L.A. RECORD ISSUE 123

ISSUE 123 • FREE COACHELLA SXSW • RSD 2016

PLAGUE VENDOR • ANTWON • VUM • GENEVA JACUZZI ALEX COX AND ALLISON ANDERS • COURTNEY BARNETT THE FEELIES • LINAFORNIA • JAMMA DEE • SAMIYAM ANIMAL COLLECTIVE • CARL STONE • LAFMS AND MORE

U P C O M I N G

G O L D E N VO I C E

3/25

FONDA THEATRE

Poliรงa

3/25 & 3/26

ORPHEUM THEATRE

Joanna Newsom

3/29

EL REY

3/31

EL REY

4/13

FOX THEATER POMONA

4/18 & 4/19

SHRINE EXPO HALL

4/21

FONDA THEATRE

4/23

CLUB NOKIA

4/29

GREEK THEATRE

4/29

EL REY

5/13

GREEK THEATRE

Goldenvoice, KCSN & Emporium present

5/19

GREEK THEATRE

Goldenvoice & FYF present

7/14 & 7/15

SHRINE EXPO HALL

Lissie

S H OW S

with CLARA-NOVA with Robin Pecknold

with Skrizzly Adams

Goldenvoice & 89.9 KCRW present

Quantic Live

with Xenia Rubinos & Jungle Fire

Goldenvoice & FYF present

Underworld

with Bob Moses

Goldenvoice & KROQ present

The 1975

with The Japanese House

Goldenvoice, KCRW & XLR8R present

St Germain

Parov Stelar Goldenvoice, KCSN & The Bluegrass Situation present

The Avett Brothers Zane Carney

with The Milk Carton Kids

with Charles Jones

John Prine and Jason Isbell with Amanda Shires Mac DeMarco

with Jonathan Richman

Goldenvoice, ALT 987 & KIIS-FM present

Halsey

with Bad Suns

6

PLAGUE VENDOR Chris Ziegler

28

MARTHA DAVIS Marion Belle

10

BREADWOMAN Christina Gubala

32

VUM Chris Kissel

12

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Daiana Feuer

38

LINAFORNIA Chris Kissel

16

SAMIYAM Le’Shawn Taylor and sweeney kovar

42

ANTWON Daiana Feuer

20

GENEVA JACUZZI Daiana Feuer

46

CARL STONE Christina Gubala

24

THE FEELIES Chris Ziegler

48

COURTNEY BARNETT Kristina Benson LINAFORNIA by dana washington

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Send download links to digital music to fortherecord@larecord.com. For film—Rin Kelly at rin@larecord.com. For books—Kristina at kristina@larecord.com.

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VUM POSTER — Ward Robinson and Jun Ohnuki PLAGUE VENDOR COVER PHOTO — Debi Del Grande ANTWON COVER PHOTO — Alex The Brown All content © 2016 L.A. RECORD and YBX Media, Inc.

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PLAGUE VENDOR Interview by Chris Ziegler Photography by Debi Del Grande 6

INTERVIEW

Plague Vendor’s debut Free To Eat was a time capsule: recorded in 2008, it became their Epitaph debut in 2014, thanks probably to its undiminished intensity. But now they’re about to release BLOODSWEAT, the clearest documentation yet of the wonderful and frightening things that Plague Vendor can do. If this was a movie, it’d be great: a spaghetti western gunslinger quite possibly risen from the grave, set loose in a Cormac McCarthy-meets-Stephen King world of ghosts and vendettas, where crime is art and the law is always a step behind death. (Call it Plague Vendor, Kill … If You Live, Shoot!) It’s outlaw punk recklessness (Cramps, Nick Cave, Iggy when he’s especially theatrical and of course Australia’s X) and the merciless instrumentation that comes from studying Black Flag as much as studying Can. And live, it’s just shy of what you might call an exorcism, with singer Brandon Blaine committed to go where the spirit moves him. Blaine and drummer Luke Perine meet in their hometown Whittier, where they can’t walk ten feet without someone running up to give them a handshake or a hug.

INTERVIEW

7

The last song on Free To Eat is ‘Neophron Percnopterus,’ which is of course the Egyptian vulture, which I read up on and found that they’re famous for two things: using tools and eating shit. And I thought to myself … ‘Those vultures have a lot in common with us people.’

Brandon Blaine (vocals): Exactly. Exactly.

Luke Perine (drums/synth): The album was called Free To Eat. B: You’ve figured it out!

I’m sure everyone bothers you about Richard Nixon since you’re from Whittier, but did you ever go visit the grave of Cramps’ guitarist Bryan Gregory up at Rose Hills?

L: Just Eazy-E. He’s buried next to my grandfather. We rep Whittier hard. Every other band from Whittier says, ‘We’re from L.A.’ B: We have everything we want here at home.

A squad of friends, people who do zines … everything. What do I need to go to L.A. for?

We go to L.A. to see shows.

L: [Before we started] nothing was happening.

Just bummer boring whatever. We used to be 18-19 and we’d hope on the freeway and go to the Echo or Smell or whatever. And then we were like, ‘Fuck that shit—we’ll just do it here.’ It was just dope! And it’s over now.

B: Fenix 5-4 was the resurgence of there being anything here. [The owner] let us do anything we wanted there. He was like, ‘Who are you?

What can I do to take you under my wing?’

He’d never seen a band like that. We’d paint all over things, drink tons of beer— Drink tons of juice?

B: I did!

Why did you want to build a scene at home?

Why wasn’t it enough to just be going to the shows that were already there?

L: We were just so critical—little critical smart-ass teenagers. If we didn’t actually do it ourselves, we’d just be talking shit. So we had something to prove to ourselves. Our first show ever was Chain Reaction.

B: We didn’t tell anybody.

L: Cuz it’s such a small community. You know how annoying Facebook and emails are. ‘Hey, come out to this!’ We were like, ‘Fuck this.

We’ll start a band and not tell anybody.’ And we went and played Chain Reaction. It was horrible!

B: It was like Andy Kaufman!

L: My bass drum broke, and Jay [Rogers] our guitarist flipped out on the sound guy and threw a couch across the room.

B: They did this thing at Chain where they’d bolt the bass drum to the floor and I picked it up not knowing that and I broke it, and then I started banging the kick drum and talking shit on people in there. People that night said, ‘These guys are assholes … but their music is really good.’

L: That was a different band. We’ve learned a lot of shit. We’ve been on the road with Bad Religion and Black Lips.

What were the first rules of Plague Vendor?

The things you talked about during your first ten minutes?

B: I wanted to be a blues band—Black Keys meets Blood Brothers meets White Stripes.

Jay hates the blues! He just hates the simplicity and how boring it is—that’s me quoting him!

L: He barely found out the two of us were doing this interview, so he asked me if I could

rep for him. So I wanna take a moment to say some dope shit. He started the band with us to not have to come up with the first riff. He wanted to be in a band where we’d have the bassline and drums and everything ready to go … and then have the mojo Brandon’s got.

And he could just walk up. He still gets mad and psycho. He wants to say he can walk up and just start playing guitar, but he still takes control and writes songs.

B: Michael [Perez] didn’t really play bass a lot.

We loved Mike cuz he didn’t really know how to play, but he came up with really distinct simple bass lines. The little bit Mike provided was enough for Jay to rip and be Jay. You recorded your first album Free To Eat in 2008, but it didn’t come out until 2014.

And now it’s 2016 and Bloodsweat is out, but Brandon was saying you’re already working on a third album. How far ahead are you? Is there a Plague Vendor album due in 2018 I should know about?

B: Every person has to hear this story! We recorded Free To Eat in 2008 in Burbank. We wanted to record. We did it in a day. Epitaph finally was convinced and wanted to put it out in 2014. ‘Let us introduce you to the world with Free To Eat.’ We had half of Bloodsweat already written. And side note—we recorded at least 20 songs in the studio for Bloodsweat and only picked 11 cuz they fit perfectly with each other.

You just threw out the others?

B: Yeah! Wipe ‘em out. Like a movie. Scenes had to work with each other. ‘This is more Monty Python than it is Goodfellas.’ None of the songs we X-ed out will be on the new record. There’s a couple new songs in the mix but we’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m happy with what we’ve come up with so far.

It’s still gonna be very dark. We play one of the new songs live. Right now it’s called ‘The New Song’ or ‘Nothing’s Wrong.’ But that’s a temporary title.

At the very final second of Bloodsweat, the band suddenly stops and Brandon growls ‘Romance!’ If this is a movie, why is that the ending?

L: That’s a good song to end with. You have songs you wanna talk about and show to everyone, and then dope blues-kinda-sad songs—songs you listen to when no one else is around.

B: You can hear why. It doesn’t fit in the middle, doesn’t fit in the beginning—but it’s not an ender.

‘To be continued?’

B: That’s how Free To Eat was. Every movie starts out great and fun—us having a blast writing, recording in a day. Bloodsweat was a thing we wrote for a while. All of a sudden it takes a long time to come out. A lot of bullshit goes into it. Now we’re working on the third record—cuz we want to. Brett threw a BBQ for us and said, ‘Just be prolific. I put you ahead of the curve. Just do it.’

L: I think it could go a little faster—the pace we write songs could be moving faster.

Do you write like thirty songs and then edit them down? Or just work on ten songs until they’re each perfect?

L: We go in like, ‘OK, we got one good bass part, one good drum part, one good guitar part …’ We could write the whole song and be 45 minutes in and then go, ‘Fuck the song!’

INTERVIEW

And we’ll never hear it again. It has to be all dope. All the best.

B: If I fall in love with a lyric, I’ll fight for the song. Lately, I’ll fall in love with them and they’re down: ‘OK, if you like it, we’ll do it.’ We’re still learning how to write songs together. It’s not a fight, but it’s not a big democracy like, ‘OK, we’ll do it.’ Everyone asks us, ‘How did this happen?’ It just happened! We’re fucking friends and we write music. It’s that simple. How do you hang out with your friends? When we started this thing in a black Ford Focus in the parking lot of the Carl’s Jr on Imperial—in 2005—I had a vision! ‘Luke and I are always gonna be in his bedroom jerking each other off!’ No—we built a tumblr and were like, ‘We’re gonna do things the artistic way—an artistic format.’

Jay would come in sometimes like, ‘What are you guys doing in here?’ ‘Trust me—we know what we’re doing.’ Everything is a painting, everything is a movie. We reached without having to reach—we put a hand out and whoever wanted to slap it got a high five. We just work together on art. He has one vision, I have one, we slap it together and it make this cool shit. He’s the English major, I’m the drop-out.

Did he steal knowledge from his classes and give it to you?

L: I would never take any credit away from you with lyrics.

B: You nurtured me! He did, though—he didn’t have to do that. ‘Dude, just do what you want.’ I thought if Luke was down with me then who wouldn’t be?

What books started this band?

B: Bob Dylan—Chronicles. We were really into Bob Dylan. I obviously loved the way he physically presented himself. I like his references and the music that inspired him. I love how deeply … people older than me have no idea of his deep roots! ‘Oh, I love Dylan!’ but they don’t know shit about Blind Willie McTell, Woody Guthrie. I read that book. So many styles.

L: [And Dylan’s] Tarantula. Honestly the real shit that started it—Dylan, the Cramps … and somewhere Kanye and Refused?

All those people are scholars of their genres.

They know history very well.

B: And I love hip-hop—I love Ghostface and Bob Dylan!

L: And Jay’s guitar playing is really inspired by electronic dance music. Like looping. It’s all about if we think something is just wack, it’s out. It doesn’t matter if we worked really hard or ‘Oh, we got the coolest person to record guitar…’ It’s the power of saying ‘No!’ and ‘Fuck that shit!’ That’s key. A good way to think about how people connect over music is to say, ‘That’s fucking lame.’ Sadly, that’s one of the ways people bond. Like you’re in a bar and someone walks in—‘Oh, that guy’s a fucking idiot.’ And they connect on it.

That’s how we’re connected on music. People connect on stuff they hate—it’s sad, in a way!

B: We like what we like.

L: We could write a full song, have it ready to go, have everybody ready to put it out and then say, ‘Fuck that!’

B: The fact that L.A. RECORD is talking to us or that we played at Amoeba is huge for us. It proves the point we’ve been saying since 2008.

We’re from Whittier—we don’t need to say INTERVIEW

we’re from L.A. to play Amoeba Hollywood or get a tour with Refused or an article in L.A. RECORD. It’s a complete blueprint for doing what you do. It’s gonna take longer, but it’s gonna take longer organically and you’ll have more humility in the end. You don’t have to suck anyone’s dick or post pictures on Instagram all day. Our manager said, ‘You could blow up tomorrow, but you’re not gonna know what to do with it. Let’s watch this go organically.’ Now I get it. Especially with Bloodsweat. We’ve been waiting so long for the songs to come out. I’m glad it took as long as it did.

There’s a gunslinger Western vibe all over this album. What about that era—or that genre—makes so much sense to you?

B: If we weren’t a band, we’d all be bank robbers. In another time, I’d be Dillinger. Or I’d be an outlaw. Now I don’t have to be an outlaw. I’m in a band! Like Tombstone! I’m Val Kilmer. Jay’s Kurt Russell. That’s us. We love each other. I’ll cry on Luke’s shoulder.

The four of us … we’re four friends turned brothers turned artists turned rebels. There’s that kinship there. I give Luke a look, and he knows what it means.

Who would be which bank robber? You need like the crack shot, the fast talker, the demolitions guy …

L: I’d be the shaky scared one that doesn’t really wanna do it, and I’d be the first one to die. ‘I don’t know if this is right! I don’t know if we should do this!’

B: I’d be the half-drunk half-sober halfawake— L: The Doc Holliday?

B: No, not that cool. More like funny—‘Woo! Fuck it! Let’s go!’ We’d all embody the spirit of Doc Holliday but in our own way. Back then in that time, anything went down—those hangings, and people’d get shot up. I feel like there’s so much death around all that stuff … it was just a crazy time.

Death seems really close on this album, too—about six feet away, at least in a few songs. Why? B: I started writing lyrics for Bloodsweat and the songs came in—the catalysts were ‘Chopper’ and ‘Anchors to Ankles.’ I don’t wanna just say I like horror films, but I think about all that morbid stuff. I freak myself out and think there’s ghosts in my room—I’m really paranoid like that. I like dark imagery.

It’s interesting to think about and write about stuff like that.

What’s the most boring thing for you to write about?

L: Anything explicitly personal. We never really wrote a song like, ‘I was in love with this girrrrl! And she broke my heart!’ Anything that doesn’t have some poetic encrypted message, you know? But they’re not my lyrics.

B: It challenges us to be a little more daring and a little more honest and vulnerable. If something’s too easy for us, even if it sounds good … it just doesn’t work. We’ve taken enough steps along the way to know that we won’t fail cuz we really believe in what we do.

L: And even with every measure of failure, we’d still be a band—we’d still be writing, even if we weren’t getting shows or whatever.

People talk about Nick Cave and Iggy Pop when they talk about Plague Vendor—but have you listened to Gun Club?

B: Yes—after people started saying it. Nothing I do musically is inspired by them. I found out about Nick Cave after people started to hear our songs. ‘Oh, you sound like Gun Club.’ I found out about them cuz Keith Morris talks about them a lot. Like with Nick Cave— ‘OK, I’ll check Nick Cave out.’ Or Mark E. Smith. I’m not trying to be like them at all but I can’t help it. It’s cool finding out you sound like something you haven’t heard of.

We were confused—like, ‘What? I’m listening to ‘Mighty Healthy’!’

What’s it like when you encounter kindredspirit artists like Nick Cave or Mark E. Smith when you’re already pretty far along into developing your own identity?

B: I’m still trying to figure it out. I’m just gonna say—I got into watching Cedric [Bixler-Zavala of At The Drive-In and Mars Volta] interviews at an early age, when I had my Windows 95 computer. He taught me a lot. How to be a band, how to behave, how to play to a room with one person who’s the sound guy. He taught me all about music.

When he did … I think Big Day Out he talked about the Fall. So I’m like, ‘Wow, I get compared to someone that someone I learned a lot from talked about…’ I don’t know if Nick Cave or Mark E. Smith are happy to hear that I’m compared to them, but I’m honored. You gotta keep doing what you’re doing. I’m not trying to do Nick Cave, but if this hits you that way, that’s good.

Cedric has talked about using a Ouija board to write songs. Does Plague Vendor believe in paranormal assistance?

B: Yeah, I do. I’m always haunted by something. I’m the grandson of a preacher who was the son of a preacher who was the son of a preacher. I was born and raised in that home with a grandmother who had the dog tags of the dad she never met—and the cane and pipe—and at a young age I dug into it.

And every afternoon I’d come home and the oven would turn on. That’s only when it would turn on. I’d feel a spirit there … something dark there. I have a really dark side to me. I can always tell like … ‘There’s a ghost here, a ghost there.’ I really believe that. I met a girl in Ventura who said ‘Forgive your mother’ and then my horoscope the next day said ‘Forgive you mother.’ I think my grandfathers are looking down on me and guiding me through it. My grandfather asked his dad, ‘What am I doing wrong as a preacher?’ And he said, ‘All I’m doing is praying for you.’

L: I went with him to his grandpa’s house and it was like 15 people—like all those people getting up there and going crazy.

B: Pentecostal holiness! That’s what it is.

Subconsciously I’m like … I’m not super super religious, but I am in certain senses. In my blood and my DNA is growing up with my grandpa and watching him preach … he preached all over. North Hollywood, La Mirada—everywhere. He started preaching when he was 15. My great-grandfather was a preacher and my great-great-grandfather was a preacher, too. Right now it’s a congregation of like 15 people, but when I was born it used to be huge. Every pew was filled. People would go to see my great-grandpa and my grandpa would be there, and my great-grandpa would preach to all-Black congregations.

Pentecostals are like … way more emotional.

They speak in tongues. I don’t wanna say it’s more ‘showy’—at all—but there’s a lot more energy. There’s a lot of singing. My grandpa sings. He has a blind organ player I’d go with him to pick up every Sunday when I was seven or eight. She’d just sit and play organ.

Sister Gosnell—she was cool. I can’t hide from it. It’s in my blood. I respect it. It’s part of me. I tell my grandpa—cuz he wants me to be a preacher and I’m his son, basically—I tell him, ‘Well, I’m preaching in another way. I’m speaking and telling my stories to people my age. I can relate to them.’ It’s working—for me and for them. It’s a little more colorful, obviously, and I’ll be a little sacrilegious, too, but right now there’s no rules. I don’t wanna put any walls up.

Luke, you told your hometown paper that is was important for Plague Vendor that everyone be able to hear the lyrics and the story. Why? L: What I really think it is … Brandon is just crazy! There’s no one like him. The same with all of us. Jay is the dopest guitar player I ever heard. Mike is coming up with the dopest basslines with no experience at all. What’s the point of covering that up? We’ve just gone to so many shows … what benefit would it have to the band to just blend in? Like when Dylan was writing those songs, he put a little list he wrote out based on Woody Guthrie’s principles. The first thing he wrote was MAKE SURE EVERYONE CAN HEAR YOUR LYRICS. That’s a classic folk thing!

B: Why am I gonna go up there when I have so much to say … like we go to art galleries or see a band where you can’t hear what the singer says. Not cool! I personally didn’t think it was cool.

L: It’s cool if you can’t hear it and it’s all reverbed-out and fucked-up— B: I don’t think it is.

L: It is.

It will be awesome if we can keep this going for half a page.

L: I would like that on the cover! ‘It’s dope!’

‘It’s not dope!’ People got the wrong message about us—people think we’re new. We’ve been through every fucking phase. All the styles, all the whatever. We were like, ‘OK—we’re gonna make the decision and be confident as a band to clearly have our lyrics out there.’ There’s no ‘side’ to it. We’re kinda cool with this, kinda cool with that—we’re our own thing.

PLAGUE VENDOR ON THURS., MAR. 24, WITH A LIVE SHOW AND RECORD SIGNING AT AMOEBA RECORDS, 6400 SUNSET BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 6 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. AMOEBA.COM. AND WITH REFUSED AND THE COATHANGERS ON FRI., MAY 27, AT THE FONDA THEATRE, 6126 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 9 PM / $35 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE.COM. AND WITH REFUSED AND THE COATHANGERS ON SAT., MAY 28, AT THE GLASS HOUSE, 200 W. 2 ST., POMONA. 9 PM / $30 / ALL AGES. THEGLASSHOUSE.US. PLAGUE VENDOR’S BLOODSWEAT IS AVAILABLE ON FRI., MAR. 25, FROM EPITAPH RECORDS. VISIT PLAGUE VENDOR AT PLAGUEVENDOR.COM. ND

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BREADWOMAN AND OTHER TALES Interview by Christina Gubala Illustration by Angie Samblotte Anna Homler is the performance artist and vocalist behind Breadwoman: a character, a deity and a living example of poetry born from a slow drive through Topanga Canyon in 1982. Born into a family of pharmacists, Homler deviated by becoming a professional artist and vocalist, yet a certain degree of apothecary savvy informs her visual work and this musical creation with her collaborator Steve Moshier, reissued as Breadwoman and Other Tales by RVNG Intl. last month. Her work deals with expression beyond meaning—exploration of language divorced from its quotidian role as explanatory agent. The lyrics of her Breadwoman project are sung in a language all their own, familiar while incomprehensible—like a conversation with nature. Fittingly, she spoke with warm, seasoned patience emanating from her voice, whether referencing Demeter or teasing herself for overusing affectionate nicknames. She left me with a sense that I’d been touched by a bit of the universal truth she so effortlessly summons through her vocal work.

It seems like you came from a performance art background, and then found yourself into a musical realm, and Topanga Canyon had something to do with that.

Anna Homler (vocals/performance): I was a visual and performance artist and I thought of myself as a storyteller, using texts that I wrote in English. I was open to images—poetic and surreal interventions in everyday life. In 1982, I was driving through Topanga Canyon when this song first came to me.

I love the idea of music coming to you in a car. That seems like such a Los Angeles thing. We spend so much time in our cars—so much time alone in our own heads traversing these winding roads.

I just started to sing the chants. They emerged— they came out of me. I didn’t normally sing in my car. I always had a cassette player because those were the cassette days. So I recorded over the cassettes what I was singing.

And you exchanged these cassettes with people who’d become your collaborators.

Right. I played some for Steve Moshier. By the time I met Steve, I had drawers full of cassettes, and he took the ones that he was most interested in.

Who is Breadwoman to you? A goddess? A spirit? What identity did she develop?

I think of Breadwoman as a being that lives in another dimension. The music and the character had their own threads of development, but then ended up being woven.

It’s like braided hair—made of the same piece, but with sections. I don’t like the word ‘channeled’ so much because it has so many connotations. But it’s something that I would tune into, and it was very spontaneous.

After reading about Breadwoman, which I’ve been doing a lot, I noticed that you discussed not having a mythological figure like her in the past. There were Demeter and Isis, and they were goddesses of grain and fertility, but not of bread. What differentiates that for you—bread versus grain, and what it represents? It’s easy to wrap your head around the notion of grain as fertility, but what does bread say to you?

What bread says to me is universal. Bread to me is universal food—the common denominator in all foods and in all cultures. Maybe not 10

in Asia—maybe it’s more rice. But I would say in eighty percent of all cultures, there’s some kind of bread? I mean, the percentage is not scientific—I’m just guessing. So the bread cultures are really rich—like in western Europe, there are all kinds of gorgeous breads.

In Ethiopia, there’s injera, the bread that’s the plate to hold the food. There’s Turkish bread.

There’s all kinds of bread.

You’ve said Breadwoman is a not a didactic character, but rather a poetic figure.

I think with symbols … anything symbolic, you can analyze it to death. You can dissect things and in doing that, you lose the essence of it. Poetry is really a shift. It’s a language shift from the literal to the lyrical—an actual hemispheric shift in the brain. You go from a more analytical side of your brain—which would be your left hemisphere—to your right brain. And right brain is more holistic—more music, poetry, and the arts.

You allow the rhythm to take over the positioning of the language more.

Right. So I didn’t analyze. I researched, but I was careful not to try to analyze. Part of poetry or the arts is following the image and seeing how it develops. You know—not trying to control it too much? You can shape things after they emerge, but before they emerge, you kill them if you try to control them too much, if that makes sense.

Many reviews have claimed that your language that you employ—which I’ve heard you call ‘the mother tongue’—is a made-up language. Do you put meaning behind the specific sounds, or do you use them to employ the essence of an emotion?

I use them to imply—it’s really spontaneous.

It just comes out of my mouth. I used to say it was an invented language, and now I just say it’s a cellular language. It’s something peeped and sighed, and I think our bodies—our cells—have a lot of knowledge. Our bodies are bodies of knowledge. When we tune into ourselves, and go inside and breathe and connect with our inner images instead of sending our attention out … If we would put our attention in, not in an egoistic way but in a deep biological way, like mediation or active imagination, that we can get a lot of information. A lot bubbles up.

A lot of personal knowledge, too. I feel like people are kind of brainwashed into ignoring the internal—we’re constantly stimulated by the external. I always call it ‘spiritual rot,’ when you don’t pay enough attention to what’s going on inside.

Now I think that’s true. I agree.

I heard that at one point during your performances, you were unmasked, and you felt like it was a liberating moment where you allowed yourself to perform as just yourself without the bread mask.

It was actually in a workshop I was taking.

I was performing as Breadwoman, and the woman leading the workshop lifted my veil, and I was freaked out because I always felt very safe with the songs being hidden—you know—I wouldn’t say ‘hiding behind a mask,’ but being a character rather than being me singing these songs. That was the decisive moment. I didn’t feel liberated at the time—I was like, freaked out. But I realized I could sing without wearing a costume. At the time in my performances, I never sang. I always used tape music. I would have pre-recorded music that I had done, and I would perform to that. Breadwoman would use gestures to communicate.

What form did the music on this album originally take? Was it the actual music you used for performances?

The music was first released on an audio series released by High Performance magazine.

These were studio recordings done with Steve Moshier. The music was based on chants used in early performances.

Your rhythms—the percussive noises you select to accompany your voice—how do you collect those?

When I worked with Steve on Breadwoman, he found the sounds. We agreed to use sounds we couldn’t identify—that would be somehow out of time. Not the usual pre-set on a synthesizer. He would find really unusual sounds so you wouldn’t go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a violin.’ We wanted it to be mysterious and unknown. Now I work with improvisers. I play a lot of objects and circuit-bent toys. Once again, I’m using sounds that aren’t expected so much. I collect sounds. I love sounds. I mean, I could do that on the computer, but I really

love objects. I love to handle my objects, and I love the visual of the objects. You really don’t know what sound is going to come out of them. I’ve been accused of playing like I’m doing brain surgery. I’m very serious, even though I’m playing whimsical things.

How do you capture sounds that you fall in love with?

I’ve been recording things on my phone. It’s not the best, but if I hear a squeaky door or something I like, I record it. But normally, I like the object that makes the sounds, so I have a big collection of sound-making objects. Sometimes it can be claustrophobic, but it’s wonderful. When I unpack my toys, I’m always very happy to see them.

Do you go through phases of purging your sound-creating objects?

I should, but I haven’t. You know what happens? A lot of things are plastic, and they just die.

They just kind of disintegrate into time.

I don’t have to purge—they disintegrate.

How did you select the breads used for the costuming and masks in your recent European performances?

There’s a mask [now]. There’s no more putting a bread on the head. But in every place, we had beautiful breads from each location.

Specific to where you were visiting? Almost as if the place was part of the show as well.

Very definitely.

What was the original mask like?

The original mask was a loaf of sourdough bread, hollowed out and with eye holes. I made a new mask for each performance. There was a French bakery near where I lived in Venice with many kinds of bread. Eventually I had a mask made. It looked a bit terrifying. It’s pictured on the second Breadwoman cassette and on the RVNG release. When that mask crumbled, I had one that looked like the original loaf of bread made. That’s the one used now in performances. Breadwoman has had many faces.

ANNA HOMLER AND STEVE MOSHIER’S BREADWOMAN AND OTHER TALES IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM RVNG INTL. VISIT ANNA HOMLER AT ANNAHOMLER.COM. INTERVIEW

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE Interview by Daiana Feuer Illustration by Abraham Jay Torres

Animal Collective’s new album Painting With is weird—weird and wonderful—and it should fill us all with gratitude that something so strange can be popular. For fourteen years, Geologist, Avey Tare, and Panda Bear (Deakin didn’t particpate in making Painting With) have paved their own frontier, finding ways to challenge themselves in making music that can at times be inscrutable, with rhythms and vocal arrangements that mimic staring into a strobelight or listening to Swedish people speak. But once you “get it,” you experience the satisfaction of realizing you suddenly understand a foreign language. In this interview, Panda Bear speaks to us from his home in Portugal, and shares his thoughts on dinosaurs, meanings, surrealism and more.

I really hope ‘Floridada’ gets in the hands of a Florida high school marching band.

That’d be sick. We really wanna get down there to play Florida, but it hasn’t worked out in terms of the touring plans. But we’re working on it.

You premiered your album at the Baltimore airport. Did you play it or perform it?

It was played on a loop for like ten hours or something.

Airports are so many crossroads of people—of every mental and cultural standpoint. To hear something like this for the first time without being initiated into Animal Collective, it must’ve been like … what the heck is going on? A bit of a seizure experience.

I hope not! But I gather it wasn’t super loud. They weren’t cranking it. Hopefully it didn’t bother too many people. Not just the airport—I’m sure anywhere it plays, I’m sure not everybody’s really getting down with it.

But that’s OK too.

One interesting thing about this album and maybe you guys in a general way is that the first listen does kind of alter your mind a little bit. You have to listen in a different way than you normally listen to

music because of all the rhythms and vocal back-and-forth. When I first listened to it, I thought that my mind was a little bit going to explode, but in a good way!

Almost like staring into a strobe light when everything’s flickering.

Well, that’s cool—I like that.

But then on the second listen, I was kind of initiated into it and I could hear the songs.

Sort of like a Magic Eye? Oh yeah! Like a Magic Eye. So is that an intention in your songwriting? To alter the way people can understand music? Or to teach them a new way of listening?

It’s more about wanting to take ourselves to that—to experience that for ourselves first, and then you hope someone else has that experience. I feel weird about making something where it has these demands on people. I don’t really have any intention … I don’t wanna force-feed something to someone, you know? But it is about trying to explore something new for ourselves— trying to push ourselves into this new place or uncharted territory. That’s the goal, I feel like. Hopefully that comes across. Hopefully people experience the stuff in the same way we do.

There’s a balance. The first track is more accessible—more poppy or whatever— and then there’s weirder ones. It’s not unaccessible but there is a different listening that you enter into.

Sequencing is super important with music like this—I guess I’d argue with all music.

You try to arrange the stuff in a way that the experience from top to bottom not only is pleasing but also sort of guides you? Or tells a story?

What kind of story are you trying to tell?

Lyrically, it’s pretty all over the place. I don’t know if there’s a common thread to the thing. I couldn’t say it’s a concept record. There isn’t an overarching narrative.

Perhaps it’s more stylistic, in that I feel like the stuff we talked about—there’s a couple things that I can trace from the beginning of making the songs through to the end.

Which is pretty typical for us, I’d say. Going into a group of songs, it seems that we just throw a whole bunch of stuff at the wall— everybody’s like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do this?’ ‘I wanna make songs that make me think about ballet!’ or whatever. And you get to the end of the process and you notice that 90% of that has been left in the dust, but there’s this chunk of stuff that’s remained.

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And that becomes the spirit of the music.

For this one, I’d say wanting to do short songs—short blasts where you try to pack a whole lot into just a couple minutes, which has always been a typical thing for us to do— that was one of the goals. Wanting to make music that felt sort of primitive or crude, in a way—that played out in the rhythms more than anywhere else. Although there are some thudding cranky sounds on there. And lastly we wanted to do something with the vocals—specifically wanting to write music for two singers where it didn’t feel so much like two people singing. The two people sorta seemed to merge—the two voices would create this individual vocal part. Dave (Avey Tare) and I went about that in pretty different ways that I’d say complement each other a little bit.

Did you sing at the same time? Or did you sing separately and chop it up together?

They were sung separately—they were performed that way. It wasn’t chopped up into bits and arranged in a really precise way. That’d be very labor intensive! But no less labor intensive than I feel like a lot of records these days are. People get pretty

You’re not like Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen–I don’t think he uses his synthesizer.

You mean just playing the hits?

Not just playing the hits but challenging what you can do musically. Some bands will just be a guitar band. Some bands will change the things they play or even the style. You’re more in that category than ‘we are THIS band and we do THIS.’ We got into making stuff that way, and felt like that was the funnest way to do it.

Talking about two voices becoming one voice—would you agree that’s a traditional song trope you’re bringing into a more futuristic context?

Yeah—for sure. That’s what makes it exciting. Trying to write a song in a different way or use a different piece of equipment to make something and see where that takes you—that’s what it’s all about. That keeps you moving forward.

Does your interest in the collage aspects of music come from an interest in surrealism?

A little bit. It comes up here and there. There were times a while ago when we had more

That’s why music is cool! Would you say music is a language or would you call it something else?

It can be. Music is an expression—a way of translating something, however vague.

It’s always a form of communication. So ‘language’ seems pretty good.

How can music be used to combat negative thinking?

On a really basic level—it just affects your mood, whether positive or negative. It’s almost like a drug in that way, or it can be.

I’ve noticed playing music for my kids can set ‘em off in a direction. And not just my kids!

Sorry, that’s a weird way to talk about it.

Kids are pure little innocent vessels. They have more genuine responses.

Yes. And they have more obvious responses as well.

Do your kids like your new album?

I haven’t played it for them. But my daughter hasn’t really liked anything I’ve done. She apologized for it one day. I said it was no big deal!

That’s sweet. Probably didn’t wanna hurt your feelings.

Yeah. She’s real cool.

I know you talk about war, recycling, gender politics … do you want to be held accountable for what you are saying? Or do you want it like, ‘It’s just a song.’?

I’m pretty good with both of those things. I don’t mind if somebody just says ‘this songs makes me feel like this!’ without ever really paying attention to the words. That’s fine.

On the other hand, I think I can speak for me and Dave when I say we put a lot of thought into what we’re talking about and what we’re writing and how we’re writing it. So to have it completely ignored seems a little like a missed opportunity. But again I don’t wanna demand somebody experience the music in a specific way. You make the stuff and spend so much time and so much effort trying to get it to be what you picture in your mind, but once you mass-produce the thing and you send it off into the world … to try to have this idea that it’s supposed to be this specific thing for somebody seems a little like a waste of time, I guess.

If you think of someone listening to it in, like, Bulgaria, they’ll be listening to it in a way different way than someone in California.

“The asteroid comes down and all the dinosaurs are running.

It was really kind of sad.” surgical with stuff. I guess because you can?

The singing parts were done separately, but were full performances for the most part.

Is it a challenge to perform this live?

For me personally there certainly is. It’s the first time there were parts that I wrote on a keyboard that I play in the songs, and then I wrote singing parts—I’ve never really had to do both at the same time. This is the first time Dave and I wrote vocal parts for the other person. They kinda had to be—the way the fit together had like a precision to it.

It would’ve been tough for someone to work their way in there when you already had one of them. And because we had this idea of wanting to create the singular voice with two people making it happen. If you take one of the voices out, the song doesn’t really work in the same way. So I suppose we had to write for the other person. That’s new for us. And recording the songs before touring them was an entirely new experience for us.

Is there any of it where you’re like, ‘How are we gonna do this live?!’

There was. We spent the past couple weeks getting it all together. All of us had varying degrees of anxiety about how we were gonna do it. Having to play and sing at the same time … Dave’s songs are pretty wordy, so just memorizing all that stuff kept me up at night a little. But we got there in the end.

If you’re not gonna challenge yourself, what’s the point of doing new things?

I agree completely. It’s not always the easy way. Sometimes you fall on your face. But that’s the way to go.

If you’re gonna do a band for fourteen years, you gotta keep pushing something.

Yeah—well, I don’t know that you have to.

But that’s the fun way to do it.

INTERVIEW

of a grasp of the technical side of music and we were able to speak that language, you could say. In terms of reading music— being kind of ‘learned’ in an instrument.

Having studied. I’m pretty sure we’ve forgotten most of that. We’re often forced to talk about things or try to explain ideas in more symbolic terms—with imagery.

We’ll have to translate ideas in non-musical ways. So sometimes talking about collage or surrealism or dada in this case—although I wasn’t very well-versed in the whole dada thing before this—that comes up. It’s weird to say. It’s not like we wrote this manifesto and have this really detailed plan about making stuff. It’s more you take these steps and the song or the music leads you along a path, and you notice on the way that it’s mirroring this other stuff. It’s not like we said, ‘Let’s make this music and we want it to sound like paint!’ As if we’re painting with sound or something. But as we were putting the stuff together, we found ourselves using that language to talk.

That’s interesting. You don’t necessarily have to know … like if someone said, ‘You’re using surrealist paint-chucking technique!’ ‘Well, I wasn’t … but I am …’ and that’s just because those things are natural to anyone who opens themselves to a creative process. You might be doing some very particular thing, but you don’t know cuz it’s not in your lexicon.

You have an idea and you start the ball rolling, but you don’t always end up where you thought you were gonna go. As long as you have an open perspective about what the thing is or what it can be, sometimes the thing leads you to places you weren’t expecting. Which is cool about it!

I read there was a baby pool and dinosaurs involved in your recording process—how exactly did a baby pool figure in to the songwriting?

Dave really wanted to represent the four elements in the room. That’s where the pool of water came from. We had candles in there and some rocks in there. It’s common for us to decorate the room. Just sort of make it our own environment. Even when we’re practicing. It’s just nice to set the room up in a way that might be conducive to making stuff. Especially cuz a lot of these studios aren’t the most visually inspiring places. Wanting to dress it up a little bit seems like a good idea.

And we recorded all the vocals kinda high up—we set up this weird little tower, and you’d stand up there to record the singing parts. The dinosaurs came from that theme of wanting to make something that had a primitive or crude quality—that felt rugged or kinda harsh, in a way. Talking about that kind of stuff led us toward dinosaurs. And in ‘Hocus Pocus’ there was a sound somebody made that one of us thought about dinosaurs when we heard it. Then we had Dave’s sister Abby—she made like a YouTube mixtape of all this dinosaur footage from various places that was playing on a loop on one of the walls in the studio. Some of it was pretty funny.

Like 1950s dinosaurs?

Some of it was really campy. Like old weird animatronic stuff. Really goofy-looking dinosaurs. But she put a scene from I think Land of the Lost on there—the part where the asteroid comes down and all the dinosaurs are running. It was really kind of sad. It wasn’t awesome.

Are you more concerned with there being a message or just an experience of music?

Sure—but in my experience there’s been plenty of music where I don’t understand what’s being said and I still have a strong reaction to the music. I’m not sure that an understanding of what’s being said in music is completely necessary for it to be effective.

That brings us to another point about music as a language—or what kind of a language. It’s something that I think about a lot.

Even just sound can elicit strong reactions.

Volume can really make an impression.

Again, thinking about my kids—my son really doesn’t like super loud noises. It really freaks him out—really scares him. We’ll go to the movies and he’ll be watching the movie with his hands over his ears.

When my brother was little, he’d know all the sound effects of the movie. Like he was only listening to sound effects.

He didn’t care about the dialogue?

Nope—he would do all the sound effects, and watch those movies over and over.

Did he go into Foley work?

No! I don’t know what he’s gonna do. He’s 18 and he thinks he’s gonna be a politician or something—likes to wear suits.

He’s figuring it out.

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE PLAYS ON TUE., MAR. 8, AND WED., MAR. 9, AT THE FONDA THEATRE, 6126 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 9:30 PM / $35 / ALL AGES. FONDATHEATRE.COM. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE’S PAINTING WITH IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM DOMINO. VISIT ANIMAL COLLECTIVE AT MYANIMALHOME.NET. 15

Do you care to talk more about this story about getting inspiration from a stripper in Detroit and eating beef taquitos?

It’s a little vague, I guess—the way it was mentioned [in the bio]. A friend of mine was rhyming over some beats I gave him at some show and my man House Shoes was there.

He moved out to L.A. before I did, but at the time this was like nine or ten years ago or something. In any case, my friend was like, ‘Yeah, I want to take you out to Detroit and introduce you to House Shoes.’ He heard these beats at a show and he’s like, ‘I want to link up with this dude who made these beats.’ So we got out there and we’re chilling at his house, like just bullshitting, listening to some stuff for a minute. Then Shoes said, ‘All right, we gotta go to the club.’ We ended up at this strip club at like 8 Mile and Shaffer called Platinum. It was like 2 PM or something and we’re going into this strip club called Platinum. We walked in there and I was like, ‘Oh, damn, he’s an important customer here.’ They got us right in to the little VIP booth. They brought us a platter of these shitty deep-fried beef taquitos. I mean, don’t get me wrong—when I say ‘shitty,’ they were delicious. They probably weren’t the most healthy thing you could ever eat.

But we’re sitting in this strip club looking at these girls and eating taquitos and shit, and he’s rolling blunts and I was just like … this is crazy. ‘You can eat deep-fried tacos and watch strippers and smoke blunts all at the same time? You can do that in your life?’ It was a life changing experience. I thought, ‘I could really get used to a lifestyle like this.’

Of course, I’ve spent very little time eating taquitos in strip clubs since then. I guess my idea of a good time has changed just a little bit. But that’s what that was about. House Shoes, I’ve been cool with him every since.

It was dope to me to link up with him—I had been aware of what he was doing for a minute, and liked hearing his mixes and shit. I knew of some of the people he was working with and that really meant a lot to me at the time. That probably was more of an influence on me than eating taquitos and smoking blunts in the strip club, as cool as that was. It was cool to link up with Shoes at the time and find that he was a fan of the music and was telling me to really take it a little more seriously.

I wanted to talk to you about your current creative process. What goes into making a Samiyam beat?

It’s always different, but I can give you an example of something I do sometimes.

Recently I’ve been going through all these Zip disks. I used to have these big Zip disks for the MPC. I had a shoebox full and I started pulling those out because I remembered I would sample so many sounds and never do anything with them. So over the past couple of weeks I’ve been loading up shit out of all these old disks. Some of it is stuff I sampled over ten years ago and I didn’t even really …

I hardly even knew how to use the MPC. I was just sampling. I’ve been pulling those sounds up and chopping them up again, and making completely new beats out of these sounds that I sampled forever ago. Some of them, there are beats that have the sounds in them already—and I listened to them and 16

it’s crazy how bad they are. But the sounds are cool, so I’ve just been doing that. But that’s just like one thing. Sometimes I’ll sit down and put on a record and find some drums I want to use. Then put on another record and see if I can find something else and just sample a bunch of stuff, or turn on a drum machine and a couple synthesizers or something. It really depends on whatever I feel like doing at the time. Whatever I want to hear, really.

Sometimes your music can sound dark.

How do you feel when you’re creating it?

No, there’s not like a certain feeling. I feel different every day. But you mentioned some of it sounds dark to you. I definitely get some of that kind of stuff out through music. It’s not always sunshine and rainbows that’s powering my beats.

What role has your boy Alchemist played in your development as a producer?

He’s definitely introduced me to rappers and shit like that, but even before that … when you say what’s the role he played in my development as a producer, he’s one of the dudes I used to be listening to, trying to figure out how people made beats. Before I ever even got into it, before I ever saw any sampler or anything like that, he was part of a little list of other producers that I was into at that time. He was a big influence to me.

This is your first official release on Stones Throw. How’s it feel to officially be on a roster now?

It’s dope, man. I’ve always looked at Stones Throw as a pretty consistent label that has released stuff that’s dope to me. It definitely feels good to be putting out a proper record with them.

What’s the significance of the title— Animals Have Feelings? Not too long ago I found a picture of you holding a koala, and for a long time that was the only picture I’d seen of you. Are they connected?

That photo was—I keep forgetting. In Australia, obviously. I think I was in Brisbane, and these dudes took me the day after I did the show to this wildlife reserve place. I got the picture with the koala bear and they charge you a few bucks. They hand it to you and it puts its arms around you like it thinks you’re a bigger koala bear or something. They had a field that was just full of kangaroos, too. There was like little kangaroos trying to fight me and shit.

We really should have got pictures of that instead.

It looks like it’s caressing you.

Actually, you know what? I had an idea that I was envisioning the picture like I’m going to look mean and just be holding a koala bear for some reason.

You look pretty happy.

Yeah, they put it into my arms and it put its arms around my shoulders and looked like it was about to go to sleep. And I just couldn’t really hold the face. I had to smile.

Animals seem to be a recurring theme in your work. I was listening to your catalog earlier and you have like a few titles named after kittens and pandas.

I had a couple of cats when I was a kid and they were very important to me. Very cool cats—beautiful, majestic animals. But I don’t know—now with travel and stuff, I

don’t have pets. I guess to be quite honest, the extent of animals’ roles in my life is I like to eat all kinds of stuff. I’ll eat anything.

I don’t know if this is really a good answer for this because some people probably look at that title like, ‘This guy, he’s going to join PETA or something.’ No—I mean, I do love animals though. Especially when I was a little kid I was just fascinated with animals, like little lizards and shit. I was trying to catch them. The title just came out of my mind. It’s not necessarily saying that I’m living in the jungle surrounded by animals or anything like that.

You’ve been collaborating a lot with Earl Sweatshirt—what it is about your individual music that pairs well with one another?

It’s hard to say. You know he had the Earl video—that was the first thing I was up on.

That was crazy to me and I was listening to his stuff from then. We just met and got along, and I found out he was listening to my shit as well and we just worked on some stuff. Actually, now that I think about it, he was trying to hit me up for a minute and I had like not looked at Twitter for a really fucking long time. He was trying to contact me through there or something. But when we linked up, I was just like … all right, he’s cool. So it was easy to work with him.

I’ve seen him on Vine messing with an SP404 and I’m like yo, that’s pretty dope.

I know that he produces his own tracks sometimes, and just to see him with an SP404 I’m like … yo.

Earl’s got some shit on the 404, definitely.

Do you work in the studio together?

Yeah—we have been in the studio together for all the tracks we’ve recorded. He’ll hear the beat and have a strong idea of what he wants to do already, and he’ll just work it out. When we’ve recorded shit I haven’t really felt the need to give that much input because he goes in there and kills it. I’ll just play him stuff. It’s the same thing with anyone, usually—I’ll just play them a few beats and see if anything sticks.

Do you relate well despite you being ten years older than him?

You talk to Earl and it’s pretty obvious he’s a smart kid. He approaches a lot of things in a different way than people his age generally might. I forgot that I’m like ten years older than him. What is he? I think he’s in his mid-20s or something. I don’t think I’m quite ten years older than him but I’m a few years older and I forgot that. It doesn’t really seem like it.

I wanted to talk to you about the vocal features on the album other than Earl.

You have Jeremiah Jae, Oliver the 2nd and Action Bronson.

I’ve known Jae for a minute and he lived in L.A. for a bit. He’s back in Chicago at the moment, but he was visiting L.A. and we just linked up. I was making a beat and him and Oliver were over and they liked it and just started writing some shit to it while I was working on it. I sequenced the beat out and we just recorded it like that. When I was starting to put the record together I hit those guys up: ‘I want to put this on the record.’ The one with Action, we’ve recorded a bunch of shit. He’s always working and he

just records a lot of shit—and then he hasn’t ended up actually releasing any of the shit that we’ve done. So I asked him if it was cool to put one of those on my record because they’re good songs. I want people to hear them and I think it fit into the record and everything. I didn’t want those to sit around for too long. It’s not really like I chose … like, ‘These guys need to be on the record.’

Those are working relationships that I have—we’re making music, and I want to let people hear it.

Are there any type of MCs or voices that attract you to want to put someone on to a record?

I’ve always been into pretty much the same type of rap. I don’t really care as long as I like the beat and it sounds good. If you can rap well … it’s an added bonus if the shit’s actually clever or makes me think a little bit. I don’t give a fuck. I’m not one of those listeners who’s like ‘it’s got to be a certain subject’ or ‘they need to rap in a certain way.’ I like it when it seems like someone has their own style, and the shit sounds good, and they might have a couple clever things to say here and there. I’m easily entertained, I guess.

You have a song called ‘Teebs Gets Angry’ on here—I can’t imagine Teebs ever getting angry. I mean, he makes like the most chill … like ambient music.

That’s like if I called it ‘Pat Metheny Gets Angry.’ He’s gotten angry before. I’ve seen it happen. But I really called it that just because … Teebs sent me some of the sounds that I based that track around, like a lot of the stuff I use as the percussion. Just that beat I ended up making—I don’t know, there’s something uncomfortable about it. For some reason I envisioned Teebs like becoming infuriated and throwing something at the wall, which I’m sure is an absurd idea. I was laughing thinking about it. I don’t think he does get quite that angry, but you know, he’s a human being. I just felt it had that type of energy and Teebs had sent me those sounds so I was laughing about that. Like Teebs getting angry— It just caught me off guard. I can’t imagine him pissed-off at something because he’s always like painting and skateboarding and making chill stuff. He seems like a—I don’t know, like a cuddly person, if that makes sense? Probably awkward to say on your album.

He’s peaceful—how about that? He’s a relaxed peaceful individual.

That’s a better word. He probably wouldn’t appreciate the word cuddly.

Who knows? Maybe he would?

Not too long ago one of the tracks from Animals leaked—has anything like that ever happened to you?

I don’t think any of my stuff has leaked too far in advance. Nothing too bad, and that one it’s like … I don’t even know who had that.

I could just like imagine some random kid on an Odd Future forum scouring the internet.

Yeah—once somebody put it up, it’s up there. People don’t even have to scour the internet now. But I haven’t really had too much stuff leak like that. Earl’s on the track INTERVIEW

so I guess there’s people interested in that shit. It makes sense that it would get out there somehow if enough people had it.

What are your thoughts on leaking in general?

I honestly haven’t put too much thought into it. I don’t always keep up on new records and everything, so it doesn’t really make that much of a difference to me. Or in terms of like my own music being leaked somehow?

Of course, if it leaks way far in advance it’s just not a good look. People get used to it or sick of it by the time it comes out. It’s better to make it until it’s supposed to come out so it can be exciting and new to everyone. Also another way you’ve got to consider it—if a record leaks and a lot of people are passing it around, that means people are interested in it. Even if it means that a handful less people are going to buy the record, it also means that you probably won’t have trouble touring. If enough people are interested then it’s your shit leaks and it’s just everywhere.

At the end of the day, that happens because people want to hear it. Or maybe it happens in the first place because people want to be like, ‘Check it out—I have this cool thing that no one else has.’ But the people who are actually looking and listening to it … that’s nice. You’ve got to appreciate that people want to hear the shit before it’s even out.

I want to ask you about your studio equipment. I know you for using the SP404 and synthesizers—are you still mostly dependent on hardware when it comes to creating music?

Yeah, I am. I have not ever made the switch over to software. Of course I’ve incorporated a few software things into my process in different ways at times. I was making beats on the 303 and the 404 for a long time.

Recently I’ve been back on the MPC. I got a couple samplers and a bunch of records and just a few synthesizers and stuff. That kind of inspires me. I’ve always just liked that— seeing the machines instead of looking at a computer screen.

Do you see yourself transitioning to software any time soon?

It doesn’t even matter, software or hardware.

I always say you’ve got to just see what’s comfortable to you. If you have ideas and you think it’s worth putting your time into trying to figure out a way to bring those to life, you’ve just got to figure out what a comfortable way of working is. For somebody it’s going to be software and for somebody it’s going to be hardware. It doesn’t really matter as long as it works for you and you make something that sounds good.

Is there something musically that you haven’t done yet that you’d like to do before your music career is over?

There’s plenty that I haven’t done. But I just want to keep making music and just challenge myself and try to just do different things. I guess I haven’t really looked at it in just a straightforward way like that. Like what exactly do I want to do? I’m doing some little part of it every day.

SAMIYAM’S ANIMALS HAVE FEELINGS IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM STONES THROW. INTERVIEW

SAMIYAM

Interview by Le’Shawn Taylor and sweeney kovar Photography by Stefano Galli Sam Baker was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit renowned for its quality of life and generally liberal leanings. Like any typical middle class child, Sam found an outlet for his creativity through doodling and drawing. Unlike a typical middle class teen, an older Sam—introduced to the world of weed and rap music—found an updated outlet for his creativity in a drum machine his grandfather helped purchase. Years later, that creativity has been honed into a sharp talent for beat making, producing, and even rapping. After moving to Los Angeles in the late 2000’s following a MySpace conversation with Flying Lotus, Sam has played a quiet but pivotal part in the fabled L.A. Beat Scene. After releasing his first two projects via Brainfeeder, Sam collaborated on a cassette with Leaving Records before moving on to the house that Madlib built. His Stones Throw debut Animals Have Feelings is yet another mostly instrumental experience, feeding his cult audience’s appetite for chunky skewed beats but adding a handful of curated MCs. Samiyam speaks now on his creative process, his experience being in the creative community of Los Angeles and just what role animals play in his day to day life.

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GENEVA JACUZZI Interview and photography by Daiana Feuer At first we were just two girls getting to know each other on the way to the Bunny Museum in Pasadena, riding in the car talking about boys and Twin Peaks. Geneva Jacuzzi has long been an enigma, a musician and performance artist who delights in the unexpected. Literally every single performance she has ever done has been different. Whether she’s using a fax machine as an instrument or blow-up dolls as a backing band, on stage she embodies an alien, or a puppet that comes to life when you leave the room, or a monster that lurks in the TV, a ghost in the machine, an unflinching piece of live art. But surrounded by over 30,000 stuffed animal bunnies and bunny-themed collectibles in a house-turned-exhibit—just wall-to-wall with bunny stuff—this girl is all giggles. The mask is lifted and we find a comfortable space to talk about real things, from big philosophical questions about creativity and identity, to the directly personal, like finding a reason to get out of bed every day instead of hiding under the covers.

With Technophelia—her first album in five years, available now from Medical Records—coming on the heels of getting sober, Geneva Jacuzzi fought her way out of a dark place and, through music, found the best part of herself worth saving.

I’m entering a place where I have to grow up a little bit. I have to be smart. In the past it was a lot of teen angst, even as an adult. How do you break habits?

I often ask myself the same thing.

I went to rehab and I quit a huge habit. It’s funny because there was all this stuff I had to do to work on breaking that habit, but it’s like, does that apply to every aspect of my life?

Are these patterns repeating everywhere? Do I have to take a moral inventory of everything?

I guess so. You have to change. Change is the opposite of habit. Changing the way you are is so traumatizing, even if it’s for the better. It feels bad while you’re doing it. Our brains are so wired not to change.

That’s why when people go to the woods alone for a long period of time, they have emotional breakthroughs. They don’t have any of the regular distractions that keep you from facing who you are—drugs, TV, work, anything.

It sounds like rehab.

As a performer, do you feel like you’re sacrificing your self to get on stage for the sake of something everybody needs?

It’s always the question of why one person versus another person. Why is this person on stage? Why are these people in the audience?

The person up there is putting out a lot. They could suck and everyone will hate them, or they could be fine—who’s to say?—but the person up there has to deal with the consequences of something they’re doing right or wrong. There is a sacrifice of your identity and your ego. It calls attention to the reason why you’re there.

If you’re there just to be liked … that could be threatened by anything, technical difficulties, the audience, whatever is going on, losing your voice. There’s a lot more to lose if that’s why you’re up there. You’re putting it up to forces of chaos. Sometimes you’re there for a reason more mysterious—it’s a calling. Every show I’ve ever done is because people have asked. I’m not the person who calls and tries to get on bills. Every tour, every show has been someone asking, ‘Hey, do you want to play this show?’ and me going, ‘Hmmm…

OK … yeah!’ To be honest, my initial instinct is always, ‘No, I don’t.’ Getting on stage is scary. It’s a lot of work. It’s emotional. It’s not necessarily fun. It is fun, and it isn’t. So my initial instinct is ‘No’ but I don’t ever say INTERVIEW

that. I say, ‘Yes.’ I used to have a lot of anxiety before shows, so it was a really big sacrifice for me. I didn’t know why I was getting up there.

I guess I wanted to be liked but I didn’t at the same time—I was very off-putting too. There was a lot of confusion. I still get some of that feeling of I-don’t-know-why-I’m-supposed-tobe-there. But I’m trusting that, ‘OK, there’s a reason I’m supposed to be there and I’m going to go do my best.’ It’s a sacrifice but it’s cool.

Like anything that you put yourself out for.

It comes back with interesting results. I feel luckier than everyone in the audience when I’m up there because if anyone’s going to learn something from the experience, it’s going to be me—or maybe it won’t just be me, but I generally learn a lot from each performance.

After you perform are you fulfilled or empty?

When I was younger I had a band. I used to get really excited and put so much into it and after the show there was an emptiness or depression—almost a comedown. I would get really depressed for no reason. Now it’s the opposite. I have these knots in my stomach before a show. There’s so much to work through before a performance. I look normal on the inside but I’m grinding on the inside with nerves. My brain is on overload. I always have a lot of logistics to keep track of. And then just keeping myself calm. Now after the show is my favorite time. It’s over and I can finally go, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ I can put the pieces together and figure out what it was I was doing and why I was there. There’s always some aesthetic that I bring to the performance—or a story or a play or a question—and then there’s an element of chaos, unexpected, improvisation, incorporating the audience or people who don’t know what’s going on.

Things happen that I’d have never expected and they end up being perfect. They bring the last chapter to the myth or the story—or they answered the question, somehow created a holistic understanding of what that event was or knocked it into the next performance.

Created a bridge. Like, ‘Oh, wow—it’s going in this direction. Let’s explore that next performance.’

Are you referring to the things you do in the performance? Or something in the songs?

Those things are ingredients. It’s like writing a story or script, and then you have these characters, and you have these different

stories floating around. You’re developing characters and strange occurrences, and then you have random things you want in there, and you don’t know why. Then you start to do it—to write the scene, develop the cast, and physically make this thing happen. Like David Lynch—I’m on this Twin Peaks kick right now. They had the script at least for the parts they were filming, and there ends up being this character Bob in one of the rooms—who ended up being one of the main characters of the series and the film—who wasn’t even in the original script. You start filming or performing and notice elements you would have never seen before and they end up being the perfect thing that completes the whole. And you would have had no idea had you not started this thing [before it was] finished.

The character that you embody as Geneva Jacuzzi when performing—has that character taken on a life of its own that way?

It’s funny. It’s a moniker—it’s not my name.

It’s a performance name, and it was just supposed to be that. But as I was moving with this thing and making music and performing, my friends started calling me Geneva Jacuzzi in my personal life. Then when I go to a party they would introduce me as Jacuzzi, and then it was my Facebook name, and that’s just me all of a sudden. It wasn’t meant to be me. I didn’t realize it was happening. It’s interesting because… if you use your own name, being in the public in any way or putting yourself out there and having your name attached to it—especially being a solo artist—it’s really psychedelic. It challenges your ego and how you feel about yourself and the world and how you portray yourself—who are you and what are you. Going in I didn’t have a strong sense of self or identity. I had a weird upbringing.

That was my first adult attempt at being like ‘this is who I am.’ Searching for what was authentic in myself through this silly name … being able to separate your self for a moment, dress it up and play with it and say, ‘That’s not me, that’s my character,’ but then realize actually that is me. Or that’s what one part of me thinks of the other part of me. That mirror effect—that Lacanian separation of yourself from the other and your reflection and your double. And all these things explored through a moniker—or a double. The performer.

Lacan, huh? You don’t hear that guy brought up too much.

His ideas are super fascinating to me. His ideas about the mirror stage of development, the separating of the self, looking at your reflection and believing that’s you. It’s this strange psychotic thing we do: ‘I am that thing. I am that reflection. I perceive myself to be that reflection.’ You begin separating from your self when you identify what your self is. We don’t realize at first and it inserts itself in everything we think and how we interact with others. That’s actually how we experience ourselves—through another person or a reflection of ourselves—the other—or through objects and material things. How we find our identity through objects—purchasing your self through a product.

In terms of your identity or reflection in who you want to be, how has music been the reflection of the real you?

It’s something that comes from you that you can physically hear. It becomes material in the sound wave, but it’s an emotional thing that you can experience yourself through.

Just like your reflection. But it comes from a mysterious place and that is really the essence of humanity—that we can make these things that come from nothing. Of course they’re teeming with influences and some people are just straight ripping other people off, but when done a certain way … When I first started making music, I didn’t have any expectation. I wasn’t trying to please anyone. I was just experimenting with a form of expression that felt natural and exciting to me, and easy—it seemed easy even though it ended up being difficult later on. But that was because I was trying to own it and see it a certain way that it wasn’t.

But from the beginning until now I’ve gone through all these ego battles—psychological problems with drugs and my emotions, and dealing with my life and childhood and all my mistakes. At the end of the day I don’t even know how I make these songs. These songs come out and I listen to them and they answer the questions that hound me in a certain way. It’s this mysterious part of me I made, and yet I don’t know who made it, but it came from me. Through all my problems, it was the thing that saved me. Towards when I hit rock bottom before I went to rehab, I 21

was putting together Technophelia, which is a collection of five years of recording. Some of those songs were my first songs that I went and re-recorded. I’m pulling out all these files and revisiting all of these memories and pain and suffering that went into the recording.

At the time I couldn’t deal with it. I barely finished the album and checked myself into rehab—literally three hours later. I checked myself in because I found that this thing that used to be easy for me had become so difficult and I couldn’t deal with the emotional side of it. It was prohibiting me from actually making music. And the only thing that was there that was me—that was true—was the music. The rest of it was all my fucking problems I started attaching to the music, and that’s when the music became difficult. So I finally said, ‘No, I need to remove these problems because the only thing I know I can be sure of throughout my whole life are these songs.’ While they come from me, they come from this part of me I don’t really understand and I have to trust. The music is ultimately the freedom of ‘me.’ The freedom of anything in any kind of situation is to be able to create. It doesn’t have to be music, it could be anything. But it is the only real freedom that we have. If we take the opportunity to express that and utilize that freedom, we start to see parts of ourselves that are truly authentic. Amidst all the bullshit—regardless if other people like it or not, whether it’s successful or not—it keeps coming back and reminding you. It’s a magical thing. I’m just now starting to appreciate it.

Do you wake up every day like, ‘OK—I’m doing this on my own’? Or remind yourself it’s a new chapter every day?

SERIOUSLY. The truth is I am in a weird state of recovery and my brain and body don’t want to do anything. I’m the perfect candidate for someone to be depressed and bummed out and bitter. I have all the brain chemicals—or the lack of brain chemicals—to be conducive to be a depressed and bad person. I had to go through a lot of shit. It’s not that bad compared to all other people. I’m not saying, ‘Oh, pity me.’ But everyone goes through problems. I’m at that point where I’m dealing with them.

When I wake up in the morning my first instinct is to stay under the covers—and when someone asks me to perform, to say ‘no.’ But there’s this other part of me that reminds me, ‘What matters to you? What is the important thing? The music. You have to stay true to that—stay true to the art because if not you’re just going to get lost.’ When I wake up I have to go through the list of stuff I’m grateful for and happy about—do like a little ritual to get moving. Then the day picks me up and I’m fine. But I have to remember—re-remember everything—because when you forget is when it gets rough. It’s easy to forget and get lost in your problems and distractions. When I have stuff coming up I have to be vigilant, or else I shut down. The shutdown is the scariest part.

It’s not like you have a 9-5 to get you through the day. The artist’s life is fucking hard. You’re only reliant on yourself.

Yeah—there’s no one going, ‘OK, get up, do this.’ I have this tour coming up and it really boils down to me and I’m terrified. This year was crazy, and now I’m going to tour Europe alone. Totally sober. That’s making me go, ‘OK—this is not an easy thing and it’s not going to happen unless you get up and do

what you have to do.’ My self-discipline is not the best right now! It’s funny when it comes to talking about creativity, I wasn’t even talking about industry. I was talking about the process of art-making, I can do that, but the industry … to be a working artist, that’s a whole other flip-side to the thing. You have the part of you that’s true and authentic and you have the other part of you has to be like, ‘Hmm—how are we going to make a living doing this?’And not completely feel commodified. How to instill some true essence into this machine that is actually devoid of that? A machine that takes everything, strips it down and spits it out—consolidates and conforms and puts it into this like herding-cattle of touring bands.

Doing photo shoots and I’m like, ‘Why am I wearing these clothes that they want? What’s the bigger picture here?’ Constantly having to re-evaluate. And doing it for no money half the time. And then trying to support yourself. And it gets harder the bigger your ego gets. When you lose track of why you’re there, everything gets harder. And even if you’re doing well financially, you could be the most successful person and be miserable because you’ve lost sight of why you’re there.

In a way, all the struggles I’ve gone through in the last few years have been good because I’ve developed a lot of skills to keep myself in check and keep my heart in the right place.

The ultimate question is why do you keep doing it? And why do you love it?

Because it’s me. It’s who I was meant to be.

It’s what I was meant to do. I’m trying not to question it too much and just do my best.

There’s a little fire under my ass all the time telling me to go and create and take something

banal and make it interesting. That’s just how my brain is wired. I don’t have label money.

I don’t have parent money. I’m poor as fuck.

I come from a weird religious family that wants nothing to do with what I do. There’s no support for the arts. I have a chip on my shoulder but it’s more like ammunition. I’ve worked so hard. I’m constantly frustrated by how everyone tries to chintz artists. All the artists that have press are paying for it.

‘OK—if I have $6,000, I could be famous tomorrow.’ It’s fine, but fuck that. I do my own recording, my own production, my own lighting, my own sound, my own make-up, my own graphic design. I don’t necessarily do them all like an expert but I do them well enough. But that’s also why it took five years to put out another record. I make things more complicated than they need to be. You could get on stage and perform the songs, but I have to build a set and have actors and costumes and a whole new concept with every show. It’s rough but I’ve done it and it’s an adventure. Talk about a wild experience and fulfilling life. I’ve done a different art performance in thirty different countries and hundreds of crazy plays and roles and themes. As far as my sanity, OK—I would love to have some help. But I love music. I love art. I love it and that’s why I do it. I’m lucky to be able to do this.

GENEVA JACUZZI’S TECHNOPHELIA IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM MEDICAL RECORDS. VISIT GENEVA JACUZZI AT GENEVAJACUZZI.COM. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE BUNNY MUSEUM AT THEBUNNYMUSEUM.COM.

MARCH 15 - SXSW @ HOTEL VEGAS w/ THEE OH SEES, THE SPITS, NIGHT BEATS + MORE MAY 4 - DESERT DAZE PHOENIX w/ TORTOISE, CHICANO BATMAN, JJUUJJUU OCTOBER 14 - OCTOBER 16 - DESERT DAZE MOVES TO JOSHUA TREE, CA

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THE FEELIES Interview by Chris Ziegler Illustration by Dave Van Patten

The Feelies are the band that never quite fit in, and never needed to anyway: they were a proudly suburban foursome who’d drive in from New Jersey to spontaneously combust onstage at CBGBs just as new wave was coming into its own, lit up by truly inspiring amounts of caffeine and a righteous outsider confidence that had them playing quiet when everyone else was loud and playing subtle when everyone else was brutal. (Of course, the very early Feelies are pretty wild, too, if you can find the live tapes.) Their first two albums—their Stiff Records debut Crazy Rhythms, a perfect little introductory package of Feelies-ness, and The Good Earth—are classics in their own way, and were reissued by Bar/None in 2009. But the next two Feelies albums originally came out on major label A&M, just as the industry was starting to abandon vinyl pressings and just before Nirvana turned everything inside out, and the result was two Feelies records unjustly lost to history. But now Bar/None has rescued these records, too, which capture the Feelies in fine form—concentrating their sound on Only Life and nodding mightily to their Stooge-y/VU-y roots on Time For A Witness, which would have been a fine conclusion to the Feelies discography had they not reunited several years back. Co-founder Glenn Mercer speaks now about where the Feelies came from, why they liked going back home and when Little Richard decided it was time for a witness, too.

How did you get Little Richard’s autograph?

Glenn Mercer (guitar/vocals): We were staying at the Hyatt—the legendary hotel in Los Angeles. I was standing out front with our lighting woman having a cigarette and our road manager was checking us in, and there was a limo at the curb—maybe five feet in front of us. In L.A., you know—limos are everywhere, so we didn’t think anything of it. But the back window rolled down. It was surreal—the window rolling down revealed Little Richard, and he had this big grin on his face like, ‘Hi! How you doing? You all in a band?’ The girl I was with said, ‘Little Richard!

You’re amazing! I’m such a big fan!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, me too!’ Then someone came out from the hotel and jumped in the driver’s seat and they took off. I thought, ‘Well, that was pretty weird.’ Dave and I stayed behind to do interviews when the rest of the band went to soundcheck, and I told Dave and right he said, ‘Maybe he’ll be back?’ Sure, whatever. So we walk out and there’s a limo on the other side of the parking lot, quite a distance away.

Dave looks over: ‘Is that the limo?’ ‘They all look alike!’ Limos, you know? But again the window rolled down and he called us over! So we went over and Dave is like, ‘Little Richard!

Can I have your autograph?’ He had these little postcards with his picture that he signed for us, and he gave us a little inspirational Bible study booklet. We were relating the story to the people from A&M and they said, ‘Yeah, he keeps a hotel room there and he often does that—he’ll go up to bands.’ He told us, ‘If you’re in a band, watch what you do. Live a good life cuz there’s a lot of temptations out on the road.’ A little … you know, testifying.

He’d hang out in his limo witnessing to rock bands?

Yeah! I saw a documentary with Dave Grohl and he told a story how Little Richard’s son or nephew recognized Dave Grohl and said, ‘Hey, wanna meet Little Richard?’ He brought him over to the limo and they had the same exchange. So apparently it’s not that big a deal!

A lot of people have the same story.

24

Still—a pretty select club.

Yeah—it’s still very inspiring. When we were first went to the A&M lot, Bill and someone from our road crew saw Roy Orbison getting out of a limo and going to the studio at A&M. We did the New York tour with Lou Reed, and that tour ended at the Universal Amphitheatre, and they had a big afterparty in one of the green rooms. That was totally star-studded. Brian Wilson, Axl Rose …

Dave said to Brian Wilson, ‘Is Pet Sounds ever gonna come out in stereo?’ And Wilson said, ‘I dunno—I can only hear out of one ear anyway.’ There was a big … not an argument, but back and forth between Axl Rose and Lou Reed. Axl said, ‘Lou, I saw you on The Midnight Special back in 1970-something,’ and Lou was like, ‘I was never on Midnight Special.’ And they were just going back and forth: ‘No, no, I’m sure it was!’

Was it actually John Cale that he saw?

Actually I think Dave remembers and Axl was right. And Lou couldn’t remember. Which isn’t surprising.

What kind of student were you? The way the Feelies work seems so conscientious.

I was in the middle. I wasn’t a great student.

I was one of the kids that prior to the psychologists putting names on things …

‘He daydreams, he can’t concentrate on schoolwork but he’s smart.’

Proto-ADD? Exactly. If they were given treatment for that, would they have the creative urge? It sort of goes hand in hand. Or just having an imagination you really can’t control.

What was not there that you were daydreaming about? What was music a way to get to?

There’s always the social element. Wanting to fit in, make friends … but in a way it’s total fantasy. You see Hard Day’s Night or the Monkees’ TV show and think forming a band means you’re gonna have your little gang … and when you’re a teenager that rings true, but then it becomes a career or a job and so many other things come into the picture. It’s no longer about that at all.

People start making music for social reasons but then it grows too big for that, and you have to decide how and if you make it your life. Did the Feelies go through that?

By the time the Feelies got together, we were old enough to know that it wasn’t totally about that—it was trying to find a balance. Doing it for fun and companionship and friendship, and doing it for a living—the business side.

I’ve heard part of the reason Stiff signed you was the glasses thing: ‘You’re so cleancut—this will look great on t-shirts!’

I think there’s truth in that. I think it’s two different statements. ‘Yeah, we’ve been looking for a band that wears glasses.’ And they also wanted to make promo t-shirts. And we said, ‘T-shirts are shirts you wear under your shirt.

Why would you want an image on it?’

Your press from the time is funny—people seem so upset about the way you dressed and looked.

When we started, we were just sort of … plainlooking, I guess. Nothing really special. Even our sound wasn’t really that special. There were so many bands at the time that were just flocking to New York cuz that was really the center of the universe for independent music. CBGB’s had their summer festival and had maybe eight bands a night for three months—just hundreds of bands!

That’s punishing!

Yeah, really—but there were so many bands that wanted to play, and they all really had something that kind of set them apart. We realized … we actually played a few years without any press at all and had a very small following. You had Talking Heads, Modern Lovers, Devo—everybody was sort of playing up the novelty aspect of weirdness. In general, music was celebrating quirkiness really. It didn’t seem out of place for us—we really just took it a step further. It really jelled for us when our original rhythm section Vinnie and Keith—they both had the Beatle bowl haircuts, and Keith brought the first Beach Boys record in to get his haircut and said, ‘I want it cut like that.’ Parted on the side, kinda 50s-ish with glasses … we thought,

‘Whoa, that’s a pretty strong statement.’ We took a little Modern Lovers, a little of this and that and ran with it really. But there wasn’t anything we didn’t feel comfortable with. We never would’ve done that.

Before you played, you’d load up on coffee and drink chorophyll— We would drink coffee and we still do! We still drink coffee before we play. The chlorophyll we would drink during the show.

What does that do? Where do you get it?

A little bottle, and you mix it with water in a jug. It puts oxygen in your blood. It provides oxygen for a planet and it does the same for you. This is before Jolt cola and all. We would bring our own percolator and set that up backstage, and we had beans with a grinder. I remember one time I was carrying the bag of beans down the stairs—this is after the show, I think at Club 57 in New York—and they spilled out all over the steps when people were leaving the venue, practically falling on their faces. There were beans all over the place! I [still] drink it strong all the time and don’t hardly feel anything. At night I switch to decaf and that makes me kinda sleepy cuz I guess I’m expecting the caffeine and I don’t get it. So it has the opposite effect.

The Feelies have a fascination with this idea of ‘home’—it’s even the chorus to the Time For A Witness single ‘Sooner Or Later.’

[Feelies co-founder] Bill [Millions] also told Spin around the A&M years that you have ‘strong attachments to home.’ Why? Anybody who does creative work that reflects them can’t help but be influenced by your surroundings. In our case—I actually mentioned this recently when they asked about how we were separate from the punk scene in New York. And I said … well, yeah.

First of all, it kind of had been done before, with the Stooges and MC5 and things like that. It didn’t seem like something we wanted to get behind. And also we just felt a real strong connection with our suburban roots. We didn’t wanna move to New York.

It was refreshing at the end of the night to drive back. Sometimes we’d get home and INTERVIEW

the sun was just coming up. It was really beautiful. You’d see the milkmen delivering the milk. We’d actually sit and listen to the suburban sounds—the crickets, the wind in the trees, hear something way the hell down the block, a kid going by on his bicycle.

We’d just be fascinated by the sounds. If we were living in the city—in New York—we’d just be bombarded by so much sound that after a while, you just become immune to the subtleties and you can’t hear anything.

Just a din of noise. I understand the appeal.

My daughter lives in New York—the appeal when you’re younger is you crave stimulation.

As you get older, it’s the opposite. You crave peace and quiet.

Is that why Feelies songs are as subtle as they are? Because it’s that suburban sound?

It played to it. A lot of it was also the influence of bands like Kraftwerk and Eno—stuff that had different layers. Something in the foreground, something in the background.

Actually there was a little bit of a movement that really didn’t take off, but Eno in particular talked quite a bit about it—the Jamaican dub music. How they’d have a continuous track of a percussion part, but they’d only bring it up in very minute little sections. So you’re playing the faders of the mixing board almost like an instrument itself. That really intrigued us as well. They’d start with a bass that’s very hypnotic and minimal—almost like one chord—and then add all these embellishments that would come and enter and leave and then something else would come in. It was hypnotic but the dynamics were created in a different way. And Philip Glass—people like that. We actually met with Philip Glass. We were considering having him as a producer. It was before Crazy Rhythms.

How much of a meeting was it? Did he discuss specific ideas?

We had hoped he’d say ‘I’d like to do this and that’ but he didn’t say much—didn’t really seem to have a lot of ideas. And we thought, ‘Well, we have a lot of ideas, so we should really do it ourselves.’ We had done one of the early Ork sessions with a producer [Jon Tiven], and after we finished recording he said, ‘Why don’t you guys go out and have some dinner and I’ll do a rough mix?’ And we came back and it was so different from anything we could imagine that we said, ‘Ah, we really don’t wanna do this again.’

People like to position you outside of punk—there’s a good quote I found about how the Feelies were ‘at odds with punk’s meanness.’ I though there was something to that. You acknowledge that outsider feeling but it isn’t aggressive, like in ‘For Now’ on Time For A Witness: ‘No rest in a restless world / everything’s out of control.’

Well, the follow-up line: ‘It’s alright.’ It’s always been the balancing, really.

The Feelies have a great sense of balance.

You never went to any extremes you couldn’t come back from.

Well—thanks! It is hard, really. Everything you do, really, is about that. Every aspect of life, when you think about it. One doesn’t exist without the other. Positive space can’t exist without negative space. Loud can’t exist without soft.

How did you come to realize this? What happened in the years before balance?

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I dunno. An art background—negative space in art? But I think it’s really inherent in your DNA. It allows you to appreciate art—maybe art is providing that insight, or maybe it’s the other way around, really.

Is making an album like when a painter makes a painting? You have your frame, and you fit your positive and negative space within it—you make the same decisions.

But a lot of times you’re not. You’re allowing the decisions to present themselves. To allow the possibilities to present themselves. And then you go with what you feel, really. People like Pollock—he’d surprise himself. He didn’t know what was gonna be there.

How were you able to recognize those possibilities? And not mistake them for mistakes?

Or allowing for accidents? Accidents happen for a reason a lot of time—you don’t plan on taking that dramatic turn. Take what people perceive as space before ‘Moscow Nights’ [on Crazy Rhythms]. We wanted to create a certain mood. So we had this like … wind sound and almost like a tugboat type of a horn. And our co-producer was like, ‘You’re mixing this so low! No one’s gonna hear it by the time it gets to vinyl.’ ‘No—we don’t wanna hit people over the head with it. We wanna be really subtle.’ And he was right! People just didn’t perceive that. They thought it was complete silence. But there’s a lot going on in there.

It has a nighttime feel. Like a moment of silence on the street between when the cars are driving by.

The best records for me—my favorite records—are the ones that are able to convey some kind of atmosphere. Like you can listen to it and think, ‘Well, if you were to analyze it and take it apart, the production is really bad!’ But the whole atmosphere is great! The one element you can’t control—the sum of all the parts is greater than the parts. It’s just something that happens. It’s almost indefinable, really. It’s the main thing you relate to when you hear it—when there’s a song you like and connect to, it’s the whole atmosphere.

It’s like when people talk about how a song should tell a story. But a song can be a story, too—it can have this narrative beginningto-end feel within it even if the words aren’t so explicit. It can move you along with it.

The listener provides the story. But you provide a framework from which they could draw their own stories.

Is it called Time For A Witness … like time to a Little Richard-style witnessing?

Testifying about better things that came before and could come again? Or just the history witnessed by the Feelies? You saw indie rock from birth to mainstream.

I could make an argument for either. For me, the lyrics and titles come from the subconscious.

Do you start playing and hear the words floating in your head?

Yeah—just sing whatever pops in your head, edit it down and re-write.

That keeps it from being mechanical and mannered.

You can tell when someone is sitting there with the pen and paper. Being from New Jersey, people always ask about Bruce Springsteen.

Somebody asked me to contribute something

to a some tribute to him, and I said, ‘Well, to be honest, when he came out, I was much more into the underground scene.’ Especially because of the cover song—Manfred Mann, ‘Blinded By The Light.’ So many words coming at you, so many rhymes—the whole image is not some guy rocking out with the guitar. It’s someone trying to be literate.

What if Springsteen had liked the Feelies as much as he likes Suicide?

It probably wouldn’t have been good.

Something bad would’ve come out of it somehow. Just the whole idea of the Feelies and mass popularity …

You always said you’d rather twenty people like you for the right reasons than 200 cuz you’re the newest thing.

Definitely. And when we said that the guy who was doing the interview actually got mad!

‘Oh, you’re so fulla shit! You’re just saying that!

You wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t wanna be famous!’ We just shrugged.

What are some of the reasons that felt like the right reasons?

People a lot of times might latch on to a band cuz it’s popular. Or it’s what’s getting played.

Dave tends to do that. He’ll get into a band when it’s first breaking and like ‘em and then go back a couple years later like, ‘What was I thinking?’

That craving for stimulation.

Yeah, I guess. We had a meeting with Stiff where we’d either submitted demos for our second record or were about to work on the, and they said, ‘We need a single. Could you come up with something along these lines?’

And they played us a Lene Lovich song. And we’re scratching our heads. The one they played wasn’t a hit for her either! So obviously they didn’t know what they were doing.

The story I’ve heard with Time For A Witness is it’s kind of a back-to-the-roots album—the Feelies with a take on the Stooges and the Velvet Underground.

At the time, a big record for us was the Neil Young Weld record. It was just prior to the whole grunge thing. It seemed like that was becoming real popular, that distorted guitar.

When we first started, we wanted to avoid that—so we got real clean guitar and guitar amps. It kinda came full circle on appreciating the value of distorted guitar. We revisited that for that record.

What brought you back to that sound?

You saw the Stooges, you saw the Velvet Underground … by the time punk came around, you felt like it’d been done.

It’s a matter of not wanting to repeat your previous record. You can always find inspiration by looking back I think. One element in the making of that record was having signed with a major label, we kind of felt that we needed to at least make a slight concession to adhere to a little bit of a schedule. They were expecting an album and we should do our best to try to make that happen. So we didn’t have a lot of song ideas, so we went back to the way we originally worked, which was we did a lot of jamming. I had just moved into the house where I’m living now and the band set up in the basement so we had everything in place to be able to play often and just … like I said, we did a lot of jamming and taped a lot of that stuff, and with that we kind of fashioned the songs.

Is this in Haledon?

I’m in North Haledon.

Does being able to have a home base like that help the band? You don’t have to waste time uprooting yourselves or chasing something. You don’t start over, over and over. You can just go right to the music.

Definitely. We were really lucky to be able to have a place that’s not costing $20 or $50 an hour just to rehearse. There’s so much baggage attached to being able to function on that level. You do get together and immediately there’s pressure: ‘This is costing money!’ That’s why our newest record that we’re involved with right now, we decided to do it here at my house and also at the engineer’s house. Just to be totally off the clock—to take our time and experiment.

That’s just so much better.

How close were Time For A Witness and Only Life to what you wanted? Were there things that never got done?

Time For A Witness more than Only Life. Only Life was perhaps the only record where we were there during the mixing but we weren’t that involved. We’d be in the back room watching videos—they had a catalog. This was at the Power Station. They had a whole library. We saw Spinal Tap, I think. And the co-producer would come and get us and we would go in and listen and make comments and suggestions and leave and take all those adjustments and then come back and listen again. We also kinda made a concession to being on a major label to try and get radio airplay. ‘Alternative rock’ was kinda on the verge of becoming mainstream—‘This is what you have to do to survive,’ so we considered that point. It’s sort of personal too. Stan loves the way the drums sound, and that’s what I hate the most. That reverb drum thing. It didn’t ruin the songs but it has that particular … it dates it. It puts it in that time frame.

Is it true that the first time you went to England the airlines lost all your new equipment?

We did get all these big road cases and new gear and had a couple shows set up in England.

And we brought everything to the airport and loaded it into one of those cargo containers, and it never arrived in England. We’re still not sure what happened. I think you’re supposed to pay some extra under-the-table money to get it on? I’m not sure. Especially back in the day on Crazy Rhythms, we were using a lot of weird percussion stuff. Like pipes, cans … we’re like, ‘We can’t call a music store and ask for a pipe or can!’

Hardware store?

Dave left the can behind at one of the shows in England. We had a hard time replacing that. A big metal can—a pretty big can. We replaced it. It was a container for metal parts or something.

Did you find a replacement in the trash on the street? ‘Ah, fate has smiled on the Feelies!’

I don’t remember but we were a lot more careful afterward!

THE FEELIES’ ONLY LIFE AND TIME FOR A WITNESS ARE AVAILABLE NOW FROM BAR/NONE. VISIT THE FEELIES AT THEFEELIESWEB.COM. 27

MARTHA DAVIS OF THE MOTELS Interview by Marion Belle Illustration by Bijou Karman Martha Davis—the original ‘it girl’ of the New Wave—has been at this for 40 years. She’s still single-tracking her vocals, and writing music that can cut you. As a singer, songwriter, performer, and bandleader, she’s been the muse of David Lynch and Giorgio Moroder, among many others. Without Martha Davis there is no Lana Del Rey—just listen to the way Del Rey sings, ‘It’s like I told you, honey.’

Strangely, it’s storming in L.A. when I called her at her farmhouse outside of Portland. I told her I had been up all night, and she told me she had already worked out, fed her ducks and made banana pancakes. She was also cooking her taxes and making sure the stable of young dudes who have made up her legendary band the Motels for the last few years were treated right by Uncle Sam. Hers is a saga that reads like an epic poem by Byron or Shelley, and her still-unfolding story rivals Edith Piaf’s for hardcore romance and beauty in the face of darkness. She was born in Berkeley, got pregnant when she was 15—and again when she was 17—then escaped the life of a Tampa Bay military wife and lived through her mother’s suicide, all while keeping a vow to follow her cherry red dreams. To hear her voice over the phone brings chills: L.A.’s ultimate femme fatale, one of the most gorgeous and enigmatic lead singers of all time, is talking to you. The girl who wrote “Total Control” and “Only the Lonely” is there, just a whisper away across a landline. In 1979 as L.A. punk was breaking, the Motels famously held court at Madame Wong’s and then shot to stardom. It only took them eight years on the Sunset Strip.

Do you like to dance?

Oh yeah—of course. I remember being 8 or 9 at home and it was raining. I was wearing this yellow tutu. I push away all the furniture and rugs from the living room and put on my mom’s old 78s. One of the records was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. When I put that on, that was the first time I ever felt like I was in outer space—like I had literally left my body. I was not tied to the earth.

That sounds like your Rosebud?

It was my Rosebud. Something about that music: Ravel, Debussy, Satie. I don’t know—I love a chord change! Bowie, too, of course.

I know.

I’m still not over it. I don’t think I ever will be.

The first time I ever sang it was the old Negro spirituals. Then it was soul music. I thought, ‘This is my thing—this is what I love.’ But there weren’t really any white girls singing that stuff. Of course I loved jazz. But I didn’t know what I was going to do. Then David Bowie comes along and combined everything—all of that into one, into something different, into pop music! And he showed us the way.

How did you go from loving pop music to making it? And why did you know you needed to go to L.A. to make it?

When I was still in Berkeley, I was already playing a little. I wasn’t recording songs that I had written yet—I hadn’t made the leap.

My friend [and original Motels’ bassist] Lisa Brennan was like, ‘You always talk about doing it—why don’t you just join my band?’ And I did. Once I was onstage, that was it—done deal. Then things went from dangerous to seriously dangerous! We moved down to L.A. to ‘make it overnight!’ That was the Warfield Foxes. L.A.—I had been before and I hated it.

It really was hard to breathe then! They hadn’t figured out the right combination of chemicals to filter the pollution. And I loved Berkeley. I would ride my bike around the campus. My parent’s friends were all intellectuals, you know.

I’d come home and they’d have this fascinating 28

brain scientist listening to them talk. But I did not like the Bay Area music at all. It was the Dead and Jefferson Airplane. I was into Eno and Bowie! And L.A. was a fascination—so alien to me. The other good thing was at that time there was NO traffic! Melrose had literally nothing on it. The Beverly Center … that’s where I’d take my children to Pony Land! It was a field. On certain perfect days—fall days when it was clear and crisp—L.A. was great. I wrote a lot of great songs there. But in 1975, she wasn’t so pretty. She looked like a whore the morning after.

Where was your first apartment in L.A.?

The corner of La Brea and Detroit. I got lucky because it was a really good place. I moved in with [then boyfriend and ex-Motels guitarist] Dean Chamberlain, a very great person. We had recently broken up but I think we were still sleeping in the same bed because of finances.

It was me, the kids, the pets. But the landlady raised the rent $800 and we couldn’t afford it. I grabbed the kids and we slept in cars for a few weeks while I was looking everywhere but not finding anything. Finally I had to move into the Hell House in Echo Park! Let me tell you—it was not safe or pretty then.

It was like an old craftsman. Paint sniffers in the basement, angel dust dealers. A huge old house that had once probably been amazing.

There was a greenhouse on the second floor and five bedrooms, some of which had no ceilings. $185 a month and in shambles. The landlady’s son I think was schizophrenic. One night I heard these crazy noises downstairs like he was killing someone. I called the cops, took the girls, and left that night! Like, ‘You just got the head angel dust dealer busted! Get the fuck out of there.’ My daughters must have been 10 or 11, and 9. It was hell for the girls. It was an awful way for them to live at times. We were broke, broke, broke. There was no net, no grandparents, just us. And Mom was trying to be a pop star. They’d say, ‘Mom, when you make it, can we get new socks?’

Was there anyone in your life then? A guy?

Not really, no. I mean, there were guys. Booty calls, you know. Dean and I had broken up.

So it really was just us. But sex was always there. Sexuality is so important to what you do—such a controlling factor in all of your decisions. It’s also responsible for every crazy stupid thing. ‘Let’s do another threesome— yeah! That sounds like a good idea.’

You were there before L.A. punk—you even helped start it with your DIY Radio Free Hollywood shows. You were there when Sunset Strip glam and metal started, too.

How did you fit in?

I’m not sure we did fit in? It was such an explosion of uniqueness. It was easier to stay true to yourself that way. The bands were so diverse. It was more a focus on honing who you were. So many kinds of groups. There was 20/20! There was Smegma! And there was us.

What got you installed at Madame Wong’s?

You know—you’re out looking for gigs.

Somebody tells you there’s this place, and you make a call. Esther Wong says, ‘You come down!’ You play and there’s five people there but she likes you and says, ‘You come back!’

At first it was like … 8 people. Then 25. Then it was packed and we were on a roll. It was … full on. Punk meets … I don’t know? The beginnings of the New Wave thing. One night it was Devo, the next night Oingo Boingo. It was tremendously diverse, diverse enough so that people could find a niche. I was 29 years old, which wasn’t really that young, but it was so new. The thing about playing there was they served Ng Ka Py, which was Chinese liquor that was imported as medicine. They served it in brown crockery pots and when you poured it out it was bright orange! We did double shots before every show.

Before the success of Only the Lonely, what was the closest you came to leaving music behind? And why weren’t you able to?

Oh man. I’m not really sure. Because you know, when my mom committed suicide …

my dad said, ‘You’ve got to go back to school and be a secretary.’ Then I found her diary.

She wanted to be an author. She’d been this brilliant English major at Berkeley but instead she got married and became the stereotypical 50s housewife for her husband. I read her diary and that was it—I said, ‘I’ve got to do music.’

And I moved to L.A. Once I went in, I was in for the duration. Going from being a band trying to make it to being signed happened so fast there wasn’t any time to think. We literally played a show at Madame Wong’s, got the deal, and the next day we were in the studio because our manager was so sure we were going to be signed that he’d already booked studio time. Then when they tell you to pack your stuff—‘You’re getting on a tour bus!’—or they’re flying you somewhere, that’s strange.

It boggles the mind. From being completely broke to having a house with a swimming pool?

When I finally got the record deal I put my girls in private school. After so long I figured they deserved to get out of the ghetto. But the creative part has always been my favorite part.

Performing second. Celebrity is the work part, the ‘there’s no free lunch’ part. I wasn’t made to be a celebrity. I think in general artists prefer not to be in the spotlight. I was really lucky to record four albums for a major label. But I also suffered that awful thing of having success with an album that was my least favorite sound. At that point my head was spinning, like I was in this current being pulled down the river.

[Capitol Records] had rejected Apocalypso, the album we submitted. And then the album they liked—the one we re-recorded—was the one that was so successful. So now I have the question, the doubts—am I wrong? I knew I had to get out or I was going to regret it.

I was reading YouTube® comments and they are very passionate about the Motels, your voice, and your beauty. The one that struck me the most was from a housewife who said something like, ‘Her songs sang my life for me.’ Has anyone done that for you?

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That’s a good question. Songs and music meant so much to me—they allow me to sing!

I was this pregnant girl still thinking about that middle section in The Rite of Spring and wanting not to be tied to the earth. I had to sing and I knew the odds and everything, but at some point it seemed to be what I was meant to do. It was a total fluke that it worked.

Were you ever a drama queen?

Not a drama queen. I play the victim, but never the helpless victim. I’m not a helpless person. I always get myself out of things. I have this Zen saying I made up when life isn’t going right— those days when you get up and trip over the chair and spill the coffee. ‘Well, I guess that’s what we’re doing today. The world’s gonna be pushing back.’ I try to go with it.

You had a lot on your plate, and trying to give the music and the performances everything— Yes, but you realize too that you have to be responsible. You’re not the gift. The gift is what came to you. That’s the most humbling thing on the planet. There’s no swagger—you’re just so grateful.

But doesn’t it take swagger to rise to that level of performance? To take to the stage and carry the message?

Yeah—you’re right, I think. There is the responsibility of the persona. It’s this weird mixed thing, doing it right. You’re completely exposing yourself. You strip naked. You’re scared to death. And you have to swagger, be in a sense completely self-involved ... the Ng Ka Py thing ... whatever it takes to bulldoze that shit out of your brain. Drugs and alcohol are obvious ways but you have to be narcissistic or else you are probably aren’t going to draw attention to yourself doing this job. You have to put yourself first until that machine takes over. Wear a sandwich board or something!

I heard from Nic [Nicholas Allen Johns, producer for the Motels and Marion’s Fatal Jamz] that you never double-track vocals.

That’s true. I guess in the old days they just didn’t put anything on my voice. I mean …

I love harmonies and I have used them at times. Val [Garay, producer of Only the Lonely] said, ‘There’s not a voice that really matches with your voice.’ You know when you’re in a room with other musicians and there’s just … so much room. Your voice can feel so small.

Listen—I was always just happy to be making music. Early Motels stuff is so vacant—so many holes. The holes were a big part of it.

‘Total Control,’ there’s a ton of space. There’s so much restraint in that recording.

‘Total Control’ I wrote as a punk song after I broke up with Dean. It was like aggro, man— lots of anger. [sings fast like a punk:] ‘Looking counter-clockwise / knowing what could happen / any moment maybe you / maybe even you.’ Then Jeff came up with this chord progression. I thought, ‘This is so much better than what I was doing.’ It became this aching thing. But that aggro thing was still under there. Have you seen the Jonathan Demme film Something Wild where they use it? The scene where he uses the song is Ray Liotta is in this car and he turns up the radio and it’s ‘Total Control.’ He turns it up and he starts beating the shit out of this guy.

Demme’s a smart dude. He heard the aggro vibes underneath.

Yes, he did. Kinda neat.

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Many people don’t know that you were approached by David Lynch to play the singer in Blue Velvet. Anyone who listens to the music you were making in 1985 and sees your photos and performances from that time will find that your connection to the character is shocking. Did you go in for an actual audition?

I did—I went and met David Lynch. I read the script and at that point it was more horrifying, It wasn’t all there yet of that character. The son and the husband hadn’t been kidnapped yet and the character was just this bizarre crazy … frightening in a lot of ways thing. I couldn’t see myself as this person. He writes a beautiful script, though—David Lynch. He puts in all the sounds of the bugs chirping in the dirt. Bottom line was a lot of pop stars were getting into movies. And just because I’m a pop star I didn’t think I had the talent.

But who knows if I had done it? I might be married to David Lynch! And I loved doing videos. I was so lucky. I got to work with just the best people. David Fincher. [Australian music video director] Russell Mulcahy. It was so wonderful. We would write little movies.

To me it’s a great achievement when people say ‘that’s so 80s’ because you were a part of creating a time that’s so vibrant, alive, and recognizable that it makes people happy. Like a movement in painting like Impressionism or Renoir. [laughs] I might not go that far!

I would! Every time I’ve seen you play I’ve thought, ‘Her new songs are as good or better than the older songs.’ There’s a piano ballad called ‘Mr. Gray’ that you usually smoke a cigarette during that seems as good as any Motels song I’ve heard.

That’s from a jazz album called I Have My Standards. Dreamy sit-by-the-fire drink-wine smoky jazz stuff. We recorded twelve songs in two days. So awesome. Just stuff I had written.

I never turn my muse away from my door. I wrote that when I was 19 on a camping trip.

All of a sudden this weird jazz-blues song came out of me. That’s the thing—you gotta get out of the way and let them just come. I’m so lucky that they like visiting. Any artist will tell you … a lot of it is hard work but a lot of it is being open to these things that are floating around. When they decide to land on you you’re a lucky person. When I wrote ‘Only the Lonely’ I literally picked up my guitar and it was sitting there. It was complete in form. I wrote down the lyrics that were coming out. I wrote down the chords. Except that one little crazy high note that everyone’s so nuts for was an accident in the studio.

I’m nuts for that high note.

I know. People love the high note. [laughs] And you still hit it perfectly live.

One night it didn’t happen, and the whole band was like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen this happen.’ It’s happened to me a couple of times when I was really sick. I just said, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t finish until I get this note.’ I think I did it three times before I got it and by that point the audience was like, ‘Come on, you can do it!’

In the studio how did it happen?

I think we were going into one of the choruses. My voice broke where it naturally breaks and everybody was like, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ [laughs] How’s your record?

Is it finished? I’m excited to hear it. Are you happy with it?

I really am, and that feels good because it’s taken like two years. And the music, as much as I heard it in all those stages ... it still sounds very fresh to me. It takes so long right and you’re constantly protecting the song and trying to capture or keep it’s essence.

I know—isn’t it fucking crazy? I think nowadays everyone’s so good at computers.

You can take things and plug ‘em in and move ‘em around and it’s kind of like that real essence of a song—which is a journey—gets sometimes confused. I think that sometimes that what you feel in the music … we don’t feel that journey, we just sometimes feel some really cool parts. I don’t do all that shit. All I need to write is a pad of paper, a pen and a guitar. It’s already gotten so far past me. I used to have one of those Akai tape machines that took like big VHS tapes. I could get around on that machine. I loved that machine. But that’s not really my … I’d say I’m much more an arranger than I am a producer. Sonics, you know—they’re great when they’re great but I fucking do not get into that minutiae because I’m listening to the song. And the song doesn’t have to be fidelity-wise excellent if it’s a great song. To me it’s more about structures and the harmonies and stuff. And Nic’s fucking incredible in every direction. He gets in there and gets amazing sounds so I don’t feel bad—I don’t need to get in there and produce every nuance of the thing. I don’t care!

There’s a great picture of you sitting at the mixing board with [producer] Val Garay.

How hands on were you in terms of getting the sound right?

When we got signed in 79 we were working with John Carter [producer of the first Motels LP]. And we basically left Madame Wong’s— played our last show like Friday or Saturday and went into the studio Monday. And Carter’s like … ‘Play your set.’ We played it live and I had never been in a studio, I had no idea. Back then there was no home studio practicing. They didn’t give you any idea until you walked in. It didn’t sound anything like what we sounded like—it just didn’t. Because a recording doesn’t sound like what you sound like live! There’s no air moving, you know?

There’s none of that crazy … it’s just different.

I knew so little I was afraid to say anything.

I was like, ‘These drums don’t sound like the drums ... [but] they know what they’re doing, they’ll fix it ... in the mix!’ [laughs] ‘And it’ll sound like us.’ And it never did sound like us to me! The first album is probably my favorite album. Second and third—the third being Apocalypso—I liked a lot. That was heavily influenced by Tim McGovern who was running the show at that time, not Val Garay.

And then when Val Garay took over he had his own tonal thing, and like I said—I want to write the song and see if the song gets across.

By the time we got to the Val Garay point of the program I was already kind of beat up. Both Tim McGovern and Val Garay are really forceful people with very strong feelings about what they want. I’m not confrontational and I’m definitely not Prince like, ‘This is my sound! It’s gotta be like this!’ I basically just sat along for the ride. The other problem I have is that when I’m making music, in whatever

respect I’m making it—I’m happy! I’m not sitting there nit-picking it: ‘We’re making music—this is good!’ But in hindsight my least favorite albums are those very polished Val Garay albums. That’s not my go-to sound.

I like stuff that’s edgy and weird. Bowie was the first influence. I loved the fact that when he would do a recording his takes would be not the flawless takes but the takes with the emotion. Something could be flat or a little out of tune but it was just the performance that he went after which was really spectacular.

So as the career went on and the records stayed … I actually started feeling not as happy with the direction of the music. It wasn’t satisfying that weird itch, you know? That thing where you want to do something different with the music? It was very homogenous and very safe.

And I don’t like safe—never have.

I think all of the records sound incredibly good. I’d argue it’s all very edgy.

I always tried to write that way—raw, kind of lyrical. Probably thanks to Stravinsky I like to try to throw in notes that create that dissonance and that rubbing that creates tension. When you’re doing it, you’re always your own worst critic. But when I listen to those records I’m like, ‘ … nah.’ [laughs] I know you’re trying, with the recording, to get to that sublime place and capture the truth. And you don’t always get there.

Exactly. I have some rules in the studio: ‘The only ego allowed in the room is the song’s ego.’

When I write a song, it’s changed a little but I used to always write the music first. That’s your theater, that’s your stage. Lyrics—that’s your set dressing. The music has to describe this vivid experience and you garnish that with the lyrics. When I listen to music, as much as I’m a lyricist, I never listen to lyrics. I listen to a whole song as that thing. It’s not about hearing the lyrics. If they’re out of place, you know it, and if they’re wrong you know it. But if they’re right, it’s tremendous.

It sometimes feels to me that song writing can be kind of a sickness because, like you said, you stay open to it and it can alienate you from others—even other musicians— because you need that.

You have to be protective of your inner self.

That’s where it all comes from. Maybe there is a part of me that’s guarded in that sense? I know songs need to come out honestly. They need to feel when you read them or hear them that there’s real emotion or … it’s sort of an alien place. I keep going back to Bowie: that marvel of an unknowable thing that knows everything. I think I’m way more integrated now then I was when I started. I immediately went from where I was so scared that I literally wanted to run out of the building, almost, to crawling around on my knees to doing just crazy shit. I had no idea what came over me.

And you’re like, ‘Is this the real me?’ It goes back to you in the yellow tutu.

It really is the great reveal.

That’s a great place to end.

It was wonderful.

VISIT THE MOTELS AT THEMOTELS. COM. MARTHA DAVIS IS CURRENTLY WORKING ON A TELEVISION SERIES AND A MUSICAL. THE MOTELS’ LATEST ALBUM IS SCHEDULED TO BE RELEASED THIS SUMMER. 31

VUM Interview by Chris Kissel Photography by Ward Robinson At 9:30 in the morning the hills around Topanga Canyon sparkle. They’re dotted with homes, cafes, and high-end restaurants, and shot through by the winding Topanga Boulevard, where Corvettes speed past rusty old Volkswagen buses. At the Mimosa Cafe, a man in suspenders and a feathered cap held forth on the conspiracy du jour: ‘There’s lies,’ he says, ‘and there’s goddamn lies.’ And on the crest of another of those hills sits the cozy little house where Jennifer Pearl and Christopher Badger live and create their music. This is where Pearl and Badger wrote and recorded VUM’s latest Cryptocrystalline, a minimal yet lush set of electronic rock that’s a breakthrough in terms of both sound and vision. Pearl, who has worked as a marine biologist, and Badger, a sculptor and art teacher, both bring an unorthodox perspective to their work. Together with drummer Scott Spaulding, they work to combine slinky metallic guitar riffs, vintage electronic sounds and slowly unfolding melodies—sometimes wistful, often menacing. We talked about the band’s grown-up sounds and grown-up priorities in their living room while a Pharaoh Sanders album played on the turntable. Cryptocrystalline comes out digitally on March 25 and on vinyl on May 3. Portions of the proceeds will benefit the Malala Fund.

Cryptocrystalline sounds richer and deeper than anything VUM has done to date. It’s relatively easy to have the kind of arsenal of electronic sounds you use—but it’s different to be able to use them to take listeners somewhere.

Jennifer Pearl (vocals/guitar): I would hope that would be a consequence of getting older, traveling more, having more hardship, knowing more people, and just developing as a person.

Christopher Badger (Rhodes bass/synth/loops): The writing process is really different, too.

Living together, and being together all the time—and working on this stuff at home and recording it for the most part at our home studio—there’s a lot of opportunity for refinement of ideas and rehashing of ideas. As opposed to getting together in a practice space at super high volume with four or five other people and trying to write. You change the structure, you change the output.

You say you credit your experiences for helping deepen your sound. What sort of experiences?

JP: So many. I think more recently the most intense experience has been becoming less narcissistic as I became a mother. Getting moved out of constantly asking myself, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is it that I want to do?’ Motherhood is a basic thing—it’s not special that I’m a mother. But I have found it to have a profound influence on how I think about things. The result of that is becoming a lot more aware about how I relate not just to my local community but also the world at large. Every time a drone flies over Syria, that’s my country and my tax dollars. It makes you more aware of what your place in the big collage. And what those ramifications are for the future. Those are the things I’m thinking of as I compose lyrics.

The idea of the self is visited in different ways in the lyrics—ideas about possession and intimacy; questions of who you are, and what you represent.

JP: I don’t think it’s ever that intentional, but through the writing process I come to realize that x, y, and z have changed, and this is how I’m thinking of it. Especially in terms of my daughter’s future. I feel like I have a heavy INTERVIEW

stake in things getting better rather than feeling disengaged and just at the center of my own universe.

How have you found your music developing alongside that idea?

CB: Part of it was getting influenced by things that were not rock music. We have played in rock bands and garage bands, and in this band, it’s more of a response to other musics and audio that I experienced through art, really, and getting into art history. Finding different ways of making music that is much more minimal. In comparison to a lot of those influences, what we do is still very rock. But compared to what we were doing before … we were, for example, listening to long microtonal drone composers. We had to strip back the flourishes and changes. I think I found an appreciation of doing a lot more with less.

JP: After [Pearl’s earlier band] Lion Fever [broke up], I went away to college and studied science for a few years. I think that was the first step toward becoming removed from myself a bit, and getting out of this head full of anecdotal evidence and personal experience. Music obviously is an art of perspective and personal experience, but I felt like science was a very powerful tool, a way of knowing that helped me take a step back from the whole thing and look at it through another lens.

A more objective lens?

JP: Yeah—it was easier for me to say, ‘This is good, this is bad.’ A lot more ended up on the chopping block.

That’s an interesting perspective. I do think that’s another thing that comes with getting older as an artist—being able to identify bad art that you’ve made.

JP: [laughs.] And to not feel so personal about it.

CB: I don’t really see it in terms of good or bad, which are moral terms, but I definitely agree that getting older, you’re going to be able to edit yourself in a way that is less emotional.

Hopefully. [laughs.] Like a guitar part isn’t good or bad, it just works or doesn’t work with the song. Mostly the guitar parts. [laughs.]

JP: [laughs.] That’s your example, huh?

The record is not a dark record, but it utilizes some dark sounds. ‘Goth’ is a word often

used to describe your sound and while that’s accurate in some ways, it didn’t feel dark the way something that is ‘goth’ would.

JP: I’m glad you say that, because I don’t feel like most of our music is dark. I feel elated when I’m making it, so I can’t imagine people feeling that way about it.

CB: I’ve always had an attraction to minor chords, which gives it that element, but we’re definitely not a goth rock band, or any genre— that’s a genre. One of the things we faced in the music scene is that we’re not a psych rock band, we’re not a goth band, we’re not an industrial band—we’re not any of these other things. Those are types of music that use drum machines, but we’re not really any of those genres. We’re a mix of so many influences, it can make it a little but hard to find a record label to fit onto or a show to fit onto.

JP: We don’t have a good lifestyle package that comes with our sound. [laughs.]

You guys get a lot of comparisons lobbed at you, partly because your music is an amalgam of so many different styles. Are there comparisons that bug you?

JP: One thing I am a little uncomfortable with is that since the first review of anything I’ve ever played, people have let the need to compare me to a female singer or musician.

I am very glad we’ve had a movement in the past decade or so where being a woman in this world of music is not so strange anymore.

I felt annoyed when it was like, ‘Does she sound like Patti Smith, P.J. Harvey, or Debbie Harry?’ It’s like a roll of the dice—which one is it going to be this time? How about I don’t sound like any of them? There is just not enough of a body of work there to compare to. I always felt annoyed that we were put in this category, like ‘Oh, we’re going to do an all-female show, where all the singers are girls, and you guys can be in that one.’ I feel like that’s getting a little bit better now, but people definitely think along those lines still.

We’re half the population, so why would a female voice be an anomaly?

To a degree, I think we used to feel like it was necessary to highlight female voices in that way. It feels less necessary now, and so that specific focus on ‘female vocals’ seems kind of weird.

JP: It’s even weirder. That sort of categorization will always make it seem as though a woman’s contribution is niche, and I don’t appreciate that. ‘If you’re feeling a little experimental today, check this out—it’s a woman’s voice!’ I find it so strange that in this day and age we’re still faced with that, though I do feel like the playing field is evening out a little bit. It used to make me really mad when I was younger, just being stopped from going backstage because they thought I was a girlfriend or a groupie at my own show.

I love the music video for ‘Katrine,’ with these three women in their bouffants cruising around L.A. I like how the lightness of it kind of contrasts with the sound.

JP: It was a snapshot of a real experience. I lived in the Central Coast growing up but before that I lived in the Inland Empire. In writing that song, I had this idea that I wanted to recreate the girls I went to middle school with in the Inland Empire, just being bored and having nowhere to go. I was thinking of these girls while we were writing and styling ‘Katrine,’ and Andreas [Attai, who directed the video] did a great job filling it out.

When you are a band lots of people write about, writers look for one golden sentence to use to describe you. And one of the reasons I like that video is that it feels like it belies everything about what people want to say about your sound.

JP: There is no concise message about us. In some ways, it’s a blockade for us. But this is who we are—we don’t have a simple neat story to put forth. If we were just going to do these Super 8 black leather glove collage videos, those are fun too, but that’s not the only place we’re coming from.

The song ‘Dream Life, Doors Locked’ — JP: That’s a dark one. [laughs.]

It is, but you have the line you keep singing, ‘I am free.’ But it wasn’t a liberated, happy sounding kind of freedom.

JP: The story in that song is not necessarily from my own experiences, but in my time as a touring musician I’ve been adjacent to a lot of dark stories. It’s a narrative about a woman who is being held captive and finds freedom through escapist means, like drugs or imagination, rather than the actual freedom 33

she would have the right to experience herself.

And unfortunately, I think that’s a pretty common scenario. You don’t necessarily need to be held captive in a motel room somewhere, but I think women in this country, and more so in others, are partially free. To me, that’s a sad thing.

What do you mean by ‘partially free?’

JP: ‘Partially free’ [describes] what I consider to be the socio-political experience of women in America. I can’t speak for all women—only for myself—but in my experience, we have a situation in which we enjoy what feels like freedom in our day to day lives until we encounter the threat of gendered violence, or go to cash our paycheck and note that our labor is only worth 78 cents on the dollar, or are reminded by the media that we are the preferred backdrop or the supporting role in life’s play—not the protagonist. And we better be on the pill because our real value is measured in our ability to attract men. Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘women’s rights?’ As long as this phrase is relevant, it indicates that there is a disparity between men’s and women’s rights. And that’s a problem.That said, I must acknowledge that in the U.S. our situation is ever-evolving and we do have overtures into legislative and cultural equality here, while women in other countries systematically suffer in the face of egregious human rights abuses specifically directly at our sex—like honor killings, genital mutilation, and forced marriage. I read a headline last year that read ‘Nigeria bans female genital mutilation’ with an exclamation point at the end of the headline.

I had hoped that the exclamation point was being used to underline the insanity of reading a headline like this in 2015.

The idea of exploring agency runs through this record. Is that related to what we were talking about earlier—about broadening your perspective as you get older?

JP: I think I have this really bizarre mishmash of life experiences that don’t necessarily go together. I’m always trying to reconcile that. I have one leg in the world of art and music, and another leg in the world of more concrete and possibly more necessary things.

I’m always feeling the tug between the two.

‘Is this necessary or am I wasting my time?

Is this important? It feels important to me, but does that matter?’ It’s a collage, that’s the only way I can express it. It’s a mishmash of these widely disparate experiences. You know, playing in rock bands and living in crumbling buildings in Detroit was a really different experience from being at a research facility in French Polynesia. But all those experiences are me. I’m not entirely one person but a variety of people.

So you studied science in college?

JP: Environmental science. I worked at an environmental nonprofit for about five years.

I’m in this precarious position now—I’m home with my daughter but I’m trying to figure out what to do next. Do I keep playing music? Do I got to grad school? Especially having a kid, it feels more self-indulgent to be doing this thing that doesn’t have any specific renumeration attached. How much longer can I keep doing this? At the same time, I’m wondering with regard to climate change and international warfare, what am I doing? I have a reasonable amount intelligence and I’m in the U.S.—why 34

am I not more of an agent of change? So I’m always walking the line, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. You get a little done over here and a little over there, instead of making a big push on one end.

That does come through on the record.

There’s a sense of self being described in the album, but it feels very slippery—sometimes you hear ‘This is who I am’ and sometimes you hear ‘I’m possessed by someone else.’

It’s related to this idea of, How closely is my identity tied to what I do?

JP: These are the questions I ask myself every day. We also quit the band every day. [laughs.]

These are also the kinds of questions I ask myself going through motherhood. Talk about not recognizing your body—this thing you’ve had your whole life becomes this other thing.

It’s been the most fantastically transformative experience. My daughter is the best thing ever in my life. But it is also this strange displacement where you realize nothing will ever be solid, everything is in flux, and I’m just passing through.

You realize how little control you have.

JP: Right—you realize it’s a joke and you have no control.

Not that I can speculate on what it’s like to be pregnant, but I imagine there’s this sense of spending your whole life trying to determine your trajectory— JP: And now it’s biology determining your trajectory. And it works. I was amazed by how perfectly timed everything was, and that I am a system of cells that operates whether or not I’m happy with the mix.

But you’re still trying to determine that.

JP: Yeah—I’m always surprised. First I said ‘I’m going to go to college and stop playing music.’ Then I said, ‘I’m going to go back to L.A. and work for the environment and stop playing music.’ Then, ‘I’m going to have my daughter and stop playing music.’ Lo and behold, it’s something I can’t stop doing.

Why did you start putting out your own music?

CB: We started pressing our own vinyl ourselves first out of necessity, and then wanting to have creative control over the process.

It’s definitely feels of a piece with the somewhat meditative idea of creating your art where you live.

JP: That was the case, yeah. We were making music all day, living in Neil Young’s old studio in Topanga. I’d just come back from Tahiti, studying marine biology and making field recordings there. We were using a lot of those.

CB: One thing about making your own music and doing it yourself and being your own record label is that you get to be involved in every step of the process.

JP: It is more satisfying in that sense.

How do VUM songs typically take shape?

CB: They start different ways. Sometimes it starts with Jennifer and a guitar riff or a vocal melody that she’s made.

JP: Or a drum machine patch. It’s always different.

CB: Sometimes it’ll start from these little tape sketches that I make. Late at night, I’ll go out and just record hours of tape. And then we’ll find a fragment of that and turn it into a song.

Or we’ll dig up a cassette we recorded months or years back that we never used, and use that or a snippet of that as the basis of a song.

JP: Which was the case for our latest single, ‘New Girls.’ We have drawers and drawers full of four-track cassettes we’ve recorded that we’ll mine occasionally. We have published something like 60 or 70 songs as VUM, and have written probably 200 or 300. But some of them will just be instrumental slices or vocal melodies with nothing else on them. This was a full-fledged song we intended to publish and just completely forgot about.

Revisiting a track like that must be like communicating with an earlier version of yourself.

JP: There was another vocal melody on that cassette, so I was communicating with myself, saying ‘This is a terrible vocal melody.’ [laughs.]

More or less the song was the same—I recorded the same guitar parts I wrote at the time—but it was interesting to hear how much my ideas sounded like my previous band, versus something I’d do today.

Sometimes you find you’ve changed a lot over time, and sometimes you find you haven’t changed as much as you thought you did.

JP: [laughs.] I’d say in some cases for us, that’s true, and in others not so much.

What’s the normal gestation period for a VUM song?

JP: It can be a few minutes, or it can be something we labor over for a few months.

And I don’t know that you can ever tell with the end result. Literally every moment on every VUM song is highly contested. We’re both strong personalities, and highly opinionated people, always trying to peel back each other’s decisions.

Does it end with compromise or do you hammer and hammer until you’re both 100 percent satisfied?

JP: [Option] B. And it takes a lot of time.

Do you know when you’re done?

JP: With laying down tracks, we know when we’re done. When it comes to mixing, I think we could mix and remix our records until the end of time. Luckily, we run out of time, or money, or a hard drive crashes and we just can’t work on it anymore.

I’d imagine that for a band like yours, where the sound is such an integral part of the music, that process is as important—or as stressful—as making the music itself.

JP: It takes at least as long as writing. The mixing and peeling back of parts and trimming things is as important as the rest of it.

Can we talk about the beginnings of VUM? JP: I was in a band called Lion Fever for a long time, and Lost Kids, and Chris was in a band called Grand Elegance, a Long Beach band, and we met playing a show together at the Echo. We started dating and eventually started making music together. We started on New Year’s Day, 2008, with the idea that we’d really be getting into territory that we hadn’t experimented with before, being more minimalist in our approach, and having it be based on drum machines and keys rather than guitar-driven rock.

You moved to L.A. from Portland?

JP: Yeah, I’ve lived all over. I’m from California originally. I lived in Detroit, Michigan, Portland, Oregon. I tried out basically every corner of the U.S. and ended up in a place I never thought I would be, which is Los Angeles.

When you came to L.A. to do music, what was your impression of the city at first?

JP: I was in that band Lion Fever at the time, and we were on Dim Mak, and there were a lot of things happening at once. It was the cliché, Hollywood-adjacent celebrity-typething I thought would be going down here, but it was also this tight-knit underground scene that I hadn’t perceived before. I naturally fell into that by working at Amoeba Music.

This city can be a really isolating and lonely place, but luckily as soon as I got here I started working for Amoeba, and that came with an instant family.

A lot of what people say about L.A. is true.

There’s definitely a culture of these vapid— JP: Fame-chasing.

Yeah—fame-chasing people. But that’s not that different from New York.

JP: Or any other city with any affluence.

Right—a creative destination type of city. But L.A. also has an element of … because people live more separately the communities they do form are stronger, because they have to go out of their way to do that.

JP: Yeah. I think you find that you lean on people more here. The network means more. The first thing I did when coming from Portland is I drove directly to the Smell. I have a mutual friend with [Smell owner] Jim Smith, this character Mac Mann who played in Get Hustle and a bunch of great underground bands, and just by calling Jim and letting him know we were coming and needed a place to rehearse … we drove straight from Portland, straight into downtown, right into the Smell. The area of downtown where the Smell is and has been for a long time used to be a pretty rough area.

So I get out of the car, and there’s a ranchero bar right outside of where we parked, and this guy comes stumbling out. He smashes a beer bottle on the sidewalk as he’s yelling at someone else. And I’m stepping out of the car, this is my first foot on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, and broken glass is flying all over me. I thought, ‘Oh no, oh my God.’ [laughs.] But I got to the Smell, and Jim just handed me the keys to his establishment.

I’d never met him before—this was just on the recommendation of a friend—and I was like, ‘Don’t you want my driver’s license? Or some money, or something?’ I didn’t have any money, but I was surprised.

You thought you’d have to trade something.

JP: I was really surprised by his generosity and openness. That’s where we rehearsed for the first couple of months, and we have him to thank for that.

That was three years before the two of you started playing together. Is there a trajectory between the music you were playing with Lion Fever in 2005 and the music the two of you started playing together?

JP: I worked in record stores for a really long time, and started getting into punk rock and collecting music when I was 15. I always had a broad range of influences but selectively used them in my own music making. So I think that rather than migrating from the straight punk Gun Club-style stuff I was doing before … I hadn’t necessarily had a change of influences but I was listening a lot to the Birthday Party and Siouxsie and the INTERVIEW

Banshees and was more influenced by that kind of stuff. And then just getting weirder and weirder as time goes on.

How has the scene in L.A. changed?

CB: One thing that I’ve seen change since I got involved in the underground music scene is the way the internet has changed the dissemination of ‘secret’ information. It used to be that you had a list of where the shows were going to be, and this whole music scene of word of mouth and human interaction.

Now everybody knows everything instantly, which is a real change of the aesthetic. The aesthetic was secrecy, or obscurity. It used to be social in a real way, and it was community based and scene based in a way that as really human and personal.

That’s interesting. I’ve never lived in a musical environment where I didn’t find out about small shows from Facebook invites.

JP: You used to have to drive by a flyer on a telephone pole.

CB: Growing up in Dana Point, I used to have to drive to Huntington Beach to a record store to find a flyer or find this girl Mariko who put together a list of all the shows. When you got to the show you had to stand around not knowing anybody and feeling awkward because everyone was intimidating. Now you just find out from Facebook and show up and everyone is looking at their phones in the in-between time. There’s no more chance for secrecy or awkwardness or intimidation.

The scene is much friendlier now. The scene used to be tough.

JP: And I used to walk two miles in the snow, uphill both ways.

CB: [laughs.] It’s not necessarily bad. It means people know what’s going on. That’s good.

It definitely means there used to be more exclusivity, which made things more special, more tight knit.

CB: But it also means you had to have human interaction. The music is a way of making a constituency of people. The people who made up the music scene were people who were physically present in a space around ideas.

I think that was part of what made the 90s music scene more politicized. There was a lot of content in those scenes that was political content, which you don’t really see in the scene anymore—at least, I don’t, when I go to shows.

Part of that had to do with the social structure and the way ideas were passed around, and how they were able to make constituencies around it. So that’s been a big change, but that being said, a lot of the people I’ve known in music since I started in the 90s are still out there playing in bands in Los Angeles. The thing about L.A. is there are many, many different scenes—not one cohesive thing.

It’s funny to me that pressing your own 7’ used to be a middle finger and now it’s like … artisanal.

JP: Absolutely. It’s also just pragmatic. It’s what you have to do. Do you want people to have your music, or not? Do you want it to just be a streaming mp3, or do you want it to be touched?

And it used to be that making those records was the only way people would hear your music. Maybe ‘indie’ artists now have less invested in independence as a political idea because doing it requires so much less effort.

INTERVIEW

CB: Everyone has a Soundcloud page.

I could go home after this interview and record an album and upload it to Bandcamp before dinner.

JP: I don’t think it’s—not to use simplistic and moral terms—but I don’t think it’s all bad or all good either. There are benefits to the unsigned musician and huge benefits to being able to publish your music at any time. But of course there are drawbacks, too. People feel like they no longer need to support the people who are making music, and I wouldn’t say that’s true of everyone. We have a really solid crowd of supporters—in particular vinyl buyers—that are still doing it. And then people that out of the blue will actually pay for music, even though they don’t have to. We’re very grateful and find it very endearing that people are willing to do that.

Just out of the kindness of their hearts.

JP: [laughs.] Out of the kindness of their hearts.

Did you know Henry Rollins at all before he started talking up the band? The fact that he frequently plays VUM on his show on KCRW has definitely helped your profile.

JP: No, not at all. You know, there are not many celebrities who I would be excited about getting attention from, but he is totally one of them. I have huge respect for him. I love his show, we’re both fans, and one day Chris said, ‘You should send him a CD.’ and I thought, ‘Yeah right, that’ll be a waste.’ And we sent it to him and he actually listened to it. When I saw his email in my inbox, I almost died. ‘Jennifer, period. Hey, period.’ He actually writes like that. One of my first forays into music buying was buying Slip It In on cassette. He’s been supporting us for years. He’s literally one of the only people on the radio anywhere playing us, and we just can’t believe how much support he’s offered.

CB: We always send him our music, and he’s always really helpful and supportive.

JP: He’s great—he’s super encouraging and has a lot of great insight. And he’s brought us fans from all over the world—we get vinyl buys from the U.S., Europe, and Australia from people telling us they heard us on Henry Rollins’ show.

CB: I like that his show is also not genre based.

He plays music from all over the spectrum, which is how we approach our music. We’re really happy to be a part of what he puts together.

JP: We could have never imagined that it would turn out this well, or go on this long.

VUM WITH PLEASURE 2 (MEMS. INDIAN JEWELRY) AND MRK PLUS SURPRISE GUEST AND DJs LUCIFER SAM AND JIMI HEY ON FRI., MAY 20, AT HM157, 3110 N. BROADWAY, LINCOLN HEIGHTS. 9 PM / $10 / ALL AGES. HM157.COM. VUM’S CRYPTOCRYSTALLINE IS AVAILABLE DIGITALLY ON FRI., MAR. 25, AND ON VINYL ON TUE., MAY 3 FROM SECRET LODGE RECORDINGS. VISIT VUM AT VUMMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM.

LINAFORNIA Interview by Chris Kissel Photography by dana washington Linafornia easily has one of the best stories to come out of the L.A. music scene this year. The Leimert Park native was always active in the local hip-hop scene, most recently as an aspiring producer and regular attendee at the neighborhood’s storied monthly Bananas hiphop event. But in 2013, a serious car accident put her in the hospital for two weeks and kept her away from the scene for months. It was a close call that gave her a respect for the fragility of things, and the lengthy recovery time gave her the space and motivation she needed to hone her beatsmithing skills. When Linafornia turned up again at Bananas in 2014, her beats were sharper than ever. She played her first live gig ever that summer, and now as of March, 2016, she’s taken over the decks at Low End Theory, L.A.’s famed experimental club night, scored back-to-back first place finishes at the prestigious Beat Cinema Beat Battle, and, with support from Dome of Doom, dropped her debut album. YUNG is intimate and personal, a journey through her own taste and a worthy continuation of the work done by predecessors like Madlib and Erykah Badu, who have both strongly influenced her. We met up outside a cafe in Leimert Park on a recent warm afternoon to talk about her newfound success and her plans for the future.

I’ve heard YUNG described as autobiographical, and I think listeners might get that sense because you’ll hear a piece that will have a sample from a jazz record, and then a 90s rap sample. The record feels like it encompasses a lot of territory, but also very specific territory.

I would think any piece of work an artist would put out will be autobiographical. As an artist, you’re affected by everything that goes on in your life, and you put that into your music, your art, your dancing—whatever your craft is. So, yes, it’s autobiographical in a sense. I remember hearing Jayo Felony [sampled on YUNG’s ‘Hi Shrimp’] ... it was something I liked to sing when I was a kid. I tied it to a jazz sample because I liked to watch Adult Swim, listening to the bumps—the bumps have the music with the trippy visuals. I love that.

Taking bits and pieces, reimagining them and molding them like a collage. I never sat down and said it was going to be an autobiographical thing. But when you put something else out in the world and people interpret it, you can say, ‘I see where you’re coming from.’ I can remember different stories when I hear the samples—remember what triggered me to create that. ‘xtrctions’ was a beat I made when I could not walk. I first heard the sample on this episode of Boilerroom I watched on my laptop in my hospital bed. AshTreJinkins started his set with a John Klemmer piece—he was just playing it—and I heard it and thought, ‘I’ve gotta flip it.’ That’s how ‘xtrctions’ came about. It was a point in my life when I wasn’t walking, I wasn’t able to do a lot on my own. But I still wanted to keep up with what was going on, looking at Afropunk websites and watching Boilerroom and seeing who’s performing at Bananas that month.

Who is that on ‘wrdfrmjazzoh,’ the ‘innerlude’ with the voice telling you to ‘follow your arrow’ and other motivational things?

Jazz-Oh is my friend who I met at Bananas—a really good friend. We became close after my car accident. What you’re hearing on that interlude is … that night, I went to her house and was relaxing. She’s into tarot cards and energies and crystals and things like that.

She’s very in tune with her spirituality. So INTERVIEW

what you hear is her reading my birth chart.

She was telling me all kinds of things about my journey. Because at the time I was getting a lot of attention for my music, after I had done my first Low End Theory show. I wasn’t used to it—I was like, ‘What is going on?’

There were shifts and dynamics of friendships going on, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how to handle this!’ She read my birth chart and was telling me all these different things. I was recording her without her knowing because I wanted to listen to it later, and when I listened to it I was like, ‘I can use this.’ Two weeks before the record dropped, I told her, ‘You’re going to be on my album.’ She was totally confused. She doesn’t rap or sing. I said, ‘I think you’re going to like this. I think you’re going to appreciate it.’ And she was really flattered—and shocked.

Maybe autobiographical is not the right word, because it implies a story. It’s more like the album is a dialogue with yourself.

It’s introspective, in a way. Maybe it’s because I do tend to spend a lot of time by myself. It gives me a lot of time to think.

How did you make ‘Wetttt’? It has a great, almost giddy groove to it.

I locked myself in my room one day, because I hadn’t made a beat in months. I was like, ‘I have to make a beat today. I just have to.’ The drum pattern was from a different beat that didn’t pan out, so I found that sample, and I locked myself in my room and made myself focus until I was done. I had a show that day, too. My nieces were running around outside knocking on my door, and I was not leaving the room until I made a beat I liked. Not just a beat, but a beat I liked. So I just chopped it all up, and it became really dope, and I played it that night. It sounded so good.

Where did you get the water sounds that start the track?

I always admire different producers who add elements of people talking, music clips, stuff like that. So it was an experimentation thing—I wanted to add a different element to my music. It complemented the track. It was nothing really profound or deep. I started doing field recordings. It was running water into a sink and recording it and then loading it into the 404 and adding a couple filters.

It adds a personal element to the music.

Side A [of YUNG] is called ‘Beats, Snippets, and Dusty Loops.’ Side A is like my live show— super-hype exciting high-energy beats. Side B is more introspective. There are definitely more voices, like DeviWonder rapping on ‘Dot Wav’ and Jazz talking, and Lauryn Hill saying a couple things on ‘Rargroovs,’ and Busta Rhymes. Side B is more introspective, so I named it ‘Raps, Remixes, and Oracles.’

How do you find things to sample?

It’s different for each one. I haven’t really pinpointed my process yet. When it happens, I have to jump on it, like, ‘I hope it doesn’t leave me!’ There are certain things with making the beats I like to make—beats that have a certain amount of swing and syncopation—that are hard to get a really good hold on. It’s easy for beats to sound very mechanical, especially if you work on a computer.

I read an interview where J Dilla said he listens to music super carefully for things that are weird or off. Mess-ups or offrhythms.

I definitely look for the weird. With producers, sometimes we sample the same records. If I was to sample a record someone else sampled, I have to find a completely different part. Flip it completely differently. And sometimes I listen to records and I think they’re so beautiful and so dope, I don’t want to do anything to them.

Like … I wish I could kind of flip ‘em, but I’m just going to enjoy it for what it is.

Did you grow up with music?

We listened to all kinds of music. My family is from Belize; my mom and my dad listen to a lot of punta and reggae and soca. Lots of different music with Caribbean roots. My brother was the one who listened to hip-hop.

My sister listened to dancehall reggae. There were different genres of music around.

You grew up here in Leimert Park—what’s special about this neighborhood?

The culture! The whole environment and the vibe of Leimert Park. When people ask me about it, I always say it’s the mecca for Black culture. There are all types of people, from all different parts of the African diaspora. There are Rastafarians, Jamaicans, Belizeans, Five Percenters—from different religions, different regions, Ghanians, Nigerians, all types of

black people who are all here together. There are black-owned businesses here. There’s a lot of culture and a lot of music. If you go down the street to the left, there’s the World Stage, where a lot of historical jazz musicians have played. On the right, there’s Melchizedek, where they play a lot of reggae. On the corner, right there at the KAOS Network, is where they hold Project Blowed, which is one of the most well-known hip-hop workshops in America. There are a lot of different cultures, and a lot of different types of music cultivated here. I used to go to the Pan-African Film Festival and African Marketplace and see all these vibrant cultures and fabrics, music and food, from all different parts of Africa.

Being younger, you don’t know that there are different parts of Africa. I didn’t understand there were different countries inside Africa.

So when you graduated from high school you wanted to go into communications— not music?

I wanted to figure out a way I could find a career I’m satisfied with and be able to be selfsufficient but also to be able to enjoy it too, so I can use whatever I make from that career to help fund what I really want to do. The art.

Is that still what you want to do?

The artistry has taken over, and totally consumed my life now. Especially since YUNG dropped, it’s been hectic. I haven’t gotten as many opportunities doing anything else. My artistry is something where I’ve actually seen upward mobility, I’ve seen growth, in every sense of the way. Not everyone gets a second chance to pursue music. I had a chance to pursue music in a different avenue, but things fell through. I went through a slump with that. I was really disappointed.

A musical project?

Yeah. Actually, I rapped. It was something I was really good at. I was writing every day, enjoying it, coming up with new concepts and ideas. In a nutshell, things happened where my circumstances couldn’t allow me to move forward, whether it be finding studio time or finding a ride to the studio because I didn’t drive—things like that. It got me really discouraged. It was a low point, and I lost my passion for writing because I was so disappointed. There was drama around trying 39

to deal with people, or work with people, and people not having my best interest. It kind of jammed me up. I thought, at the time, that it was something I could do for the rest of my life. When it fell apart, I was like, ‘What am I going to do now? What is my purpose now?’

But now that I’m pursuing this beat journey, I’ve been embraced by all these people in the beat community. So many different artists that I’ve looked up to—they’ve welcomed me.

Now I know I’m in the right place.

Erykah Badu tweeted your ‘xtrctions’!

Yeah! I’m so inspired by her artistry and the way she carries herself, especially as a woman in the music realm. Because it’s so easy for women to just fall into using their bodies and using their sexuality to get what they want. It’s so easy to sell your sexuality, but she kept it about her art for so long. That’s really admirable. She was able to execute her ideas on her terms, and people loved her for it. She stayed true to herself. That’s the most important thing to me as an artist. And just the fact that she was able to actually listen to my music, and she seemed happy with it …

There’s a whole lot of static around the whole idea of sampling now, ever since the Robin Thicke situation. I think if the artist likes what you’re doing, there’s no problem because you’re paying the artist respect. You’re doing the artist justice [with] what you’re creating by re-imagining their original composition into something new and fresh.

That puts a lot of pressure on you, you know? Every time you hear something you want to sample, you have to live up to it.

Yeah—I’m very picky, and very hard on myself. Even putting YUNG together, I was sitting on it for a year, saying ‘I don’t think this is enough!’ Feeling like there was something missing. People were telling me, ‘Just put it out!’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s not ready.’

That’s a very Erykah Badu-like quality. [laughs] It makes me a slow worker. But the end result is so worth it. I’m so confident in what I’m presenting. No one can tell me anything about it because I made sure. I worked until my doubts were gone.

That’s something a lot of artists don’t do.

It’s hard enough for some artists just to fight through to the end.

I can’t do that. If I’m not fully confident in it, why would I present it? The feedback I get from people is always really positive, and it reaffirms what I already believe. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If my pickiness and being hard on myself and giving myself the time to work on it until I don’t have any doubts is getting me all these opportunities, I’m going to keep that with me. I do want to find ways to expedite the process. But as long as I’m satisfied with what I’m putting out there, that’s what matters to me. I know that if I put myself out there, I don’t want to half step. I sometimes feel like some women—not all women, but some women in the music industry might half step, and feel like they deserve accolades and opportunities just because they are a woman pursuing music.

Of course I’m a woman—yes, I am—but I don’t want to be completely defined by being a woman. I just want to be dope, period.

Beyond age, beyond gender. I just want to be talented and really exceptional at my artistry, period, regardless of my gender. That’s all. It’s 40

cool that I’m a girl! But I’m good at what I do, regardless. No one wants to feel like, ‘Oh, she just won that battle because she’s a girl.’

You don’t want to be labeled a ‘girl producer.’

Yeah. I mean… there’s so much you can say about this.

We have a tendency to ...

Focus more on me being a woman.

To make it a label.

Yeah.

Rather than just accepting it, knowing the music is made by a woman without using gender to push people into a niche.

I don’t want to be a niche. But there’s so much to be said about being a female producer, and going to these shows and being surrounded by males, who are also producers.

Do you feel like you have to try harder to prove you’re good?

Ninety percent, no. If I’m getting that many bookings, with this artist or that artist, with seasoned artists who created this type of music, or community—like Dibia$e or Ras G, they’re the forefathers, the foundation of the beat scene. If I’m getting booked with those people, it’s for a reason. I don’t think I’ve ever been discriminated against. I’ve been embraced and welcomed. Just because of my art. They base it on if it sounds good. They don’t care what you look like, or what gender you are. If it sounds good, they’re gonna rock with it. That’s how I feel. If it’s dope, it’s dope.

If it’s wack, it’s wack.

What sparked your interest in making beats?

I was always a supporter. I remember going to my first show in 2011. My brother took me to this really crazy event called Bassface around Christmastime in 2011. It was my first beat show. There were so many heavy hitting artists there—Flying Lotus, Ras G, Teebs, Def Sound, Mono/Poly. It was my first experience watching these beat sets, and that’s what sparked my whole interest. Being in front of these big huge speakers, with Ras G’s pounding bass vibrating through my whole body. I was standing in the front row, like ‘Oh my God, this is amazing! I might be deaf tomorrow, but I don’t care!’ It changed a lot.

The fact that [producers] are able to express themselves without having to say anything had appeal to me. I love to be able to express myself through the music. I don’t care as much for getting on the mic. I like being able to play these beats and cut all over them and do these weird effects. I’m expressing myself without having to talk.

You started making beats in 2014, right?

I started making beats in 2013, actually. I got my first SP-404 in 2012, and for a year I learned everything I could about everything the SP-404 could do. I experimented on tracks I like to listen to on the regular by like … Ras G and Samiyam and Flying Lotus and Madlib. I got into a car accident in the summer of 2013, and I was incapacitated. I fractured my hip and femur on my left, and I dislocated my elbow on my right. So I spent the summer and fall and winter learning how to walk again, and learning how to use my hands again. And making beats—trying to keep up with what other people were doing.

Before the car accident, I was a volunteer for the street team at Stones Throw for the premiere of Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton. [It] was

so much fun. They showed me a lot of love, and I got a lot of free music because I was doing so much. Stones Throw is definitely influential in my sound, and in my desire to make music. Before my accident, when I was promoting there, I had the idea that I wanted to do something with music, and to continue to do stuff with Stones Throw. But after I got in my accident it was hard to keep in touch.

So when I was recovering, I just wanted to work on music. Music has always been a huge part of my life, whether playing piano at the age of 8, or wanting to DJ at age 12, creating mixes and selling them at school, or rapping and writing lyrics at the age of 18 or 19. Music has always been something constant.

The car accident helped you focus.

I got into that car accident, and I feel like my whole paradigm shifted about where I want to be and what I want to pursue. And now doing music … it’s got me more opportunities. If all these opportunities are presenting themselves on this journey, this is something worth doing, to see how it’ll pan out.

So you got in this car accident, you started making beats at home, and then a year later, in 2014, you started performing?

Yeah, I started coming back to Bananas the following year. I was walking. [And] I was still practicing my beat sets. I was always working on transitions, how to move from one beat to another. I finally started doing my own beat sets in the summer of 2014. And I’ve been booked almost every weekend since.

And the first time you ever performed music live was doing these beat sets that summer?

Pretty much. I was in plays in middle school, musicals and stuff. But being in plays and reciting lines is totally different. I started doing the whole live beat mixing aspect in 2014.

Before I even decided to pursue the whole beat journey, I was already friends with these people. I love going to shows with beat sets.

I love seeing Samiyam and Flying Lotus and Dibia$e. So for me to decide that I want to do it—and being already cool with different people who throw events—it was like they were already ready for me to do things. Before I started making beats, I would be rapping in cyphers with friends. They wanted me to perform as a rapper, but I wasn’t really interested in performing as a rapper on stage.

But I wanted to put myself out on the stage as a beatsmith—as a producer.

This all happened so fast. All of a sudden you’re winning these huge battles. [laughs] Yeah. My first battle was in December, 2014, and it was a couple months after I’d started doing shows. I’d heard about Beat Cinema Beat Battle, and I thought I’ll submit and see what happens. And I got chosen to compete. So I went down to compete, and then I won. It was like… ‘OK! Cool!’ One of my most proud moments.

Do you have any leftover desire to work in the music industry—the path you were first on?

I definitely don’t want to limit myself to just music. Before I started doing music, I wanted to come out with my own vintage collection for plus-size women. I still have my test shots and I have the clothes, and I never got it started because the music took off so quickly.

I’ve always loved thrifting and fashion and clothes. Especially being a plus-sized woman

in L.A. trying to find cute clothes—it’s not easy, and it can be really expensive. But I find ways to make sure I look the way I want to look and save money on that, and I want to provide a way for other women to do that, too. It’s another avenue, and I don’t want to limit myself.

What are some of your favorite records to just listen to?

Aquemini, by Outkast. I love Outkast so much.

Tribe Called Quest, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. I can’t think of a more perfect debut album. Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde and Labincalifornia. Arthur Verocai. He’s a Brazilian composer who makes this beautiful music with strings and psychedelic guitar. And Quasimoto! Madlib is my favorite producer. Quasimoto The Unseen, and Madlib’s Medicine Show,Volume 2: Flight to Brazil. I have this really crazy story about how I got put on to Madlib. I used to be really cool with this guy named Vyron. He’s now known as Left Brain, from Odd Future. We used to go to Crenshaw [High School] together. I used to go over to Vyron’s house, and the first time I went over to Vyron’s house, he was playing that CD. He had a crate full of merch from Stones Throw, because Stones Throw was giving Odd Future a lot of love at the time. So he had a box full of dope music, like Lazer Sword, Madlib, all types of craziness. That was the first CD he gave me—Madlib’s Medicine Show, Volume 2: Flight to Brazil. Ahh. [sighs] I went down the rabbit hole and I never left. It changed everything for me. Because the way Madlib picks the records—his record collection weighs a ton. The [Medicine Shows] are basically collages of his record collection, and on this one, where he goes into music from Brazil, the compositions he picks… it’s so beautiful! It gives me chills every time I listen to it. For real. Also Erykah Badu, for sure.

New Amerykah. That was one of my favorite albums to listen to. I know it’s a more recent one, but it’s my favorite. There are lots of really dope producers on it. Shafiq Husayn and Madlib produced it, and a bunch of other producers who are really amazing.

Is there anything else you want people to know about you at this point?

I don’t know, you know—this is all so new to me. I’m not used to doing photo shoots or being in front of a camera. Before my car accident, I never used to take pictures. I would go to all these shows, and I would never take pictures of myself with people. I think my attitude was like, ‘I’m here, I’ll remember it.

Let’s live in the now! Why do we have to have our phones out all the time?’

What changed your mind?

I got into my car accident, and I was like, ‘Damn, I could have died.’ And nobody would have any memory of me, because I didn’t take any pictures. And now I’m doing all these shows … I have to document this.

This is important. It’s really big for me. I have to document these moments. I have to have pictures from the beat battles that I win. I want to have memories.

LINAFORNIA’S YUNG IS OUT NOW ON DOME OF DOOM. VISIT LINAFORNIA AT SOUNDCLOUD. COM/LINAFORNIA. INTERVIEW

ANTWON Interview by Daiana Feuer Photography by Alex The Brown He blew out Union (formerly Jewel’s Catch One) in the name of his Nature World clothing-slash-culture org last month and now he’s about to see his long-awaited Double Ecstasy EP come out on Anticon—this is shaping up to be a good year for Antwon, who’s got as many connections with New York rap as he does with California hardcore or artists and designers the world over. (If he gets his own TV show, which he should, he’ll officially be a renaissance man.) Produced with Lars Stalfors—who never did hip-hop before this, but whose work with Mars Volta and Health makes him a perfect match—Double Ecstasy is a record with everything happening at once: it’s hilarious, existential and fearlessly personal, all thanks to Antwon’s trademark total commitment. Fun, doom and sex—sometimes it’s all the same thing.

How do you deal with being bored? What do you do when you’re stuck?

I don’t know if I feel stuck by boredom. I get really stuck emotionally when I’m depressed, like I don’t want to make music. Then I have to force myself out of it. I could wail on that type of shit and not do anything, but the kind of thing that’s going to make me happy and switch my mood is to create something that I like. So if I don’t create then I’m kind of sticking myself where I am. So I have to force it and make something, even if it’s just like funny—it doesn’t really matter. That’s kind of why a lot of music is half-funny, half-serious.

It’s just to take me out of my funk and make something.

What puts you into the funk?

Self-doubt, I guess. Self-doubt and normal insecurities probably, like growing up.

About your art?

Yeah.

And you conquer that by making more art.

Yeah—making more art, making more music.

Taking that sadness or anger and making it into something creative.

Do you ever make music cuz you’re happy?

No! I want to go out and hang out if I’m happy. If I’m really really happy, I probably want to go drink or something and celebrate.

I can’t be extra happy and record. I mean …

I guess I can. But I feel like it comes from somewhere else. I never felt like being happy and being like, ‘I’m going to go record.’ I’ll feel like celebrating and being among friends. I guess it’s easier when you’re in a dark place and you’re kind of hanging out by yourself.

Since you reflect your real life in your songs, do you think your songs impact the way people deal with you and react to you?

Knowing what comes out in your music?

I don’t know. I don’t smile like a lot, so people are weird about that—‘Why don’t you smile?’

Or try to make me smile by smiling at me, and then it makes me feel awkward, like I’m not on that, I’m not on that wave, and I feel weird. I dunno.

Takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.

I mean—I’m not smiling. I’m just … you know, that’s how my face looks!

There’s resting bitch face and there’s resting sad face.

I have definite resting bitch face. I dunno about sad face.

The Double Ecstasy EP has been done for a bit, but now you’ve decided to go with Anticon. How did you end up there?

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Like any record label that’s going to be successful with their artists, they need to trust and believe in you. Money isn’t usually an issue—if people believe in stuff, they’ll put up as much money as they will. The main reason we went with Anticon is we were familiar with each other and they believed in me and wanted to put out a record of mine for a long time. I talked to other people who had been interested and I felt like I wasn’t really top priority to them.

If I’m working on music and releasing music with somebody it should just be me and them.

I don’t want to not be top priority.

Do you enjoy the business of music? How involved are you in that side?

My manager does most of my business right now—the business stuff that’s kind of like the dirty work. He does a lot of that and I appreciate that a lot. Without him, it would be harder for me to my job. A lot harder. I do the side of having an idea, going forth and finding partners for the idea, and then he kind of helps me out with the tail end. He does the rest.

You have your collective/brand Nature World. What’s the motto from that one project? ‘Emasculating clothes for men’?

Oh yeah—that’s the collab we did with Cali DeWitt. We did a whole line for L.A. Art Book Fair, and it was images of men being dominated by women. It was mostly Cali’s idea and we just ran with it. Street wear is very ‘man’ or male-dominated, and it’s silly. We made all this merch with imagery that is emasculating men, but men are wearing it. Anybody who actually understands what’s going on is like, ‘Yo, this is sick as hell!’ But the kid that doesn’t know what’s going on is pretty much wearing a shirt that says ‘fuck you’ and some grandma is going to look at it, like ‘Oh my God, that’s so crazy!’

Then eventually they’re going to think about it and be like ‘What is this that I’m actually wearing?’ and then get into it.

When you’re young, music and style are tied together. You try things out to test your identity, so it’s cool to make people think about why they’re wearing something.

Definitely. Like you watched a skate video and you heard a song: ‘Oh, what’s this song?’ And then found a new genre of music and just got into it like that. It’s easier for kids now. When I was growing up and stuff, it took that for me to get into something—stumble upon it through a game. Accidentally.

Like the soundtracks on the Tony Hawk skateboarding games.

No doubt! I still hear songs and I’m like ‘Oh that’s from Tony Hawk!’.

That definitely puts us as people who grew up in the 90s or early 2000s.

I’m about to be thirty this year.

That’s a big one. Do you feel like you’re supposed to be more of an adult now?

I definitely feel like I have to be more of an adult now. But I love youths—I love kids and shit. They keep me alive, so why not take everything they give me and give it back and teach them things? That’s the best. My favorite way of being an adult is helping out the youth and motivating them. I help out Wiki [of Ratking] and his homies and shit—I motivate those kids and they love me for it, and they show me love and keep me alive and inspired.

How did you meet Wiki?

Our homie Panda was tour managing them at the time of their first tour. 2013, I think it was. They played the Blue stage at Fun Fun Fun, and we were playing the Blue stage the next day. Panda did merch for Trash Talk for a long time, and he was like, ‘Yo meet Wiki and Hak’ and I was like, ‘Oh shit—what’s up.’

Usually people in rap music, they meet each other and don’t even try to be friends—they just try to make music with each other and you can feel the vibe is off and shit. When me and him met, we were fans of each other’s music, but we [also] wanted to hang out with each other. When they started to tour with Trash Talk, that’s when me and Lee [Spielman ] started living together, so every single time they’d be here, they’d stay at my crib. We didn’t make music right away—we felt each other out as friends. Pat had an attitude that was real familiar to me—the way he is reminded me of my friends growing up, and I guess that would probably be the same for Pat. And it was cool that we both make music and shit. That’s where we got the We Stole Hip-Hop Tour.

You go on tour and hang out with your friends.

Exactly. We’re trying to push this super far. I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag and shit, but I’m pretty sure this year we’ll be touring a lot together.

How did you end up working on your EP with Lars Stalfors from Mars Volta?

I think he was interested in it and interested in working with me, so we got together. This is the first time he’s really done rap production, but I really liked working with him. Out of everyone, that’s like my favorite person to work with. It was cool—it was one of those things where we could work together, and he was down with that. Instead of just getting a beat and rapping over it, I felt like I was more

hands on with the creation of the track—that in itself was a lot better. It’s really difficult just doing the same thing over and over again: getting a track, rapping over it, and that’s it.

You don’t get to mess with stems or get to be a part of the production. This process was a lot more fun. I would go into the studio and then we’d write a song and start another song, then I’d go home and finish that shit and come back and finish and start another one—that’s how we did it. No samples.

Does your background in punk and rock influence the sounds that you’re looking for musically?

I don’t think it influences the sounds I’m looking for. It influences everything else—my attitude towards life. It influences the way I interact with fans, the way I hold myself in my actual life, the way I go about life. Musicwise, I guess it does—everything influences everything else. But it’s not a direct influence where I’m trying to appropriate some kind of punk or rap music, you know? I’m not trying to be some rap-rock dude. I’m just doing what I do. I mean … I learned how to be social through going to shows. I learned how to interact in different ways. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone who wasn’t punk, the way that I think, the way that my friends think. The way we go about life. To somebody normal, it wouldn’t make no sense. But that’s OK. I mean, everyone has the ability to be pretentious. I don’t think anyone is shielded from that. No one’s an angel. Everybody’s shitty. But when it comes down to it, I think the majority of people who stay into punk throughout the years understand it’s a friendship. I go to different places and meet other people, we all link up, and it’s all through punk. That’s my favorite thing, How did you go from punk to hip-hop?

I was always into hip-hop. It was never a thing where I gave up punk music to do hip-hop.

That’s something that’s inside me. It’s not one of those things where I was like, ‘I don’t want to listen to punk anymore.’ I may have been disenfranchised, I may have been like ‘I don’t really want to go to shows,’ but it’s deeper. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, I listen to this music’ or ‘Oh, I don’t want to listen to this music anymore, I want to listen to something else.’ There never really was a time where I felt like one was stronger than the other. I felt like both are elements that make ME that are a part of me.

Do you have to present yourself in a certain image in order for people to accept what you’re doing?

INTERVIEW

Yeah—I guess I have to accept myself as being a black man because people are afraid to see me as anything else. It’s wildly ignorant, but I get it. I understand that people are fucking ignorant as shit, so I have to present myself as not being some timid non-black man, but that’s OK. The thing is … I get my point across. Before, I think a lot of people used to freak out because I looked more punk. That was really strange to them. But I thought it was cool and I didn’t give a fuck. I mean, I could still do that now and not give a fuck.

You rap about women in a certain way—do you feel like you have to? Or is it just who you are?

When people look at the way I speak about women and when it comes to my rhymes, people think I’m speaking in a crazy sexist way. But I don’t feel one way about women.

I have multiple women in my life that I have strong friendships with and they’re not sexual at all. Most people only want to hear things about sex with women. They don’t understand other things like feelings or talking and understanding.

Like no one wants to hear a song about how much you like your female friends and how nice it is to go to the movies together.

Yeah, but I’m going to do that—I’m going to make a song about that.

Good!

But let’s say I do that. No one’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, yo, he has that song…’ They’ll be like, ‘He has that other song, “Dying In The Pussy.”’ They just wanna hear what they wanna hear, and say what they wanna say, and I’m here to give 100% human feeling, uncut. If somebody wants to take away what they take away from it, I can’t change their minds—but I’m going to give you 100% of what I’m trying to do.

I have a strong love for really dirty songs.

But I did have a moment watching your videos where I was like ‘Is this person telling the truth or is he telling the story he thinks people want hear?’ Do you sing that way but turn around and be sweet and nice to all the girls or do you not care about me, as a female?

Of course I care about women. My mother raised me, by herself. Any time there is like a situation, I always side with the woman first just cuz of personal experience—growing up and understanding that the world is not made for a woman. It’s a man’s world, and you have to help women as much as you can.

If you have a voice you should help those who don’t. I do care about women, but because I make rap music, and because this and that, I feel like people try to make it out like I’m some pig or like I’m some misogynist but they don’t know me—they don’t understand me, they don’t try to get to know me. I’m just trying to do my work so that later on people understand that I’m trying to do right by women—by humans. Everything in general, I’m just trying to do right, do the right thing for everyone.

What do you feel is the right thing? Did you learn it from music?

What I know about right and wrong is just from talking to a bunch of people—listening to people about where they come from. So I know what’s right and what’s respectable about certain things in life—being respectful of 44

where other people come from. You learn how men are depicted in music, and how a man should be, and this and that. With my music, I’m trying to teach people that a lot of things in masculinity aren’t real. I’m trying to teach kids—teach people—there are different ways.

You don’t have to always agree with the way you were raised, but you have to understand that there are a lot of other people in this world and you have to respect a lot of other people to get by—to get respect.

It’s hard because by the time you figure out how to do it you’re turning 30.

Yeah! And there’s not a lot of people who turn 30 and have a voice like I do. With fans, if they tell me my music got them through things, I like to hear that. If I am speaking for the people, I want to be a person for the people—not just one sect of people. And that’s pretty much what I’m trying to do with my music.

Do you feel like an artist has to have felt like an outsider at some point in order to reflect on the world?

No doubt! You can’t be like an insider— you’re only going to have one view. If you can see everything, you’re more sensitive to everything, and you take in more. I think people who are insiders are content in the way they live so there’s no real learning after that.

But an outsider is continuously learning about the world and that’s how I like to be. Nonstop learning about other things. It makes it better for progressing—evolving.

An artist does have the power to speak and people will listen. And it’s like … do you want that responsibility or do you not want that responsibility?

I do. I mean, I’m only human so sometimes it’s a little too much. But I do want the responsibility of that. I always did.

Did you think that music would be your way to make an impact?

Not at first. A lot of people told me when I was growing up that it is that way but I never really felt that way until recently.

It’s pressure. We expect a lot of entertainers: ‘Yes, we want to be entertained but back it up with something substantial or else.’

I agree.

There are melancholy elements to your songs. Are you down in the dumps? Is there more hopefulness in the music you’re making right now?

I always feel different. Sometimes I feel sad.

I like to show the raw emotion. So if it’s happiness, it’s happiness. If it’s sadness, it’s sadness. It can’t be a grey area in music. I don’t want to make grey area music where you take the emotion out. I don’t want to make happy songs all the time. Sometimes I do want to make happy songs. Sometimes I want to make a sad song. I feel that if that song is that emotion, I want it to go to the heart. So whatever it is, I want people to feel that shit.

I can’t make a half-assed sad song and I can’t make a half-assed happy song.

It’s not pretend. And it’s not pretend music.

It’s definitely not pretend music. I feel what I feel when I make it.

ANTWON’S DOUBLE ECSTASY EP IS OUT FRI., APRIL 1, ON ANTICON. VISIT ANTWON AT ANTWON. BANDCAMP.COM.

CARL STONE Interview by Christina Gubala Illustration by Felipe Flores

Electronic music pioneer Carl Stone’s fascinating career has been informed by his adventures in Los Angeles, Japan and San Francisco. His morphing disintegrating samples and field recordings contain fragments of everything from perfectly packaged pop music to bustling bazaars. As a former Cal Arts music archivist, the foundation for Carl’s truly psychedelic take on vinyl layering and chopping was laid during long sessions of documenting obscure music for the progeny, and his archivist’s mind casually jumped from Roy Harris to Aqua without shifting gears. His extensive experience as a radio host on KPFK shined through in perfect conversational rhythm as he joined me on dublab one warm February evening for a chat about pop idolss, ASMR, L.A. Thai restaurants and cultural appropriation. (This interview appears in its original audio form on dublab.com.)

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You were an actual archivist at one point in your career—you started copying tapes for CalArts?

Yes—it’s an interesting story I tell a lot because it was more than just a job. It really had an important influence on my whole approach to making music. This was, again, back in the day—we’re talking the 70s when I was a student at CalArts—and they had a big music library which was composed entirely of LP records. There were no CDs at the time. So the LPs were in general circulation, which means students could play them and check them out and so on. Many, many rare recordings, and a lot of stuff brought over by the people who were in the World Music department: stuff from Africa, stuff from India, stuff from Asia—very, very rare recordings. Also just great recordings from Europe—a lot of experimental music, electronic music. A very interesting collection. But the fear was they’d get scratched, they get warped, they get broken, they get stolen, whatever. So what they decided to do was before a record went into general circulation, it had to be copied onto the archive medium of the time, which was the cassette. There were easily ten thousand LPs in the music library and my job was to copy every one of them on to cassette.

So in the course of this, I got to listen to a lot of music, which was great. But it also was an extremely painstaking process because to do them one at a time would just take forever. They set me up in kind of a dungeon room—no windows or anything—with three turntables and three tape recorders to just keep things rolling three at a time, simultaneously.

I could monitor everything individually to make sure nothing skipped—and when the record would run out, it was time to turn over the tape. I could mix different records together in the monitors—obviously not in the recording—and I started to become interested in these kind of mash-ups. These colligations of different music. You’d have a string trio on the first turntable, and some electronic music on the second turntable, and maybe some music from central Africa on the third, and I’d be listening to them. I didn’t think of it as composing at the time, but I would listen and hear the relationships and even do some mixing just in the monitors. To this day, one of the hallmarks to my musical approach is the use of appropriated music, and also the combination of the variety of musics that have no seeming relation to each other, but do relate somehow. So this was really important—this archiving job that I had at CalArts.

It sounds like it would have been a fascinating process just to go through all the music. That layering technique was happening simultaneously as hip-hop culture was developing with samples, but you really didn’t have any— No, I was in my own little world. I was listening mostly to classical music and avantgarde jazz, and a lot of world music. Later after I graduated, I started to actually work with turntables in live performance. I had a turntable and a stack of records and a stereo digital delay which could do cut-up and looping. Some of the things I was sampling were like Motown and Michael Jackson and

things like that. I don’t think I actually bought it from an infomercial, but I had somehow ended up in possession of one of those five LP Motown sets that they were selling on television back in the day. It really had everything. All the Marvin, all the Temptations, Jackson 5 were on that collection.

David Ruffin for days.

I love Motown—what’s not to love? I love Smokey Robinson, I love the Temptations, the early Jackson 5. The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, all that stuff.

As good as it ever got, I think sometimes.

I think so too. I think so too, yeah. So those early pieces actually are going to becoming out in an LP set. We’re putting out a three LP set, including my unreleased performances from the 80s that use this kind of material like Motown, plus a rare recording of a live performance that was done at the Kitchen in 1982—no, 1981—and some other pieces of mine from that era. This’ll be coming out on the Unseen Worlds label out of New York City later on this year. Grandmaster Flash and all the people who were getting hip-hop and rap off the ground on the east coast—I had no idea at all. And I was on the west coast.

Certainly, I’m not going to pretend that Grandmaster Flash knew what I was doing. I didn’t know what he was doing. But there was a kind of zeitgeist of people who were starting to get interested in the idea of these cut-ups, and— —pushing the technology. I know that you primarily work in digital media these days—do you miss the analog mixing? Or do you feel liberated by the lightness of a laptop and the endless supply of sounds at your disposal?

Honestly speaking—and I know a lot of people will disagree—I’ve never been happier than now in the digital world. Yes, there is some intangibly wonderful thing about analog recordings, but to be able to take a studio that I used at CalArts—which was hundreds of thousands of dollars and took up an entire room—and to have it now as an app for an iPad … that kind of power and portability and flexibility is just fantastic, you know.

It sounds really freeing. You don’t have to schlep around material objects. Just the laptop.

A laptop and maybe a small audio interface and a toothbrush and a change of underwear, and I’m ready to go on the road.

As I understand it, you split your time between Japan and San Francisco.

At this point I’m in Japan about eighty percent of the time. I moved my California base down to Los Angeles. I’m actually based out of here now. L.A. has changed a lot—I was born in L.A., I grew up in L.A. I went to CalArts and then after that, I did some work helping composers get funded with an organization called Meet the Composer, and I ran a music festival for a while. And then in 1993, I sort of got tired of Los Angeles, frankly, and San Francisco had always appealed to me, and I moved up there. I think it was just a few years too late. The tech boom was starting and rents were going up and a lot of places were closing.

It wasn’t as great as I had remembered it as being when I was a visitor. Eventually I ended up in Japan which I really love. I lived there for INTERVIEW

half a year in the late 80s. It really worked out.

I met a lot of people. There was a lot of interest in my music. I was kind of a living Tom Waits big-in-Japan kind of person. At that time, the Japanese economy was booming, and I had a lot of opportunities to go every year to work on projects. So as my relationship with Japan developed and furthered, it came to a point where I was actually offered a job teaching there. Even though I had never really wanted to teach before— Were you teaching music?

It wasn’t exactly a music department. I was teaching about digital sound in the media department of the school of Information Science. I took the job and pretty much moved. I live in Tokyo—my favorite city in the world. I think it’s an absolutely great place for art, for music, for culture, and for food, and those are all things that are important to me.

Food, indeed. I understand that you named many of your projects after your favorite restaurants.

I know—it’s really stupid.

No, not at all. I think the relationship between food and music is somewhat underappreciated, but they’re two things that I absolutely must consume to exist.

I feel the same way. My titling system for my pieces is an arbitrary system. I was struggling— I’m not really good at titles, I’m not a poet, I’m not an author. It’s hard to come up with a title that epitomizes what I’m trying to say in the music, and what I’m trying to say in the music I can’t really say with words anyway.

So why not just give it an arbitrary title that sounds sort of interesting? So I started long ago arbitrarily naming pieces after the restaurants that I was going to, which at that time were mostly Thai and Korean places.

I noticed ‘Torung’ in there.

Torung—does that still exist here? You’ve done your research because Torung is not a piece that many people know. But it is part of my cannon. And ‘Shibucho,’ ‘Dong Il Jang,’ these are pieces that were in the first gen— ’Sukothai’ was in the first generation. Now I have a piece called ‘Jitlada,’ which is one of the Thai restaurants that I like. I have a database of restaurants, and I have my pieces. When I write a new piece, I just reach into the bag and pull a name out. And sometimes it might be a piece that’s based on some Korean folk music, but it ends up with a Japanese title.

Next thing I know, people are taking shots at me because— Taking umbrage with the cultural appropriation of it all.

Exactly. [laughs] When you listen back to works you’ve composed, do they feel familiar to you?

Like tracks from Mom’s—do you find yourself surprised by them, listening to them in retrospect?

Mom’s is an LP that had better distribution than most of my releases. This particular C.D. also has been pirated and distributed online. So these pieces do keep coming back to me, and one piece in particular—a piece called ‘Shing Kee,’ which is a long dive into a short excerpt of Schubert. A Schubert lieder sung by a Japanese pop singer in English that is kind of like my Bolero. This is the one piece INTERIEW

that more than any other that people mention that they identify me with.

Really? Do you remember which Schubert lieder?

It’s ‘Der Lindenbaum.’ That sample alone that I used from a Japanese singer Akiko Yano really cut my ear when I listened to the original version. As I say, it already has an interesting cross-cultural tension built in because it is a German lieder, but it’s sung in English by a woman who may have had some classical training, but her whole approach stylistically is in pop. So the use of vibrato and so on is very very different from what you would hear from a classical lieder performer or operatic singer.

You mention a female pop singer. That seems to be a motif that comes up frequently in your compositions. This morning I was listening to some of your music, and I noticed that you were playing Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ backwards.

It’s all cut up and redistributed. It’s not exactly backwards, but it’s kind of backwards.

I would know those vocals anywhere just because of the generation from which I come.

Right. First of all, I am attracted to the female voice generally speaking more than the male voice. So a lot of the work I do uses a female vocalism as a starting point, and a lot of that can be pop music. I actually have a whole series of pieces based on ‘Barbie Girl.’

I heard Britney in there as well, I believe?

‘Oops, I Did it Again’?

Might have been. Some of these pieces attract me because they are sort of so bad that they’re good. They’re so utterly tasteless, but at the same time, so delicious, you know?

We had an interesting conversation offline with regards to psychedelia and acid jazz, and how—I don’t know—I find this an incredibly psychedelic experience, especially this newer track like ‘Dino’s,’ just because it’s so hard to grasp whether it’s major, minor, anything. The shell of a pop singer is there, and yet there’s an opera swirling around her, and underneath her, and through her.

Right. I’m searching for a kind of ambiguity and also a kind of intangibility, and maybe a sense of confusion. I’ve always been disappointed with what one might call ‘acid jazz.’ It never struck me as being particularly psychedelic. But what I’m trying to do is in a way—not that I’ve ever experienced it—is try to duplicate the sensibility of psychedelic experience.

It sounds like you’re a sound collector, be it ‘appropriated music’ as you’ve put it or the texture of sounds around you. How do you go about collecting them? Do you plot what you’re looking for, or are you just taken by something and you snatch it up when you can?

More the latter. When I travel, unlike tourists who might have a camera strapped on, I walk around with a portable recorder looking for interesting sounds. I don’t necessarily have a goal in mind. Sometimes there are certain places that I know should have interesting sounds. I’m very attracted to marketplaces and things like that. I especially like urban soundscapes, so when I go to a city, I will

always have my recorder handy—just walking around soaking up the sounds.

If you capture a field recording, is it something that you’ll find yourself recycling in different pieces, or are they all piece-specific? Like you’ll have one sound that makes its way into a composition of yours, and then it just lives in that composition, or do they appear in multiple compositions?

That’s a good question. For some reason with field recordings, they tend to show up in one piece and one piece alone. Musical samples— on the other hand—are spread throughout my pieces freely and show up multiple times in multiple pieces, partly because I very often become obsessed with the samples that I’m working with. You mentioned a piece based on ‘Barbie Girl,’ that Euro-trash hit from Aqua back in the late 90s. I’ve got at least ten different pieces that all use that same material.

Other pieces—if people examine them closely, they will find the same samples showing up in different guises and different contexts, but each one is completely different. The process that I use will be completely different, but the material may be the same, and it has to do with the way that I work. I have pieces that come from my fascination with a particular sample, but as often as not, I’m interested in a kind of process. And the process is such that you can plug almost any different music into it and it will still work, and that’s what’s interesting. What happens if you plug this Schubert in, or what happens if you plug this Aqua in? What happens if you plug this shamisen music in? The results are different even though the process is the same.

It’s fascinating thinking of these samples as instruments, almost.

That’s right. They are an important part of the musical construct. One thing I want to mention—I want to talk a little bit about Phill Niblock. I said I considered him my mentor and that he’s the person who gave me my first start in New York, but he’s really an important figure in minimal music. When people think of minimal music, the same names usually crop up—Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, La Monte Young. There are other composers like Alvin Lucier who I think deserve the moniker as well, and Phill Niblock is one of those. He’s been working in a very, very austere fashion with a very specific approach for more than forty years. He records instrumental sounds from very often classical instruments like bassoon, clarinet, trombone, violin—whatever—and he edits them very carefully to remove all the attacks. If you remove the start of the sound, of a sustained sound from a trombone or a clarinet, you take away a lot of the characteristics that distinguishes it as that instrument. What you’re left with is a sound that in many ways sounds very electronic, but also has an inner personality you could only get through instrumental sounds. Then he takes these recordings and then shifts them a very, very small degree in pitch and recombines them so you get what is known as beat tones. These are the things that happen when two sounds are very, very close to each other in pitch, but not identical. It’s an acoustic phenomenon that really has to be heard to be achieved.

It’s called ‘beat’ because the difference in frequency produces a kind of a rhythm, a kind of a ‘whom-whom-whom.’ Or if the difference is even closer, the frequency will be higher a ‘whu-whu-whu-whu.’ This is kind of a fundamental part of his approach to music.

So he does these very intense soundscapes built on these drones. They’re quite loud and you feel them in your body as much as you hear them. This music is played back along with films—he’s also a filmmaker—films and videos that he’s recorded in his many travels.

So it’s a very engrossing experience.

I want to speak to you about the visual artists that you’ve collaborated with—the sculptors. Tell me about that experience and how the project was conceived, and what it’s like to soundtrack something that’s a concrete piece of visual art like that.

Immobile, too. Not like video where you can kind of soundtrack motion. How do you create music for that?

I worked with several sculptors. The first one was a collaborative installation with a Japanese sculptor by the name of Seiji Kunishima who works with metal and stone.

The sculptor and the gallery director gave me complete freedom, and what I chose to do was work with the same materials that the sculptor was working with—with metal, with stone—to create a looping installation that had no particular beginning or end, like a piece of sculpture which is in essence not time based. And this would be played back in the gallery along with the exhibition of the work. Another collaboration I did was very different, but also with a Japanese sculptor who lives here in southern California named Mineko Grimmer. She works also with stone and with ice, and bamboo as well.

And she created—and still creates, as far as I know—pieces where pebbles are frozen into a block of ice, which is suspended above a lattice work of bamboo, and as the ice slowly melts, the pebbles one by one are unleashed and dropped into the bamboo. So you have a very natural approach—one that I think is very informed by Japanese sensibility of nature and the natural passage of time. We collaborated in a number of different ways.

The one that comes to mind was a piece we did at the Santa Monica Museum of Art back at its original location. There we did a one-hour piece featuring a number of her sculptures which were set up to drop their stones into the bamboo and into this everincreasing pool of water. Also I played back a series of pre-recorded music based on a lot of natural recordings made in the Hollywood Hills where I lived at the time.

I like that the sculpture itself became part of the music. That it created sound and started interacting with it.

It did. And very beautiful sound. The sound of these pebbles dropping into the water through the bamboo one by one—very gorgeous.

CARL STONE WITH ULRICH KRIEGER AND CHAS SMITH ON SUN., MAR. 13, AT THE BLUE WHALE, 123 ASTRONAUGT E.S. ONIZUKA ST., STE. 101, LITTLE TOKYO. 9 PM / $10 / 21+. BLUEWHALEMUSIC.COM. VISIT CARL STONE AT SUKOTHAI.COM. 47

COURTNEY BARNETT Interview by Kristina Benson Illustration by Rachel Merrill

Courtney Barnett has been called the voice of her generation and Australia’s answer to Bob Dylan— and she was nominated for a Grammy, too—but there’s just no possible way to imagine any of that going to her head. Instead, she’s just like you’d think she’d be from listening to her songs, which start somewhere in the dreary part of the every day and discover—with modesty, precision and humor—the kind of meaning you’ll think about for a long time. Her debut studio album Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit is out now on Milk Records and she joined us for a few minutes by phone to talk about her favorite soon-to-be-extinct animal, all the ways in which your brain fucks with you, and why she generally tries to refrain from shoplifting.

I’ve learned that you are a fan of the the Leadbeater’s Possum, one of Australia’s most adorable endangered animals. I looked them up and the adjectives most associated with the Leadbetter’s Possum are ‘primitive,’ ‘relict,’ and ‘non-gliding.’

Which of those adjectives best describe you and your music?

Ha! ‘Non-gliding’ sounds like a good representation. I never really thought of myself in those kinds of terms.

Is that your favorite endangered animal?

My favorite is the koala. It’s not as endangered—it’s on its way to serious endangerment. They’re so cute!

In ‘Caravan,’ you talk about seeing a dead seal on the beach, and then picking up a flyer about the barrier reef. You know that horrible picture of the polar bear clinging to a tiny block of ice?

No—but I can imagine.

That photo really crystallized how I felt about the environment. I’m wondering if that moment in ‘Caravan’ did the same for you.

Yeah—it was a real moment. I went away down the coast to do some writing, and I guess … I have those moments all the time.

There’s not one moment that jumped out, but every couple days it happens, it feels like.

But down on the beach there was a feeling of hopelessness—of not being able to do anything. It all came together, and I tried to represent that in that song as best I could.

That song has a real sadness to it—a lot of your songs do in a certain way. It reminds me of Billy Bragg. Some of his songs just seem so tragic, even when they’re hopeful—like what he’s singing about will never happen, and that makes it even worse. As I listen to your record I’m like, ‘She’s right—we’re totally fucked!’ But maybe there’s an optimism I’m missing?

Interesting point cuz I’ve been thinking recently and trying to determine whether I’m an optimist or a pessimist. I feel like even though I’m very pessimistic, I’m optimistic enough to keep going and trying and learning. If you’re not optimistic about the world you live in, then you’re in trouble. But a lot of the songs are still veering to the darker or more pessimistic side. The lightness is that

we’re in it together and trying to make sense of it. That’s kind of the most optimistic thing I can think of.

You say we’re all in it together—like ‘Depreston’ is about a house hunt in a city that’s very far away from where I am, and yet I recognized every detail as resonating with my own local experiences. As you’ve been traveling so much lately, are you coming to realize that your songs are more universal than you realized?

I definitely figured that out. I never felt that it was my own struggle—I think I knew that it was universal, but I didn’t know how much it would be picked up on emotionally. So many people connected with it emotionally.

And yeah, and it’s extremely universal— we all need food and shelter in whatever level it is. There are two things as humans that we can kind of connect with.

Many of the songs on the record are about things that have happened to you in your daily life. Now I imagine much of your life is preoccupied with band stuff. Is this changing what you write songs about? Or the way you write about living your life?

It’s more about the thought surrounding those moments. It’s hard to explain. I still do plenty of other stuff that’s not those kinds of boring things. But a lot of my songs focus on the little moments anyway. It could be looking out the window of whatever vessel I’m traveling in, and noticing something kind of beautiful out the window and turning that into a whole story of its own. Even though the environment is the same, it’s not really a story about touring—it’s the byproduct of it.

You’ve talked often about how you have a lot of anxiety and have a hard time making decisions. Is touring a good fit for you? I mean—when you’re touring, your job is essentially reduced to one task: getting to a certain place at a certain time.

That’s a good way of looking at it. The brain will find its own way to fuck with you even though it seems like it should be pretty straightforward. I end up creating situations or ideas or developing new OCD things or something turning into anxiety, even though I really don’t want to. I think it ends up coming back at you in a different way, which is kind of a bummer.

You’ve also said you struggled to make the album, and then once you did, you didn’t know how the songs fit together. What did this album need for you to feel like it was really finished?

That’s just the hardest question of making music, I think. For me anyway. I never know what I’m doing or when it’s finished.

I’ve always just trusted my kind of instinct, which is hard. You kind of know when it’s not right—if you just keep following that, you’ll get to something that is right.

‘Elevator Operator’ is about someone doing something completely normal— riding the elevator to go to work —but an observer thinks that he must be doing something completely crazy—riding the elevator to go jump off the roof and commit suicide. What was the last time you did something totally normal but another person thought you were about to do something totally crazy?

The underlying theme of that song is judgment. People judge you wrongly based on their own ideas or perceptions. I feel like a lot of the time when I’m shopping, people think I’m going to shoplift. I don’t know why cuz I’m really nerdy and I’d never steal anything from a store. I’d be too scared!

Because you’re too scared of being caught?

Or you think stealing is wrong?

Like I’d get in trouble. I must look guilty.

Or because I’m a bit scruffy so they think I’m a thief. And when you think someone’s looking at you, you get more guilty-looking cuz you’re trying not to look guilty!

COURTNEY BARNETT WITH ALVVAYS ON THURS., APR. 14, AT THE GLASS HOUSE, 200 W. 2ND ST., POMONA. 8 PM / $25 / ALL AGES. THEGLASSHOUSE.US. AND AT COACHELLA ON FRI., APR. 15, AND FRI., APR. 22. COACHELLA. COM. COURTNEY BARNETT’S SOMETIMES I SIT AND THINK, AND SOMETIMES I JUST SIT IS OUT NOW ON MOM+POP MUSIC / MILK! / MARATHON / HOUSE ANXIETY. VISIT COURTNEY BARNETT AT COURTNEYBARNETT.COM.AU. 49

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ONE REPORTER’S OPINION Chris Ziegler

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ALBUM REVIEWS

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THE INTERPRETER Jamma Dee

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ALLISON ANDERS and ALEX COX

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WAYBACK MACHINE

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LAFMS: HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? D.M. Collins

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DISTRIBUTION MAP

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COMICS

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LIVE PHOTOS

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SXSW CHEAT SHEET

FILM

Ron Garmon

Edited by Debi Del Grande

Curated by Tom Child

ALBUM REVIEWS hard with crunchy electronic keys as Bea’s voice rises like a wave and gently crashes down. This EP shows that Alina Bea has the talent and ability to stand out on her own musically and otherwise.

—Zachary Jensen

ALINA BEA Live Undone EP New Professor

You may be familiar with Alina Bea from her work in her previous band Body Parts, which disbanded when the leading members ended a long-term relationship.

This came right at the moment where the band was reaching success on a larger scale. Alina Bea took this experience and decided to grow from it with her own solo project, creating something that is confessional, cathartic, and beautiful. The music takes slight reference to the quirk and experimentation of her previous band but adds more of an electronic pop base that is more reminiscent of the Kate Bush meets St. Vincent realm. Electronic beats, keys, and other electronic sounds set the foundation for Bea’s beautiful wide-ranging vocals. The strongest stand out on the album is the track “The Wanting” which starts off with bell sounds that provide the basis for the beat. The lyrics on this song cut deep as Bea talks about her previous lover as she sings “Maybe all you need is something new” followed by “someone younger someone dumb within your reach.” The chorus hits fairly

ANGELS DUST Musings HIT+RUN

At least part of the resurgent interest in cassette tapes is about how tapes show their age—garbling, deteriorating, slowing down in ways that are distinctly organic and, in fact, almost human. This is what Flavia of Angels Dust sings about on “Slow Tapes,” the centerpiece of the band’s six-song EP of the same name. Flavia, whose voice is very much like Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval’s, has a voice lighter than air when she sings: “I keep wondering how you’re keeping it together/ I’ve been listening to slow tapes.” She listens to retrieve lost memories, finding a kind of masochistic peace in hearing how they’ve faded. (Behind her vocals is a frayed, grim backdrop created by producer David Lampley, the other half of the group.)

On the last note of “Slow Tapes,” Flavia’s voice evaporates, leaving a

ALBUM REVIEW SUBMISSIONS

L.A. RECORD invites all local musicians to send music for review­—anything from unreleased MP3s and demos to finished full albums. Send digital to fortherecord@ larecord.com and physical to:

P.O. Box 21729 Long Beach, CA 90801 If you are in a band and would like to advertise your release in L.A. RECORD, email advertise@larecord.com

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tiny trace before it disappears. Now the Los Angeles duo has released Musings, which consists largely of remixes of the material on the Slow Tapes EP. The producers who take over for Lampley here are most effective when they layer a degree of ugliness and dissonance into the group’s sound—for instance, Giovanni Marks’ remix of “Slow Tapes” sounds uncomfortably yet compellingly like two different songs playing at once, one Flavia’s, the other a misplaced swatch of Motown soul. enshun’s remix of “Funeral” deeply distorts the vocal line and layers it over an equally distorted breakbeat — wearing away the song’s original intent and revealing something more unsettling underneath. A couple of new original tracks—especially “Holy War,” which echoes like it was recorded an old warehouse—take their cues from these approaches. This feels like a breakthrough for the band, who take their sound, delicate and pretty but perhaps a little too easy to compare to other groups, and disfigure it in unexpected and satisfying ways. Angels Dust may have found a more existential truth in this process, too: that we do in fact age like cassette tapes, not only in how we our memories fade and disintegrate, but also in how sharply and suddenly we can take on new, gloriously imperfect forms.

—Chris Kissel

they tell you what’s up right away, cause kicking you in the face emotionally and sonically is what these dudes do. They bring the beachy vibes on songs like “Umbrellas” but nevertheless they still sound like a band thats just now starting to deal with life in the adult world.

The longtime Fullertonians write songs that sound like life, fun and chaotic and sometimes things fall apart. With scene president Ty Segal at the wheels this time around as producer, the album has that “let’s throw fuzz on everything vibe” that has become his trademark and as a result, the new mature Audacity still sounds raw as ever but more put together. On the track “Baseball” the band takes you right back to their punk rock roots—it’s a quick one-two-punch and you’re done kind of song. Audacity might be growing up but with age come understanding and awareness, as well as the ability to communicate better, and here we find Audacity communicating exceptionally. this is life, this is what it sounds like to wake up slightly pissed off and happy at the same time.

—Daniel Sweetland

BLEACHED

Welcome the Worms Dead Oceans

BLACK MOUNTAIN IV Jagjaguwar

AUDACITY Hyper Vessels Suicide Squeeze

So Audacity has been around a while, so you’ve heard their albums before and think you know what to expect. Wrong! You have never heard Audacity like this before.

More grown up, more angry, more reflective—sunshine meets punk rock. With a catchy but scathing intro to “Counting The Days,”

nature of the first song it ends and you find yourself running head first into a pounding of giant drums and classic punk aggression on the album’s second track, “Florian Saucer Attack.” The communal nature of this band might be one of its greatest strengths, as that these songs more than anything else sound like a conversation between the members as they play. This unifying quality is what allows this band to float in and out of sounds and tempos and still maintain a consistent vibe. The album floats in and out of punky angst and anger and near Pink Floyd creativity and groove-based floating numbers like “Defector” and “Line them All Up.” Like all of this band’s output there is never a lack of creativity or progress. Great melodies and accessible feel but never without a hint of the strange.

—Daniel Sweetland

Black Mountain have a new album and a new dedication to doing things big. Big guitars, big catchy vocals, gorgeous keyboard arrangements, and other big concepts.

“Mother of the Sun” kicks off the album with huge fuzzed-out guitars over a gorgeous vocal arrangement that features some awesome give and take within the haunting and gauzy melodies from Stephen McBean and Amber Webber, the bands’ primary vocalists, and just as you begin to feel comfortable with the jammy and almost proggy

Bleached are masters of tight, melodic, poppy, pissed-off rock’n’roll, and now, hints of a little of this and little of that and a much higher quality of production thanks to Joe Chiccarelli (Morrissey, The Strokes) and Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, YACHT), Bleached is at their peak, writing killer songs with incredible arrangements and amazing energy. Heartache can lead to some incredible artistic reactions and after going through break ups, relocations, and reflections, Bleached emerged from the turmoil with a grip of powerful and statement songs. From the get-go with “Keep on Keeping” to the speed-laced “Sleepwalking” with its shredding guitars to the heavy, pounding, and incredibly hooky “Wednesday Night Melody,” there is hardly a flat spot on this ALBUM REVIEWS

album. If making an album thats “as real as life” was the band’s goal they have more than succeeded.

Honest and real, fun and blatant, these are songs about drugs, driving, the California nightlife and love and loss. There will always be a need for honest and fun albums in this world. Nothing overthought or pretentious, just rock’n’roll.

—Daniel Sweetland

DUNES

Bitter Charm Negative Space

BUYEPONGO Todo Mundo self-released

One of the amazing things about the Los Angeles music scene is the sheer amount of diversity that exists within it. In one week it is entirely possible to see a punk, jazz, classical, electronic, cumbia, reggae, hip-hop, or any other show you’d possibly imagine. The sound of Buyepongo exemplifies this melting pot, and is why so many people have come to love their work. The music is high energy and danceable, technical yet playful, and all around fun. Originally a more traditional cumbia band, Buyepongo has shifted their sound over the years to include a more “Todo Mundo” (or “entire world”) approach. The music draws from elements of traditional cumbia, punta, merengue, jazz, reggae, funk, and African beats to create an album that is a musical exploration the world over. The sounds this group creates are not a simple meshing of genres, but rather a synthesis of traditional sounds to come up with something that is familiar yet entirely new. Take the song “Pegao” for example, which starts with a smooth jazztinged sax line and mood-setting congas that quickly shift into a highly danceable tune. “Gorditas” is another fun and danceable merengue song that proclaims the group’s love of full-figured ladies. There is not one song on the album that is not enjoyable, and it would be easy to say something great about every track as most people would love this music; that is unless you hate to dance and have a good time.

—Zachary Jensen ALBUM REVIEWS

It’s been four years since Dunes released their debut album Noctiluca, a dark and jangly dream-pop gem that blended all the talent that band members came with from their previous projects. With what seems like a lifetime in the music world, Dunes has finally resurfaced with another full-length album, produced by Alex DeGroot of Zola Jesus fame. The album has the atmospheric and heavy charm of 80’s greats like the Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush, but does not suffer from any of the trappings of sounding dated. The songs are infectious, pop-driven marvels with smooth bass lines, harmonic guitar riffs, and solid drum beats that highlight Stephanie Chan’s warm vocals rather than blend with them as previous albums did; this shift is the most dramatic and successful change that Dunes has made to their sound. It allows Chan’s vocals to carry the songs to towering heights as well as highlight the strong songwriting. The first single, “Runner,” highlights this shift with its light harmonic guitar riffs that set the stage for the melancholic vocals. Immediately following is the 80’s-steeped song “Sir Lady Java” that perhaps inadvertently channels the feel of “Everlasting Love” with the opening verse. These songs are moody in all the right ways and a pleasure to listen to.

—Zachary Jensen

GENEVA JACUZZI

Technophelia Medical Records

Like all Geneva Jacuzzi endeavors, there is an extreme amount of attention paid to the tiny details that make Technophelia unique. There is a fearlessness in the precision of her voice, no matter if it’s robotically chanting “ZERO ZERO ZERO”, seductively prancing around a goth dance floor, arguing with automated phone messages, or braiding itself into a symphony of multiple personalities while the bleats of sheep rattle along in harmony. A synthesized foundation serves as an obstacle course through which Jacuzzi steers this schizophrenic romp, and it’s lush, catchy and clean— production work from producer Chris Coady adds a slick sheen to the DIY aesthetic that somehow manages to accentuate rather than undermine. The unabashed, intoxicating catchiness of “God Maker” and “Cannibal Babies”, the brushed dreaminess of “Macho Island”, and the knuckle-bitingly sultry “I’m A TV” make for just a handful of the hypnotic places Jacuzzi maneuvers her creation. Bodily imagery, the vernacular of birth, sex, death and other organic phenomena, is prevalent throughout Technophelia, not ironically but perhaps to enhance the notion that technology, and its adoration and fetishism, is only possible because of organic form that gave birth to it.

—Christina Gubala

Gifted and Blessed

Emotional Topography Leaving Records New age music has a lot of baggage: the sometimes half-baked mysticism, the lysergic imagery, the dated sounds (think of a world where pan flutes didn’t automatically conjure something cheesy), the multitudes of sub-par private press tapes and CDs. Yet Leaving Records’ new “Modern New Age” series carries this baggage proudly, and for that reason alone it’s compelling. Assuming the series’ goal is to guide us toward genuine inner peace, and it appears to be, we might ask: when it succeeds, does it do so in spite of, or because of, all that baggage? Emotional Topography by Gifted and Blessed (Ga-

briel Reyes-Whittaker) is one of the latest releases in the series, and Reyes-Whittaker takes the music’s spiritual dimension seriously. According to a recent Resident Advisor feature, Reyes-Whittaker’s latest musical ventures “seeks to unite ancestral traditions with modern technology.” I can’t judge that on the merits, but I can say that Reyes-Whittaker calls on new age fundamentals—plodding Tangerine Dream-like compositions that create small measures of anxiety and dispel them gently; geometric synthesizer riffs that could score an ’80s lightbulb commercial— and that these sounds are healing sounds. Reyes-Whittaker repeats and mutates brutalist shapes and motifs (we might even call them mantras) until they demand a kind of meditativeness. “Non Duality” consists of a single shape warping quickly but softly, dismissing errant thoughts as if by algorithm.

“At One Ment” is moodier, a kind of distilled sullenness, like goldenrod swaying in a technicolor field (oh yeah—one of Reyes-Whittaker’s other achievements is allowing you to abandon your pretensions and embrace sounds and scenes that might otherwise feel cheesy).

“At One Ment” is one of the least eventful compositions but a quiet feat of classically analog synthetics. “Love Activators,” the album’s final track, oscillates between the same two notes, building a kind of calm, mantric anti-climax.

Somewhere inside its six and a half minutes there’s glitch in the recording, like a cassette player momentarily dropping the tape.

The moment enhances our sense of peace, rather than breaking us out of it. Perhaps that’s because it’s an acknowledgement of the nostalgia that makes this whole thing run—a self aware embrace of all that baggage, seen with fresh eyes, and the final stroke of the bold argument that new age is a form worth exploring again.

—Chris Kissel

You know those woozy, early evening hours that stretch out endlessly in the summer? The unrelenting heat has stopped, but the warmth absorbed in the concrete still gently rises up, the air is tangibly soft, you’re not sure what time it is, and you’re content to just sit on the curb and enjoy it? That’s basically what the self-titled debut from Golden Daze (duo Ben Schwab and Jacob Loeb) sounds like. The recent Midwest-to-L.A. transplants explore themes like migration, displacement, and loneliness within a soft-edged mix of shoegaze, melodic 60’s pop, and generous dashes of psych. The very “Pish”-like “Low” shows the influence that The Brian Jonestown Massacre has on the duo, while the lo-fi, unadorned vocal stylings and sunny melodies of Cass McCombs leave an imprint across the whole LP. “Lean In” has a lovely, whining guitar riff that floats in as if on a breeze, while a Merseybeat melody by way of an LSD tab centers “Sleepin’ In The Sun,” which sounds just like the title suggests. Another standout track, “Foreigner” shows they can write a catchy hook using just one syllable, as the song expands into the weightiest thing on the album. The danger of any shoegaze-influenced album, with all the obscured vocals, distortion, and wall-like sound, is that the songs, much like the mixing, start to blur together. While still enjoyable, this is the case for the last third of the album. That being said, it’s when Schwab and Loeb try something a little different that they really shine. The uptempo “Never Comin’ Back,” with a more defined melody and the placement of drums and jangly guitars nearer to the front of the mix, is a dazzler.

The closer, “Still Time” ends things on a high note. Part soundscape, it’s like you’re floating through space, time, dimensions, or all of the above. Groovy.

—Madison Desler

GUY BLAKESLEE GOLDEN DAZE self-titled Autumn Tone

The Middle Sister Leaving Records

Guy Blakeslee, better known for his work in the Entrance band, 53

THE INTERPRETER

JAMMA DEE Curated by Kristina Benson Photography by Christina Craig

Jamma Dee has an impressive collection of music—a couple thousand cassettes, a couple thousand records, and a few hundred CDs—and he uses most of it to produce supremely smooth jams on his own and for some very choice vocalists.

His Volume 1 album is out now on New York’s ARCANE label and he has a Volume 2 on the way shortly. He joins us now to talk about the power of an album cover and what he loves most about a particular kind of soul music.

“I found this at Rockaway—they have so much stuff in those $2.99 bins. You can find crazy stuff in there. Mikki Bleu is an unsung genius of R&B and soul music. I don’t know if this is his debut or his second record, but there’s three or four songs on here that are so amazing. He’s like an unsung Keith Sweat who’s also a musician— this guy can sing and write and play. Like Prince but a little less flamboyant? Such a cool vibe on this record. I wanted to show this just to give daps to Mikki Bleu. He has like eight other album that are so insane … from 89-99. I initially found the cassette at Goodwill and always played it, and then found the record in the last few years. I did a remix to one of the jams on here called ‘Under Lock-N-Key.’”

The chI-lITes STEPPIn oUT (prIVaTe I, 1984)

“I’m a huge Loose Ends fan, especially their first few albums like Zagora, A Little Spice … Look How Long is the one that Carl McIntosh from Loose Ends put out after the group had broken up so it’s all his production. There’s just some amazing songs on it. It’s a total vibe of that exact year. The sounds and the swing of the drums is such a quintessential vibe of 1990 to me—from what I remember of it! I’m 28, so I was still a young guy.”

“Chi-Lites along with the Whispers, the Sylvers, the Fatback Band … there are these five to eight funk bands that are just the best, I’d say. Chi-Lites definitely in the top five. This record is just a straight gangsta funk dance party record. The cover’s pretty funny, too— they’re all in these weird outfits looking jolly. I found this years ago and it’s stayed with me til this day. I was DJing this backyard party in Inglewood a few years ago—a cholo gangster kinda crowd—for a friend’s birthday or whatever, and there was this old cholo dude with a big mustache sitting in the back of the party. And he came up like, ‘Hey, man, can you play the Chi-Lites “Gimme What You Got”? And I pulled the record out and it was just the best party after that! This record is cool cuz it has such a street element but it’s so classy and sophisticated and classic, really. Great musicianship all around, like all the Chi-Lites, and a great cover. Everything is working on this record.”

INNER LIFE II (SALSOUL, 1982)

rockIe robbIns RoCkIE RoBBInS (Mca, 1985)

“I found this one at record surplus for sure. This is just an amazing cover off the bat: a female half-robot alien chick with electric glasses.

One of my friends had it real early on in digging and I looked for it five years easy before I found it. It’s a rare one. It’s featuring one of my favorite singers Jocelyn Brown, and there’s a lot of Leroy Burgess work on this record which is amazing. It’s one of my favorite disco records—it’s real disco soul. Another one that is quintessential of the time. And the cover is super-appealing. The cover completely matches how good the music is.”

“Rockie Robbins has a lot of records anywhere—like any store is gonna have a Rockie Robbins in the soul section. But they never have this one. This one seems sought after cuz I rarely see it, but when I do I try and grab it. I have like three copies of it! This is an amazing record—there are three or four timeless tracks on here that I still play when I DJ. There’s a lot of production by Richard Evans, production by this guitarist Craig Cooper, who is also one of my favorites, and then Leon Sylvers III is also on several tracks. It’s like a super-group producer album. He got all the best producers to make the tracks for his singing. An all-star production squad! Great beats, great lyrics—the whole nine.”

LOOSE ENDS LOOK HOW LONG (10 RECORDS, 1990)

VIsIons vISIonS (polyGraM, 1988) “In the last five or so years, I’ve been really interested in the late 80s sound—kind of U.K. street soul sound. There’s a swing-beat vibe to this record. Through and through, it’s amazing. There’s three or four tracks on here that you can still play out. It’s unique and the cover’s really cool—the whole band’s on the cover in their craziest garb. One thing that’s special about it … when I was on an acid trip, we heard this song on here called ‘Perfect Love Affair,’ which is the best acid song you can ever listen to. Before and after and still do this day— such a great day. A $3-$5 record. If you can find it, scoop it up.”

MovIn’ on 5: An ESSEnTIAl CollECTIon FRoM ThE Uk SoUl MovEMEnT 2Xlp (rUMoUr, 1993) “It’s a compilation with old funk groups like Kleeer but also this song called ‘In The Mood’ by Raw To The Core. It’s such an amazing cut. I paid like $20 shipping for just this one song. There’s a video for it, too. It’s basically UK trying to make American quiet storm sound—such a dope song. I’m a proponent of the dollar bin forever.

I try to keep it under $40-$50 tops at all times. Unless it’s just that song you wanted for a decade …”

dUke booTee BUST ME oUT (MERCURY, 1984) “Off the bat, there’s the record cover with a photo of Duke Bootee— this dreadlocked bearded guy—teaching this class of all these delinquent-looking kids—such a weird cover. All the songs are interesting, but there’s a couple that stood out to me forever. The one I love is ‘I’m The One Who Loves You.’ It’s such an amazing drone-y druggy ballad, and Duke’s talking about how his woman left him but he’s riding a train through the city of love … it’s really graphic but somber? It’s a beautiful melancholy jam.”

INTERPRETER

MIkkI bleU I PRoMISE (eMI, 1989)

delUXe JUST A lITTlE MoRE (UnyQUe arTIsTs, 1989) “This is a UK street soul record. For the past few years I’ve been super into this genre. It’s like downtempo jazz funk boogie … like boogie but a hundred BPM as opposed to 113 or whatever. More of a street hip-hoppy boppy version of boogie with a lot of West Indies Caribbean influence—kind of along the lines of Loose Ends and such. The producer is this guy Toyin Agbetu who was a ghost producer with like ten aliases—2 Tuff and Master Tee and all these. He produced probably 50-60 records all in this genre. He’ll always have his real name on there but also his alias. He’s done a lot of house, a lot of jazz, but the UK street soul stuff is amazing and this record is essential. This was another record with $35 shipping or something—you gotta pay the price with these records, especially the British ones.”

ModernIQUe MoDERnIQUE (sIre, 1987) “Another front-to-back crazy record. So good in every sense. This is a late 80s New Jack-y kinda street soul record as well. It’s produced by this guy Larry Woo, who produced tons of crazy stuff in this area. I think he did a lot of work Roy Ayers in the late 80s. This is kinda rare—I think I got it on Discogs. I heard the record on YouTube when I was in Spain, and I was like, ‘I’m ordering this right now!” And when I got back it was there! And the cover … a lot of people want their covers to be timeless and not dated, but it’s a clue for people like me. Like ‘OK, they’ve got these baggy MC Hammer pants and dark glasses …’ It’s cool—when I get my next record together, I’m gonna try and make it geared toward this time so maybe people in twenty years will be like, ‘Man, they were so weird back then!’”

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has done his fair share of musical exploration. The early Entrance records were comprised of very stoner/psychedelic influenced songs that took you on a journey.

Later, while Blakeslee was taking a personal path to sobriety, the band’s sound shifted to a little more jangly and lighter style that reflected Blakeslee’s newfound clarity with the world. His latest release, which is a solo project under his own moniker, takes this spiritual and musical journey to a deeper place. The Middle Sister is an instrumental album that finds Blakeslee exploring the world of classical composition. The album is broken up into an A-side and a B-side with different approaches to each that is entirely recorded on magnetic tapes. The A-side is an 18 minute 44 second acoustic composition that is broken up into two movements. The movements are filled with acoustic guitar strumming setting the tone with melodic piano sounds and Tibetan singing bowls adding texture.

The build up on the composition is very reminiscent to Indian classical music (minus the tabla) with the music rising and falling to tell a story and take the listener on a journey. The music here is light and airy. The piano comes in at just the right moment to sprinkle in the right texture. The musical shift that Blakeslee has demonstrated here is phenomenal. If you are familiar with the work of Peter Walker you will have a strong grasp of what is going on with the movements on the first side of the album. The B-Side of the album finds Blakeslee switching from acoustic to electric guitar presenting a much different effect. The 19 minute and 14 second piece is broken up into four movements and each one builds from where the last left off. We start with a very Kevin Shields-like slow drone guitar track that carries through the entire track to build up for what is to come. It has a hint of Steve Reich in its simplicity and grace, but the later songs are heavier on the Shields influence. While the A-Side is light and airy, the tracks on the second movement are a lot heavier and fuller in nature. The dream-like quality of crunches and drones are enhanced by progressive krautrock inspired guitar riffs and drums. The contrast of the two sides of the album is strangely complementary and enjoyable to experience. Overall the experience is quite mesmerizing and it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all if Blakeslee choice to continue in this direction for a while.

—Zachary Jensen 56

HAPPY HOLLOWS “Way Home” self-released

The Happy Hollows have endured a long journey, from their humble beginnings in L.A.’s forgotten Central Second Collective, performing amid wildly diverse, experimental music, through the intoxication of near-fame and the grind of the industry of music. Their new release “Way Home” reflects on that journey while providing a framework for the band’s future. Lyrically, the track is equally apropos of a romantic relationship or of the band’s history. Sarah Negahdari’s statement “I wanted more attention” is just as obviously the reminisce of a heartbroken lover as it is the lament of a road-worn indie rocker; as, indeed, is the subsequent admission, “Sometimes the truth is too hard to swallow.” The lyrics ask the listener to decide whether love lost can feel the same as dreams abandoned. The music displays a band comfortable in its own skin: eighties-inspired synths throb and crescendo, lush guitars provide melodic and elemental form, bass and drums propel and punctuate, all while Negahdari’s voice, as starkly challenging as those of kindreds Kate Bush and Siouxsie Sioux, climbs and crashes.

In all, the song describes a journey back to a new home; one of confident pop songcraft, infused with the lifeblood of experimental rock.

—Josh Solberg

This may be as close to Pet Sounds as we’ll ever get from Brian Wilson’s leading disciple. The latest album from the High Llamas stands out from the nine preceding it by presence of a unifying concept; in this case, theme music for a London stage production play of the same name about everyday life in suburban Peckham. That part went right over the heads of many US reviewers but who cares? Speaking of critics, this wonderamaland’s 27:18 runtime is the kind of shortweight that would’ve made Robert Christgau mark an A- record down to a B, but again, who cares? Time is entirely suspended in a sonic realm traversed by few rockcrits and not all that many rock musicians, unless you count a couple of the Kinks’ lowest-selling albums and “Get ‘em Out by Friday,” an epic 1972 Genesis joint decrying U.K. urbanization that used to be an end-of-the-week rushhour favorite on American AOR radio. If you live in a city that is rapidly gentrifying yet still experience within it a certain wonder and magic, then this is probably the best High Llamas album yet; a quick and blissful theatrical romp from mastermind Sean O’Hagan, careful maker of gorgeous piffle.

The joyous title track is fit to stand alongside The Zombies’ “Care of Cell 44” but it’s merely a pillowplumper for the cosmic coziness to come. This bubbleweight operetta, as winsome as any Sixties sunshine pop artifact. is deftly occluded for 21st century tastes and adding up to something almost hopeful at the finish. If, in thirty years, music fans hear our own winsome and conflicted era in this brief phantasmagoric burst, then so much the better for life at the Old Rocker’s Home.

—Ron Garmon

HOLY GRAIL THE HIGH LLAMAS Here Come the Rattling Trees Drag City

Times of Pride and Peril Prosthetic If the surge of traditionally minded heavy metal bands over the past few years have proven anything, it’s that you shouldn’t tackle the genre’s classic ‘70s/’80s sounds if you don’t have a vocalist who’s tru-

ly ready for arenas. (Whether you’ll ever play arenas is neither here nor there.) On their first two albums, L.A.’s Holy Grail established itself as a promising young metal band unafraid of melody, largely through the serrated riffs and twintower shredding of guitarists Alex Lee and Eli Santana. Those qualities remain on the band’s new album Times of Pride and Peril, but Holy Grail’s third full-length effort is really an unabashed showcase for lead singer James Paul Luna. Gone are the growls and buried vocals of Holy Grail’s past; in their place is Luna’s horizon-wide range and powerful delivery, both clearer and sharper because he has been moved to the front of the mix. Luna is a strong and consistently compelling presence on Times of Pride and Peril, which is not to say that his band mates have fallen behind. Indeed, Lee, Santana and the rest of the gang more than hold their own musically, stirring scraps of thrash, prog, punk and hard rock into their trad-metal mix. Holy Grail has always had tremendous potential. Times of Pride and Peril proves the band has every tool it needs to reach that potential. Without a doubt, this will be one of the catchiest heavy albums of 2016.

—Ben Salmon

crunchy L.A. duo of old. “Coat of Arms” has been compared to Morricone, but sounds as much like Sousa to me. That’s a pretty heavy mixtape right there. Jerkagram stick out on their own most when they tame their careful architectural impulses for something a little more hand-sculpted. “Two Pillars,” as its name suggests, is spartan and controlled, but with enough of a degree of frailty to suggest the next wayward breeze might knock it off balance; “Anteater,” looks to heavy stoner rock like Melvins and ISIS but benefits highly from a natural, groovy interplay between the brothers. On the album’s coda, the brothers sit back and surrender to noise—a final willingness to succumb to something they can’t totally control, which makes for a welcome contrast to their impressive compositions. Nothing on the record is staid—they avoid becoming genre tourists with their obvious dedication to the notes they play. But it’s these moments that leaven all those sounds into something full and organic.

—Chris Kissel

JOANNA NEWSOM JERKAGRAM Outer Limbs self-released

Branding may not be Jerkagram’s greatest strength. The key to good branding, of course, is to create a product that’s easy to wrap your head around. Jerkagram—a duo comprised of Derek (guitar) and Brett (drums) Gaines, two brothers who recently relocated to L.A. from NYC—do pretty much the opposite of that. They veer from style to style on a whim, rarely giving an indication as to where they’re going next. But what might make for a tough pitch to an uninitiated listener makes for a rewarding trip for those who venture into Outer Limbs with an open mind—a tour through winding, precise instrumental rock a la Don Caballero, sludgy doom metal a la Earth, and hazy garage rock a la No Age, that

Divers Drag City

The five years between the 2010 release of Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me and her newest fulllength, Divers, released late last year, gave fans plenty of time to ponder what kind of momentous musical statement she was preparing. Her four years of work after 2006’s Ys resulted in a gargantuan triple-vinyl stunner. Ys, though limited to a conservative two records, featured no songs under nine minutes long. With each release, Newsom seemed to be dramatically expanding her musical scope on one front or another and with almost no official pre-release information available concerning the recording of Divers, fans could only speculate: would she release a FOUR-disc album? Would there be any tunes that might crack the twenty minute mark? How would ALBUM REVIEWS

her creative ambitions take shape this time? The end result turned out to be a surprise, although not for the reasons some had anticipated. In its length and musical style, Divers stands as an uncharacteristically modest release for Newsom. It seems much of a piece with Have One on Me in its embrace of a variety of musical styles and instrumentation, refining and tightening the symphonic arrangements that characterized the stunningly lush Ys. But “modest” takes on a new meaning when relatively applied to Newsom. Lyrically these songs are as dense and poetic as any she’s ever done, and as melodically complex, even if the arrangments frequently feel more essential than extravagant and like her previous work, this is music that constantly reveals new parts of itself over the course of time, encouraging dedicated study, which fuels the devotion of her core fan base. Newsom can be polarizing (although I confess a mystification when people still bring up her increasingly melliflous voice as their bugaboo) but this album, relatively restrained as it is, may be a good entry point for those who are not already fans.

Those who are will find little to complain about, save perhaps for how long they had to wait. ­—Tom Child

with an anthemic chorus, explodes with throbbing bass and jittery hihat action, giving it the math rock feel of vintage Bloc Party. “Knives” a uniquely structured song with a U2-esque guitar break in the dead center, highlights Volkens’ songwriting and distinctive voice: a hard-to-pin mix of Cage The Elephant’s Matt Shultz at his most unhinged, with bratty hints of “Fell In Love With A Girl” era Jack White.

The open airiness of “Simple Folk” shows the versatility this band truly has. With a sidewinder of a guitar riff and lyrics like “The high tides try and pull me to the moon,” The Knitts go folk-tinged psych, complete with a nice little rambling outro that sounds like blue skies and rolling wheels. The alphabetkitsch of “Erotic Aquatic” makes it the most fun song on the EP, while smartly-placed key changes keep it from being too sugary. The Knitts have all the promise, talent, and studious music knowledge of fellow L.A. up-and-comers The Shelters, but where The Shelters sway fuzzed-out psych, The Knitts go more punk; some of the time, anyways. The riffs are bruising, the bass is thumping, and you never know what’s coming next.

—Madison Desler

LUKE TOP THE KNITTS

Suspect Highs ORG Music

The Knitts, who got their name from hanging around the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, are a Valleybred, genre-busting band of brothers and childhood friends. Tooling around the L.A. music scene since 2011, their new EP Simple Folk captures those early days of intrepid adolescence and total musical freedom, or “writing music without it being a job yet,” according to vocalist Justin Volkens. It’s true, the band and the EP don’t fit in a major-record-label-friendly box, but The Knitts don’t really care; an infectious attitude that permeates their four-song EP, blending garage rock, post-punk, psych, and razor-sharp riffs. Lead single “Get Up! Get Out!,” a slinky, sexy track

As co-founder and frontman of international dance-pop outfit Fool’s Gold, Luke Top has earned a reputation as a melodic tunesmith with an ear for lush arrangements-- a reputation that has kept him busy working with the likes of Cass McCombs, Papercuts, and Beach House. As if that wasn’t enough, the renaissance man also works as a paralegal and has just released a solo album of mellow, chamberpop gems. Suspect Highs, written during a period of isolation from his numerous projects, is lyrically personal and introspective. Existential lines like “Do our dreams make us whole?” and “Can I call my own bluff?” from album opener “Marble Floors” are saturated in masterfully-crafted arrangements, their dirge disguised within dreamy melodies and sunny West

Simple Folk EP Knitting Factory

ALBUM REVIEWS

The Third Power Believe (Future Days)

That here is one of the great obscure slabs of Detroit iron is apparent from the leadfoot fouron-the-floor riff opening “Gettin’ Together.” The druggy proto-metal, pre-Ozzy pummel that follows has the effect of kicking Doors of Perception off their hinges. Not that the whole LP is chock with such slammers. “Feel So Lonely” is a muscular freakbeat blaster out of the ActionCreation-Les Fleurs set—a sub-genre few U.S. fans (as opposed to record hounds) then knew and “Coming Home” is driving psychedelic blues with a closing guitar flourish worthy of Ten Years After. That the Third Power was only slightly less rambunctious than MC5 and not quite as depraved as the Stooges count for little when they rocked as hard as the Bob Seger System. The obligatory epic “Like Me, Love Me” overcomes dumb hippie lyrics at about the 3:11 mark, yielding to a rousing metallic bustout that should have closed the original album, since “We, You, I” and “Snow” seem the slightest of afterthoughts. A generous helping of extras remedies this with nine unused studio and unheard live tracks. Among the former, “Streets of Heaven” and “Hey Little Suzie” give an idea of how a sophomore LP might have sounded. This kind of debut ought to have made at least short-term legends out of its authors but it was instead was flung out the door and forgotten by Vanguard Records, a New York classical label adrift without compass in the oceanic rock market of 1970. The band split up soon after and almost goes without saying that Believe was heavily bootlegged down through the years, but as the first legit reissue, this is cause for broad if vastly belated rejoicing. Singer-guitarist Drew Abbott later threw in with Seger and eventually landed up in the Silver Bullet Band, which was certainly no inexplicable quirk of rock history.

This Heat

This Heat (Modern Classics) An unclassifiable experimental trio sometimes cited as postpunk, This Heat began as two veteran prog-rockers (one of them drummer Chris Hayward, formerly of Gong) and a neophyte bassist emitting the varied and stupendous din captured on this debut from a Brixton meat freezer at about the same time Malcolm and the Pistols were executing the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Belatedly released in 1979 by Piano, an art-rock label that would attract notice for its avant recordings, this surprisingly tasty 12-track notion box combines elements of progressive, fusion jazz, modern classical,

and proto-punk in a manner that would recall Malcolm Mooney-era Can except the only two tracks conventionally similar to each other are the abstract “Testcards” bookending proceedings. The propulsive joints “24 Track Loop” is fit to drop on L.A. dancefloors this minute while “Diet of Worms” is close to what’s been getting called “ambient” for quite a while now and “Rainforest” comes well within hailing distance of techno. Traces here may be found of what would eventually become Spacemen 3, Stereolab, Lucky Dragons, Gang Gang Dance, Factory Floor, and Eno’s own number of weird kids making angular, bracingly clean noise on any given night in a warehouse not far from you. This Heat followed this brain-boggling statement with another EP and LP, about which more anon.

Game Theory Lolita Nation (Omnivore)

By the time of Game Theory’s fourth fulllength, Scott Miller was being hailed by college rock fans as a next great pop songwriter so this was the perfect mercenary point to unload a semi-slick commercial masterpiece; something if not the ages, then certainly for 1987. What Enigma Records, Miller & company rolled out instead was an uncanny, gawkily personal, startlingly melodic double LP produced by the estimable Mitch Easter of Let’s Active and way too weird for mass consumption in the late Reagan era. Far from the usual assortment of hair metal posing and Bruce-y Americana do-si-do rock fans were just then growing to detest, Lolita Nation was a double LP’s worth of white hot White Album-sized ambition and density. Liners reveal Miller had “every twist and turn” of the whole J.G. Ballard sprawl already pre-planned, down to the album art. Pulling song contributions and best efforts out of a tour-numbed, partially new band, Miller delivered something impressively bizarre and focused, with scads of power pop doubloons like “The Waist and the Knees,” and “The Real Shelia,” impassioned rants like “One More for St. Michael,” and droning psychedelic raveups like “Dripping With Looks” chockablock with tossed-off fragments of sonic debris with titles like “Watch Who You’re Calling Space Garbage, Meteor Mouth,” many a few seconds length or less. “Together Now, Very Minor” is a dreamy Monkees-like trifle that drifts off almost before you notice the album’s finished. Disc Two is a trove of alternate versions (include a superior long version of “Chardonnay,” over a half-dozen passes at rock classics including the Hollies’ “Carrie Anne,” “Candidate” by David Bowie and the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen,” the latter graced with Miller’s trademark puckish delivery and mild self-satisfaction at remembering most of the lyrics. Lolita Nation was received with enthusiasm by critics (except for the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau, who manfully admitted not getting it), the tour accompanying was wildly successful by Game Theory standards, so they recorded Two Steps From the Middle Ages the next year and eventually disintegrated. Miller went on to found the Loud Family, whose Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things (1993) would floor any listener intrigued by this amazing set.

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L.A. RECORD is currently distributed to 300 locations across the greater L.A to San Pedro through Long Beach and Orange County, as well as in Hollyw Highland Park and more. Unfortunately, we do not have the space to list eve but here are some of the key spots where you can get a copy of L.A. RECOR business listed in future issues as a key distribution location, contact us at

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A. area, from the Valley to Pomona wood, downtown L.A., Echo Park, ery one of our 300 drop locations, RD! If you would like to have your t fortherecord@larecord.com!

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★ NEW THIS ISSUE!

LIVE PHOTOS SPRING 2016 OFF! January 2016 Alex’s Bar

ONLINE PHOTO EDITOR DEBI DEL GRANDE

HAIM February 2016 Air + Style

MAXIMILIAN HO

SWIMM February 2016 The Federal Underground

DEBI DEL GRANDE

SHEVA KAFAI

Corners February 2016 Teragram Ballroom

DEBI DEL GRANDE

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The Paranoyds February 2016 The Echo

SHEVA KAFAI

LIVE PHOTOS

The Shrine January 2016 The Chun

Clara-Nova January 2016 The Troubadour

DEBI DEL GRANDE A.F..R.O. February 2016 The Regent

SCOTT SHEFF

Feels February 2016 The Echoplex

DEBI DEL GRANDE

Plague Vendor January 2016 El Rey Theatre

SCOTT SHEFF

Albert Hammond Jr. February 2016 The Roxy

CHAD ELDER

LIVE PHOTOS

CHAD ELDER

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African-sounding guitars. Songs like “Avalon” and “My Uniform” have a built in sway and groove, due to a subtle combination of Afro-pop rhythms and New Wave elements carried over from Fool’s Gold, which makes even mid-tempo numbers danceable. But variety abounds, as the tropical, 1950’s doo-wop melody and sax solo of “Chariot” gives the album a surprisingly soulful turn, with Top’s warmand-cozy voice going it’s crooniest.

“Reunion Island” and “Lucky Penny” are the standouts here, with the former floating in on a jangly piano riff that will bop around your head all day. The latter has some fun with William Onyeabor-style keyboards that are sure to put a smile on your face, even while Top laments a darkness that he just can’t shake. Fans of Vampire Weekend and Cayucas will appreciate the album’s roots in international sounds, though Top has a subtler hand, a more soulful sound, and a lounge-ready voice.

—Madison Desler

Matthewdavid’s mindflight Trust the Guide and Glide Leaving Records

It is with clear instruction that Leaving Records’ Matthewdavid delivers his latest opus in all its sprawling glory. Trust the Guide and Glide posits MD in a position of docent as well as creator, assuring the listener that there’s a current tugging through this piece that can be accessed upon surrender. Natural and digital phenomena cheep and babble, arpeggiate and pan. Each of the seven tracks exceeds eight minutes, unfurling like tendrils and expanding in every direction. The binaural sunrise of “Ocean Dream Symphony” stretches like the very first surya namaskara, glistening with sprinkles of bird calls. From there, the voyage doesn’t accelerate so much as swells, ebbs, climbs. The motion remains calm and constant.

His track nomenclature serves at a series of landmarks and street signs along this lazy river, with allusions to exploring mythological submerged metropolises, invitations from elves, and the mysteries of the dunes – 62

bodies of sand created by the wind and the water. The closing track, “The Vessel and the Voyage”, is the album’s longest piece, and arguably the liveliest. If one can indeed trust the guide, this glide is as effortless as it is invigorating.

—Christina Gubala

MONIQUEA A Certain Way 7” MoFunk

Moniquea’s “A Certain Way,” one of the timeless singles cut from her 2014 MoFunk debut LP, Yes No Maybe, is a delight. Producer Teeko’s housey A-side take on the track slides Madame Mo’s vocals over a sparkling wave of Lisa-Frank-hued synths, distant Prince-y guitar licks and 90’s piano chords made to move the body on contact. Cowbells, layers of vocoded echoes, and squeaky clean production textures duck and weave through tempo changes, conjuring the illusion of sitting shotgun with Moniquea as she steers you through the neon-backlit realm where she holds court.

The flip side’s take on “A Certain Way” finds Eddy Funkster and XL Middleton, Moniquea’s MoFunk family members, adding audiocojones to the track with liberal employment of the 808. The Bside is certainly more of a slowburning groove, understated in its oozing cool, and the contrast between the two takes only serves to prove further that gold is gold no matter how you melt it. For that classic Cali party vibe, MoFunk is the new go-to, and Moniquea’s the undisputed first lady.

—Christina Gubala

¡SOCORRO! Flavor of the Day Lolipop

December seems like an odd time to release a collection of sparkling jangle-pop songs. Unless, that is, it’s December in Southern California and the makers of said jangle-pop infuse it with a healthy dose of wistful melancholy. That’s the beautiful balance struck by Pasadena band ¡Socorro! on their six-song Flavor of the Day album, which spills over with snappy melodies, but never turns saccharine. Recorded at Lolipop Studios in Echo Park (and putting out only 74 handmade physical copies of the album), the release finds ¡Socorro! ably subduing its jangle-pop joy with more than a hint of heartbreak. To wit: The title track sets an elegant melody against a rollicking little electric guitar lick.

The glassy-eyed “Point At Stars” sounds like the final flickers of summer sun fading away. “Burning Bridges” has a little bit of rockabilly get-up-and-go, like the Beach Boys gone Bakersfield. And “Rosebud” churns like the Pacific surf, with tasteful reverb roiling in the background as vocalist Ray Guy Valdez urges “Don’t you dare think of wilting away.” It’s a sweet sentiment, though one can’t help but wonder if ¡Socorro! is at risk of wilting away itself. Regardless, Flavor of the Day is a lovely set of songs from a band that understands how to squeeze emotion into (and out of) pop music—an increasingly hard-to-find and much-appreciated trait.

—Ben Salmon

ating tracks that can easily work in the club, or for a chill session at home. A perfect example of this is the track “Starlight Lace” which blends minimalist beats with vocal loops to create a background for a song that really comes into its own when the beat drops in. The vocals in this song serve double purpose of providing the melody or the focus depending on the particular element’s layering. The production skill needed to make something sound so carefree and seamless out of something so complicated is remarkable. Another standout track is the song “Put it Down” featuring the singer/rapper Anderson .Paak.

The song blends hip-hop elements with Paak’s soulful singing/rapping and heaving hitting electronic beats. This is just one of the great guest spots on the album. Again this is another great release by Tokimonsta. The only complaint one could have is the desire for a full length release. ­—Zachary Jensen

Cryptocrystalline Secret Lodge

Fovere Young Art

Jennifer Lee, better known as Tokimonsta, is a prolific producer and DJ who has been a staple of the Los Angeles beat scene that grew from the Low End Theory club and labels like Stones Throw and Brainfeeder to blow up to a national level. She has a unique take on beat production, hip-hop, and overall electronic music that has positioned her to be a well-respected member of the scene. Tokimonsta is following up her successful release Desiderium (from her own label Young Art Records) with another mini album entitled Fovere. The release shows this artist’s versatility in cre-

ZACKEY FORCE FUNK Electron Don HIT + RUN

VUM

TOKIMONSTA

ballad, “The Other Side” and with the Baja hoodie burnout surf twang on “Red Flag.” “You Have Gold” is a Broadcast-esque meditation until, through the mist, comes a synth chime riff recalling Bowie’s “China Doll.” When it appears—and it only appears once—it’s a revelation. The songs then moves toward its conclusion steadily, like the delicate but purposeful gait of a coyote. Emerging from the dark, lit by the moon above, with a thirst for a creek that may or may not run dry.

—Kegan Pierce Simons

The noir dynamism of Topanga Canyon is pungently evident in the Topanga Canyon outfit VUM’s new record, Cryptocrystalline. Hippie mysticism is always more interesting when it’s peppered with darkness. Manson is much more interesting that the Grateful Dead.

Charisma tinged with mischief, the edges singed with evil, even. Such is Cryptocrystalline—an astounding collection of psychedelic noir fit for both the creekers and the peakers.

The beautiful but haunting reverberation of a canyon sky lit to the hilt with stars and who knows what else. Vocalist Jennifer Pearl channels the weirdo-shamanism of The Doors on “Katrina” when she sings discordantly, “Fire in the dollhouse oh oh oh oh / The rain in the garden hey hey hey / Honey in the rearview oh oh oh / Ghosts on the highway hey hey hey.” Members Christopher Badger and Scott Spaulding fluently round out VUM’s sound with precision and great effect, most astutely demonstrated on the marching band and Carrie prom-themed damaged

Zach Hose can’t sing like Prince.

And he can’t make beats like Flying Lotus. But as Zackey Force Funk, the Tucson native somehow manages to take all the weird, fucked up, cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled melodies floating in his head and make them into something not just listenable, but danceable—in a 4 a.m. stripper-filled party sort of way. Since moving to L.A. two years ago, Zackey’s released two original studio albums featuring production from all sorts of funk royalty, where his soft whisper of a distorted-vocal style scratches atop the smooth grooves of guys like XL Middleton, Eddie Funkster, Egyptian Lover and Brian Ellis. Electron Don, Zackey’s latest release, is a flashback to before these collaborations, when he was just a dude from the southeast side fighting his third felony arrest and trying to get his life back on track.

There are no major names accompanying him on these bedroom tracks and no outside influences except for Zackey’s funk love and thug life, which comes through in the grittiest of ways. Many of the songs (everything’s under a two minutes long, here) plant the recordings firmly in Arizona’s rich history of desert scumbaggery (“Nogales,” “Locust Heat” and “Chingale Pues”), which Zackey embodies and embraces as the only person who might be able to actually redefine the term “gangster funk.”

—Sarah Bennett ALBUM REVIEWS

FREE TREE

Mr. Happy’s Weeping Nosebleed self-released This comes from L.A. RECORD artist Dave Van Patten, and if you’ve seen Van Patten’s art—trust me, if you read this magazine, you have!—you’ll recognize the world of his drawings: lovely utopian psychedelia balanced (or damaged) by an exhausting awareness of what it means to live in the real world, shot through with a raw-id kind of surrealism that’s like Rory Hayes looking through the eyes of Peter Max. And if you haven’t seen his art, you’ll recognize what’s happening nonetheless—it’s one man’s attempt to explain how he can’t believe what he sees. Mr. Happy is a roughly (and loosely) recorded album, but that’s exactly it’s charm, and its Pavement-meets-the-Beatles-on-a-4 -track concept is done with dedication and reverence. (And the title track is perforated with cheerfully startling stop-starts and surprise melodies that prove he really did listen closely to the Beatles.) Call it a Sebadoh bedroom-rock take on “Rain” or “I Am The Walrus,” i.e. Beatles songs as pop as they were psychedelic. There’s Syd Barrett’s sing-song nursery rhyme style in “Cubicle Blues” and elsewhere, and there’s Dylan’s revved-up harmonica blues, too, especially that can’t-helpit “Yeah!” that bursts out of nowhere. Plus when Van Patten does his basso deadpan, he’s comes off like Kevin Ayers at his most authoritatively psychedelic—a welcome vibe. “Walking Into Light” is a unpretentious happy-sad rocker that reminds me of older Blank Tapes, and closer “Don’t Worry” skips the Beatles to go to John Lennon and that Plastic Ono Band album—guitar, harmonica, lots of room tone and a guy convincing himself it’s all gonna be alright.

MOOD OF DEFIANCE

In A Box 7” Recess / Water Under The Bridge San Pedro punk from 1981 bursts screaming into the light of day. As documented in the crucial A Wailing Of A Town book, Mood of Defiance had a drummer from Sachharine Trust and the unfuckwithable singer Rachel a.k.a. Hatha, who burned flags on stage and performed in a wedding dress or sometimes in fake vomit, etc. In A Box is punk bottled at the source, with that distinctively mangled 70s guitar tone (thank you, T.A. Black) and shock-horror word-cram scream-alongs from Hatha. Basically, this is a band punking out while their singer prepares for take off—and REPORTER

then it’s death from above, with songs that speed from sarcastic to surreal to annihilating. If someone told me the only two punk bands these guys ever heard were Flipper and the Bags, I’d believe it, and if someone told me, ‘No, they ever heard ANY punk bands—they just showed up like this!’ then I’d believe that even more. MoD is mean, driving, urgent, relentless. Recommended if you are fed up with fucking around.

NORMAN WOODS

World’s Disease EP self-released A truly DIY release from musician/skater Norman Woods: vicious practice-amp guitar, resolutely minimal smash-smash-smash drums, overdubs that slap you in the face and a lotta left turns keep this a healthy distance from commercially palatable contemporary punk, and I’d argue all the better for it. I’m not sure Norman played everything, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t because this sounds like a brain-drain straight to fourtrack—so consider that a warning if you’re used to polished stuff. Instead, this is in the spirit of Chain Gang, Crime or too-earlyfor-the-trend bands like J.T. IV or Sundog Summit that made punk songs by hanging out in their heads instead of examining what the Sex Pistols were doing. Title track and droner-rocker “No Time For Weeping” collide the sentiment and solos of crushing 70s psych-funk—Black Merda—with 70s bonehead rock b-sides—i.e. proto-punk by people who got derailed after hours playing along to Sabbath or Hendrix—and “Indulge” is like Germs or Fang trying their own version of something off, say, Judas Priest’s Rockarolla.

(The guitar parts are just what they should be: Norman’s a shredder who knows exactly how and when to shred.) Yes, there are moments when someone could/should make some cuts, but that also means there’s unstoppable inspiration at play, too. World’s Disease is the work of a ready-to-roll rocker with no shortage of ideas, and that plus no supervision makes a record proud to be itself.

Seth Bogart

self-titled Burger Records Maybe this is self-titled for a simple reason: it’s a new introduction to Seth Bogart, the musician and producer formerly known as Hunx, etc., and also a new introduction to Seth Bogart, the personality. First, as a producer and musician, the subliminal message

here is check out what Seth can do: he can crank out endless swoony love-at-first-note choruses, create not just atmosphere but entire planets with a few choice production tweaks, and if you pair him with Chela, he can make songs that you could almost sneak into the actual club if you mastered them more mercilessly. (See: “Supermarket Supermodel.”) And there’s Seth the singer, who works in two modes. There’s the pop star who doesn’t wanna do pop star stuff, but loves it when he does, as on the delightful “Club With Me,” which is a Hunx-y rocker redone as pixilated 80s disco: “Time to turn your radio on! / Time for you to finally take a chance! / I just wanna dance!” (LASER DRUM FILL!) (I wonder if Toni Basil was ever hit up to collaborate on this? Devo was her backing band for a minute, you know.)

And there’s the sentimentalist, who finds maybe even more joy in making a sad song: like unflinching heartbeaker “Barely 21,” which is an 80s-gone-60s girl group downer with very vibey teen-lament vocals from Tavi Gevinson. Match those together and you got a guy who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. The low-budget sound here is nothing but flattering, and the songs thrive within it. Call it Casiotone Cure, especially on “Plastic” or “Sunday Boy,” or just think of Cleaners From Venus with a pop-art makeover. It’s funny: when I first listened to this I was thinking of Dolly Parton, who—to paraphrase—said it takes a lotta talent to sound this cheap! But by the end, I figured it out. This isn’t cheap ... it’s deep.

TRACY BRYANT

Subterranean Burger Records Tracy Bryant’s solo album Subterranean is the sound of a serious writer and guitarist looking to add a few lines to an conversation that goes all the way back to the first person to plug in an unadorned Telecaster and wonder aloud about life. Indeed: the title track says, “Carry me, I carry you / anywhere I’m going to” and isn’t that lovely if that’s about life as a musician in the underground? Here, Bryant (also of Corners) sings a bit like Richard Hell, plays a bit like Robert Quine, draws a little from the same semi-mythical past that powered the Cramps and Gun Club and pulls it into the present like Rain Parade or Dream Syndicate did when they proved there was life yet in American rock guitar. As demonstated immediately on opener “Come Around,” this is a disciplined album, and it finds power both in discipline and in the instants where Bryant breaks ranks with some shock burst of noise. (Like spotting a rattlesnake in your backyard—it reminds you that the wild isn’t so far away.) Subterranean is as solid as they come for its first half—check the menacing “The Gun”—but something really kicks on “Start The Motor,” which is as obviously “pop” as it gets but which is so damn winning, and which leads into a suite that glides from Dolls-y rock (“I’m Never Gonna Be Your Man”) to Donovan-meetsthe-Cramps downer “Want” to the urgent Dovers-styler jangler “Tell You,” which is as

60s as it gets here. Some people use songs to write stories, other make self-portraits, but Subterranean is so sharp and clear its practically a photo … or maybe really a mirror?

TY SEGALL

Emotional Mugger Drag City Since no one has closely addressed it yet, what is an Emotional Mugger? I’ll say: yes, it is the internet or an internetted society, as some have guessed, but specifically the way the online world barfs up a kitty photo or a war atrocity or some hatebait article that forces your lizard brain to react on contact— LOL WTF OMG!?—and that sensation is you getting emotionally mugged, and/ or having your already depleted humanity sucked out of you by a machine that gets pennies per provocation. (I also think about that Richard Hell interview where they talk about how every time you laugh, an emotion dies … perhaps that was more Emotional Mail Tampering, though?) My evidence?

The line where Ty possibly sings “I will give you pleasure … thru EMAIL?!” (but I’m sadly/probably mishearing) as a riff drags itself across hot pavement, and the general sense of desperation/exhaustion/alienation that animates this awesome mindblown dystopian 80s cyborg-zombie of an album. Emotional Mugger is a deliberately ugly record for sure—the production is so claustrophobic as to be suffocating, practically a goopy second skin that wraps around you­—and every instrument is distorted to the point of torture; you can hear every internal component in the guitars pleading for mercy. What we end up with is basically Devo—Hardcore Devo, premajor label Devo making scary-funny songs on homemade instruments without respect for limits or taste—in collision with The Idiot. Those are compatible sounds: outsider, avant, sealed off from the outside world and submerged in their own vision, and that’s Emotional Mugger, too. It even starts with a door slamming—but are they locking Ty out or locking Ty in? Anyway, despite complaints from reviewers about how abrasive this is— hi, have you met Ty Segall?—he’s still got hits. The Equals cover (“Diversion”) deletes just about every line except the parts about being back from jail and ends up like a punishing Chrome outtake and “Candy Sam” or “Mandy Cream” are irresistible, especially “Sam”: “Pick me up / I am done / Candy’s gone / no more fun!” If there’s a connector to Manipulator, that’s it—if Manipulator was the moment when Ty found his alwaysmeant-to-be sound, then Mugger is Ty testing how far that sound bends before it snaps.

These are pop songs in diagram, so you can see all the moving parts and the manual annotation, and they’re still hooky and catchy, but the hooks are extra sharp and they hurt more when they catch you. Then comes closer “Magazine,” the final decay: “You don’t need a reason / it’s all in the magazine,” sings Ty. Very heavy—a magazine is part of a gun, isn’t it? See, everyone thought this album was about getting mugged—but by the end, you’ll find it’s about getting emotional.

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ALLISON ANDERS AND ALEX COX Illustration by Nathan Morse Directors Allison Anders and Alex Cox were graduate students in UCLA’s storied film program at about the same time, and they’d soon follow the same then-brand-new path—a daring zig-zag between punk rock ethos and critical chops—to make their own classics Repo Man (1984) and Border Radio (1987), both snapshots of philosophy and attitude in action as much as representations of specific moments in time and space. (Each has a killer local soundtrack, too.) So let’s not call this a class reunion, but L.A. RECORD (with welcome help from Cinefamily) was lucky enough to re-connect Anders and Cox for a conversation about coming up through UCLA in the 80s—and to swap stories about hustling grants to work with Wim Wenders and “accidentally” running into Harry Dean Stanton over and over. Repo Man and Border Radio screen together with Anders and Cox in person at Cinefamily on Fri., Mar. 18, as part of the “Underground USA: Indie Cinema of the 80s” series running until April 29, and Anders and Cox reminisce now about a rare occasion when the good old days really were that good. (UCLA’s Billy Woodberry and his Bless Their Little Hearts will join Cox and his Walker on Sat., March 19, as well.)

Allison Anders: I was just trying to remember the first time I ever saw you at UCLA. And I remembered!

Alex Cox: What was the event?

It was no event—that’s the cool thing. You were just walking through the hall and I was new that quarter in 1982, and I saw and I was like, ‘Oh my God—there’s a punk guy here!’ Everyone else was so terribly boring.

Everybody had long hair. Long hair was still everywhere.

Totally! Even in film school, I was stunned by the fact that people already had an idea of what a filmmaker was supposed to be—this angsty kind of thing, walking around with their palms pressed against their forehead.

Like actors were driving them crazy, or this was driving them crazy, and I thought …

‘These people, why are they even doing this if it makes them that unhappy?’

Yeah—but you know what’s also funny about the punk thing, I was talking to Abbe Wool who was also at UCLA, and she said ‘Why were we so angry?’ I don’t really know! You had to be really angry, didn’t you? It was obligatory!

The second time I saw you was at an event.

It was my very first Melnitz screening and Abbe’s film was playing and you were sitting there watching her take the shit you have to take from the audience. Someone had said to her—actually I think it was a friend of mine—he was really harassing her, saying, ‘From what I can tell from your movie, you don’t like people, you don’t like children!’

And she said, ‘No, that’s not true,’ with this little twisted smile. ‘I like everybody …’ and she looked at you and said, ‘Except him!’

Meaning not you but [she liked everybody but] the guy who had asked the question.

And you cracked up laughing. I watched this like ‘These people are why I’m here!’

What was also good about it though is that people would come from outside and screen their films and we could really give them a hard time. If someone came along with a conventional or with a Hollywood-type movie, you could really give them a terrible experience—and that was good.

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You really could! I can’t imagine they could get by with that now. The students are so sensitive. If you criticize anything they’re doing you could be fired.

Also I think they’re more respectful. I think that’s maybe an even worse thing—everyone is very respectful and doesn’t want to upset people.

I think that’s very true. In a weird way, I felt I could survive that Melnitz scrutiny then maybe I could have a shot at—if I ever got that far—getting torn to pieces by a reviewer. I felt that it was a great rite of passage—a really important lesson to have to take that from people and have to listen to John Boehm say something and have to defend the film.

That was [Abbe’s] Rita Steele: Private Heart.

That’s it! Which had, of course, your actress from Repo Man— Jennifer Balgobin, a marvelous woman in Repo Man! She was the star, and Abbe discovered her briefly in that film. It was just great! Why did we leave? Why aren’t we still graduate students at UCLA? I know! It was so fun. I was a single mom at the time, but there was room for me to be there. And my God, you’d be in those critical studies classes watching amazing films all day long.

That was the other good thing—that we were embedded in critical studies. That actually turned out very good. It forced you to acquire a very broad film knowledge. John Cassavetes films, you know? Which I would have never seen on television.

It forced you to think about creating—using the language of film to create meaning.

Some years later, after I was a filmmaker, someone said, ‘Such-and-such filmmaker says you don’t need to go to film school— you don’t need to learn all that stuff.’ Well, … I guess not, but I think it’s important to learn why one editing style over another creates a completely different feeling in the audience, and that you’re going to create totally different meaning if you cut something one way versus a different way.

And you’re only going to learn that in

critical studies. Yes, you can learn that on your own—but not necessarily.

You can intuit things, but a lot of things will pass you by because you won’t have a framework for it.

Exactly! And we had some of the most brilliant people in the world teaching us.

I thought Rosen was pretty great—I was always happy to go to one of Bob Rosen’s classes.

I’ll never forget on the first day of class he showed Hard Days Night and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. That was back then! That wasn’t now, when all this is accessible—and it was 35 mm prints. I was like, ‘I am just absolutely in heaven.’

When we did Repo Man, which was right after then—it was in 82 that we were having auditions for Repo Man on the soundstage.

And when we did the film, I did re-enroll at UCLA so we could take advantage of the facilities—use the lights and the editing bay.

That’s what we did with Border Radio as well. We kept someone enrolled so we could continue to use that equipment.

Even though that’s exactly what you were not supposed to do. You were not supposed to be like Ed Harker, and make a feature that went on and on for years, but everybody wanted to do that.

We had a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of thing.

‘We know you’re making a feature.’ Billy Woodberry, bless his heart, encouraged us to make a longer form and said, ‘I’ll help you but we gotta be careful.’ We were careful and we eventually finished the thing.

Billy was amazingly supportive of so many people’s films, through his tech office.

We put a poster from his film, Bless Their Little Hearts, in Border Radio, and I see that after our films are playing [at Cinefamily], Bless Their Little Hearts is playing.

That’s rather cool, isn’t it! That’s a good bill.

That’s a hell of a weekend—a UCLA weekend at the old Silent Movie Theater. So did you meet Peter McCarthy or Jonathan [Wacks, who produced Repo Man]? I know you met Abbe there—you and Abbe became close?

I met all those guys at UCLA. Peter and Jonathan—we must have been in production classes together. Jonathan was doing a documentary and Peter was doing a drama.

Then they graduated and started this film business to make corporates and commercials in Venice. I went by and would hang out with them cuz they were professionals! And guys from Suicidal Tendencies would hang out in their office cuz these guys were movie people!

So Peter and Jonathan, I follow in their footsteps. Abbe, we had classes together, and we’d go see shows together, and she was the video director of Repo Man, and on it went.

I remember seeing her at the Lab, I believe, at Yale, and she said to me, ‘You will meet people right now that you will work with for the rest of your life.’ And there are people that I’m still so close with that I met at that time at UCLA. It’s true. Especially producers, camera people, we knew when we were students. [Like producer] Lorenzo [O’Brien], and I’m still working with him. Right now he’s in Colombia making the second series of Narcos.

He’s so good! How did Repo Man come about? You were still at UCLA? I was at UCLA, and I think I was almost finished there but I hadn’t quite. Wacks and McCarthy were already out, and I had written the script for Repo Man. Wacks and McCarthy had started this company of theirs, Wacks-McCarthy Productions, and I took them the script, and they said ‘OK, we’ll try and produce it!’ We created a company called Edge City Productions. I think we tricked Bob Rosen into giving us like $1,000.

His investment in our enterprise! There still exists this kind of company, Edge City Productions—the remains of Repo Man. They found the guy who was the former pop star, the Monkee, Michael Nesmith, and he raised the money. Then I was supposed to produce one of their films but of course I never did, but they went on and were directors anyway.

Wacks went on and made a bunch of films, including Powwow Highway, a very good film.

Peter just made another feature about zombie romance, and he’s living in New Mexico.

FILM

I’m realizing all these connections now. We probably only vaguely knew when we were making Border Radio, but we followed very much in your footsteps.

It was the same kind of project, wasn’t it?

Yeah! Bob Rosen was involved in Border Radio also, and we shot a little something at Peter’s over there in Venice, and then Nesmith ended up distributing Border Radio on video.

He was very smart! Pacific Arts—that’s what his [video distribution] company was called.

He was really smart because in 1983, when we made the deal for Repo Man, the studio didn’t realize home video was going to mean anything, so he managed to negotiate that he would own the home video for like fifteen years or something. So he made a lot of money off of home video!

Super smart! I remember one of the teaching assistants saying in my very first class: ‘Now you have to take notes in the critical studies classes otherwise you won’t remember what you saw in great detail.’

And then he goes [sarcastic voice] ‘Now maybe sommmmmeeday we’ll all have home video playing machines!’ And we were all already watching porn at home.

We were fortunate—we had this expectation that our films would play in a theater. That they would play on a big screen.

I realized that I was part of the last generation of filmmakers to expect that my film would play in the theater—that I would cut on film, that I would shoot on film, and that people would experience it on film. I just heard something the other day about how ‘... and this means that smaller independent films will have a harder time being seen in movie theaters.’ And I was like … ‘Well, no duh. They’re barely in movie theaters now.’

But we believed we could do that. I was in a relationship for years with Terry Graham who was in Gun Club and the Bags, and he said ‘Yes, we didn’t have any expectation that we would be like Fleetwood Mac but we all thought we’d get a record deal. We all thought there was some way people were going to hear our stuff and buy it.’ It’s not like now where people have no such expectation. They think they’re going to make shit and no one is going to see it or hear it. It’s weird to me when I see that with my students: ‘Why would you even get up in the morning if you didn’t think someone was going to see it?’ Maybe you’re not going to be Spielberg or Fleetwood Mac, but at least you think someone’s going to see or hear what you’ve done.

The other weird thing as well ... because it’s changed, and because the screens that they’re going to look at our independent work on gets smaller—when you’re making a film now, how much do you think about ‘Someone’s going to be looking at this on their phone,’ and how much does that affect the level of detail that you include?

I saw something at Sundance that’s a web series. I was like, ‘OK, so I’m seeing it on the screen. Now. And this is the last time it will be seen like this.’ If that girl’s distributor said, ‘Screw you, I’m not going to pay for you to go to a film festival!’ she’d never get to see it on the screen. She’d only see it on a laptop or maybe on TV on Netflix.

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And people have gigantic televisions. But also you have to think that people are going to watch it on their telephones—so you have to make the stars big enough that they can see the stars in the sky.

Or you just say, ‘Well, it’s just small, so I’ll make it small.’

But there’s a danger—play everything close up, and everything becomes even more television-like.

At some point television got larger. When I was working in television, I’d go, ‘Why are they still so focused on over-the-shoulder shots when TVs are so big? We can have wide angles now!’

And also the aspect ratio changed. When the aspect ratio went to 16:9, it’s a natural twoshot and you don’t get stuck in the four-bythree over the shoulder, over the shoulder, over the shoulder. That’s good—I do like that aspect ratio.

Now you had a real fucking cast with Repo Man. I mean—we had a lovely cast on Border Radio. It was all punk rock musicians. But you had that plus you had Harry [Dean Stanton] and you had Emilio [Estevez]. How did your cast come together?

That was somebody else who was a student at UCLA—Vicki Thomas—and like everybody she wanted to be a director. But because we already had a director on Repo Man she had to do something else, and that was be the casting director. So she cast those guys. I’d been stalking Harry Dean for a long time. I’d tried to get him to be in my student film, and I would like—do you know Tom Musca? He’s at UCLA. He was working at this restaurant in the Hollywood Hills, and Harry Dean would come in to have his dinner. And Tom Musca would call me and I’d race up there on my motorbike and go, ‘Oh, Harry Dean! What a surprise! You’re dining here this evening? So am I!’ I’d try to get him to be in my student film. It never worked. But that was my entree to Harry Dean. And really, [Emilio’s part] should have been Dick Rude. There was a kid called Dick Rude in Repo Man who was really good, and that should have been Dick’s part. It was terrible that I cast Emilio but that made the studio happy at the time—made the financiers happy.

He was really coming up then. I also had the Harry Dean connection right around the same time cuz I went to study under Wim Wenders.

When they did Paris, Texas? Of course!

So there’s Harry and then there’s Robby [Müller] too. [The cinematographer on Repo Man and Paris, Texas.]

I think that’s how Wim Wenders found Harry Dean, because of Repo Man. I think they’d been talking about doing another film with Dennis Hopper, and Robby said, ‘There’s this other actor called Harry Dean Stanton that you have to check out.’

Because I was a single mom I would sign up for anything with dollar signs attached.

I ended up winning all these awards and that’s how I got onto Paris, Texas. I lied my ass off and said he had invited me to study and I won this grant to do it and then I told Wim, ‘Hey, I won this grant to come study under you.’ You could make shit like that happen for yourself there.

We were complicit with our professors. They wanted us to do things that were interesting and ambitious and didn’t cost too much money—and that was great!

When did you shoot—in ‘81?

The year just before they went off. We shot in the summer of 83, and they went off in the fall to shoot Paris, Texas.

I teach one quarter a year at UC Santa Barbara. I create my own classes, and one year the department said you should do something on American independents. So I thought, ‘ I won’t go back further than my own generation.’ And here’s where I think our generation began: Paris, Texas and Repo Man. Even though one is made by an Englishman and one is made by a German— —and both shot by a Dutch guy!

And both with Harry Dean! I feel like there’s a punk vibe to both of them, and the American landscape is part of it—there’s something so very American about both the movies.

I think that’s right. And the cast is really —they both have got good American casts.

Obviously with a couple of exceptions.

And these great character actors that were so amazing! The African American actor— Sy Richardson. The guy who played Harry Dean’s alter-ego in Repo Man. I met him at UCLA. He was in a film called The Grey Area about people in prison, directed by Monona Wali. I sat there and thought, ‘This is a really intense guy!’ He’s still around—still at it! Sy was wonderful because he was a professional but he’d also show up to be in student films.

And Olivia Barash had done just a few things at that point.

Yeah! She was into all kinds of stuff—she was going to be a rock ’n’ roller and all kinds of things.

I just did an interview myself and they were talking about … what was the thing that made it possible to tell these stories back then? I said, ‘DIY culture.’ Without punk rock I don’t know that I could have made a movie because the bloat of the music industry and the bloat of the movie industry completely kept everybody out.

There were only a few people that got to make records and a few people that got to make movies. And I said, ‘With the punk scene, I think we felt like maybe we just can go make a movie because they’re just making records.’

That was definitely an inspiration—or the inspiration—for all of that because it was possible! You weren’t dependent on a big record company or a big studio giving you permission. That’s what worries me about the idea that, ‘Oh, I’m going to get a job in the industry and work for the studio. And they’ll give me a film to direct.’ It doesn’t happen that way! It only happens if you really really want to do it so much yourself that you’re driven to do it and you drag all your friends along with you to make it happen.

I think some of the crowdfunding is great.

I came up with an idea like that on Border Radio. I made a list of people and said, ‘If all these people just gave us a little money ...’ but that was pre-internet. The internet gave you a delivery system for that.

And it does work! You raise small sums of money to make independent film. It’s great!

Then they can participate in the screenplay or the casting or the process of it being made.

It’s a virtuous … I wish that I had been able to give $25 to some film director and watch them make the film.

You get to see more shit you want in the world: ‘I want this book on the bookshelves.

I want to see this record get made.’

It’s working very well and let’s hope it continues to. Everything changes and there’s such a push towards ‘turn everything into the same corporate studio stodge machine.’

But then there’s always new possibilities and somehow the independent spirit survives.

It really does. I decided to go up to Sundance this year with my daughter. I was like ‘It’s alive and well. When I’m far from it, I’m like, ‘Nothing independent is really happening anymore.’ But no, it is.

But how does it get seen? That’s the thing. You saw it at the festival and that was the idea.

That’s the harsh reality. At least when I did Gas, Food, Lodging I could build word of mouth and there wasn’t an onslaught of stuff at the time. But now the chances of us seeing it on the screen are nil.

Unless you’re very fortunate. Unless you’re in a situation where there’s a repertory theatre.

Cinefamily is like that. They have a film and for a week or two it will get its run, and then they’ll continue their other programming— which is kind of incredible.

Yes—and we have to support it! People have to see the films when they’re playing.

What inspires you now? Were you as inspired each time you made a movie?

Usually! As long as I don’t expect a big budget and I can trick film students into working on them, I can do all these projects that I really wanted to make but wasn’t able to before. So that’s what I’m trying to do now. And in the independent way—no studio is going to give me a penny, but somehow the independent way—the DIY way—is going to be OK. Do you still feel that way? Everything I’ve done is very cheap. It’s no great shakes but I’m having a good time.

Right! But that’s it—we’re storytellers. I was talking to my granddaughter, and she says ‘I like how you tell this story.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s my job.’ ‘It’s your job?’ ‘Yeah, it’s my job. I tell stories for a living. I’m very lucky, I get to make shit up!’ It doesn’t matter how much money you have to tell that story.

I think that’s right. It doesn’t matter. You do it anyway and you get it done. And there it is, and somehow it’s out there—on videocassette or a 35mm reel, but it’s out there and then who knows! And we’re very fortunate that we got to go to UCLA and that it was such a font of independent spirit and the DIY ethos. No one wanted to leave!

BORDER RADIO AND REPO MAN ON FRI., MAR. 18, AS PART OF UNDERGROUND USA: INDIE CINEMA OF THE 80S AT CINEFAMILY AT THE SILENT MOVIE THEATRE, 643 N. FAIRFAX AVE., LOS ANGELES. BORDER RADIO AT 7:30 PM / REPO MAN AT 10:30 PM / $14 / ALL AGES. CINEFAMILY.ORG. VISIT ALEX COX AT ALEXCOXFILMS.COM. FILM

BRIAN BROOKS LILA ASH | INSTAGRAM: SECRET_HOTGIRL

COMICS

JOHN TOTTENHAM

O’HARA HALE

Curated by Tom Child

DAVE VAN PATTEN COMICS

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LAFMS: HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? A SHORT FILM PORTRAIT OF THE LOS ANGELES FREE MUSIC SOCIETY Interview by D.M. Collins Illustration by Elza Burkart For the last forty years in Los Angeles, a collective of musicians, experimenters, tinkerers, and Captain Beefheart-obsessed stoners have been inventing and reinventing sounds in ways you never thought possible, right under your nose. They make sounds that hearken back to krautrock and the disciples of John Cage, and yet each new gathering is a brand new start. But surprisingly, for a band so connected to some of the 20 century’s best-loved visual artists, not much has been documented on film about the Los Angeles Free Music Society since they formed in 1974. Luckily, filmmakers Holly Thompson (also a member of the band PRESENT) and Mark McNeill (co-founder of dublab) know a thing or two about promoting older forms of music in order to reinvent the new, and their new short documentary LAFMS: How Low Can You Go? is not only a loving introduction to LAFMS, it’s also a brilliant film with moments of poetry as rich and strange and warm as the aging anarchic soundscapers who populate it. th

How did you decide that this would be your first widely-seen foray into film?

Holly Thompson: We were in a documentary class together and had a need to make a project. And our interests collided because I play experimental music and I knew some of those guys, and so did Mark.

Mark McNeill: These guys and gals have been a huge part of the fabric of L.A.’s noise scene, underground music scene … really proto-noise and super DIY. And they were putting out records! In a short film like this, we couldn’t be darlings and include everything we’re interested in, but something the film had to include was the idea that nobody else was making their own records. It was a revolutionary thing in the early 70s.

And they were doing revolutionary things, like taking flexi-disks and crumpling them up, re-flattening them, and recording what they sounded like played on a turntable.

How did they release these albums?

MM: They were doing it on their own label.

They would do the artwork, record the music, and then deliver that to be pressed. One funny story we didn’t get to include is their mastering engineer called them and said, ‘Hey, I think you sent me the wrong recordings. This sounds like garbled noise.’ And they said, ‘No, that’s the record.’ It was 1974, and the stuff on the radio was big overblown pop music, or whatever drivel is always on the radio.

The music these guys were geeking out over was Captain Beefheart, the Residents, Frank Zappa, Sun Ra … they were bonding over weirdo music in the back room of Poobah [Records]. They’d have ‘brick breaking’ sessions where they’d break up a brick of cheap weed after hours and listen to the new the brand new Beefheart or whatever was happening.

But making their own records was a big leap.

They realized, ‘Hey, we can go straight to the pressing plant and have this music pressed.’ In small quantities, like 100 copies. They would give records out to friends, and sometimes the friends would give the records back: ‘Thank you so much! But this is not really for me.’

Holly, besides being a film-maker, you also play in a band PRESENT that makes music, and noise kind of in the same spirit as LAFMS. Do you find in modern times the same resistance from friends and family when you share your sounds with them?

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HT: When I was interviewing them, I could totally relate—those were all my experiences of friends having to admit that they don’t like your music. My brother and sister would say, ‘It sounds like pots and pans!’ I just felt really bonded to them.

Like Breaking Away makes me want to ride bikes or Rocky Horror Picture Show makes me want to have bisexual glam orgies, this documentary makes me want to join the collective! Did you guys get tempted to ... you know, join the cult?

HT: Yeah! Though it’s so loose of an organization that it’s barely an organization …

MM: They call it a ‘disorganization.’

HT: … so that is kind of the goal of it, an introduction to that world where everything is an instrument, exploring the new possibilities—that YOU CAN MAKE THIS MUSIC, TOO. That’s one of their mottoes, you know? Their mantras!

Normally in L.A. where you hear this kind of music played—whether it’s an academyapproved theater like REDCAT or the Hyperion Tavern or Pehrspace, or just listening to a recording over headphones late at night—it’s very dark. That can be a good thing, because it lets you lose yourself in the actual sound rather than what they’re using to make those sounds. But in this film, LAFMS actually thrives in the light. In one part, Mitchell Brown turns on a portable radio and puts it into a cylinder, which already sounds interesting, but then he takes a Jimi Hendrix record cover and kind of ‘warbles’ it over the top of the cylinder to make these interesting sounds. And you can’t escape the idea that it is important that this is a Jimi Hendrix album, even though you’d get the same effect with any album cover.

MM: John Cage is hugely important to their sound, and that’s kind of a Cage-ian aspect— this Dada weirdo effect. But a lot of it’s about being a very ego-free music, in a way, because it’s not really about them or virtuoso playing.

It’s about friendship, having fun, and seeing what the moment reveals—being creative with whatever is at hand. That alone is pretty inspiring—to realize that you might just need some friends and some metal pipes, and you’re making music!

There were so many moments of beauty in

this documentary, like the fragile chiming sounds of dropping sections of metal pipe onto the ground. But for fans of more ‘normal’ noise bands and composers, what are the most abrasive things you saw?

MM: In that same place where they were dropping those pipes—and later in the film, three people are playing on the same drum set—we got all these people together in one room at Potts Plumbing. Joe Potts and Rick Potts from LAFMS are obviously brothers, and it was their family’s business, and we got everybody we could in that space to jam and it was total cacophony! And there are so many moments where all of this gels together, and it just goes ‘GOOMPH!’ and it all locks into place. You have these magic moments of sonic epiphany … They’re chasing the dragon.

HT: What stood out to me especially, being the camerawoman, is that the moments we got were all impromptu.

MM: Rick [Potts] says it really well: ‘It’s like what I imagine a surfer must feel catching a wave. Once you do it, you want to get back out there and do it again.’

One of their musicians in the Society is Tom Recchion, and your film talks at length about the many instruments he’s created from found objects—pieces of wood or hubcaps which produce interesting, resonant tones.

MM: He was constantly creating instruments and inventing new things—things like ‘the nail shoe.’ The world of invented instruments is usually more highbrow: you might think of Harry Partch. But theirs was almost like ‘trash’ instruments, more like Dada construction. It’s goofy, it’s trashy, it’s funny! But it really does the job. He was really into the idea of instruments that disintegrate while playing, you know? It’s this weird, shambled set. And they also take this seriously! They have a sense of humor, and it’s intentionally funny, but it’s for the purpose of being expressive. They’re teetering on the brink of being an inside joke, but it’s also really heartfelt at the same time.

How those opposites come together makes me think of something David Bowie said about Brian Eno: ‘Brian will take things from low-art and elevate them to high-art status; I tend to do exactly the opposite, which is to thieve from high art and demean it down to street level.’ On the one hand,

LAFMS has classically-trained, maybe jazztrained members who are casting aside all the formalities, and on the other side are untrained musicians who use that lack of precision like it’s their own ‘found art.’

Would you say that’s correct?

HT: Yes, I would! Vetza [Trussell] is classically trained. Other members, specifically Ace [Farren Ford], purposefully decided not to learn how to play in a more formal way.

MM: He came at it from a punk rock sensibility.

HT: A lot of their intentions were to do new things with instruments and music that they weren’t hearing. Vetza, in the beginning scene [of the film], plays cello in way you normally wouldn’t hear.

MM: She was a trained performer. She was also an actress. In their world, a lot of people come from an art background. You know, Mike Kelley was part of that crew in the periphery. Paul McCarthy was kind of an OG when they were just starting. I saw him play with them just last year at Paramount Ranch! And Fredrik Nilsen is a well-known art photographer. Tom Recchion was one of the lead designers at Capitol Records—he did the Smile! release that finally came out…

All these people, they’re all coming from different artistic worlds, but they’re from a Southern California era that’s extinct now.

They all liked Big Daddy Ed Roth. They grew up Beach Boys fans, but then they weren’t finding what they wanted in the pop world.

They were outsider weirdos who bonding over different music. And it wasn’t like there was the internet. You had record stores, like Poobah Records, and these little hubs, and shows. Anyone outside of that sphere might hear it like, ‘What the hell am I listening to?’ The fact that it’s still packing a punch forty years later says a lot. When hip-hop came out, it might have been revolutionary, but now you can play hip-hop at a shopping mall and nobody bats an eyelash. If you play LAFMS at a shopping mall, people will lose their shit. Forty years down the road, it’s still visceral impactful music, but to think of it at the time it came up in the early 70s—it must have been totally bananas!

WATCH LAFMS: HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? AT LAFMSFILM.COM. 69

L.A. RECORD SXSW CHEAT SHEET SXSW can be (and should be and also will be) complete and total confusion, so in the spirit of helpfully de-confusing you, L.A. RECORD has compiled this cheat sheet for (mostly) unofficial shows, parties, showcases for this year! Listings subject to change without notice! Dublab will also be broadcasting live from Exploded Records (at 4500 Duval in Austin) from 10 AM to 6 PM from Mar. 15 to Mar. 20–visit or tune in at dublab.com!

MONDAY MARCH 14

BuzzBands.LA’s Dear Austin, Love L.A. AT THE MAIN STRANGE BREW 5 AT HOTEL II with Paul Bergmann, Feels, VEGAS Gooch Palms, Tacocat, James Supercave, Miya Folick Daddy Issues 2pm | Free with and more 12 pm | Free RSVP | Contact Venue for More Info BURGER RECORDS’ SXSW TAKEOVER AT HOLE IN THE THE ONION AND A.V. CLUB AT WALL The Zoltars, Los Pesos, BARRACUDA Open Mike Ea- Sarah Bethe Nelson, Boy Toy 8 gle, Thao & the Get Down Stay pm | Free | All Ages Down, Bleached 4 pm | Free with RSVP | 21+ HOTEL BOOGIE & PANACHE PRESENT BOAT SHOW BOOFUNNY OR DIE JUNCTION AT GIE AT CAPITAL CRUISES Night THE SCOOT INN Ghostface Kil- Beats, Kevin Morby, La Luz, Milah, Raekwon, Tracy Morgan 2 chael Rault | First Boat Leaves pm | Free | Contact Venue for boards at 12:30 pm | $20 with More Info Open Bar | 21+

TUESDAY MARCH 15 SPRING BREAK DAY 1 AT HOTEL VEGAS Pearl Charles, Feels, Sugar Candy Mountain, Death Hymn Number 9, JJUUJJUU, Night Beats, Thee Oh Sees, The Spits 12 pm Free With RSVP | Contact Venue for More Info BLUNDERTOWN, SAILOR JERRY, AND VANDALAY INDUSTRIES PRESENT AT BARRACUDA The Spits, Powertrip, Flesh Lights, Blaque Chris, Tony Accosta 1 pm | Free with RSVP | 21 +

LAGUNITAS COUCH TRIPPIN 2016 PARTY AT THE SCOOT IN The Black Angels, Badbadnotgood, Dan Deacon 12 pm | Free with RSVP | Contact Venue for More Info

THURSDAY MARCH 17 JOYFUL NOISE RECORDINGS AT OBSOLETE INDUSTRIES The Blank Tapes, Globelamp, Sugar Candy Mountain, Pearl Charles, Yonatan Gat 12:30 pm | Free | All Ages

PITCHFORK DAY PARTY AT BARRACUDA Vince Staples, D.R.A.M., White Lung, Dilly Dally 12:00 pm | Free | Contact Venue for More Info

SOUTH BY SAN JOSE AT HOTEL SAN JOSE Peaches, Shannon & the Clams, Dylan LeBlanc, Haelos 12 pm | Free with RSVP | Contact Venue with More Information

SOUTH X SAN JOSE AT HOTEL SAN JOSE Bombino, Eleanor Friedberger, Chicano Batman, BARRIO BASH VOL VII AT THE Lydia Loveless 12 pm | Free | SAHARA LOUNGE Buyepongo, Contact Venue for More Info La Frenetika, Vanessa Zamora, Los Se Esta Noche, Rudy De KUTX LIVE AT THE FOUR SEA- Anda 12 pm | Free | 21+ SONS White Denim, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, Twin SPIN AT STUBB’S Chvrches, Peaks, Rattletree 3 pm | $10 Vince Staples, Deftones, Dawn, includes breakfast taco and Bleached, White Lung, Beach granola bar | Contact Venue for Slang 11 am | Free with RSVP More Info | Contact Venue for More Information STUBHUB HOUSE AT BANGERS The Kills, Bloc Party, Lower BURGER RECORDS TAKEOVER Dens, Tanlines, Deap Vally 2 PEARL ST POOL PARTY AT THE pm | Free With RSVP | Contact PEARL STREET CO-OP Hinds, Venue for More Info the Shivas, Pearl Charles, Feels, Tijuana Panthers 9 pm | THE ALL SCENE EYE BALL AT Free | 18 + CAROUSEL LOUNGE Growwler, Rudy De Anda, Tennis System, THE ELECTRIC CHURCH Nightmare Air 5 pm | Free | PRESENTS: RITUAL TO THE 21+ SUN KING PART II AT SAHARA LOUNGE The Blank Tapes, Death Hymn Number 9, Golden Dawn Arkestra, Shilpa Ray, the Sun Machine, Yonatan Gat 5pm | Free | Contact Venue for More Info FRIDAY MARCH 18

PANACHE BOOKING SHOWCASE AT HOTEL VEGAS La Luz, The Mystery Lights, Ezra Furman, Thee Oh Sees, Michael Rault, Yonatan Gat, Cellars 2 SATURDAY MARCH 19 SXSW DAY PARTY AT WATER- pm pm | Free | Contact Venue LOO RECORDS Casey Veggies, for More Info BURGERMANIA V AT HOTEL White Reaper, Beach Slang 12 VEGAS Emitt Rhodes, The Garpm | Free | All Ages PITCHFORK DAY PARTY AT den, Thee Oh Sees, La Luz, BARRACUDA Neon Indians, Hinds, Pookie and the Poodlez, BURGER RECORDS’ SXSW DAWN, Chairlift, Anderson Tijuana Panthers, the Parrots, WEDNESDAY MARCH 16 TAKEOVER WEINERMANIA .Paak and the Free Nationals, The Shivas, Mean Jeans, MeltII AT SPIDERHOUSE Tijuana Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee ed, Froth, No Parents and many SPRING BREAK BOOGIE 5 AT Panthers, Death Valley Girls, noon | Free | Contact Venue for more 2 pm | Free | Contact VenHOTEL VEGAS Nobunny, Tele Joel Jerome, Kim and the Cre- More Info ue for More Info Novella, La Luz, Guantanamo ated, The Grinning Ghosts, Baywatch, Pookie and the Adult Books, The Blank Tapes, ONWARD SPACE AGE LOLIPOP THE BIG ONE AT BARRACUDA Poodlez 1 pm | Free Before 7 Traumahelikopter, Night Beats AT SPIDERHOUSE Go!Zilla, Yacht, Haelos, Diarrhea Planet, pm | Contact Venue for More 2 pm | Free | All Ages Pearl Charles, Rudy De Anda, Drowners 11:30 am | Free with Info JJUUJJUU, Death Hymn Num- RSVP | Contact Venue for More DOSTUFF DOWN THERE AT ber 9, Sugar Candy Mountain, Info EMPIRE CONTROL ROOM The Tracy Bryant, Summer Twins, Spits, Shannon and the Clams, Deap Vally 11 am | Free with Flatbush Zombies, Big Ups 11 RSVP | Contact Venue For More am | Free | 21 + Information

200 W. 2ND STREET POMONA, CA 91766 WWW.THEGLASSHOUSE.US (909) 865-3802

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