eic: james ferraro

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Thanx for listenin';]

Monday, January 28, 2013

EIC's 10Q's w/ Collarbones

"..a (pitch perfect produced) tale of teenage life.."

Collarbones

Aberrant-Adolescent Wi-Fi

Collarbones Bio:

Adelaide's Travis Cook and Sydney's Marcus Whale met on the Internet in 2007. Over the course of several years, and divided by 1150km, they pieced together a sound informed by geographical distance but basking in the warmth of digital proximity: the electronic hum, the LCD glow, the metallic sheen of laptop culture formed the unlikely basis for a sound that embraced its digital origins. This is music made with the Internet as much as music made with drum machines, vocoders and carefully distorted instrumentation. Since the release of Iconography the duo has spent more time (physically) together than usual, supporting and playing with a slew of international and local outfits. Collarbones explored their sound and the dynamics of physical closeness over the past year, supporting Neon Indian and Daedelus and touring with label mates Oscar + Martin as well as Ghoul, Donny Benet and The Paper Scissors. The duo were handpicked to play triple j Unearthed's Parklife slot, the inaugural Sugar Mountain Festival in Melbourne, and FBi's Sydney Sounds Like, all tightly curated affairs. Their live shows and the release of Iconography has seen them nominated for a Sydney Music, Art & Culture (SMAC) Award as well as an AIR Award (Australian Independent Record Labels Association).

Hello, how are you?

Travis: I just ate some imported Cookie Crisp cereal but we were out of milk so that was a disappointment. Life sucks.

Marcus: I just ate some almonds, they're tastier than usual.

What are you currently listening to?

Travis: A lot of Calvin Harris lately, specifically "Thinking About You". The new James Ferraro, the new Rihanna, the new Crystal Castles, the new Scott Walker, the new Mykki Blanco, the new Andy Stott.

Marcus: Pretty inspired by New York queer rap right now - Mykki Blanco and Le1f's mixtapes especially.

Whats with the band name?

Travis: What's with the blog name?

Touche Travis. ;]

Whom or what are your biggest influences when it comes to sculpting your sound?

Travis: Someone's Darude fan site from 2001. Someone's Molly Ringwald fan site from 2002. Someone's Someone's Marissa Cooper fan site from 2003. Someone's Death Cab for Cutie fan site from 2004.

Marcus: Someone's Collarbones fan site from 2016 that looks like it's from 1998.

Care to tell us a little bit about your latest LP 'Die Young', theme, favorite tracks, etc.?

Marcus: We spent a year dredging up teen angst and putting it into songs. It seems more real than our current, drab lives.

Travis: A lot of the album is trying to capture the feeling of being a teenager and everything feeling very amplified, every thing that goes wrong feeling like the end of the world. It's the beginning of a poppier direction for us I would say. "Hypothermia" is probably the track I feel I can relate to the most.

Any plans to tour the US for said release?

Travis: Always. I haven't been since 2010 and Marcus has never been. I for one have a bald eagle draped in an American flag on my mantlepiece.

Got any other projects we should know about?

Travis: Only my life which is an ongoing performance art project. Subscribe to me on YouTube for life coaching.

Marcus: I sometimes like to make R&B with my friends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqXrG7ZZxqw

What movie would work best on mute while listening to you music?

Travis: Heathers. If I was a funny guy I might say A Serbian Film.

Marcus: Mean Girls. A Cinderella Story. Freaky Friday.

You can only keep/listen to ONE album for the rest of your life ..which album would it be?

Travis: I'd run into the forest listening to 'Colour Green' by Sibylle Baier and never return.

Marcus: It's difficult to tell what I might like in the future but I suppose 'Saturday Night Wrist' by Deftones.

Are you living your dream?

Travis: Yes. Never say never. I've realised I'm stubborn when it comes to only ever doing what I want to do.

Marcus: It's been rather lovely to be able to play shows many weeks of the year.

Thanx Tom, Travis & Marcus!

Collarbones are currently playing a few live shows here and there and (hopefully/probably) prepping their next release...

Monday, November 26, 2012

EIC's 10Q's w/ Vinyl Williams

"..blurs the line between beauty, transcendentalism, future thinking distortions, and Space Gaze Jamming.."

Vinyl Williams

Anogogic Space Frequencies

Vinyl Williams ~~Bio~~Interests:

Egyptian Biogeometry, realms of color, Alejandro Jodorowsky, secret worlds, Golden Dawn, unknown unidentifiable inbetween intangible quantum soups, gold spheres, teal, pop music, tropical wands, Robert Ashley, lunar jungles, instinctual intuitive righteous spontaneity, simultaneity, wonders, dream worlds, energetic fabric, seamless wombs, Phil Spektor on shrooms, Robert Ashley, glam altars, irrational pyramids, Alan Watts, pure paradoxical plains, extreme harmony, hypnotism and true magic.

Hello, how are you?

HIYA, I'm funtastic a'zemeny wooooo!!!!!!!

What are you currently listening to?

KWJAZ - because it's futuristic waiting room music, oddly I seem to enjoy this lately…actually lets be more precise, it's just perfect to listen to whilst responding to interviews. James Ferraro's more ambient albums are tropically psycho. He comes up with unbelievably stimulating album/track titles that seem to set a visual more than a sound world - always on the threshold between hypnotic, boring as fuck, and incredibly Los Angeles-style creepy. "Palm Trees and Wifi" and "Dubai Dream Tone" are two amazing track titles from his newish album "Far Side Virtual." Clear is meditative yet abrasive - paradoxical music is where it's at!

Whats with the band name?

Vinyl was a nickname, first given by a fellow promoter at The Kollective agency in Salt Lake City, UT - I used to design flyers and book local bands. It's actually how I started collaging, doing flyers for touring & local shows around Utah.

When did this project come about?
Vinyl Williams with its current members is a little over a year old. Ian Gibbs (current guitarist) had been listening to my music for years and years, ever since my first demos before Vinyl Williams existed. I finally ended up jamming with Ian after running into him and long time friend Nikita Arefkia (current keyboardist) at last year's FYF fest in LA. Just after one rehearsal with Ian I realized he knew every song I had ever written on every instrument... he actually knows how to perform my music better than I do. Evidently he was a perfect foundation to this new reanimation of the band. I met the rhythm section (James Lake and Billy Winger) around the same time at CalArts, after which the band was fully complete.
The whole project is about 4 years old. It took until 2010 to find the right turquoise vibes, but from then on I began releasing free albums and making short EPs. Even before then from 2008-2009 Vinyl Williams toured 3 times around the US, we toured every state west of Tennessee. We did it totally independently and were able to break even.

Care to tell us a little bit about 'Lemniscate', themes/personal favorite track(s)?
It was my first attempt at a chronological journey where I aimed at transporting listeners. It's not a conceptual album, it's open enough that individuals provide their own unique concepts and associations to the arbitrary themes that occur throughout the album. The lyrics were written fluidly, as poems before they were plugged into songs. This may be the cause of the sporadic-style melodies that occur throughout the album, as a result of syncing melody to pre-made poems. Parallel to stream of conscious writing, the words of separate songs end up linking together non-deliberately, in a pattern that traverses a semblance of worldly things seen by unworldly eyes.
I think "Open Your Mind" is my favorite, not sure why. Maybe because of the ambient pad that takes up the second half of the track slowly falls down in pitch over the course of about 3 minutes, until the end where it reaches a half step difference. There are moments where harmonics jump out randomly, like spikes. I like stepping outside of equal temperament tuning, this is the only track on Lemniscate that does so.

Any plans to tour internationally for said release?
Early next year is looking likely for a UK/EU tour. This December was a possibility for a show in Paris and a few extra surrounding shows...truthfully I want to spend December driving from Los Angeles 1,000 miles south to the temple of Tacal in Guatamala. It's a hard choice to make between a free European vacation performing dreamy pop music or a spontaneous & equally dangerous Guatemalan expedition into the unknown.

Got any other projects we should know about?
Salonislam is a new music portal I've just begun, which will release music from other band members in Vinyl Williams as well as associated partners who also space cruze. Projects include Dream Trees (Ian's band that sounds exactly like the name) Fynndlit (James's noise project) Hidden Music (noisy disco improvisations with several guest musicians) Bijou (Billy's dreamy electronica) Koala Temple (satirical teal pop) and more! Also, I'm planning a video exhibition to open at different locations throughout LA at the same time. A massive show with 10+ video works projected at the same time on the same wall. It will be like a never-ending video jam. I also really want to perform what Sean Patrick Maylone (promoter in S. Korea) talked about while we were in Korea on tour, which would be to have two really greasy gross looking construction cranes arm wrestle to the death. Masculinity!

What movie would work best on mute while listening to your music?

Maybe 'Enter The Void', because the dialogue is dumber than an ice salesman, but the visuals are spectacular. And it's quite blissful, purplish-red and teal and gold. Another candidate would be 'The Color Of Pomegranates'... as well as this Polish masterpiece 'On The Silver Globe'.

You can only keep/listen to ONE album for the rest of your life ..which album would it be?
'High Noon' by Afternoon Penis.

Are you living your dream?

Until I'm able to levitate I'm about as close as I can get.

Thanx Daniel + Lionel!

Vinyl Williams recently released an awesome album I recommend you check into, also he's touring the West Coast ..if you happen to be in that area...

Monday, December 19, 2011

EIC'S10Q'S w/ La Big Vic

"..rebirth from a tiny alienistic egg into something completely/conceptually beautiful.."

(Photo credit: Weird Magic)

La Big Vic
Psychotomimetic Venerable Dream

La Big Vic Bio:
Actually from Brooklyn’s La Big Vic. LBV’s lead guitarist, Toshio Masuda, performed in a major label J-Pop boy band in his youth in Japan. He produced hip hop songs, commercials, and soundtracks before coming to America to become an inspirational R&B musician. Peter Pearson, the group’s synthesist, is an apprentice to Pink Floyd’s live sound producer Jeff Blenkinsopp at Expert Audio Repairs & Servicing (EARS) Inc. One of Jeff’s last interns was Gavin Russom. La Big Vic’s lead singer and violinist is Emilie Friedland, founder of Visitation Rites. She inspired us to start chatting with people about music. La Big Vic is a kosmische, trip-hop, genre buster. Actually is hook rich, atmospheric, and full of lurking positivity.

Hello, how are you?
Pretty tired.

That's a shame, may I ask why?
Well, I am in grad school for journalism right now and I also run two music blogs-- Altered Zones and Visitation Rites. If you add recording and playing shows to the mix, it's quite a full plate. I think Toshio and Peter are pretty exhausted as well. Toshio does production work for J-Pop labels in Japan, and Peter is working as a synthesizer repairman at this place called Expert Audio Repairs and Service in Manhattan. Both of them work other day jobs on top of that, and have various musical side projects as well.

What are you listening to these days?
As a band, I'd say that in addition to all the usual Psych and Kosmische and Kraut and Prog reference points, we've been on a heavy, early aughts electronic music binge. Lots of Air, Daft Punk, Gorillaz, Massive Attack, UNKLE, Aphex Twin. Portishead. Cibo Matto too. That warm, resonant, crystalline production sound was painfully out of fashion for a while in indie music, but I'm glad that it seems to be making comeback these days. There's something much more earnest and brave and hopeful and naive about putting yourself out there in high resolution. On a technological level, there is all these free or low-cost digital tools available now for making music that sounds clear and direct. It's sort of a lie to say that you "were so poor that you had to record on a shitty four-track" these days; should you choose to do so, you should be doing so for because that production sound is part of the message your music is trying to get across. James Ferraro's new record, "Far Side Virtual", takes this argument to an extreme. Last time he played in New York, at the Neon Marshmallow fest, he had a laptop on stage beside him. He didn't even use it; it was just a kind of tongue-in-cheek "endorsement" of the idea of making music on a computer.

What's the story with the band name?
Well, the story we always tell is that we named it after a mutual friend named Victor, who happens to be very tall. The "La" was sort of a jokey reference to the '80s Krautrock band La Dusseldorf, which is one of our faves. At this point, I just like the fact that it has three syllables.

How did the idea for this project come up/start?
Toshio and I met when he was playing keys in another Brooklyn band called Behavior, and I was sort of guesting in it as a violinist. At a certain point I found out that my services were no longer really in demand there, so Toshio and I started jamming on the side-- just live keys and violin for the most part. This was in Fall of 2009. In early 2010, Peter came on board as our keyboard player, and Toshio switched began playing guitar and taking on more of a producer's role. Peter is Toshio's upstairs neighbor, and we do all jamming and recording in this massive industrial loft building where they live. It's one of the only artist buildings in a heavily Hasidic section of Williamsburg. Our sound sort of came together as a product of our instruments (synths, guitar, and violin) and shared musical obsessions. I wouldn't say that we started out with a concrete mission statement or anything.

Whom introduced you to Underwater Peoples?
Probably Matt Mondanile of Ducktails/Real Estate. He's an old college bud of mine who happens to be from North Jersey, where most of the UP's are from. I actually did a show on Newtown Radio with Ari Stern, one of the four founders, before La Big Vic signed on for a record. It was called "Underwater Visitations," and you can listen to the archives on the Underwater Peoples Website.. At the end of the day, the NYC scene is so small that we probably would have linked up anyway; it seems that like-minded people always do.

Has the idea of working with any other artists from Underwater Peoples come up?
We've jammed on stage with members of the greater UP family. Julian Lynch played Clarinet on our track "Chinese Wedding" once or twice, and Evan Brody-- one of the label founders and the frontman of Family Portrait/Wet Dream has thrown down on guitar for us. I also laid down some from violin and vocals on the first Family Portrait LP. But no, we haven't really thought of doing anything more extensive as of yet.

EIC: I'm in love with the latest Julian album, definitely one of this year's best! I would love to hear you guys put out an album together!!!;)

If you could score any movie real or fake, which would you choose and why?
I don't know. I'd say a year ago, when we were tracking the first album, it would have been a feature-length advertisement for Euro Disney, or a soundtrack for an airline's in-flight entertainment system. Now that we're working on the new album, which is much darker and more dystopian, I would say some sci-fi noir movie with lots of crazy urban architecture in it, like Alex Proyas' Dark City, or a Batman cartoon, or even a Little Nemo type tale. I'm very interested in Gothic skyscrapers of the 1920s and how they come off as cathedrals to the church of capitalism. There's something very rich in the contrast between that celebration of infinite prosperity and this dark underbelly of corruption that often accompanies representations of it in the popular imaginary, like some bad guy lurking around the corner or down the next manhole.

Speaking of manholes, you're stuck underground for the rest of your life..

You can only keep/listen to ONE album ..which album would it be?
Personally, maybe a box set of every Les Rallizes Dénudés live recording ever captured. But that's sort of my least favorite kind of question.

Are you living your dream?
To the extent that I love doing about 90 percent of the things I have to attend to on any given day, and couldn't bear to part with any one of the hats I wear, yes, I guess I am. That doesn't mean that surviving in one of the most expensive cities in the world while living that dream, and trying to make time for the people you love, isn't pretty challenging sometimes. I'm still in my twenties though, so I guess I haven't hit the age when those difficulties become disqualifying ones. So far so good.

Thanx Emilie!

La Big Vic are currently working on a companion "Dub" remix EP ("Dub The World 12") which should see the light of day around February 2012..