "City Boy" too, but less ambivalence and more disgust.
LL: Do you want to talk about some of your influences, musical and otherwise? I know you reference a Sherwoord Anderson story in "The Roaring Land."
HM: Not really, but yeah Winesburg, Ohio is in that song, and so is Speak/Memory, for the record: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" and also the lines about a home video of your family without you before you.
LL: Ok, what about a favorite show memory?
HM: Rock Dove shows began as polite and humble affairs. We were sober for the first couple. But they quickly turned wild, angry, and infinitely more fun. That was around the time that the Hank May moniker was dropped and Rock Dove was born. The first show as Rock Dove was the first show that caused me to puke (maybe not, but that's a good lie).
LL: The puking seems to have settled down.
HM: Yes.
LL: But I always loved seeing Djavan ready with a bag.
HM: I've built up a tolerance to rock and roll. Our greatest show was at Bridget Rodman's house for Winter Wondercall in a small living room packed with kids and Djavan between me and the crowd with two crucial jobs: protecting my pedals from the mosh pit and holding the plastic bag for me to vomit in while still strumming.
Many noses bled that night.
LL:if you could see any band play that you've never seen before, who would it be?
HM: Living or dead?
LL: Either.
HM: Elliott Smith. I've been listening to Elliott Smith all day. But yeah, Elliott Smith or a Modest Mouse show during the mid-90s.
I'd do some terrible things for that time traveling trip.
LL: Also, if you could go on tour with an current band, who would it be?
HM:I'm thinking American Princes or Magic Hassle[Our cousin David Slade's bands].
LL: That would be so much fun.
HM: I know right!?
LL: I would be so jealous. Off topic, but did you see mom's Dublin photos and dad's new hat?
HM: YES. At first I saw it sort of hidden under an umbrella, I think, and then I saw it fully exposed. Wonderful hat.
LL: It's really something. So, do you usually start the songwriting process with lyrics, or with music? And how collaborative is the process when you include instruments like trumpets and cellos?
HM: The songs usually begin as musical skeletons to be dressed with the flesh of my lyrics, which either come separate from the music or out of the melodies themselves.
I usually write all the parts and then teach them to my friends. However, Patrick Taylor writes his own bass lines and Luke Silas comes up with most of the drum parts, but I write the trumpet parts on Finale. And I write the guitar parts and teach them to Xander [Whistler], and he writes guitar parts for me to play in Pilgrim [Xander's band]. I think we should start a third band that's entirely collaborative.
LL: Ok, one last question: if Rock Dove was a food, what food would it be?
HM: Is that a serious question?
LL: Yes! Well, no. Kind of.
HM: It would a pot brownie and a shot of whiskey.

Visit Hank at www.hankmay.com.
Contact Hannah at hmay@gm.slc.edu.

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Alex Bleeker Interview: Part 6

by Ida Griesemer

This interview with Alex Bleeker (of the Ridgewood, New Jersey bands Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks) took place on January 13, 2010. It will appear in six parts.

View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

In which Alex discusses the dynamics of the band members and the different projects they are involved in.
LL: The other thing I was curious about is how – I mean, you’re involved in a lot of different projects right now and it seems like you and the group of people that you work with are doing something unique, in that you’re sort of trading off front man responsibilities and you all take turns writing songs. I know you all back up Julian when he plays sometimes, and you have your own album, and Real Estate. What is it about your friendship dynamic that allows you to take those different roles so fluidly?
AB: I think it’s fluid in one degree, but I also think that it’s not all the same band. So there’s something to be said for that too. We have to allow whole different bands to have their space in order for it to work. I think that’s the balance that we found, but I definitely think there is a little bit of struggle in terms of like, Well, this is when I’m… and this is when you are. And maybe if we were a different kind of band then Real Estate could accommodate all of those things into one.
LL: I mean it’s hard to imagine because you really –
AB: The aesthetics are different.
LL: The aesthetics are different, but also it’s just that responsibility and that attention, being the person in front who wrote the songs. I mean, in a lot of bands that’s where the tensions arise, when one person’s in front and the other people need more of that attention but aren’t getting it.
AB: Totally. I mean, there will be times when I’ll bring a song to Real Estate practice and Martin will be like, This sounds like a Freaks song. And I’ll be like, What does that mean? You know, why can't – And, there’s validity in it. I understand what he’s saying, because that song did become a Freaks song.
LL: Did you write some of the Real Estate songs?
AB: Martin is definitely the chief songwriter. There's a couple of songs on the record that are accredited to Martin as the chief songwriter, and a few of them came out of more like, jams. I think we’re reaching a really good balance now where Martin will - he definitely has good control over the sound that we’ve all agreed is our sound. It’s something that we like. He’ll bring something maybe three quarters of the way finished to practice, or the general structure of a song, and we’ll fill it in. I like the way that that’s been happening. He’ll play something and he’ll be like, find something in the bass. And he’ll just repeat it –
LL: Can you think of a song specifically?
AB: Especially a song that’s nobody’s heard yet, that’s brand new. We’ll probably play it on the tour. We don’t even have a name for it yet. He’d just play the verse over and over again and I’d add something that I find, so we’d each get to contribute creatively. So sometimes it works like that. Sometimes he has a song 100 percent down and it’s great and I’m like, Yeah. Cool. That’s my part. That’s awesome. And then sometimes it will totally evolve. Like, “Suburban Beverage” is just a jam that we were playing together that summer that I was talking about. And then we recorded all of our practices on cassette. And we listened to it, and as loose as the structure is, we gave it a little bit more of a solid structure, and that’s a song that we wrote together because we were just jamming. And I don’t know if you’ve heard the Reality EP? It’s kind of like the companion to the Real Estate record. It just came out Mexican Summer. It’s really short, it’s like six songs, that were sort of demo-y or we couldn’t put on the record for whatever reason. Also just stuff that we were throwing around that we liked. The first song on that is just like, us hanging out in Martin’s apartment and turning the tape machine on and playing, and we were like oh, that sounds good, and we cut an excerpt out of it that we liked, and that’s a song on the record. Sometimes it works like that.

video via pixelhorse

LL: Ok. And the other times are when – you mentioned that one time when you wrote a song and Martin said that it sounded like a Freaks song and then it ended up…
AB: Yeah, I mean, because he has that creative control. He has the power of veto. But we can all bring stuff to the table.
LL: Did the Freaks happen because you wanted more…
AB: I’ve been writing my own songs for a long time. And when I realized that it was possible to put a formal band together and put a record out, that was really exciting. I just wanted an outlet. And I do think it’s true that a lot of the songs on that album wouldn’t fit so well stylistically into a Real Estate set. We used to play “Epilogue” live, as Real Estate, for the first couple shows. And it was great, but we all sort of agreed, This just kind of sticks out. It’s noticeable. So the Freaks just sort of formed out of my desire to have an outlet for all the songs I had been writing.
LL: When did the band come together?
AB: Summer, I guess, was when the name Alex Bleeker and the Freaks existed. And we recorded the album in July. But some of those are old songs, some of them are songs I wrote 10 years ago, and some of them are songs I wrote two days before we made the record. So it’s kind of a mix. Sort of like what I was saying about the Real Estate album. You have your whole life to make your first record, and you have seven months to make your second.
LL: And then with Julian, that’s a whole other aspect.
AB: That’s just an honor. I see Julian as like – I hold him in the highest regard musically, out of all of us. I think we all kind of always have. There’s something otherworldly going on about him and his songwriting. It’s just super beautiful. And since high school I think we’ve sort of looked at him as – at least I have, I’ll speak for myself – he’s always been prolific. He’ll make two or three records a year, as long as I’ve known him. And they just continue to push boundaries or do new things. Often times Julian will get somewhere, and then his influence will trickle down, later. I mean, I definitely noticed a marked influence on Matt – I mean, on Julian from Matt. Which was cool to see it go the other way.
LL: The Ducktails record?
AB: Yeah. Just in terms of the fidelity of Julian’s records and his style, his guitar playing style. I think Matt had some influence on that, which is good, because it hadn’t really happened like that when we were kids.
LL: So you can see it evolving as you get older?
AB: Totally. You know, that’s a role that we fall into so easily because we did that so much in high school - just like, play Julian’s songs. He’s a good delineator. But he’s someone who - it’s not equal parts creative when you play behind him, really, which is great. You’re doing your own little variation and he’s like, play it this way. He’s super specific about his music.
LL: He has a really clear vision of what he’s going for.
AB: Yeah. Totally.
LL: He doesn’t play live that much.
AB: He does but not – well, he doesn’t live here. That’s one thing. He’s in grad school right now in Wisconsin. So he’ll have Brooklyn shows when he’s back for breaks. And that live show, playing songs off his record, that doesn’t happen very often. He had an aversion to playing songs live for a while. He would do these really beautiful improvisational sets and have somebody do a drone or a shruti box, which is a traditional Indian accompaniment instrument. It sounds kind of like a harmonium because it’s one chord. And then he would play clarinet over it. Improvisational, beautiful clarinet. Super new age-y. He did a bunch of that last summer.
LL: Did he release that ever?
AB: He should do a live record. He really should. That’s a good idea. He’s definitely got that element of like – Julian can play clarinet.
LL: Did he have that same guitar teacher?
AB: He did.
LL: Maybe Tony was more pleased with him. He could play clarinet.
AB: I think that Julian was definitely more of a star student that Matt and I were. He practiced more and he had more of the traditional theory ability. But he would be bold. Julian used to be really into Van Halen and so he’d put nine gauge strings on his guitar so he could finger tap and stuff, and Tony was like, pfffft.
LL: I had one more idea about the weather. How does the weather influence what kind music you guys play?
AB: I think it influences it a lot, actually. I’m putting out a new 7” with Group Tightener. And that’s got a wintry cover. And I think it sounds wintry. Because it’s the winter now. It’s cold now, people wear coats. I think so. I think seasons have an affect on everything that I do all time.
LL: And music is another outlet for expressing what’s happening.
AB: I like winter. It’s too long though.

View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Contact Ida at idajane@gmail.com.

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Alex Bleeker Interview: Part 5

by Ida Griesemer

This interview with Alex Bleeker (of the Ridgewood, New Jersey bands Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks) took place on January 13, 2010. It will appear in six parts.

View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6

In which Alex confronts the confusion of having critics who are also friends.
LL: Do you have moments when you have to take a break and step away and say you’re not going to look at music blogs this week?
AB: Yeah, I mean I don’t – I do – I’m not a big blogoshere person. I have an awareness of it. And that’s what’s strange too - these people become your friends. There’s a community composed of not only musicians but press people, or whatever…
LL: I was curious about Chocolate Bobka, specifically. Did you know him before?
AB: No! But we gchat everyday, you know, McGregor and I.
LL: Because he started writing about you guys?
AB: Yeah. He started coming to a lot of shows and we started reading his blog. I think his blog - I’m not really sure, but I think his blog has grown a lot in the past year also.
LL: It’s one I find myself going back to a lot.
AB: Yeah, I mean, as a person writing for a blog, are you inspired by McGregor?
LL: Definitely. And the fact that he ties it together with curating shows too, that he’s involved in that way, is definitely inspiring to me.
AB: Yeah. I mean I think he’s great, and I really respect him as a person and what he does. He’s definitely a huge figure in whatever’s happening in Williamsburg right now, and New York City. But that gets confusing, because what if we put out a record that McGregor hates?
LL: Right. Are you still friends?
AB: Yeah. And isn’t he obligated as a person of the press to be honest about it? But is he obligated as a personal friend to keep giving us positive press? I’m not sure sometimes, what my relationship with him is. I find that we definitely are friends, and I want to consider him my friend, but I think that he recognizes these things too and often has to separate himself, because that is the nature of our relationship.
LL: Because it comes back to - that’s how it started.
AB: Yeah. As a critic. It’s weird. Because we were just at a bar the other night and I was like, I like that we’ve become friends. And I know that that is true because I consider him a friend of mine, we have a good relationship, a friendship, but I could tell that he was hesitant to confirm it. He kind of looked at me and was like, yeah. Because that’s the nature of it. For both of us. And that sucks.
LL: I’m wondering if that’s still possible. Can you be friends and also have someone –
AB: I mean, we are friends.
LL: Right, I know. I guess it’s just – there has to be a lot of trust involved. Even among your band members, or the different projects that you work with, it’s still such a delicate thing. Looking at it like, Alright. We’ve known each other for so long. Obviously we’re really close friends with really strong ties, but even with those people I’m sure it’s tricky to be able to have a conflict about your views.
AB: Totally. I mean, I think it’s safe within our community. People are gonna be honest with each other and it’s nice, but then I definitely have – it took Julian a long time to come around to my record because he was self-conscious about his playing on it. He was sort of critical of it when I played it for him, and that really hurt my feelings in this way, but I appreciated his honesty.
LL: When you played the Freaks record?
AB: The Freaks record. After I finished mixing it. I mean obviously I shared it because he played on it, but –
LL: He was being sort of hard on himself?
AB: I think that’s what it became sort of about. Because his playing is featured really prominently in a way that he doesn’t normally play, you know, that sort of raw shredding.
LL: “The Shredder.”
AB: Yeah. And he later wrote me an email about it, and was like, I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about the way I reacted to the record this summer, I think I was self-conscious about my playing. But, definitely, it can be intense if you bring something to the table and people aren’t immediately complimentary. But it’s also – I wouldn’t trade that immediate community that we have to share our music with each other.
LL: Yeah. How did you react to that?
AB: It made me upset! I wanted him to like it, but I also knew that I really liked the record and I didn’t want to change it. So I just stayed strong.
LL: You felt good about it.
AB: Definitely. And then I sent it to Ari from Underwater Peoples and he was really excited about it and said that he wanted to put it out. Outside reactions were strong, so I just trusted them. Yeah, when it’s something about friendship – you can be friends with someone when they don’t like your album – and definitely, Julian’s someone that I really, really respect.

View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6

Contact Ida at idajane@gmail.com

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Alex Bleeker Interview: Part 4

by Ida Griesemer

This interview with Alex Bleeker (of the Ridgewood, New Jersey bands Real Estate and Alex Bleeker and the Freaks) took place on January 13, 2010. It will appear in six parts.

View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6

In which Real Estate finds their name when Martin’s parents offer all four band members jobs in their realty firm.
LL: How did the name Real Estate happen?
AB: I guess it was because over the summer Martin was going to real estate school to get his realtor’s license. His parents are realtors so he had this safety net job as a realtor. And we were having the like – I’m sure you’re very familiar with it – the common post-college existential crisis, like, What are we going to do with our lives? We’ve been so sheltered and institutionalized for the past 16 years. We don’t wanna get jobs! How do we even get jobs if we wanna get jobs? And so Martin was doing this thing, and we were having dinner and his parents were like, You guys can all work for us if you got your real estate licenses. And we were like, What if we all went to real estate school and all were realtors, and we also had a band, and we called it Real Estate. It was a just a joke. And when the band became an actual band and we had a show booked – our first show was two Octobers ago – we needed a name and that was the only thing… And we thought it sounded vaguely like a soft rock staple, sort of like Steely Dan, I don’t know why. For some reason we were interested in that kind of aesthetic.
LL: What about the Steely Dan aesthetic was appealing to you?
AB: Especially Etienne and myself, but also the other guys, got really into soft rock for some reason. We wanted to make music that was like – and in a way we’ve achieved it with Real Estate – music that was like, smooth. Laid back, you know, head bobbing, grooving. And so that was sort of the original inspiration for the band, and we wanted the name to fit that. I definitely think we have stronger influences than bands like Fleetwood Mac or Steely Dan, but that sort of idea was attractive to us at the time.
LL: It’s interesting that you felt connected to that kind of music because it was at a time when you were like, Are we gonna be realtors? Are we really gonna do this as our job? I mean, we could. And that’s sort of a serious thing.
AB: Totally. And you know Martin, who’s the front man of the band, is. He goes to work at his parents’ real estate office when we’re not on tour.
LL: I love that. It’s so literal.
AB: Yeah. I mean it’s definitely become totally associated with us that we’re from New Jersey. We’re these very normal, typical suburban kids. A you-know-these-guys kind of aesthetic.
LL: Well it’s familiar to you guys, because that’s where you are.
AB: True, but I think we’re interested in appealing to common experiences. You know, we wanna make it clear that I think our music is relatable because it’s coming from an honest place where we’re those kids that played music in high school. We just never stopped.
LL: So if that’s where you’re coming from, where do you think you’re going as a band? What do you think is most crucial?
AB: I think we need to – right now we’re experiencing a lot of success, which is really exciting, but can also be really intimidating. Because when we wrote these songs, when Martin wrote these songs and when the band formulated and when we started – you know, I think Martin is the chief songwriter of Real Estate for sure, but I think a lot of our appeal, especially the appeal about the live show, is it’s obvious that we know each other and that we’re having a lot of fun and that we have a deep musical connection. We didn’t meet each other for the purposes of being in a band together. This is something that we’re all passionate about, in different ways, but we’re on a similar wavelength, and I think the magic of Real Estate comes from that. It comes from that long friendship and pure love that’s come into the creation of it. And we had 10 years to develop that, in a way. Even though all the songs that were on the record were written within the span of a year, there was no pressure to write them. It took us five years to arrive at this specific sound that makes sense for the four of us to play together. And you know, we’re going to have the opportunity to put out a second record, and now there’s a different kind of anticipation for that record, or a different kind of attention going on. I think right now it’s important for us to stay calm and to stay grounded. Take everything as it comes. We’re about to have a really busy year. We’re doing a lot of traveling.
LL: Do you feel yourself floating and getting a little bit detached at times?
AB: I mean, it becomes more of like a – when you play shows every night it’s great, it’s a dream come true, it’s amazing - it’s also a job. So we have to keep the spark and the energy there. We have to want to play together. We have to be careful and look out for each other’s feelings, and we also have to not worry - in a weird way this is funny because this is a press-related moment – we have to not care about the press. You know, we have to write good songs, we have to evolve naturally, and not try to cater to a sound that we’ve been pinned to. We don’t have to write songs about the summer. It’s about not being compelled to be anything and to allow the music to come organically, which can be scary and hard now that you can read people’s comments about you on Brooklyn Vegan. Which is the worst feeling in the world, in a way. My darkest moments are when I go scour the internet for hate comments about our band. You look for the bad things, or you anticipate the backlash because you know it has to come, because we’re getting a lot of positive attention.

View: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6

Contact Ida at idajane@gmail.com

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