EYES & EARS by Thom Clabots

TOM CLABOTS

CONTENT PREFACE EYES & EARS DESIGNS

TABLE

PREFACE THE VISUAL AUDITIVE

I think I’ve always been fascinated by photography. It all came about when my dad stupidly bought a digital reflex camera he never used. So I took it off his hands and realised I wasn’t half bad at it. Even though I couldn’t tell the difference between the meaning of iso or shutterspeed I was instantly hooked. Thinking photography was my ultimate way to go as a profession. But in the end I chose graphic design as a carreer choice. Why did I do that? Maybe it goes back to the time when I was obsessed with drawing, just doodling my way through the day. I remember when I was 13, I would cut pieces out of old magazines and ‘design’ my own hand made magazine, all that with a pritt stick and a pare of siccors. Funny to see how, 11 years later I’m doing this. But life goes on, opinions change, your choices mend and you start to see the bigger picture of what your supposed to do in life... or so you think. I’ve always loved taking pictures, I actually got better at it throughout the years as well. For me it’s still the only format in which I can create what I see or imagine. I’ve always tried introducing photography as much as I could in my designs. And if there’s one man out there who knew how to bridge the barrier between photography and design, between real and unreal, what is and what should be. It’s Storm Thorgerson. At first hand this name may not ring a bell that quickly, especially if you’re not into graphic design, but even so you definitly saw a few of his works here or there. Storm Thorgerson was a photographer who ran a graphic design studio called Storm Studios. He was the creator of some of the worlds most iconic album covers. if you’re wondering wich ones, here’s a few for starters: Pink floyds ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, Biffy Clyro’s ‘Only Revolutions’, Muse’s ‘Absolution’, .... The list goes on and on. And even though he passed away in April 2013, his legacy lives on through his design studio. Storm studios is still open, creating the ‘really but not’ images storm was so famous for. Everyone who knew him, wanted a design from him. He worked for some of the worlds biggest and brightest bands. Without a doubt is Storm Thorgerson my all time favourite designer and source of inspiration. And it is through this perception that I started this project. This insanely fun project that gave me the most freedom in the world.

Left page : Biffy Clyro : Only Revolutions / Righthand page : Top image: Bruce Dickinson Skunkworks / 2nd row left: The Mars Volta : Jelly Head / 2nd row middle: Muse Absolution / 2nd row righ: Pink Floyd : Wish you were here / 3rd row left : Healing Sixes Enormosound / 3rd row middle : Biffy Clyro : Puzzle / 3rd row right : Pink Floyd: Atom Heart Mother / 4th row middle : Alan Parsons : Try anyting once / The Cranberries Bury The Hatchet - All designed by Storm Thorgerson

Riff Raff : Vinyl Futures / Artwork by Storm Thorgerson

Thorgerson, who was of Norwegian descent, was born in Potters Bar, Middlesex (now part of Hertfordshire), and he attended Summerhill School, Brunswick Primary School in Cambridge, and the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys with Pink Floyd founders Syd Barrett, who was in the year below him, and Roger Waters, who was in the year above him. Storm and Roger played rugby together at school, while Storm’s mother Vanji and Roger’s mother Mary were close friends. He studied English and Philosophy at the University of Leicester, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours, before studying Film and Television at the Royal College of Art, where he graduated with a Master of Arts degree. He was a teenage friend of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and best man at Gilmour’s wedding to Polly Samson in 1994. In 1968 along with Aubrey Powell he founded the graphic art group Hipgnosis, and between them they designed many famous single and album covers, with Peter Christopherson joining them for their later commissions. In 1983, following the dissolution

STORM THORGERSON REAL, BUT NOT of Hipgnosis, Thorgerson and Powell formed Greenback Films, producing music videos. In the early nineties Thorgerson inaugurated StormStudios along with Peter Curzon – a loose group of freelancers. The line up included Rupert Truman (photographer), Finlay Cowan (designer and illustrator), Daniel Abbott (designer and artist), Lee Baker (creative retoucher and designer) and Jerry Sweet ( designer) along with Thorgerson’s personal assistants, Laura Truman (prints) and Charlotte Barnes, and then later Silvia Ruga (designer). Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon cover. Perhaps Thorgerson’s most famous designs are those for Pink Floyd. His design for The Dark Side of the Moon has been called one of the greatest album covers of all time. Designed by Thorgerson and Hipgnosis, the artwork for the cover itself was drawn

by George Hardie, a designer at NTA Studios. Many of Storm Thorgerson’s designs are notable for their surreal elements. He often places objects out of their traditional contexts, especially with vast spaces around them, to give them an awkward appearance while highlighting their beauty. To quote Thorgerson, “I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality ... to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not?” Muse - Absolution cover. Over the years, Thorgerson and his team designed and released several books about their work. The Gathering Storm - A Quartet in Several Parts was the final book Storm worked on with his team and it was completed just before his death in April 2013. The book was released in September 2013 and includes album covers artwork, photographs, and anecdotes, spanning five decades from Storm’s early work with Hipgnosis through to StormStudios. In accordance with Storm’s wishes, the studio will continue to work.[citation needed] vIn 2013, Prog Magazine renamed its Grand Design Award after Thorgerson. It is now known as the Storm Thorgerson Grand Design Award and will be given to the designer of the year’s best-packaged product. Thorgerson had won the 2012 award for his continued work with Pink Floyd

EYES & EA THE VALUE OF DESIGNING

ARS FOR MUSIC

The hardest part is getting the project of the ground. you always have a a certain Idea on what you would like to do. but knowing that you’ll have to dedicate 6 months straight on a project is kind of scary. First, there’s always fear, am I gonna be able to fill up 6 months of work with this project? And even if I do get 6 months filled up, will I be able to finish it in time? The deadline is a designers best friend and whorst enemy at the same time. But that’s the part of life we all have to deal with. But eventually, when the panic starts to go away and you figure out where you’re headed towards you get the sense that this project could just be the next best thing you’re working on. I knew from the start I wanted to do something that was based on music and graphic design. making album covers may seem like an obvious choice at first, but really... it isn’t.

Digital drawing based on a photograph by William Selden. Digital drwing by : artformusic.wordpress.com Image on the right : The Haรงienda by Peter Saville

Peter Saville didn’t keep the audience waiting long last night, writes Sara Martin, only fifteen minutes, but the crowd wanting to see him at the D&AD talk struggled to fit into the large auditorium; a screen was set up outside for people who couldn’t find a seat. Adrian Shaughnessy had the tricky task of interviewing Saville. Growing up in Manchester in the 1960s, Saville went to art school to do what he enjoyed most. He was into punk and punk graphics, but yet also inspired by Jan Tschichold and other Modernist typographers, who influenced his first poster for The Factory, a music night in his local town. When the Factory became Factory Records, he became the art director, de-

THE PETER SAVILLE PRINCIPLE signing their record covers. His cover for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, was ‘a cover I just wanted for myself’ and when he asked if he could leave off the name of the band and the title they agreed. Shaughnessy pressed him to talk about the sleeves. Saville confessed that most of the time he didn’t know what he was doing in the early days. He explained how he and his friend Malcolm Garrett, carved a place for themselves on the London graphic design scene – coming from the North, they felt they had more to prove. Moving on to his brief period at Pentagram (see Reputations Eye no. 17 vol. 5), he maintained that what he learned in this time has been useful to him every day since then: there is

so much more than ‘just designing’. Controversially, for an audience full of designers working in the music industry he said: ‘No one should be designing record covers after the age of 30’, and ‘Music covers are not graphic design, they do not communicate anything, they have no purpose in that respect.’ Saville amused us with his directness – he was refreshingly opinionated. Recent work includes ‘branding’ Manchester as an ‘Original Modern city’, and the logo for Kate Moss’s Topshop collection – an offer he couldn’t turn down when it came from Moss personally.

THE TROUBLE WITH GRAPHIC DESIGN TODAY IS: WEN CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? IT’S NOT THE MESSAGE OF THE DESIGNER ANYMORE. EVERY APPLIED ARTISTS ENDS UP SELLING HIS OR HER SOUL AT SOME POINT. I HAVEN’T DONE IT AND LOOK AT ME. PEOPLE CALL ME ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS DESIGNERS IN THE WORLD AND I HAVEN’T GOT ANY MONEY.

Left page : Top Left : Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures / Top Right : The Haçienda Middle left : New Order : Blue Monday / Middle Right : Joy Division : Closer Bottom left : Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Architecture and Morality Bottom Right : kvadrat showroom Right page : Top right : Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Middle left : New Order : Power, Corruption and lies Bottom Right : Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark : English Electric

BUILDING PROJECT D

“HOW CAN I, AS A DESIGNE APPEALING ARTWORK FOR THAT HAVE A COMMUNICAT IT’S RESPECTIVE TARGET A

UP THE DETAILS

ER, CREATE VISUALLY R MUSIC ALBUMS ATIVE VALUE TOWARDS AUDIENCE?”

07 ALBUMS 07 ARTISTS 07 DESIGNS But there can only be 01 form of intent CREATING A SERIES OF ALBUM COVERS THAT NOT ONLY REPRESENTS THE MUSIC IT WAS MADE FOR, BUT MOST OF ALL BRIDGES THE GAP BETWEEN THE VISUAL AND AUDITIVE WORLD.

MAC DE MARCO LIVE ALBUM

THE KNIFE SILENT SHOUT

LOWER DENS TWIN-HANDED MOVEMENT

BONOBO THE NORTH BORDERS

SANGO NORTH

THE DRUMS PORTAMENTO

BEACH HOUSE TEEN DREAM

05 golden rules to a solid design PHOTOGRAPHY

TYPOGRAPHY AS THE KEY SIGNATURE

ARTWORK IS COHERENT PART OF THE MUSIC

CHOOSE THE RIGHT FORMAT

ALBUMS CHOSEN BY DESIGNER

DESIGNS

Image credit : InterviewMagazine

BEACH HOUSE TEEN DREAM Known until recently for a hazy, reverb-laden take on indie rock, Baltimore duo Beach House have widened their sonic palette considerably with Teen Dream, their excellent new record and first for Sub Pop. For bandmates Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, the album represents the artistic growth that came with playing hundreds of shows and a desire to break out of the woozy style they cooked up almost four years back when they recorded their first LP, Beach House, on four-track in Scally’s basement. We caught up with Beach House during a very busy week for them that included their first-ever latenight TV performance, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and the release of Teen Dream. Just a few hours before they would play a cracking live set to celebrate the album’s release (a “birthday party,” Legrand called it) at Brooklyn’s Bell House, Scally and Legrand chatted with us backstage at the venue and the pair seemed equally thrilled and overwhelmed at how far they’d come over the past few years. Among other things, they talked to us about creating Teen Dream, the move to Sub Pop, and what it means to find themselves now playing to a much bigger audience.

Pitchfork: Teen Dream marks a shift in sound for you guys. Did you intend for that going in or was it something that just came about organically while recording? Alex Scally: Looking back on it, it wasn’t really something we were conscious of happening. But I think touring all of 2008 on a record [Devotion] that was very much stillsounding and difficult to convey to an audience, it really drove us toward something different, almost wanting to take those songs as we play them live and making them surge and pulse more. Every night, turning up the volume, every show getting louder and louder. When we started to write these new songs, there was always this feeling that needed to be there in order for us to be excited about it. Victoria Legrand: We were almost feeling tied down by certain things. Pitchfork: You’ve talked in the past about working within a set of selfimposed limitations. Did you feel the need to break out of that this time around? AS: It’s a lot of the same limitations. We try to write just with two instruments mostly and keep it really simple. And, actually, most of the same instruments for Devotion were used on this record. I think we just recorded and utilized them in a kind of drastically different manner. VL: We were thinking about stripping things away and pushing them further. There was a kind of constant

feeling of not settling for things that we may have done in the past. We pushed ourselves harder. AS: And also, in performing live and recording, I personally feel, and I think Victoria feels the same way, that we started to grow really tired of the kind of sloppy or fast sound of lo-fi that we were so into in the beginning. Just that really fast thing where you try to catch a sound really quickly and try to capture this energy to it. It’s really amazing and so many people do it so well and it can be such an interesting thing. But for me, it just started to get really boring. I really felt like, “If we record this sound, this tone, you know, it might sound awesome if we did it on a four-track cassette right now, it would sound really cool. But if we recorded it with this really nice mic and maybe stereopanned it, what would it do?” Just trying to go for sophistication. Which sounds a little elitist, but that’s really what a lot of it was. Probably our demos for this record were as good or better sounding than Devotion. Before we even really went to record. VS: For example, vocally, with reverb it was never about hiding for me. But when you look back, as you grow, you start to see that reverb is this mask. It’s a style. It’s like a lace curtain or something. But it works. It worked

Beach House Polaroid

on the first record and it worked on Devotion, and it’s still there on Teen Dream to some degree. AS: There’s actually very little reverb on the record. But the feeling that reverb gives you is all over the record. Which is expansion of sound. You know, reverb does that thing where you make one sound and it grows to 20 times its original size and fills everything up. Whereas with this record, I think we were trying to get that same sensation with arrangement and actual sounds. And loud. Volume. We try to play really loud now. You get the same feeling as reverb, you get the same explosion, but from a different place. VL: I’d like to imagine people would to listen to the album really loud. Or on headphones so it’s like, there’s no space left anywhere in your ears. Pitchfork: Did the shift in style or sound have anything to do with a reaction to the prevalence of lo-fi? AS: I don’t think it was a reaction to how many lo-fi bands there are now, it was more of a reaction to our own past, just being bored of something. Because so much of the stuff happening is awesome. I’m not like, “this stuff sucks!” I really like a lot of it. VL: It’s a reaction to ourselves, and who knows what will happen in the future? There may very well be another reaction to something. Pitchfork: I tend to think of Teen Dream as an immersive listen, in that it really works front-to-back as a whole album. In the MP3 era, how important to you guys is the album experience?

VL: We’re very song-oriented; we believe in songs. It’s very important to us that every song is treated with great care. So in that sense, the album, beginning to end, is very important to us. Not that it’s a concept record that must be listened to in its order or anything, but that at any point you would pick up the record and feel that you’re in this universe. We would never be happy with ourselves where only one song stood out, that’s not even part of our hemisphere. AS: Something that Victoria started on the first record that we’ve really gotten into is calling songs “families”. Like, we’ll be writing, and we’ve done this on Devotion and this one, we’ll come up with a song and say, “You know, this really isn’t part of this family.” And what I think it means for us is that it just doesn’t fit with where we are. So I think albums very much matter for us, because all three times they’ve been a statement of a very short amount of time, a threeto-six month period, where these

songs were the most exciting things for us to work on. For instance, with this record, there were a few songs that we started to write and they just weren’t right. It’s not that we didn’t like them, we just thought, “No, let’s just not even entertain them because they’re not part of this family”. VL: And it’s not an overly intellectualized thing. It’s literally a gut feeling. Like when you walk into a room and you just sense that something’s out of place. AS: Yeah, and I’m actually really obsessed with song sequence. I think that’s very important and spend a lot of time thinking about what will be the opening song, what will be the closing song. You know, how the energy goes from one song to another. It’s a really big part of our recording process each time. We were even writing fantasy song orders as far as two months before recording. I’m basically really obsessed with it, actually.

Pitchfork: I think it has a very natural rhythm to it. The thing that stands out to me is that there are plenty of tracks, like “Silver Soul” for instance, that are single-worthy, but they also work within the context of the record. AS: I think we wanted every single song to be a single on this record. That was kind of the idea. Pitchfork: So how did the move to Sub Pop come about and how has it been working with them so far? VL: We’ve sort of been in loose contact with them and Susan Busch since the beginning. When the demo was being passed around through friends she received it. So there was an acknowledgement of what we were doing. But as artists we were not going to wait for anyone and just wanted to start working and touring. But then three and a half years go by, and now that we’re on our third record, they approached again and it just really felt like the most natural fit. It felt like this could be the right time to widen our artistic channel. AS: We’ve been DIY since the

beginning and only in the last few months did we get, like, a managertype person. We’ve done everything ourselves. We did our first recording in my basement in like three days, we loved it and some friends in Baltimore, bands you may know like Celebration and Jason Urick just gave it to people they knew in the music industry. And there was some interest from above, but I think all those people thought they were, like, demos. We were, like, “What? This is our music!” We were so unsophisticated and young with what we wanted out of music. We just wanted to start playing and touring. So we just put out our record on the first label that would put it out and who seemed like a cool guy and it was Todd at Carpark, who rules. So we just started touring and it was really great because rather than, like, getting a lawyer and trying to refine those songs and try to make them something they weren’t, we just started. And now we’ve played over three hundred shows. The playing

and constant touring and working has been the best thing for us. So going to Sub Pop was, like, we want to get more out of this record. We wanted to make be able to make this DVD. We wanted to get all of these things that were expanded parts of our vision accomplished and it seemed like that was the best way to do it. Because they were like, “Look, we believe in you guys, we have believed in you guys”. VL: Moving to a bigger label isn’t about making things easier. It’s about going to someplace new so that you can continue to challenge yourself. Because I think we sort of outgrew a certain place that we were in. AS: We don’t have any more money than we had when we started Devotion. VL: We have less. I have a lot less... AS: Every bit of money we got, we spent. The recording was insanely expensive. Every single step of the way, we’ve just tried to go more, go further. So that’s a large part of the Sub Pop thing. And also with things like the packaging they gave us for the CD and record were so crazy, I don’t think any other label would have let us do that. Todd definitely wouldn’t have let us do that! They’re kind of famous for not saying no to artists.

Beach House

DETERMING THE BASES FO

“I WANTED TO THAT ONE SO DEFINED THE 30

OR THE DESIGN

O FOCUS ON ONG THAT ALBUM.” 31

GET IT TOGETHER MAN

“3D PAPER CO WERE NEW TO THAT WAS A C 44

OLLAGES O ME SO CHALLANGE.” 45

MAKING THE DESIGN

“FROM STAND ACTUALLY GO

DARD TO OOD.”

DESIGN 01, USAGE OF FUTURA IN COMBINATION WITH A SCRIPT TYPEFACE CALLED WISDOM SCRIPT. IT GIVES THE ALBUM ARTWORK SOME SORT OF OLDSCHOOL VINTAGE FEELING. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS DESIGN WAS THAT IT STILL DIDN’T SAY WHAT IT NEEDED TO SAY

Recorded in upstate New York, in a converted church called Dreamland with producer/engineer Chris Coady Teen Dream is the third album from the Baltimore-based duo Beach House, and their Sub Pop debut. Both the CD and LP formats of Teen Dream will arrive packaged with a companion DVD featuring a video for each song on the album, each by a different director.

“THE BIGGEST ISSUE HERE IS THAT THESE TYPE OF DESIGNS HAVE BEEN DONE BEFORE. IT’S NOT EXPECTED OF YOU TO CREATE A NEW FORM OF DESIGN, BUT IS SURE WOULD HELP IF THAT WAS THE MOTIVE.’ 51

“FINAL DESIGN : USAGE OF A MORE “BOLD” TYPOGRAPHY, THE MAIN IDEA WAS TO CREATE A BRDIGE BETWEEN MODERN USAGE OF EXPERIMENTAL TYPOGRAPHY AND THE MEDIUM.” 53

ZEBRA SILVER SOUL NORWAY WALK IN THE PARK USED TO BE

LOVER OF MINE BETTER TIMES 10 MILE STEREO REAL LOVE TAKE CARE

BONOBO THE NORTH BORDERS In our first-ever official interview, Okayfuture stepped into the monkeyhouse with Bonobo, the jazz-grounded electronic producer who’s new LP The North Borders has been creating quite a stir amongst serious music heads. Sitting down across a blonde-wood conference table from the beatmaker born Simon Green inside a gleaming new glass cube of an office block in Williamsburg, Brooklyn it seemed somehow appropriate to skip over the Where did you grow up/What are your early musical influencestype questions and get straight to the technical specs.What do you think? Accordingly, what follows is a molecular-level track-by-track breakdown of the new record, right down to which knobs were twiddled when and which file folders are for dropping-coins-into-water sounds and which are for scrunching-paperinto-the-microphone sounds. You will also find indispensable studio tips for beginners, answering allimportant questions like: “how do I get the amazing Erykah Badu (who features on “Heaven For The Sinner”–listen below) and Szjerdene (who contributes to several cuts on the album) to sing on my record?”

OKF: So before we dive in, maybe you could give us in overview-what makes this album different from previous Bonobo LPs? Bonobo: There’s no one manifesto when I’m making a record, it’s always more sort of a reflection the kind of palette of tastes that I’m into at the time. Which I guess, even though I’ve been living in Brooklyn for three years, I still think of this as very much a London record – the London record I made in Brooklyn, because I think that sound was still the most prominent in my pull of influences. I think the main expression of that from The North Borders is this idea of the last outpost of human endeavor, like there are these places… Like the flight from London to New York, half of that is going over these northern territories of Canada, and this kind of icy wasteland, and you know there’s people down there, there’s towns and stuff, but you don’t know who they are or what they do. But there’s always these little outposts where stuff is happening in the world. The sort of imagery of that was the main idea behind The North Borders. OKF: What would you say the balance of digital and live–were you using a lot of live instruments? Not as much as the last one. The previous record Black Sands had a distinctly live feel to it; a lot of horns, soprano solos live drum breakdowns.

I almost stripped the jazzy element out of this one. This one was more about getting back into electronic kind of processing. The sound palette was different, I was using a lot of Foley sound; recording–not drums– but sort of scrunching paper into microphones or hitting pots and pans or dropping coins into water and creating sounds out of that. It’s more interesting to me; I think I’d said a lot already with that set up of double bass and horn ensemble. This was kind of delving more into sonics and abstract textures. Bonobo: I would have days where if I wasn’t sort of feeling the writing process, then I would just spend the time by collecting sounds. So I would set up some mics. One of the things was just a paper coffee cup I found that was really nice and percussive. I do stuff with squeezing or twisting two wine corks together – slowing that down, then I can make a really interesting sort of drum roll effect. Just getting a pile of kind of nuts and bolts, dropping them on to a table, or just getting objects and dropping them into water, turning them into kick drums. There’s one whole folder [in my library] called “Plastic Bottle” which is scrunching and unscrunching a plastic bottle in the microphone. And then there’s “Paper,” “Plastic,” “Metal”…

OKF: OK, let’s go track-by-track.What do you think? 1. “First Fires” f/ Grey Reverend I actually had this as an instrumental. It came into focus rather slowly, I wanted to do this kind of haunted r&b vibe to it, especially with the long reverb tails, and all the sidechain drums, in that sort of style of like a slo-mo Mount Kimbie or someone like that. And it really lead itself, those people who – like Stevie J, or XXYYXX – obviously, there’s little touches of James Blake maybe, this is my nod to that kind of sound. I knew that a sparse vocal was going to be what we needed. I knew Grey Reverend from his work with Cinematic Orchestra, who’s a friend of mine from Brooklyn as well. We originally wrote this track for someone else, because there was this vocalist we knew, and we tried to write it for him, and we recorded an original version with this other guy Len Xiang—he actually busks on the G train, at the Lorimer stop – he sounds like Bill Withers. Incredible voice, but for some reason it just didn’t fit. I think because Grey Reverend wrote the song, well he wrote the lyrics at least, it only sounded right when he did it. So we re-recorded it, and that was the version that ended up going on. But originally it was going to be the version we recorded with Len. So that’s that one I guess. And the strings were recorded in London.

2. “Emkay” If there was a kind of recurring theme on this record, I guess it’s that sort of 130bpm, post-garage/2-step kind of sound. “Emkay” is definitely one of those. It uses that same kind of borrowed r&b acapella sampling, which is kind of being overdone a little bit now. But I think there’s still room for it to be used subtly – not to the point where it’s autotuned beyond the actual human range. I think when you keep it extended as a plausible lyric, or a plausible phrase, then it can still sound tasteful. This is about as jazzy as the record gets as well. There are some saxophones in here that we layered up – we did a lot of work with looper pedals; layering up woodwind until its more of a kind of droning wall of sound. There’s also a lot of orchestration here with the strings, which is kind of a case of more just writing parts at home, you know, sometimes on a Mellotron. My friend Mike Lesirge plays woodwind in my live show, he kind of helped me with the arrangements on this record. So I would kind of play him a part – we went to London and we got this string section together and he arranged all the charts for them, including the woodwinds. I like the idea of introducing that kind of orchestral aspect to this more skipping, kind of garage-y thing. I really like what MJ Cole was doing back in the day; in a way, it’s kind of a nod to that as well.

3. “Cirrus” This was the first one I did, and it’s in a way the most simple of the album as well. It’s sort of representing something that’s a recent evolution in my tastes, it’s my first time sort of going into 4-4, and it’s in a very percussive kind of way. It sounds to me like at its essence, its a very traditional Bonobo track, in that it’s just a nice simple series of loops. It’s a simple track, and it’s meant to be simple – it’s not a grand statement. This is actually the one that really goes down well on the dancefloor, I think that’s because of its simplicity maybe. I mean it started off with a kalimba, like a thumb piano – I just played into a mic, and I was trying to go for that Gold Panda/Pantha du Prince kind of sound for this, you know, float and bounce. Just basically a thumb piano, a 4/4 kick, and a Prophet 5 synth – that’s what most of this track is. It’s just one of those tracks where there’s a real joy in there, just kind of fell out without any real work. This track just fell out of me in about 2 days

4. “Heaven For The Sinner” I had this beat for a little while, and it was very simple. The point where I made it, it was just an 8-bar loop. I met Erykah– last year, 2012 we were on the same bill for a few festivals, one was Decibel in Seattle, she had a show on one night and I played the same place on the next night–so we had met earlier. I met her as well because I had done a remix for this project that she was involved in, this “Re:Generation” film where her and Mark Ronson were in New Orleans, Zigaboo Modaliste was down there, Mos Def was on it, Trombone Shorty as well. It was a real old-style New Orleans shuffle kind of track – and I got to remix it. I kind of remixed it as a way of getting Erykah’s attention I think, that was the objective. It did work, eventually. The next thing, I was invited down when they were doing that track on Letterman; Zigaboo, Mark Ronson and everyone else. That’s where I met her, and it was cool. We immediately realized that there was a connection, musically – we knew a lot of the same people, we were into a lot of the same stuff, the conversation just seemed to be very easy in that respect. I don’t know how familiar she was with my stuff, but she liked what I was doing, I think. She’s a fan of music first, she wanted to hear the tracks. She wasn’t going to agree to do something unless she was feeling the track. The track I sent her, this one, it was very basic at the time – I extended the loop out a little, but I just really liked the way it swung.

One of my favorite tracks of hers is “The Healer,” which is the Madlib beat, and I felt this kind of had a little bit of a nod to that. I just felt like it would fit really well. So you know, it wasn’t an overblown – you know, working with Erykah I could’ve gone this route of really grandiose, kind of track. But I felt this was more personal, a more human sounding loop, more of an old fashioned way of working – you know, 4-bar loop. And I have Kirsten Agresta, a harpist on Erykah’s last record, a track called “Incense” – and I had her play at the top of this track, and it just gave it the movement it needed, and Erykah was into it. And from there on we just chatted a little bit, and she was bouncing ideas backwards and forwards. She’d put a very basic idea down and send it across, and we’d just get talking and kept sending bits and pieces over. I took what she did in the studio and arranged it in a way that I felt worked structurally, and she went back in the booth and re-recorded it. We had about 5 or 6 exchanges, and we were on the phone just talking about how we wanted to figure out the arrangements and stuff. And that’s how it came about. It was just a case of finishing things in London with the string arrangements…there were some woodwinds in there as well. But the basics of it were just this loop

5. “Sapphire” Again, it’s that sort of 130 BPM bass-y thing. I’m playing a lot of the keys on here but the main sample is a folk record. I don’t know the name–or I probably shouldn’t name it anyway even if I did–but it’s a very sort of isolated, nameless folk recording of just a harp. The rest is sort of these little micro loops. Taking this one hit and just doing things in very short loops and getting a nice tonal quality. I still love sampling, that’s kind of where I started, and what I like to do. This again is that kind of vocal sampling as well, I can’t say exactly where it’s from, but its actually from YouTube; someone singing an acapella on YouTube. Which is where I think samples are kind of coming from now. You know I only used to sample off vinyl. I still sample a lot of vinyl, especially everything is still sort of pre-1980s. I would never go past that kind of foundation of 1980s looking for samples.

6. “Jets” Back into that mid-90s BPM. Some of these were written from the ground up only as songs, this one was very much like, loop-based. Sort of finding a sample, and making a beat. So I think this is just kind of that oldfashioned style of beatmaking that I kind of went for. It kind of links to my earlier stuff, I think this track, because it goes back to that 95 BPM and again with this kind of vocal samples, but just little snippets here and there. 7. “Towers” A very simple backbone with a vibraphone and I didn’t want to progress too far with it. I knew immediately that this was going to be a vocal track and you know, I’d been talking to Szjerdene and I’d heard her singing from these friends of mine who run a blog in London – they put these kinds of parties on, called “Put Me On It.” Szjerdene was on one, and it was just a case of the room just lighting up; suddenly everybody stops talking to pay attention to someone they’d never seen before. She’s got a really captivating voice. After that, it was just waiting for the right track to come along, and this was the first track I approached her with. We recorded it in London, took it back to Brooklyn and mixed it; kinda fleshed out the rest of the track. I had a suggestion as far as the tempo of the vocal, so I had a little input, but lyrically it’s all her. She actually killed it with the backing vocals as well, I think that’s the real highlight in this. I think this is a track that will be very different when it’s performed live. There’s room for the energy to be a bit bigger when we do it live–Szjerdene is going to be on the road with us as well. So we’ll figure out how to develop this on the road, which will be cool.

8. “Don’t Wait” This was sort of inspired by sounds coming back from that early house era, like the 808s and 909s. But I wanted to do something that was a really slow kind of house, almost a disco tempo but a bit more – it’s a bit more emotive I guess. This was all about the drums for me, just trying to use that kind of that old sensibility of using a drum machine and sequencer, and creating that kind of sound. A version of house, but done by me, which I haven’t really done before.8. 9. “Know You” This is one of my favorites from the album. This track went through a few changes, but I think again it was trying to work outside of a structure I was familiar. I think the most exciting things happen when you’re pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, into areas I don’t usually work. I’d always come from sample breaks and chopping stuff up, or recording live drums and going into them with the sample. There’s a sort of very bass-y 808 kind of thing that happens, which was more like using subfrequencies and creating dynamics in places you wouldn’t expect it. Instead of so many crescendos in a loud part, it’s putting crescendos in part where its pretty sparse, and that’s something people like Jamie XX do really well, and a few others. The vocal sample is actually some outtakes of Szjerden It might even be referenced from the same track. But yeah, I was going through my archives of other sessions with other vocalists, and used that as a sort of plundering area for vocal samples, sort of an abandoned area of vocal sessions from other projects, but ended up on that one.

10. “Antenna “Antenna” was just kind of a real simple, built around this almost hummed kind of sample. I was listening to DOOM and the way that his drums and bass kind of hit – that was a big influence on this track. Especially on the drums, anyway. I wanted to get that very straightforward but also quite swung kind of bass-and-drums thing going. This was also one of the first I did as well. But yeah, I was trying to go for that kind of sound. And layering up loads of flutes – me and Mike Lesirge, my woodwinds guy, we layered up like 6 kinds of flutes 11. “Ten Tigers” This is very much, sample chopping. It sounds like a typewriter, but its actually – I don’t know what it was, this was a part of the Foley recordings, as were all of the drums on this. All the kinds of snares and hits on this, and layers and various bits of foley. And this is one of these tracks I’ve got with a sort of micro sound woven in there, loops where everything is like one second or half a second samples and trying to use two or three key sounds and just move them around. I think with sampling as well and music making in general, its just kind of trying to see how a sound can change when you throw a different note against it – to be with a kind of bass and other samplings. Or to harmonize something and take it in a completely different direction. So I guess its these 3 or 4 sounds kind of bouncing off each other, and dragging each other against these different directions.

12. ‘Transits” Another one with Szjerdene, wanting to do something with an actual original vocal, but still approaching it in the same way as the other ones with the samples, the acapella stuff; the same kind of ethereal feel. I actually played her the track after this but she didn’t relate to that one as much, she was more inspired by this one. This was the first track she did, the first one I sent her, and she hadn’t written anything in a little while, and she came back with such a huge amount of lyrics for this track and so many ideas that we had to narrow it down to one or two. We kinda went back and said, let’s focus on this one idea, and bring it back to something more minimal – and this works out very nicely. It’s almost half of what she originally came up with. There’s so many dynamics in this track – there’s also this side chain going on and the backing vocals. She said she hadn’t really done much in terms of backing vocals, but she absolutely killed it on this. We just kind of went in and did 5 layers of these, and they sounded incredible – just sat there listening to them for 3 hours straight. It was just a real pleasure to record this. We did this one in London.

Interview : http://www.okayfuture.com/features/edm-jazz-bonobo-the-north-borderstrack-by-track-interview.html

13. “pieces” Yeah this was an instrumental for a long time, I had approached a couple of people with this. Last time we played the live show was in Australia was in March 2012, we had a version of this tune, it was when Andreya Triana was still touring with us – and she had a version of this that was very out there, a very psychedelic thing she was doing with it. I tried a couple of people with it, and it just didn’t fit right. I knew Cornelia from her work with the Portico Quartet, who are friends of mine from London. And I saw them doing this show, and I saw Cornelia, and her presence was just mind-blowing. It was a very last-minute thing, this was sort of the last piece of the whole album, the last piece of the puzzle, really. This was done remotely, over a very short period of time. She didn’t think she could work in that way, but we were on the phone a lot, talking about stuff, and she just had this demo idea, that was just perfect. So this was the end of the album, and also the last idea I had for this album as well.

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

“THE NORTH B A REFERENCE FINAL OUTPO MANKIND, YO PEOPLE LIVE T NO ONE KNOW 70

BORDERS IS E TO THOSE OSTS OF OU KNOW THEIR...BUT WS WHO.” 71

WHENEVER I THINK OF “THE LAST OUTPOST OF MANKIND” I ALWAYS THINK OF ICELAND. BIG EMPTY SPACES THAT SOMEHOW HAVE PEOPLE LIVING THERE. 73

BY USING A CURSIVE THICK WHITE LINE I WAS ABLE TO REPRESENT ‘THE END OF MAN TERITORY’. THE DESIGN IS A SINGLE JACKET WHICH HOLDS A FOLD - OUT POSTER WITH THE TRACKLISTING THAT LITTERLY FOLLOWS THE BORDER OF THE IMAGE. 76

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LOWER DENS NOOTROPICS Baltimore dream-rock band Lower Dens’ sophomore album, Nootropics, eschews traditional pop themes (love, death, overcoming adversity, etc.) for more cerebrally challenging confines. The album, whose title refers to substances that enhance a human’s cognitive powers, focuses heavily (but not solely) on transhumanism, a scientific movement that calls for technology to improve mankind’s phsyical, emotional, and psychological capabilities. This may not result in easily absorbed romantic odes, but this context is perfectly suited for the band’s swirling, expansive blend of darkly

tinged pop music. However, the album (out now via Ribbon Music) was more than just a chance for the group to flex their collective grey matter. It afforded them a chance to build on the work they started with 2010s TwinHand Movement and further strike a balance between the dark and menacing and the enchanting and beautiful. That sonic expansion impacted every aspect of the band, who are undergoing their own evolution in front of our very eyes and ears.Recently, CoS News Editor Chris Coplan and front woman Jana Hunter met to discuss that growth and its impact on the band’s creative and recording processes, the state of their live show and touring efforts, and much more. According to a press release, the album explores the concept of transhumanism. How did the whole initial concept become of interest? Would you possibly consider this a concept album, even of the most tangential variety? Friends of ours in Baltimore have been interested in, and sometimes proponents of, transhumanism for

a while. It was a hot topic on a local message board, as well. We’re in the habit of buying books for the van, passing them around, and using them for fodder during otherwise long and sometimes tedious drives, so we bought Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near after hearing it (and him) much discussed. It fit well into conversations we were having already about society as we traveled through lots of communities and waxed pseudo-intellectual about humankind’s relationship to itself. The record isn’t about transhumanism; that’s just one of the only things that people seem to have latched on to. Our conversation became a broad and passionate discussion about the conflict between our still ever-present animal instincts and motivations versus the times, the near-future we seem to be always present in, the epic and sweeping movement towards technological embrace. It’s still, then, very much a record about our experience in our world, an observational one, and doesn’t propose concepts so much as examine them. Oftentimes those examinations are made through personal experience and never in judgment of others.

On a related note, how do you think the album’s overall concept, exploring the relationship between man and machine, played out through the course of the record? It seems from listening to the record, the concept is subtle, almost hidden, through a lot of the effort. How do you think the concept, an idea you wanted to explore, shifted or changed, if at all, your approach to creating the album? The intention in using these ideas was to have them be more of a thematic guide than a conceptual basis. In other words, these ideas were the topic of much band discussion during the writing of the record, and I used them as inspiration for lyrics, but those lyrics either reflect my personal feelings on a subject or my observations of other people’s ideas about them. For instance, “Lamb”‘s narrator has a bit of my own fear of immortality, whereas “Brains” reflects more of the epidemic fear of technology versus the downhill snowball pace of its grip on all of us.

In a recent interview, once again discussing the album’s concept, you noted that “technology atomizes at such an astonishing rate that we can barely process it as it happens in front of us.” Do you feel like this record is a means to merely explore that concept, or are you trying to perhaps “do battle” and make people more aware of the ever-changing technological landscape? With the record, I am, we are, only exploring – conceptually and sonically. That is what we do best as a group; we do it well, and it’s very deeply satisfying for us. I do welcome the opportunity to go further with it in venues such as this one, to perhaps confront things like the dangerous and detrimental alignment of technology and commerce. However, Lower Dens is a music project, and its purpose isn’t to judge or battle. I like to ask this of every band/project set to release their sophomore LP: How was the songcrafting and recording process this time around? Easier, more streamlined perhaps? Any observations you made, or any strengths or weaknesses in the band/ project that came up with this second go-around? Initially, during the first few months of touring for Twin-Hand Movement, it was very frustrating. I’d always record at home in the middle of night and had grown very attached to having a lot of free time and my own space in which to totally isolate myself. On tour, there’s nothing like this; there’s no time, no personal space, no isolation. You can’t even jerk off, let alone spend hours alone in your own stink at only your own expense. Making the transition to cans (headphones), laptop, and Midi keyboard might have seemed

like a compromise when we first considered it, but instantly it became not just a solution to a problem, but an opportunity to expand. It seems like a small thing when I describe to people moving from one instrument to another, but for me, the instrument in my hand can be my main source of motivation, because I am above all a player, and I love it more than anything. So, welcoming in keys and synthesized sound changed everything for writing for me. The band adapted really, really well to this, taking in songs that were much more skeletal than ones I’d written on guitar and developing them from a textural and atmospheric aspect, developing whole new palettes of sounds. In that way, it highlighted our ability to change as drastically as we’d want or need to and our ability to do it together. It really also allowed for our two new members, Nate and Carter, to show us what they were capable of, and accordingly, they’ve provided some of my favorite moments on the record. After touring so much behind TwinHand Movement, do you foresee as much support behind Nootropics? Having played the tracks from Nootropics at least some shows by now, how do you think they’ve held up live? Do you think they reveal anything new onstage, be it

a different meaning or new pacing or whatever, that they didn’t in the studio? I was always fretting in the studio about what we were or weren’t going to be able to translate live, and Carter, in particular, encouraged me/ us to abandon that and work towards making exactly what we wanted to hear. Because of Drew Brown’s aesthetic choices as much as our own, we ended up with something that is, even by our standards, very restrained. I love it, and I love that it’s left us so much room for live shows. These songs are in most cases something else entirely live. On record, they’re very thoughtful; live, they are very present and, for me, quite intense. I’ve been surprised. I guess I anticipated more reservation from people who’ve come to see us given that we’re moving somewhat away from being guitar-based and hence less rocker, if we ever were, towards something that might require more attention and less action, but there’s been none. No reservations. Audiences have been very generous; shows have been amazing and fun. I think we’ll tour as much as we can and as many places as we can, but we might need to be more cautious than we’ve been. That carelessness in booking endless shows nearly cost us Will. No tour is worth that.

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Staying with the whole live show bit, I’ve read in a few reviews that, at least with the material from Nootropics, the songs are more cohesive, with less room for individual tracks to stand out on their own. Is that something you’ve noticed/a conscious decision made to present a whole, united musical experience? In writing, the songs we decided to use for the record were grouped for their seeming ability to make a whole, although this process was a least somewhat arbitrary. Any somewhat confessional songs were scrapped, and any that left a lot of room for thought and exploration were pushed to the fore for consideration. I think I can speak on behalf of everyone else in the band and say that there is a general preference for albums that have a cohesive aesthetic or theme. We wanted to make a record, something that is a body of work, not just a group of songs.

One of the more dominant notions/ concepts I noticed between album #1 and album #2 is that this second effort has less variety to it, that the emotional setting tends to hover around cold or distant. There are tinges of warmth and happiness, but the centerpiece seems to be more focused on depressing elements. Do you feel as if you focused the emotional content more, or do you see the sentiments on this record just as varied? Does the whole transhumanism concept almost box one in to a more removed/barren emotional framework? There seems to be a tendency in people’s reactions to associate distance with sadness. For me, this is not a sad record, just a contemplative one. The objects or subjects of contemplation aren’t inherently depressing, though they are heavy. While music obviously has, of all the arts, the best means to express pure emotion, it also has the characteristic of pushing all non-relevant thoughts aside, clearing the mind and making

space to consider things apart from emotion, or with emotions that are more tied to global concerns than personal ones. I think the human inability to reconcile our natures with our desires might be tragic, but it’s also funny and beautiful. You’ve mentioned in other interviews that the new record was recorded at Michigan’s Key Club, far away from the usual home setting of past work. What was the process like working “off the beaten path” as opposed to in a more familiar setting? Is it an experience you’d want to explore more? Or do you think that “professional” recording situations might take away something from the homespun material? There’s not a whole lot to the town we recorded in, and that’s no slag. It’s just very simple, and there are farm stands and a beautiful, great lake nearby. Fewer distractions meant more focus. The studio itself is very thoughtfully put together, a wellconstructed playground run by two very smart, funny, kind people, and

INTERVIEW : http://consequenceofsound.net/2012/05/interview-jana-hunter-of-lower-dens/

IMAGE : TOUTPARTOUT.BE

very comfortable. We slept nights in bunk beds above the studio. It was, in many ways, perfect. In talking to others who have heard the record, there seems to be a consensus about the loads of metaphors strewn throughout. Would you tend to agree with that, or do you think maybe there’s more direct grains of truth or observation being laid out? Again, has the whole concept or focal point of the LP forced the album into a box of slightly involved lyrical constructs? Is there one basic, unwavering emotional statement that the album’s trying to get across? I guess I’d want to know more about this consensus, but I feel that the distance between the lyrics and plainspoken observation isn’t based in metaphor but rather my tendency

to obscure details. I do this because continually work at such a rapid-fire I’d rather not force literal meaning pace? Or, going back to the whole atomization model, do you want to down any throats; I’d like things take your time with albums/releases? to remain open to interpretation, and if people want, I’d like them to I think we followed exactly the path be able to associate certain words that we needed to, took the time we needed. It’s become important to me or phrases with their own lives and experiences. As much as I am that I follow a sort of internal guided interested in the heady ideas behind path. Sometimes it takes a while; some of the lyrics, I know the feeling sometimes it is immediate. Since of wanting the music you like to be we’ve only just gotten the record out, a vehicle for unrestricted emotional I can’t say at all where we’ll end up on the next one, but I’m very much release of whatever sort you looking forward to going down that need. For me, the album is about road. optimism. Believe it or not. While the album’s just coming out and you’re undoubtedly focused heavily on it, what’s next musically for Lower Dens? Where do you think you can go with the sound after exploring such lofty notions and creating such succinct tunes? Is that even part of the process, to

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

“NOOTROPICS SMART - DRUG TYPE OF NARC STIMULATE YO AND GIVE YOU THAT’S COOL 88

S ARE A GS. THESE COTICS OUR BRAIN U FOCUS. BRO.” 89

JANA HUNTER CLAIMS SHE’S FASCINATED BY TRANS - HUMANITY. YOU KNOW, CYBORGS AND ALL THAT. IT INSTANTLY GAVE ME A SCIENCE - FICTION KIND OF VIBE. THAT AND THE MEANING OF NOOTROPICS GAVE ME AN IDEA THAT STARTED WITH THIS IMAGE. 91

IT’S ALL ABOUT LINKING EV THE FIRST SMART DRUG TO RILATINE, IT’S THE DRUG T TO CALM DOWN AND FOCU THIS DRUG ACTUALLY GAVE GRAPHIC ELLEMENT FOR T OF THE ALBUM IS BASED O EDITED THE PICTURE IN SU GIVE OFF THIS 70’S TYPE O IT WAS VERY IMPORTANT T THAT TYPE OF FEELING SIN INSPIRED BY KRAFTWERK. 94

VERYTHING TOGETHER, O CAME TO MIND WAS THEY GIVE ADHD PATIENTS US. THEY PACKAGING OF E ME AN IDEA FOR THE THE COVER. EVEN THE SIZE ON THE PACKAGING. I’VE UCH A WAY THAT IT WOULD OF SCIENCE FICTION VIBE, THAT IT WOULD GIVE OF NCE ‘NOOTROPICS’ IS 95

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THIS IS A FICTIONAL ALBUM COVER, IT’S A CONCEPT WHICH I FELT WAS REALLY FUN TO DO, SO I TRIED TO MAKE IT AS GOOD AS POSSIBLE DESIGN - WHISE. BASED ON JACK WHITES’ STUNT ON RECORDSTORE DAY 2014 I CAME UP WITH THE FOLLOWING : 106

WHAT IF YOU WOULD GO TO A CONCERT, AND GET THE LIVE SET ON VINYL RIGHT AFTER THE SHOW? WITH PICTURES AND EVERYTHING. IT’S A DAREDEVIL PROJECT BUT IF THIS COULD ACTUALLY BE DONE, HOW AMAZING WOULD THAT BE? I’VE DRAWN UP A CONCEPT. 107

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RECORDED AND PRESSED ON 12” VINYL DURING THE MAC DEMARCO LIVE SHOW AT LES NUITS BOTANIQUE 2014 IN BRUSSELS, BELGIUM. ARTWORK DESIGNED DURING LIVE SHOW, PICTURES TAKEN DURING THE FIRST 3 SONGS EXCLUSIVE AND HIGHLY LIMITED EDITION. 13 PRESSES AVAILABLE FOR SALE.

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SANGO NORTH With the recent release of Sango‘s flawless new album entitled North, he’s been receiving a great deal of attention – much deserved. His recent North American tour (The Here With Me Tour) was a short but sweet, starting in the East Coast and ending in Los Angeles California over a two week span. After catching Sango perform his live DJ set at Babylon Nightclub on August 2nd in Ottawa, BTW’s Adam Bosley had the chance to pick the brain of the man behind the beats. Find out below what type of music Sango grew up with and what his favourite tracks are off his new North album. Tell us a bit about yourself, Who are you and what do you do? I’ve been doing music since I was 12. Been into music somehow or someway. Always been a creator somehow or someway. As I’ve gotten older it just came to be for me to be a producer. I’m Kai by day but Sango at night. I like to incorporate both my lives as a musician and as an everyday guy into my music. Where did the name Sango come from? Watching too much t.v. It came from the anime show Inu Yasha. I really liked the name and it stuck. What did you grow up listening to that inspired you to make the music

that you make? New Jack Swing (Teddy Riley), a lot of East Coast Hip Hop, I grew up on a lot of House not Euro House but rich Chicago House. I grew up on a lot of Soul, a lot of West Coast Hip Hop (E-40, Tupac). With the recent release of North. Can you tell us a little bit about the record, when it came out, some of it’s influences? It came out July 23rd 2013. It started with the release of “Trust Me” which was the story line of life as a whole and the journey through life and surrounding yourself with good people, emotion, atmosphere, positivity and togetherness. North is pretty much a love story, not necessarily with a person in general, but just in love with music. Actually a person or an activity that brings you closer to bettering yourself and positivity, North represents going somewhere better. If you could put the North album in a genre what would it be? I’ve heard it’s been called Lush Trap, but I would call it Positive Soul Music or Future Soul. What’s the production process like for you? What programs are you using? I’m using Reason. I’ve used FruityLoops in the past, but I faded away from that. Typically when I’m making projects, I’m usually making two projects at once. There’s a side of me that I want to explore any type of music and there’s a side of me that want’s to make pure Sango sounding music. North is pure Sango sounding, but I’ve experimented with other genres and add my flavor to that genre. When I have two things going on, I can bounce ideas off of each other and it makes my ideas even better. When it’s time to narrow it down, I can sit down and refine the sound and then I cater to my idea that way.

What’s your favourite track off the North record and why? “She Yells”, which is the first track on the album and the first track I made for the album. It’s about that tough love, how a woman can really care about you, but at the same time can yell at you because they care about you. Sounding wise “Middle of Things, Beautiful Wife”. It just came to be. I was looking for a singer and he wrote what he felt and kept the title. SPZRKT and I had the same emotion, same idea, same everything and we didn’t even discuss it. I sent him the beat, he wrote it and I was like how did you know what I wanted. What’s your most memorable music moment to date? That’s easy. April 12th 2009 was my first time being on stage doing music, playing the Congas. It was at a venue called The Intersection in Grand Rapids, Michigan. What’s next for Sango? School. Western Michigan University for Graphic Design. With the North album having some artists featured and the remix of songs by Robin Thicke and others, are there any artists out there that you would like to collaborate with? I get this question a lot and usually I say Drake or Sade, but recently I’ve been listening to this group called Inc. and they are amazing and would love to do some work with them. Another artist I would love to work with would be Lecrae who is a Cristian rapper. Our final question is our signature question that we ask everyone and you can answer it any way you’d like… What do you think life is? Life is Trial, It’s just the Demo to the full release, It’s the quiz to the test. This isn’t it.

INTERVIEW + PICTURE http://www.beyondthewatch.com/interview-sango/

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THE DRUMS PORTAMENTO One of the breakout success stories of 2010, The Drums have always seemed a slightly awkward proposition. With their tousled bangs and striking, slightly effeminate good looks, the NYC indie-poppers seemed every inch the partygoing kids suggested by calling card single ‘Let’s Go Surfing’. But on closer listen, parts of their self-titled debut suggested a band with growing pains to get out of its system. Did they want to be a guitar pop band in the blockbusting mould? Or a ‘cookie-cutter Postcard Records band’ like their heroes Orange Juice? And were they happy to affirm the simpler pleasures (and pains) in life with their lyrics? Or were frontman Jonathan Pierce’s troubles (he was raised by religious hardnut parents) bound to surface in the end, as in ‘I’ll Never Drop My Sword’’s gently revelatory “do you think Jesus loves me? Can I go home again?” off the last one?The torrid few months that followed seemed to confirm the impression of a band with an incipient identity crisis — declining to play ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ in live performances, the group was subsequently rocked by guitarist Adam Kessler’s decision to quit in September last year, a departure which left surviving bandmembers publically fuming.

Jonathan, you said some pretty harsh things in the heat of the moment when Adam quit the band (“forget about Adam, because he’s forgettable”), do you guys have a very intense working relationship in general? JP: I think there’s this pretty intense friction, and it always seems like one extreme or the other with us. I’d like to be romantic about it and say it really lent itself to song writing but it was just stressful and annoying. Has it been that way since the outset? JP: Well, when the band started there was a big sense of camaraderie and for a couple of months it felt like we could do anything we wanted, there was a real freedom. At our first shows we would bring these weird props onstage, like we had this Time Life book about the Soviet Union — we’d read it out onstage and give it to the audience with like ‘Love, The Drums’

in the cover of the book. CH: I think when a band has a trajectory like ours it’s hard to be objective to your own context. So we were talking today about things you could do that seemed cool when it was in a small club in front of twenty people, but you can’t do that as the context changes. So many things changed in a way that pulled the rug out from us, I don’t think we even realised how quickly things were changing. JP: But we learned a lot, that’s very much reflected in the new record. There was a real naivety in the beginning, about everything. I think there are still some things we wish we hadn’t done or said. It’s funny, I can write a song and like it at the time, I’ll think it’s great and then a week later I’ll listen to it and be like, ‘What was I thinking?’. And we had to grow up while everyone was

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watching because we played our first show and people started watching immediately. Whereas a lot of bands would refine and figure out who they are over time, and I think we’re still in the process of doing that. We made a lot of decrees, we had a lot of grand statements. If people didn’t agree with what we were doing we had a ‘go fuck yourself’ attitude, and I don’t think we’ve lost that but we’ve just focused on what we wanna do more. It’s a very green reaction to things but there was definitely a point where we liked poking, we liked being aloof. And then the context just changed so fast, it changed faster than we could adapt. And now with this record I just feel like we’re at a point where we’re a little more realistic with who we are. We’re a little more self-aware now, a little less dreamy and based in more of a firm reality.

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What do you think of the old songs looking back? JP: Last night for the first time since we released it I listened to our first EP [‘Summertime!’]. It was literally like listening to something we had nothing to do with. And I’m not trying to say we’re ashamed of it, I think it’s cool for what it is and I’m glad we did it. But now I can’t relate to the songs. Whereas the new album has such a life of its own, it’s so much more personal. Parts of it are really autobiographical, whereas the first album and EP were more idea-driven, every song was like a scene from a movie. I think with the last record our whole objective of putting forward this concept blocked out how great these songs could be. And I feel with the new album we pulled away from being that straight-up, 100% pop thing. Rather than focusing on what were gonna wear and how we were gonna be onstage, we tried to forget about all of that and just make a great album. And let that dictate everything else. JG: We wanted to be that cookiecutter Postcard Records band or something. JP: But yeah, listening to that EP

it just felt so distant, it was just bulldozing through with no regard to anything but this idea of ‘we’re making these two-and-a-half minute pop songs and that’s all we’re gonna do and if you don’t like it ‘fuck you’. Whereas this album we’re still doing what we want… but what we want has shifted slightly. We used to have these really strict limitations. And now we’ve added new limitations and pulled out old ones, so we’re still limited and we still want that classic pop song structure, and we still want every song we write to in some weird universe be covered by The ShangriLas, but… JG: I think the difference for me is we allowed ourselves to do more, it was more like ‘How can we do this thing that we wanna do without compromising the song?’ Whereas last time we were more like ‘You can’t do that. Don’t do that. You’re gonna fuck up the song’. We had these sharp parameters. You seem to have attracted a backlash in some quarters, what d’you chalk that one up to?

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CH: Well I mean the position we were in at the time was a very unique position for a band. Maybe that sounds delusional, but things happened so fast that a lot of the stuff that initially attracted people to us, once it got put on a larger pedestal people weren’t into. And there was this unabashed sincerity about it, there was this rough transition where we went from being the band we were to being the band we’d slid into. JP: But I feel like things are set up that way, especially in the UK. Even though you haven’t changed at all, you’ve just put a record out you made in your bedroom and the media goes apeshit on it, and they build it up to this thing of ‘Oh, this band’s gonna change music forever’ and the band’s like ‘Er, what’s going on?’. An then automatically there’s a legion of people that will hate it automatically because they’ve been given that title, even though [the band] is just making the music they love. They have nothing to do with it. And that happened to us. JG: There are some journalists that have really fucked with us, even by saying nice things they’ve kind of fucked with us a little bit. It’s like

they’ll say this is the best band in the world to start a frenzy because maybe it’ll help sell their magazine, because suddenly it’s the new ‘It Band’ or whatever. JP: It’s not like any of this even matters. It’s really funny, do you ever think about that? A band defending itself, or talking well about itself. All these bands having to prove how important they are, it’s ridiculous. ‘Cos we’re all just gonna die in the end, ha ha! Hmm, you make a good point. How are things between you and Adam now? JG: He moved upstate, nobody’s been in touch with him but I heard he was doing OK. He’s a carpenter, actually. It’s not like we’ve been avoiding him or anything, he’s just not the sort of person that’s gonna drive down to New York to do a concert or anything. We were just caught up in a bunch of things, we were about to start a tour, we were talking about the record. We had a music video to shoot the next day… it was frustrating. JP: But in a weird way it was like Adam left and suddenly all these rules we’d made for ourselves were alleviated, it was like ‘Wait, we don’t have to do things that way’

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So how was recording for the new album? JP: We like to do albums as chronologically as possible. Typically from what I know bands go into the studio and record a bunch of songs, and then pick the best ones for the album, whereas how we’ve always done it is you start with the first song which is the first song on the record, and then the second song is somewhat of a reaction to the first one, and so on. We tend to write just as much as we need and make each song as potent as possible, rather than spreading the ideas around thirty different songs or whatever. We don’t like to having too many loose ends. JG: I wish every band would do that. I feel like when I was growing up bands were doing that! JP: We make records in our kitchen, people get really excited about big producers and studios whereas we did half of it in my kitchen, we did

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one song in [Jacob’s apartment] and a few songs in Woodstock in my friend’s place. It’s very homespun, people will spend all this money producing these perfect-sounding records. It costs a lot and labels want their money’s worth, so they’ll really milk the singles for all they’re worth. And the artist doesn’t have to put out another record for three years. But what else are we gonna do? Tour and make records, that’s what bands are supposed to do. I get the impression the ‘surf pop’ tag didn’t sit all that well with you guys, have you gone to any lengths to avoid that this time around? JG: It’s like when your grandparents ask you what your music sounds like. Or when you’re going through airport security and the guy’s like, ‘What do you do?’ and you’re like, ‘I’m in a band’ and he’s like, ‘Well what does it sound like’? and you’re like ‘Oh, it’s surf rock’. CH: I just say ‘eighties’. JP: That’ll get you through any customs, honestly. Those ladies are just like, ‘Seriously? I LOVE the eighties’. So what’s the new record about? JP: There are songs about, that deal with… I grew up in an extreme religious household with some pretty strict guidelines which looking back just seem really outrageous and crazy. So there are songs that deal with that, and coping with life now having gone through all those things. And there are songs that deal with ambiguity. Some of our inspirations have come from trans-gendered individuals, but I can’t say too much about that.

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You grew up in a pretty conservative environment? JP: I thought it was conservative in the thick of it but actually it’s really extremist. It’s a small, crazy town with a lot of dark shit going on. It’s even called Horseheads, which sounds pretty dark. I spent a lot of time alone as a child, feeling very weird about everything. In a way I felt ‘I’ll Never Drop My Sword’ off the last record dealt with some pretty personal themes, does that give an idea of what’s to come? JP: Yeah, ‘I’ll Never Drop My Sword’ was in a weird way maybe a first taste of the ideas that come into play on this record. We’re not normally fond of political bands, we’re not one of those bands that believes you have to have a message with every song, but it got to the point where we did want to say something a little more important.

And musically what directions have you chosen to pursue? CH: We wanted to get that dark, mysterious magic that Wendy Carlos has going on, that’s really kind of magical to us. JG: It’s weird when we talked about pop bands in the past — like we don’t really talk about The Supremes for instance, even though they’re an amazing group. We just talked about the Shangri-Las, ‘cos there’s Did it strike the rest of you guys that an underlying subversiveness to it, same with The Zombies as opposed Jonathan was writing some pretty to The Beatles. Or Orange Juice, we dark lyrics this time around? love the way they sounded like they CH: Well usually we’ll work on a song were about to fall apart, or how they for a couple of hours round his house, could just throw a guitar solo in there I’ll leave and he’ll send me the track with vocals on it… So it’s not like I’m that makes no sense… I’d say the there at the time. But I do think this musicianship’s maybe 20% better one feels more personal. Like with on this record, but there are certain things you don’t wanna progress on. the song ‘I Need A Doctor’, when Jon sent me that one it was like wow, this Like Brian Eno always used to say is even more personal than when he when he got too familiar with one was singing ‘I thought my life would of his synthesisers he would turn it around backwards and close his eyes get easier’. It’s more introspected. JP (to Connor): You wrote back to me when he programmed the sounds when I sent you that song, you were because he didn’t want to feel that way, it’s not exciting. I’ve always felt like, ‘Dude you’re a freak’. Which I that way, once you’re too familiar with enjoyed. things you start to ease into them and CH: There’s also that song ‘In The turn the lights off, instead of trusting Cold’, there’s something eerily cryptic about that song. For some reason I your ears more than your muscle heard it and I just thought, ‘What if memory. we’re not gonna do another record?’. Maybe it’s just where we were at the time, but…

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THE KNIFE SILENT SHOUT extension of the music Olof and Karin painstakingly construct at home in Stockholm. They’ve made a short film, When I Found The Knife, and last year released it on DVD alongside a collection of their beautiful videos. still wrestling with the old conundrum For their new single, the Massive of how to present ‘computer music’ Attack-on-the-autobahn Silent Shout, in an interesting way on the stage. they’ve worked again with Andreas Within the steely electronic pop of Nilsson, director of the video for their A snowfield, near a forest, round their last album Deep Cuts lurked original version of Heartbeats and dawn, somewhere in Sweden. The songs about women’s rights and the provider of the visuals for that one Knife are art-directing the shoot for duty of good citizens to pay their live performance (at London’s ICA their new press photographs. They taxes. For their last set of pictures last February). For the chilling clip are wearing long black coats, long for Silent Shout, the title track of The black wigs and masks that make them they dressed as gymnasts. The Knife don’t do anything by half, and they Knife’s new album, Nilsson drew on look like crows. Why? don’t do anything twice. Compromise the work of 1930s German animator ‘If we could choose not to do any is the enemy, repetition a cop-out. Oscar Fischinger, and on Charles photos at all, we would,’ says Karin Advertising? That’s a tricky one. Burns’ graphic novel Black Hole. The Dreijer Andersson. ‘But it’s quite The Knife wrote Heartbeats, the latter tells the story of a sexuallyimpossible. Because I don’t think it transmitted plague raging through has anything to do with the music. So song covered to achey-breaky affect teenagers in Seventies Seattle. Which we use the photos now to show what by fellow Swede José Gonzales in the Sony Bravia ‘bouncing balls’ again begs the question, why? ‘We our music looks like.’ commercial. Yes, say The Knife, they told Andreas we wanted something ‘It’s very cold and dark and had to think hard about allowing their very dark and surrealist. When he suggestive maybe,’ says Olof Dreijer music to be used to sell stuff. ‘It’s the came up with this idea it was perfect. of the duo’s new ‘image’. ‘We feel first time we’ve said yes to a thing Silent Shout is one of the songs that like that if we had been there with like that,’ says Karin. ‘The only reason feels most …’ Karin stops for a think. our plain faces, that would destroy we thought it was OK was it wasn’t the illusion of the music. So we tried us performing. It’s not fun to sell to dress up as the music. Occult and music for commercials but it gives dark but at the same time, funny.’ This is the world of The Knife: precise, you money – to help our label.’Video? Ah, that’s a different matter. The particular, dark, occult, funnyKnife like making videos. They’re an peculiar, funny-ha-ha. This Swedish brother-and-sister duo work mostly on their own in splendid isolation; they release music on their own label, licensing it to selected partners around the world, so they have to answer to no one. They have only ever played live once because they’re

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‘It’s very near what kind of music we want to do. We have been making music for seven years and with every year you are getting close to what kind of music you really want to do. I think we are pretty close. In that song particularly: because it has all the elements that we like – it’s very sad, but hard and beautiful at the same time. And it’s cold, but it’s warm. A lot of qualities!’ she laughs. The Knife began making Silent Shout, their third album in March 2004. Recordings commenced in an old carbondioxide factory, then moved to the vaults beneath The Grand Church in Stockholm’s Old Town. Olof and Karin planned to build a permanent studio underneath the church. But 15th century medieval brickwork and future-sounding art-synth-pop proved incompatible. ‘We had to move because of the poor sonics of the room,’ says Olof. ‘But mainly because it was so old the walls were falling apart so we had brick dust in our lungs.’ Retreating to the health and safety of their respective home studios, then a Stockholm studio complex, The Knife finished the album just as the huge exposure for Heartbeats was introducing the craft and magic of their songwriting to a worldwide audience. Silent Shout is an astounding achievement, intriguing and bewildering,

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rights and the duty of good citizens to pay their taxes. For their last set of pictures they dressed as gymnasts. The Knife don’t do anything by half, and they don’t do anything twice. Compromise is the enemy, repetition a cop-out. Advertising? That’s a tricky one. The Knife wrote Heartbeats, the song covered to achey-breaky affect by fellow Swede José Gonzales in the Sony Bravia ‘bouncing balls’ commercial. Yes, say The Knife, they had to think hard about allowing their music to be used to sell stuff. ‘It’s the first time we’ve said yes to a thing like that,’ says Karin. ‘The only reason we thought it was OK was it wasn’t us performing. It’s not fun to sell music for commercials but it gives you money – to help our label.’Video? Ah, that’s a different matter. The Knife like making videos. They’re an extension of the music Olof and Karin painstakingly construct at home in Stockholm. They’ve made a short film, When I Found The Knife, and last year released it on DVD alongside a collection of their beautiful videos. For their new single, the Massive Attack-on-the-autobahn Silent Shout, they’ve worked again with Andreas Nilsson, director of the video for their original version of Heartbeats and provider of the visuals for that one

live performance (at London’s ICA last February). For the chilling clip for Silent Shout, the title track of The Knife’s new album, Nilsson drew on the work of 1930s German animator Oscar Fischinger, and on Charles Burns’ graphic novel Black Hole. The latter tells the story of a sexuallytransmitted plague raging through teenagers in Seventies Seattle. Which again begs the question, why? ‘We told Andreas we wanted something very dark and surrealist. When he came up with this idea it was perfect. Silent Shout is one of the songs that feels most …’ Karin stops for a think. ‘It’s very near what kind of music we want to do. We have been making music for seven years and with every year you are getting close to what kind of music you really want to do. I think we are pretty close. In that song particularly: because it has all the elements that we like – it’s very sad, but hard and beautiful at the same time. And it’s cold, but it’s warm. A lot of qualities!’ she laughs. The Knife began making Silent Shout, their third album in March 2004. Recordings commenced in an old carbondioxide factory, then moved to the

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vaults beneath The Grand Church in Stockholm’s Old Town. Olof and Karin planned to build a permanent studio underneath the church. But 15th century medieval brickwork and future-sounding art-synth-pop proved incompatible. ‘We had to move because of the poor sonics of the room,’ says Olof. ‘But mainly because it was so old the walls were falling apart so we had brick dust in our lungs.’ Retreating to the health and safety of their respective home studios, then a Stockholm studio complex, The Knife finished the album just as the huge exposure for Heartbeats was introducing the craft and magic of their songwriting to a worldwide audience. Silent Shout is an astounding achievement, intriguing and bewildering, enigmatic and engaging, and never less than

compelling. One Hit is a gothic sea shanty, Still Light an electro/a capella hymn. Neverland is a thumping dancefloor anthem with a punchy lyric (‘I’m dancing for dollars for a fancy man’). The twinkling starscapes of Na Na Na could be the work of a sci-fi Sigur Ros. The ghostly fairy tale atmospheres of From Off To On are utterly hypnotic, while the kinetic menace of Forest Families is frankly frightening. ‘They say we had a communist in the family, I had to wear a mask,’ sings Karin, to hairraising effect. Throughout, her voice is manipulated and transformed every which way, a cacophony of vocal styles evoking the myriad characters peopling these songs: solitary sailors, a hermaphrodite, a sickly person or two, male-bonding groups in crisis, TV addicts, a scared housewife and, The Knife say, ‘a biologically weighty citizen that desperately tries to get to know his body’.Karin says it’s the ‘scared housewife’ who is singing Na Na Na but she’s unwilling – unable even – to provide too much more detail. In contrast to the overt political content of Deep Cuts, for Silent Shout she wanted to do something ‘more under the surface. It may take a little bit more time to see what we say. But I don’t know how to separate art and politics. You make art about what’s in your head. It’s difficult not to think about what’s happening around you. ‘I guess many songs are about looking for something to

spend time, and to fill the body, to avoid loneliness and the physical functions or dysfunctions of the body. It’s one step forward and one step back.’ ‘And the Silent Shout title, it’s like when you dream and really want to scream something, nothing comes out. She’s more forthright on the subject of Marble House. One of the best songs on the album, it begins with the synthesised sound of castanets before evolving into techno-ballad in waltz time.‘We wanted to do something between The Sabres Of Paradise’s Wilmot and the movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. And the lyrics may be performed by somebody who devotes herself to anything, just to have something to fill up her time.’ We Share Our Mother’s Health, as well has having the best title ever, is a burbling electro groove, like Chicks On Speed managed by Malcolm McLaren. Karin views it as a ‘sick’ song, but also a counterweight to the more ‘serious’ Marble House. ‘It’s a very hysterical and mainly a panicked kind of song,’ says Olof, who admits he often has no idea what his sister’s lyrics are about. ‘I can only relate to the harmonics. But the sounds are… like a new rubber material.’ The inventing of new

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sounds was another of the guiding precepts behind Silent Shout. ‘I learnt a new synthesis, the FM synthesis, and we have featured that on every song,’ says Olof, acknowledging that his inner geek is really also his outer-self. ‘You can find that on the Yamaha DX7 and some others. But what I use is software for that – it can make very fragile and sensitive sounds that change during the period that you hear them. I started to use it because Plastikman uses it,’ he adds cheerfully. It’s also a way to make sensitive sounds that are also very cold and physical also – that can feel physically like they go into your body through certain frequencies. That’s good too,’ says Olof with a chuckle. We wait for someone to make the obvious joke about The Knife’s music cutting deep into the listener. But no one does. Silent Shout is more focused than Deep Cuts, and not just because it features 11 tracks where its predecessor had 17. The songs are rich with detail, thoughts and ideas and innovations piled hard on top of each other. It may not make you want to dress up as a crow in the snow. But its jaw-dropping fusion of technology and emotion, circuitry and the soul, melodrama and melody, will leave you gasping.

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SILENT SHOUT / NEVERLAND / THE CAPTAIN / WE SHARE OUR MOTHERS' HEALTH NA NA NA / MARBLE HOUSE / LIKE A PEN / FROM OFF TO ON FOREST FAMILIES / ONE HIT / STILL LIGHT

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Music Covers Are Not Graphic Design, They Communicate Nothing. Peter Saville