Band of the Week

Benoit Pioulard

Thomas Meluch is fascinated by many different things, Polaroid pictures, nature, but most importantly he is fascinated by sound. From an earlier age he has been recording the sounds around him and the sounds that he has been able to create himself. His first appearance on a label was in 2004, at the age of 20, on a hometown label called Moodgadget. This also marked the first official appearance of the name Benoit Pioulard. After the release of his first ep Enge, Meluch signed with Chicago's Kranky Records. Releasing two albums and two eps in the next three years, he has continued to experiment with the way pop music sounds.

What makes the music of Benoit Pioulard so interesting are the various layers of field recordings and altered sounds, but what keeps your head moving are the solid pop melodies that lay just below the surface. There is a mystery and a distance in the sound that draws the listen in deeper. He makes you want to dig deeper and investigate the source of this complexity. So, I went straight to the source and asked Thomas a few questions.

Orange Alert (OA): Your latest release, Lee, was recorded just a few months after the passing of Lee Hazelwood. How did you choose “Sundown, Sundown” and did you consider finding someone to sing Nancy Sinatra's part?
Benoit Pioulard (BP): I’d had the notion in my mind for a while to cover a Lee Hazlewood song, and very shortly after he passed I put on the Nancy & Lee record; “Sundown, Sundown” asserted itself into my consciousness for the next several days and I found myself humming its melodies while the vocals rang through my head. To me the lyrics work on two levels – he’s either lamenting a nicknamed lost love or finding comfort in the beauty of things outside the interpersonal, both of which I have done. I didn’t want to replicate the amazing, epic arrangement of the original, however… I thought it best to be a little more interpretive while attempting to convey the same kind of ‘eyes to the horizon’ feel of the song. It did cross my mind to perhaps find a female voice for Nancy’s part, but I figured Trish Keenan would have said no.

OA: Lee was released on black and white vinyl. Do you feel your sound lends itself more to vinyl then say mp3 or cd?
BP: Certainly I have a fondness – even a preference – for analog, so it’s a great thrill to hear my little homemade things coming off of a record. Also I think a certain amount of demand for a vinyl version of the Précis album is what led to Kranky’s decision to release it (and Temper) that way, so it’s great to know people have that same affinity.

OA: Speaking of your sound, it walks a line between lo-fi and jangle pop. I have always wondered what your recording process is like?
BP: Some parts – namely guitar and vocals, usually bass as well – are done in a fairly regimented fashion after lots of rehearsal. But upon beginning to record something I really only have that skeleton in place, so the rest of any given song will arise during the few days that I’m making it, rolling around ideas in my head and so on. The instrumental pieces vary widely in their level of planning; some are assembled from a cache of field recordings and noises I find appealing, while others (“Sweep Generator”, for example) are mostly constructed in my head beforehand. I do my best not to fall into patterns that might yield boredom…this is a selfish project after all.

OA: Both Temper, your latest full-length album and Precis were released on Kranky Records, one of the most under rated label in Chicago. What has your experience been like with Kranky?
BP: From what I understand about the workings of most other labels, I couldn’t be happier to be on Kranky – Joel is the definition of no-nonsense and will never mince words, nor does he make anything even resembling a false promise. There are loads of good reasons the label’s been around for 15 years while so many others come and go. And what still stuns me is that I’ve actually managed to make a few dollars from the albums, which I thought at my scale was unlikely at best.

OA: Your framed Polaroid shot box sets are a great idea. Where did the idea come from and do you feel that fans are more likely to buy this box then the individual albums?
BP: I’ve been utterly fascinated by Polaroid since the first time I saw a shot slide from the gate of my grandpa’s old warhorse camera. Oddly I didn’t get one of my own until I was a teenager, but by the time I found what you might call a ‘voice’ in my recordings, it seemed natural to include some of my shots alongside the music since I’m such a visual person… At a certain point I had a few people asking whether any of the shots were for sale and realized there could actually be a niche market for them. I love the process of selling and sending things directly to people – to me the personal connection is invaluable, hence the handmade album versions etc. With the inconceivable amount of music floating around in the world, I take it as a huge compliment when someone gives any attention at all to mine.

OA: What next for Benoit Pioulard?
BP: I’m looking at a possible springtime tour with Windy & Carl, though there are no details to speak of yet. Around that time I’ve also got a new 7” with a couple of longish songs coming about on Blue Flea Recordings. I’m pretty happy about that one, actually.

"Ragged Tint" from Temper



Bonus Questions:
OA: If you could sit down to coffee with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be?
BP: Werner Herzog.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
BP: If by ‘great’ you mean ‘classic’, then probably Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee. If you just mean ‘awesome’, then it’s Psychogeography by Will Self.

Listen to: Sundown, Sundown (mp3) from Lee, Brown Bess (mp3) from Temper, and Triggering Back (mp3) from Precis

For more information on Benoit Pioulard please visit his website.

Band of the Week

The Loyal Divide

As a band begins to carve out a sound, play local shows, and release material, the priority is to gain exposure. It seems that the current trend is to allow buzz to take precedent over sales in hopes the sales will follow. In theory it is a sound plan even if the sales come from the next album or the album after that. The fact is that with a market is not only flooded, but dominated by a select few major labels it is increasingly difficult to sell cds. Why not allow fans to listen to you album first? If they enjoy it they may just buy or at least tell a friend, attend a concert, or buy a shirt. The songs themselves are no longer what is most valuable to a band, but merely a tool that can be utilized to gain a broader audience.

Chicago's Loyal Divide recently released a new ep that was over a year in the making. To build an audience, and to give fans an idea of their current direction they posted all of the tracks on their website for fans to listen to. They made it visually appealing, and hopefully left people wanting more. They also team up with the acclaimed RCRD LBL site to allow all of four of the tracks to be stream on their site as well. Labrador is an incredibly dense and danceable ep filled with electronic pop gems, but the question is how many people would have heard it without these steps being made? Loyal Divide is an example of what we can expect to hear coming from Chicago this year, not only sonically, but also creatively.

Recently, The Loyal Divide was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): I recently read a feature story about you guys from 2007 and they
described your sound as Modest Mouse meet The Cure. It seems like a lot has changed in two years, including your address. How has your sound evolved over the last couple years?
Loyal Divide (LD): I think our sound has changed because of widened musical interests.
In retrospect it makes sense that our old songs sounded like Modest Mouse and The Cure because that's the kind of music we grew up with and internalized. Since our move to Chicago, I suspect that we've drifted towards dance music because it provides a convenient soundtrack for public transportation. It's music that you don't have to emotionally commit to. Even though I enjoy their music, I think it would be exhausting to listen to the Arcade Fire, or bands like that,
every time I put my headphones on and stepped on the El. Dance and ambient allow me to zone out, which is a nice option to have. Luomo's Vocal City, and more recently Thomas Fehlmann's Visions of Blah, have been circulating through the band, and I think that Vocal City especially has had a notable impact on our sound. It's a beautiful sounding album, and has taken my focus away from song structures and trained it on sound construction and layering. Hopefully that priority shift helps, rather then hurts, our future songs. Apart from musical influences, I think that the purchase of a sampler has helped to develop our sound. We use a Roland SP-555, which has a lot of cool filters. There actually aren't that many samples on the EP, but it's easy to take an original sound source and degrade the quality to make it sound like a sample.

OA: Your new ep, Labrador, is a great example of serious electro-pop. How long did you guys work on this ep and how did you decide to allow it to be streamed for free on your website and on RCRD LBL?
LD: It took a long time to release this EP, about a year and a half. In all fairness, though, we wrote enough material during that time for an entire album, so if all goes according to plan, we should be releasing a new EP every four or five months with those songs; it's just a
question of developing certain sections and tweaking details. As far as streaming the EP for free on RCRD LBL, that was an easy decision. I think that it's foolish to be too protective of your
music at this point in the game. We need exposure much more than we need money (even though we need that too). So it's really a no brainer to give people free access to our songs.

OA: I really like the design of ep, who designed it and how important is the look of the ep to the overall image of the band?
LD: I think that artwork, and especially cover design, is hugely important. It associates certain colors with the album's songs, which I think partly informs the listener's experience. I suppose a great example would be Loveless. Every time I listen to that album, I see red and pink, which for some reason enhances the tripped out sexiness of the music. I wanted something that looked slick and vibrant, so I spent a long time with my friend, Dave Kowalski, getting the spacing and hues just right; I think that a poorly thought out cover will work against a band trying to get their music heard, especially at this point of anonymity.

OA: You have played many of the venues in Chicago's and I'm not going to ask you to pick your favorite. However, do you feel that there is enough opportunity for a young band to find a stage in the city?
LD: We've never had trouble finding a gig in Chicago, and I think that's true for most bands trying to play out. If you have friends who will come see you and buy drinks, then you have many venue options. We're lucky enough to have a great and very devoted base of friends and fans who will come out to see us, even if it's 20 below, so we've been fortunate in that department.

OA: What your thoughts on the Chicago scene in general?
LD: I'm not really sure what to make of it, because we don't know many bands. My cousin's in Mass Shivers, and I like them a lot, but apart from that we don't know anyone. I'm not sure if that's a comment on the Chicago scene or a comment on how we've isolated ourselves. None of us live very close to Logan Square or Wicker Park, which is where I think any kind of scene might be happening. There's definitely a wealth of talent here, and it's curious to me that more bands don't get national attention. In any case, we've been going to a lot of local shows recently and trying to meet other bands, because when it comes down to it, we want to belong to a creative community that inspires us and fosters us. I suspect it's out there, we just have to
be proactive about finding it.

OA: What's next for Loyal Divide?
LD: We have a new EP coming out within the next four or five months. We are hoping to get picked up by a label, so we are going to devote some energy towards that, along with playing shows and trying to get the word out. I suppose the immediate goal is to quit our day jobs.

Bonus Questions:
OA: If you could sit down to coffee with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be?
LD: Brian Eno; I think that he'd be up for a good conversation about music, which, when it comes down to it, it just about the only thing I'm interested in having a good conversation about.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
LD: 'I Am Legend' by Robert Matheson. It interests me when a writer or filmmaker takes what's considered a unsophisticated genre and makes something artful out of it. I Am Legend is a novella about vampires, but it's really an engaging and wonderful book. Along with that, I
really enjoyed Chris Ware's 'Jimmy Corrigan...The Smartest Kid on Earth,' which is a graphic novel that takes place in Chicago.

Labrador Ep

Young Blades/Labrador/Lover I Can Tell You/Vision Vision

For more information on The Loyal Divide please visit their website.

Band of the Week

The Mystery Books

"I closed my eyes and then I opened them, took four sleeping pills and closed them again."

The reason I never ask musicians why they do what do is because the answer is always the same, "Because I have to." I suppose a better question would be, what would you do if you weren't making music? How will you fill your days, or release all that confuses and scares you?
For the man behind The Mystery Books, Riley Fink, it is clearly about the thrill of the project. A few weeks ago I received his album Russia in the mail and what first caught my eye was that Riley has sent me a package and not just his CD. Inside were hand written notes (on orange paper), two cds, and poetry. It was an experience, and the album was a joy to listen to. Riley is a great story teller, and uses quiet acoustic instrumentation to tell his stories.

Recently, Riley was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): You have a released an album called Russia. What can you tell us about this album?
Riley Fink (RF): I can tell you that it has nothing to do with Russia. I put it in quotation marks so that people focus on the word instead of the place. It is not a "concept" album about a country in Europe. It is about what I think of when I think of Russia. I think of a place really far away, that is very isolated and cold and extreme and at the time when I wrote these set of songs I felt isolated and cold and extreme. I felt like "Russia". The music is an acoustic guitar, an upright and electric bass, and an old organ from the 60's. The bass is bowed alot and the organ just comes in every once in awhile.

OA: You are handing out free copies, and also have it available for free download through cllct.com. How did you discover cllct.com, and how did you decide to give away your album for free?
RF: Someone showed me the website cllct.com one day and I thought it was good. I like for people to hear or see things that I do. I don't really know what else to do with my time. If I am promoting something then I have something to do, otherwise I get into habits of sleeping for an entire day or just laying around and feeling bad. That is why I do things that I do. So that I have something to do. I wish that everyone would have things that they created with them all of the time. It would be interesting to hear every one's voices and thoughts. That is the only thing I am interested in with people, I think. It is also fun to give people things. I like giving my cd's to waiters that I have in restaurants or just put it in someones bike basket on the street. I also like to hide them in books at the St. Marks bookstore in New York and at the University of Florida library in Gainesville, Florida.

OA: On Russia you have a song called That Night With the Green Sky that was first a poem by Tao Lin. You are also working on turning a poem by Andy Riverbed into a song. Do you see a connection between poetry and music?
RF: I think that poetry is just a basic format for communicating. It seems like it is like looking into someones mind and seeing something the way that they see it. And when I write lyrics it is almost the same for me as writing a poem. Poems are easier because you can phase things the right way without having to shorten or condense them for the sake of a melody. But I think that it is all basically the same thing. The final result is that you get to pretend like you are someone else for awhile and hopefully they feel better than you do.

OA: Do a lot of your songs begin as poems? What is your song writing process like?
RF: I think that my writing style for songs is that I try to be really vague when I describe my thoughts or feelings and when I write poems it is less vague and more straight forward. It is more of a story I think with poems. My writing process is different for both. With songs I sit down with a guitar and write the lyrics and music at the same time. And with poems I like to sit and stare at a computer and type things and then be distracted for awhile with email or youtube and then write more.

OA: Your lyrics, much like the poems or Tao Lin and Andy Riverbed and many other young poets, seem to center around the idea of boredom. Do you feel that is an accurate assessment?
RF: Yes. We are the "Bored Generation". We are very bored all of the time for some reason. It is a strange thing.

OA: What's next for The Mystery Books?
RF: I am writing songs for an album called "sleep forever". I wrote the title of the album before I wrote any of the songs. I think that most of the songs will be about over sleeping and dreams and sleeping pills. Maybe it will be dedicated to sleeping pills. I think that would be funny.
Maybe we will do that and then maybe we will stop playing. We will just be sleeping all of the time. Maybe we will play more in our dreams. Maybe you will be there in your dream.



Bonus Questions:
OA: If you could sit down to coffee with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be?
RF: I would want to sit down with the Old Dirty Bastard. No. I would want to be walking quickly with the ODB on the side of a country road with no sidewalk. We would be saying things so fast and not even looking at each other. Just at the ground ahead of us. I would like that alot.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
RF: I read "Honored Guest" by Joy Williams recently. Tao Lin sent it to me in the mail. I read most of it in a park in Florida by my house. I felt like things inside of me were moving around all weird when I was reading that book. It felt good.

For more information on The Mystery Books you should check out their myspace page.

Band of the Week

Joe Frawley


Growing up in the '80's, when I hear the word sample I think hip hop. I picture a deejay cutting and chopping up portions of old funk records and laying down a solid beat. Or perhaps he throws in a phrase here or there, like "pump up the volume" or "fresh" and so on. So when I discovered a sampled based musician from Connecticut named Joe Frawley I was pleasantly surprised to hear subtle piano tones coating chopped and repeated audio samples. To a writer it is not a foreign concept to feel that there is rhythm and music and pattens contained in the spoken word. Most musicians prefer to utilize words that have been sung, but when sampled the spoken word can have a more mysterious and luring tone and texture. Last summer, Joe released his first full-length album, A Book of Dreams on his own label. On the album he defines the line between music and sound art while creating a world as beautiful as it is frightening.

His latest release, Ritual Research, was released last month for free through the on-line label Clinical Archives. It follows a daydreaming graduate student who slips obliquely into a subconscious underworld of shifting identities. The listener moves through the dreams as if on a cloud moving with each piano note. It is a fascinating collection that has been downloaded over 22,000 times in the last month, and for good reason.

Recently, Joe was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): Let's start with the idea of sampling. I have interviewed a few other sample based artists, and they basically operate on faith. As Jon Nelson of Escape Mechanism put it, "faith that our country's legal system would choose to defend the creative act, over the micro management of every single sound byte ever recorded". Where do you find the majority of your samples and do you ever feel the need to get clearance to use them?
Joe Frawley (JF): To answer the first part, my samples come directly from my listening experience. I am kind of an audio junkie, equal parts music and spoken word. Public radio interviews, even some dialog from films go in. Certain phrases, whether musical or spoken, will just resonate with me and I’ll have to rip them. Most interesting for me is when I can recombine them with other sounds to create an entirely new context. The old man’s voice in “The Hypnotist” is from a VHS tape of Leonard Bernstein rehearsing “Le Sacre du Printemps”. Sometimes the original source is something kind of weak, or not very evocative in its original context. For example, I have ripped dozens of audio samples from a DVD of Charlotte Church live in Wales, including between-song banter. I rip a lot of audio from public radio interviews. An interview with A.S. Byatt features strongly on my composition, “Tangerine”. I also have a pretty good field recorder, and some of Ritual Research is based on a surreptitiously recorded conversation I had with an individual. As far as legal clearance goes, I have a few thoughts on this: 1. The work would never get made if I did everything legally. 2. In this country, lawsuits aren’t based on principle, they are based on money- of which I make none. (That’s not to say I don’t sell records, but I just about break even). 3. My samples are intentionally obscure, which greatly lessens any economic damage. Negativland sampled U2, I think, to be intentionally provocative. My samples are meant to slip through your fingers, so to speak. One last point, being a musician I do take care to give credit to the musical appropriations from other composers.

OA: Speaking of Jon Nelson, I first heard your music on his program Some Assembly Required. How do you handle promotion of your music, and do you feel there is an adequate forum for your brand of classical/electronic music?
JF: I have my own label, Joe Frawley Music, and promotion is hard work, almost equal to the creative process. My work intentionally hovers in the cracks between music and sound art. It fits in between several different genres, which makes audience targeting a challenge. I have the most success with outlets that attract fans of experimental, ambient and post-rock music. I’m hoping the future will bring about a genre where my work will be at home, maybe called “Mind Music” or “Dream Soundtracks” or something like that.

OA: There are two distinct elements at play in your music, the classical nature of your piano play and the electronic and complex nature of your sampled speech and field recordings. How is a song typically built? Do you create a melody on the piano and build upon it or do you find a spoken phrase or vintage recording and create a soundtrack for it or does it all just come together at once?
JF: I usually have an archive of piano recordings, which might be stuff I composed, or improvisations. I usually treat these recordings the same way I do the other sound samples I collect. I might use a loop of a piano phrase and combine it with some voice or sound effect and see if it evokes any feeling. The process is remarkably similar to painting, or the way I imagine painting would be since I don’t paint. You can actually hear the audio equivalent of underpainting or palimpsest, where ideas that didn’t take were faded to the background, while a stronger idea was “painted” on top of it later. Some pieces are clearly based around a piano recording, like “The City (Map 2)”, while in others, the samples are more prominent. I try to think like a composer and avoid ear fatigue with any one tone or texture. Regarding structure, I don’t usually plan things out. I’ve read there are two different types of authors, those who outline the plot first, and those who discover the story as they write it. I would fall artistically in the camp of the latter, when working with sound collage.

OA: Your latest release, "Ritual Research", was released last month for free through Clinical Archives. How was this decision made to give this beautifully intense ep away for free?
JF: Thanks for the kind words. My friend Alex who curates that net label invited me to submit a release just as I was finishing Ritual Research. At first I said ‘no, thank you’, because I really dislike how my music sounds on MP3s. It’s just not the best presentation for my work. Then I realized his releases get upwards of 20,000 downloads, which is probably more listeners then all my previous CDs combined. I am also still selling “A Book of Dreams” which has only been out for 6 months, so I began to think of the net-label release as a promotional tool for my back catalog. We’ll see if it works. This is a strange time for music making. I’d love to see vinyl become king again, but it not going to happen. I don’t complain though, because if this were 15 years ago, I’d just be some weird guy making sounds in his basement and no one would ever hear it. So you take the good with the bad.




OA: I have really enjoyed the added element of video to a few of your songs, it really helps to visualize the intended or indirect or statement of the piece. Do you see video playing a larger role in your future projects? What motivated you to get into video collage?
JF: My first video was basically a slide show of some of my original photography- photographs of some artwork I had made, mixed with pictures of my wife, Michelle- set to the audio piece “Wilhelmina’s Dream”. I did it to feature my visual art, but then got intrigued by the idea of treating video clips the same way I treat audio: looping, processing, mixing to create new meanings out of pre-existing images. I’m currently experimenting with some new video ideas. My music is intended to evoke visual/mental imagery, so I feel a little uncomfortable imposing video images on my audio pieces. I hope to find a balance. The thing I like about video is that I have no idea what I’m doing. At least with sound collage, I had a music background. Video is terra incognita, which is exciting.

OA: What's next for Joe Frawley?
JF: I am really interested in pursuing collaborations with other artists, and not necessarily those who sound like me or share my aesthetic. I hope to continue exploring new directions within the same style and to avoid repeating myself. Increasing family and professional demands are making it more and more difficult to find space to create; but with luck, in a year I will have another 30 minutes of new music. That’s about the going rate.

Bonus Questions:
OA: Coffee? If yes, where can you find the best cup in your area?
JF: Tea. My house. Da Hong Pao (oolong). Order from Harney & Sons.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
JF: Repetition by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Not for everyone.

For more information on Joe Frawley please visit his website.

Band of the Week

Drew Danburry

There has been a reoccuring word surrounding my interactions with musicians lately, and that word is faith. It all starts with faith in your own abilities, and that then has to translate into faith that others will take interest in and enjoy your sound. Now you have confidence and a fanbase, but the final act of faith lies in turning over your songs to a record label and a promotion team. Each step of the processing of making an album requires the musician to trust that he or she has made the right decisions in writing, recordings and especially in who they have aligned themselves with.

On his latest release Drew Danburry has finally given control to a record label. For the last five years Drew has released all of his albums independantly, but he recently signed to Emergency Umbrella Records. There is justicifaction for being both signed and unsigned, and the transition between the two can be challenging. Luckily for Drew he has found a great label, and the resulting album This Could Mean Trouble, You Don't Speak for the Club sounds great. He has finally found a quality label that has faith in him, and his career and life has never looked brighter.

Recently, Drew was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): Your latest release, This Could Mean Trouble, You Don't Speak for the Club was released in November on Umbrella Records, what can you tell us about this album?
Drew Danburry (DD): It is a good album. I'd be surprised if people don't it enjoy on many levels. I'm really happy with the result and really proud of it in terms or art, craft and diligent labor.

OA: Having self-released your albums leading up to this release, how has your experience with This Could Mean Trouble been different?
DD: It's been really hard relinquishing control of everything. It's been hard not to do everything myself and have it be hands on, it has been hard to just put my faith in others. That's just been a "me" issue though. The label is wonderful and everyone I'm working with is working as hard as I am to make it be a successful release. The fact that strangers have so much faith in what I'm doing really reflects a lot on the value of the release and my art to me. I'm a lucky guy. I've been very blessed in my life.

OA: You have spent a lot of time on the road. What can people expect to see at your shows? Do you book your own tours? If so, is touring becoming more difficult and less financially feasible?
DD: Yes I have. I never know what a show is going to be like. To be honest, I'm not too emotionally stable, so depending on the atmosphere and how I'm feeling, that's what they get. I've had meltdowns less than I've had amazing awesome performances with the audience feeding into a fiery energy that gets the whole crowd moving and stomping and shouting and yelling for the pure joy of life. But for someone to expect that always would be frustrating to my humanity.

At this point I book my own tours but I've been searching for an agent and/or to tour with people who I love/like and/or have an agent that will book the tour and slot me in as support. In short, I'm pretty jaded on DIY touring right now. I can't make ends meet doing it and I've had so much bad luck accompanied with dishonest people that I just don't want to deal with it at all. I've had PLENTY of wonderful people who've been kind and supportive and absolutely wonderful to me. But the bad luck has just outweighed everyone's kindness so heavily I can't keep up. And I'm a pretty positive guy....anyone who knows me, knows this is true, so for me to say this is not just a wimpy confession. I've been through a lot of shit trying to pay my dues which make for great memories but nowadays with a wife in stow and more debt than ever I just can't carry it all anymore.

OA: Speaking of touring, you have a series of shows coming up with one of my favorite performers, Emperor X. Have you ever played with Chad before? What do you think about his stage show?
DD: I've never met him nor seen him. But I'm excited to. We have a mutual friend in Ryland Bouchard (The Robot Ate Me) and I'm rather fond of Ryland as an individual. He's been a great friend throughout the years.

OA: The products that your wife makes are really interesting. How long has she been selling these items, and have your fans been supportive?
DD: She's been making these things for years and years....but she's only been my wife for five months so we're trying to get the word out on what she's doing as best as we can. It was near embarrassing on tour because she sold everything she had in two weeks and I just sat next to her and wished I was selling half as much...ha ha...I guess there isn't much to say, she wins. She makes a product people want more, especially my fans. We're definitely working to make what she's doing take as much if not more precedence to what I'm doing.

OA: What's next for Drew Danburry?
DD: I'm doing whatever I possibly can to record the next album amidst juggling two jobs and organizing whatever touring I can afford and muster come 2009 without neglecting my bills, my wife and everything else. It's actually quite a feat surviving the way things are going right now. We're barely avoiding going negative in our bank account with every check to check that comes in. It makes life interesting and fun.




Bonus Questions:
OA: If you could sit down to coffee with anyone (alive or dead) who would it be?
DD: Joseph Smith! Get it? Ha!

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
DD: The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. I just finished it this last weekend. It was wonderful, I am officially converting into fanship of his writing and excited to look for more books he's written.

Listen to: I'm Pretty Sure (mp3)

For more information on Drew Danburry please visit his website.

Band of the Week

Skew


The sounds you record while hidden away in your bedroom or deep in the basement are always recorded with an audience in mind, but you never know if your recordings will see the light of day. As you see live footage of Skew's studio or of his live performances it is clear that his sound is the result of personal experimentation. He combines live distorted guitar with an MPC2000, and the results are incredibly complex, danceable and surprisingly organic.


Skew is a NYC musician, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, he enlisted the help of fellow New York producer Shakeyface to help created his self-titled debut album. The results were released on Shakeyface's label It's Bananas Label on November 11th, and has been receiving very positive press.

Recently Skew was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): I really enjoyed your debut album, but I have seen a review or two that have not been as positive. Do you read the reviews, and do they every affect the way you look at your album?
Skew: Well the cool answer would be to say that I don't read reviews. The honest answer is I read pretty much everything written. I try to not let it affect me too much but when you're a solo act and you don't have a band who all believe in the record, a less than favorable review can create momentary but crushing waves of self doubt.

OA: They album was released on It's Bananas Music. What has it been like working with Shakeyface and It's Bananas?
Skew: It's been great. Shakeyface (Doug) is a long time friend so it makes the whole process a lot more fun. Also he's a great producer so it helped to have someone who's opinion you trusted particularly when it came to choosing what tracks would end up on the record.




OA: The video for Stadiums Are Ok Too is great. How did you get involved with Stephen Key and how much input did you have on what he created?
Skew: I really wanted a video for that song but didn't know anybody who was up for the task. So, my girlfriend placed an ad on craigslist and we got a fair amount of responses. After looking at samples of their work I knew he was going to be the perfect choice. His work has a certain whimsical quality that I thought would fit the song well. When it came to him doing the video I gave him zero input. More or less just told him do your thing.

OA: I watched the brief clip of your studio and all of that vinyl on your shelves. What is your songwriting process like? How much of your music is sample based and how much is live instrumentation?
Skew: I used to do a lot of sampled based work. In regard to this record I didn't use any samples. I recorded with an MPC2000, a Mikrokorg, Guitar and some effect pedals.

OA: You also record as I LOVE MY MPC 2000 BUT I'VE CHOSEN PROG METAL, what is the difference between the two projects? When you record or think of a melody how do you know which project it should belong to?
Skew: ILMMPC2000 was initially started to be a dark, experimental project. Something that was and is supposed to be a bit self indulgent in terms of doing lots of edits and time signature changes etc.. With Skew I always want to keep it somewhat grounded in pop music in the broad sense.

OA: Instrumental and electronic music seems to be gaining in popularity. What are your thoughts on the current state of electronic music?
Skew: My listening habits tends to shift a lot. The past year I've been listening to a lot of pop stuff both old and new. Kanye West, The Killers, Syd Barrett and The Kinks have all been in heavy rotation. As far as electronic stuff that has excited me people like Burial, Flying Lotus and Eliot Lipp are all doing stuff that's really amazing, individual and with out concern for flavor of the minute trends.

OA: What's next for Skew?
Skew: I hope to doing a lot of live shows this year. And I've already started working on the next record which I think is going to be a big shift musically and will most likely have vocals on every track. But right now I'm just excited about having this record out and I want to do whatever I can to support it.

Listen to: Stadiums are Ok (mp3) and Stadiums are Ok (Sound of Arrows Remix) (mp3)

For more information on Skew please visit his website.

Band of the Week

Luke Jackson

"Come tomorrow in the depths of my despair/I am frightened, I'm enlightened, I'll survive/Beg or borrow, I could lose it I don't care/I can taste it, I won't waste, I'm alive"

There are moments in life that are filled with a strange and confusing mixture of emotions. It doesn't seem possible, but you feel lost and found, free and trapped, frightened and alive all in the same breath. In the first single from the latest album by Luke Jackson, "Come Tomorrow", he talks about the morning after he reaches the "depths of his despair". Several years ago Poet Hosho McCreesh describe the feeling like this, "Nights where you're sure you've walked your last cold mile, nights where you're convinced that this world ain't exactly the place for you." McCreesh talked about coming through the other side and all that you can learn from the journey and the struggle. "You ain't never seen a sunrise like the ones you see the day after one of those nights." I am sure that through out the song writing process, just as in any journey, there are moments of glory and pain, triumph and sleep deprivation. Through it all, Luke Jackson has crafted an album that is honest in style and lyric, and will help, if only briefly, pull you into the morning.

Recently, Luke Jackson was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): And Then Some... is filled with a lot of personal thoughts and expressions, when you write do you ever picture the listener or think of who might be hearing your thoughts? Luke Jackson (LJ): God no. I’d never write a thing if I thought like that. I write for my own expression first and foremost. The only concession I make to any future audience is to be sure to bury most of my meanings in at least two inches of fertile metaphor. This serves two purposes...it protects me from exposing myself too much, and it leaves the songs open to the interpretation of the listener. Hopefully, whatever I originally wrote the song about becomes completely irrelevant, and in time, I myself forget.

OA: The album also spans several years of your life, and several communications with Magnus Börjeson. Overall, what does it feel like to finally have this finished product?
LJ: Well, I should correct you here. My correspondence with Magnus never concerned these songs. Indeed, he and Christoffer (Lundquist, my producer) asked NOT to hear the demos I had recorded of the songs in advance of the sessions. I showed up on the first day of recording and sat in front of them and Jens (Jansson, drummer) in the studio’s big live room and played them the entire album on my acoustic guitar. That was the first they heard of any of the songs. Within an hour of that we were recording the first bed tracks, live off the floor. It was very spontaneous.
To answer the second part of your question, the album was finished almost a year ago, and it feels as good to have released it now as it felt to have finished it then. I’ve been nursing this project for some time now, and it’s quite fulfilling to be getting the great feedback I’ve had from folks like yourself. But in truth, there’s nothing more rewarding that the creative process. I’ve been in “business mode” with this album for the last year and I would much rather just be free to write and record songs. Unfortunately, an independent artist today must be a jack-of-all-trades and I doubt I’ll be doing much creative work until the promotional aspect of this album is over.

OA: What has your experience been like with Popsicle Records?
LJ: Following on from the last question, Popsicle is my own label. I set it up last year, first to release the long lost 1995 album by Magnus’s old band Favorita, and now this new album of mine is on the label, co-released with Urban Myth, the label of my dear friend Dan Bryk, a brilliant singer/songwriter himself. I spent a fair bit of the last year hawking the album around some of the more discerning indie labels and they all said the same thing: “we love the album but we’re not looking for anything new...the music business is imploding on itself and there isn’t any money”. Being on my own label is a lot of fun in many ways, and very frustrating in others. I’m an idealist and a perfectionist, and that can get expensive. There’s not a label in the world that would have let me put out a gatefold LP, half-speed mastered and pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl, or a custom 45/DVD package, or the elaborate packaging I did for the CD for that matter. That was all stuff I wanted to do because I believed in the record, and there was no-one to tell me “no”. The flip-side is that it’s a huge responsibility to try to make sure I’m giving the album the best chance it has to get out there and reach people. In the end, I’m better off doing this myself. I’m a bit of a control freak, and if I was on a small a label I’d just sit around wondering if they were actually DOING anything. This way, I know exactly what the label is doing!

OA: I really enjoyed the video for "Come Tomorrow". I know this song was written a while ago, but it seems fitting for all that is going on in the world these days. Do you feel that song has taken on a new meaning these days?
LJ: Hmm, I don’t really know what I can tell you about this song. I wrote it a couple of days before gong into the studio with Christoffer, Magnus and Jens in January 2007, and it was mostly inspired by how excited I felt to be recording with my friends in Sweden, with a little bit about my most recent tribulations thrown in for good measure. Like I mentioned earlier, the meaning I associate with any song is quite irrelevant. If the song has meaning to you, it’s served its purpose. I’m glad you like the video. We froze our butts off making that!

OA: Do you find it easier to make an album then to tour and promote an album? As a smaller act, is it getting more difficult to tour?
LJ: I haven’t done a huge load of touring. I love to get out and play, and rarely turn down a gig, but I was never one to get into a van and drive to Vancouver and back, playing every toilet along the trans-Canada highway. I never did it in my 20’s and I’m not about to start in my 30’s. It’s a Catch-22. You have to tour to build an audience, but touring doesn’t pay unless you have a lot of people coming out to see you. I’m trying to use the net to build my audience, then I’ll tour wherever I’m wanted. I have friends whose live show is their “product” and album sales are a by-product. I feel quite strongly that this album IS my “product”. It’s just that no-one pays for music anymore. Oops.

OA: What's next for Luke Jackson?
LJ: All thing being equal I’m be becoming a Father for the first time at the end of January. It’s hard to really even consider any of the other aspects of my life in light of that. Hopefully we’ll be coming up for air by the Springtime and I can think about picking up promotional activities then. It would be great if I got into SXSW...I would play a bunch of shows on the way down there, maybe with my band if I could afford it. Oh, and there’s a brilliant animated video for Goodbye London in production. A genius London-based animator friend is working on it. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen!

Come Tomorrow (mp3)


Luke Jackson - Come Tomorrow from Fanatic Promotion, Inc. on Vimeo.

Bonus Questions:

OA: Coffee? If yes, where can you find the best cup in your area?
LJ: There’s a new place called Lit which just opened up on Roncy and it blows everyone else on the strip out of the water. Their mocha is beyond. And they do a chocolate brownie that defies description. Really, I need never try heroin now.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
LJ: I recently read Dan Savage’s book “The Commitment”. He writes the nationally-syndicated sex column “Savage Love” and this book is about his family life with his boyfriend and their adopted son, and the ultimate decision of whether or not they should get married. It’s hysterical and touching and everything in between. I feel quite strongly that Dan Savage’s voice is one of the most important in America today.

For more information on Luke Jackson please visit his website.

Band of the Week

Dent May

When you hear the velvet sounds of Mississippi's Dent May you may picture the classic Vegas lounge singer, full tux, cocktail, maybe bubbles floating through the air. That picture may not be completely wrong, but Dent is actually a southern boy from Mississippi who takes great pride in his roots. In fact his debut album, The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele (Feb. 2009, Paw Tracks) plays to his roots in every tone and in every lyric. He sings of the small town boy and the lonely housewife, the quite parties, and the pretty girls. The other local aspect of this album is the artist that he asked to do the cover and design work, Will Bryant. If that name sounds familiar it is because Will was featured on Orange Alert back in June of 2007. He is also from Mississippi and now he has done a cover for a Paw Tracks album. Now he, just like Dent, may find the national attention they have deserved for years.

Recently, Dent May was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): The forthcoming album, The Good Feeling Music of..., sounds and looks great. It seems like you have rerecorded some of the songs from your self-released ep, and even added a few new elements to songs like "Meet Me in The Garden" and "College Town Boy". Why did you decide to record new versions of these songs for the album?
Dent May (DM): I considered scrapping them all but ultimately those songs were a part of the original vision I had for the album before I released the E.P. I had the album title and a track list that's pretty similar to the final track list before I wrote most of the songs. Then I recorded demos for all the songs. Sometimes I wish I rerecorded "Pierce Avenue," but I moved away from Pierce and it didn't feel right at the time. I also didn't want to go down in history as the dude who played a Prince cover on ukulele.

OA: It seems like giving away your ep digitally for free last year has really paid off. Have you ever second guessed that decision, and do you think that move is what caught the eye of Paw Tracks?
DM: I've never second guessed that decision and hope to release much more free music in the future. I'm really excited about the possibilities that the Internet brings to the table for both artists and consumers. It's not what caught the eye of Paw Tracks though. I met the Animal Collective dudes down here in Mississippi earlier this year.

OA: Speaking of Paw Tracks, what has your experience been like with them so far?
DM: It's been dreamy!

OA: I love the artwork and design of the new album, Will Bryant is someone I met almost a year and a half ago and remains an undiscovered Mississippi talent. Why did you pick Will over a more established artist?
DM: Will is a friend of mine, and I wanted a Mississippi artist although the bastard's moving to Portland. I wanted everything about the album to be as local as possible, yet still with an ear and eye toward the global. He's been making my flyers and what not for a while, so it was natural. He may be undiscovered at the moment, but he'll do big things I assure you.

OA: You are gaining the reputation as a showmen in the classic sense of the word, what can folks expect from a Dent May show as you tour the country this Spring in support of the album?
DM: Costume changes, bubble machines, champagne, handclaps, dancing, singing, etc.

OA: What's next for Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele?
DM: Well, I hope to tour the majority of 2009 with my ukulele. But after that I'm going to record some non-ukulele jams. I've been working on some dance music and plan on using the moniker Dent Sweat. Hopefully I'll have some songs finished before the ukulele album comes out.

"Oh Paris"


Bonus Questions:
OA: As a small town boy Mississippi, where can you find the best cup of coffee in your area?
DM: I was working at a book store in Oxford called Square Books. It's an excellent store and has a cafe upstairs. I don't drink coffee, but I hear it's good. On a nice day you can hang out on the balcony overlooking our fair town square, and its delightful. Look me up if you do.

OA: What was the last great book you read?
DM: The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret

For more information on Dent May please visit his website.

Band of the Week

Paper Route

When someone talks about the artistic direction of a band they typically mean the cover art or concert posters, but with Nashville's Paper Route art takes on a whole new meaning. While on the tour the guys enjoy drawing and blogging. This allows them to share with their fans, and in a way allow fans to connect with them and the tour. It is a unique way to share the experience, and fans seem to be responding.

Musically, the band molds electronic music and pop lyrics to form familiar texture, but they push their sound to it's farthest reaches. Their latest EP, Are We All Forgotten, is filled the sounds that made the world fall in love with Postal Service, and it is only a matter of time before every one is craving the cound of Paper Route.

Recently, Paper Route was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): Let's start with your name. What you are doing seems much more substantial than just a Paper Route, where did the name Paper Route come from?
Paper Route (PR): When the band first started it was more of an experiment with found sounds and trying to incorporate those elements into songwriting. We never really set out to start a band, but the creative process was inspiring enough to keep us coming back to the studio (Chad's bedroom) again and again. Being that we all had paper route's as a kid we thought it would be a fitting name, reminding us of simpler times in our lives when daydreaming
coexisted with hard work. That's what I remember most about my paper route, having an excuse to walk around as a kid and just daydream. It was the dreaming that got me through the route, and it's that sense of wonder and innocence that we're trying to capture in our music.

OA: While you guys are on tour you keep a very cool art blog. Have you seen the new Bands on the Road Sketchbook? What are some other things you guys do on the road?
PR: Someone was actually telling me about this the other day, but I have yet to see it. I think it's a great idea though. The limitations of being trapped in a van can lead to some interesting creative moments. We've written many songs (about nothing), we film and photograph everything, and we read a lot.

OA: Speaking of touring, I've heard some bands talk about the feasibility of touring the country these days? Are you finding it increasingly challenging to carry out a successful tour?
PR: There definitely have been some challenging times, but I don't necessarily know if it's getting any worse. Gas is always too expensive, college kids rarely have money for concerts, and when one person gets a cold (in a van that you travel in sometimes 18 hours a day) everyone gets the cold. This is every day for us. We go on a stage and live these songs. Sometimes the
club is packed and singing along, other nights it could be a new city where you have to prove yourself to an audience that doesn't have to like you. What's most important to us is talking to the audience after the show. Hearing how they've connected with the art and music or just getting to know new people is what keeps us going the next day.

OA: Southern fried electronic music, I was surprised to find that you are from Nashville. Who are a few of your influences musically?
PR: We listen to Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Burial, ... artists that sound like they're from another world. You listen to it, and it takes you somewhere else.

OA: What is the Nashville music scene like?
PR: Nashville is a big little city, almost everyone knows everyone. At first we felt a bit odd, being an electronic band from Nashville (almost all of our friends are singer/songwriters) but now we love that juxtaposition. We've always been drawn to the tradition and mystique of the south. That's why we moved here in the first place.



OA: What was the last great book you have read?
PR: I just read back to back two brilliant books. So i'll mention them both... "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, and "Jayber Crow" by Wendell Berry. And I take a copy of "Alice In Wonderland" with me everywhere I go.

OA: What's next for Paper Route?
PR: Right now we're just getting off the road, heading back to Tennessee and sending off our songs to be mixed. We're really looking forward to wrapping up the album we've been working on (it's looking like a Spring release). We've got a lot of touring coming up with the UK in a couple of weeks followed by Canada and the States all throughout January and February. We're adding some new songs to our set, and I've got a lot of Paper Route visual art things to attend to. I should probably be doing some of those things right now.

Listen to: Empty House (mp3)

For more information on Paper Route please visit their website.

Band of the Week

Jared Mees and The Grown Children

Even though Jared Mees and his wife started the Portland record label and storefront, Tender Loving Empire back in 2005, the first product that I actually held in my was the latest album from Jared himself, Caffeine, Alcohol, Sunshine, and Money. The album practically jumped out my stack, with it odd shape, and colorful screen printed case. It was a work of art. It was clearly made with care.

What was more impressive were sounds and stories inside the beautifully designed case. Jared has crafted a set of songs that are vibrant and honest, but also as the rainbow spitting shark on the cover. There is a mixture of sadness and victory, struggle and perseverance, but overall "patience pays off, finally".

Recently, Jared was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): The first thing that caught my eye with your new cd was the design elements. I know you have a background in screen printing, but I love the idea of a screen printed cd cover. Is this a more costly and labor intensive way to produce a product?
Jared Mees (JM): Screenprinting has been a huge part of my life during the past 3 years as everything released by Tender Loving Empire (the label/comics imprint my wife and I run in Portland OR) is hand screenprinted. While screenprinting is much more labor intensive we can produce each unit at less cost than getting it printed by someone else. Its also a lot more of an interesting process that you can control. I inevitably am unhappy with the work 95% of printers do, so its kind of a way to cater to my own OCD high standards nature. Plus it just looks and feels cooler.

OA: I also have the latest album from Super XX Man, it seems like there is an honest artistic effort put into the products of Tender Loving Empire. Is that what you are trying to covey? Do the musicians, yourself included, feel these artistic packages better represent your music?
JM: Tender Loving Empire began as a way to to name the unifying aesthetic momentum of our friends and family who were making music, drawing comics, writing books and just generally struggling to make art that was honest and mattered. The unifying look of our musical releases (screenprinted art on recycled cardboard covers) kind of just happened. We put my first album (If You Wanna Swim with the Sharks) out in that format and that had good response and we liked it and our friends liked it so we just continued doing things like it. However we have branched out recently. Our new comic compilation Shitbeems on the Loose has a really intricately colored offset cover with a screenprinted wrap and the new Boy Eats Drum Machine 12 inch vinyl is screenprinted directly over the art of other acts from the 70s and 80s...

OA: "Caffeine, Alcohol, Sunshine, and Money" is a complete journey through your life (or so it seems). It seems like there have been struggles, but you are finally beginning to find some peace and also prosperity. Is this the case? Has "patience paid off, finally"?
JM: Basically caffeine, alcohol, sunshine and money are the four things I realized that affect people's day positively or negatively depending on the amounts you intake. In a way they're like the modern day food, water, shelter, clothing. The album mostly focuses on events from the past few years (tallest building in hell, in the fall, excellent time, oh no oh my god,) but also has a few more abstract examinations of the subconscious imagery that plagued me during those times (bees, trampling daisies, 10:26) As far as patience paying off, it does in small ways daily, though I guess it remains to be seen if it actually will in the long run...what that means is kinda vague to be honest. All this is not to downplay the fact that yes there were a couple years of hellish times but things have improved in my life considerably as of late...

OA: You are currently on a national tour, but do you feel that we are going to begin to see a decline in the amount of bands who can actually afford tour the country?
JM: I don't think so. Bands will always tour. The independent "if we can't get over, we'll go around" attitude is alive and well in this country just as it always has been. We just did a 25 state 30 day tour and I can say with confidence that it will take something much more substancial than $4.00 gas (Which, interestingly enough, when we left on tour, gas in Portland was $3.50/gallon and now its $2.40) to keep bands in this country from touring.

That said I think there is a lot more competition now that the playing field has been leveled so much by technologies like myspace and garage band. 1 person with a macbook and a 50 dollar mike can do what it used to take tons of equipment and knowledge and manpower and money to do. However, technology can't help you write honest, heartfelt, kick in the teeth pieces of music, nor can it teach you how to communicate that music to an audience in an authentic manner. Thats always going to be the barometer, in my opinion, of true blue american music: the finely tuned ability to combine words and music into an emotionally compelling composition coupled with the steel guts of a performer. Fuck myspace plays and big advances and ageism and music-as-fashiony-commodity-to-sell-energy-drinks...that's not music.

OA: Here in Chicago we hear a great deal about the "Portland Scene". What is the music scene actually like out there?
JM: The music scene in Portland is amazing. I'm not going to downplay it. Thats why I moved there and other people like me move there every day. There are amazing acts, amazing venues, a vibrant house show scene and a true, do it together, independent spirit. The sheer # of bands in such a small city however can make for some pretty stiff competition when you're starting out, but still, its not that hard to get shows or get people to show up to your shows....it is however, pretty hard to impress people because half your audience is usually musicians. Even if you do impress them, its hard to tell if you have.

On that same note, there's tons of other resources for getting your music out there in Portland. Several stores around town (including Tender Loving Empire) take music on consignment. There's also several yearly compilations, PDX Pop NOW!, Failing Records Comp and TLE's own Friends and Friends of Friends that feature collectively over 100 different bands each year. There's also Pop Tomorrow, which is a promotion company that specializes in throwing showcases featuring largely new and unknown acts. Portland Poster Pole is a website that features the weeks best posters from around town. There's even a fledgling musicians union. However, I don't want to make Portland sound like a mecca. It is whatever people who live here make it. Right now it kicks ass and I know as long as people don't get apathetic or complacent about it it will continue to kick ass for many years to come.

OA: What's next for Jared Mees and The Grown Children?
JM: Touring Touring Touring. The west coast this winter, Texas during spring, and probably a western US tour during Summer....Chicago again in the Fall. ...James Brown (our van) has tons of miles left in him.... we got dreams...

Bonus Questions:
OA: Coffee? If yes, where have you found the best cup?
JM: Stumptown Coffee every time...there's 3 of them in Portland. Cafe D'italia next to Tender Loving Empire is my favorite coffee shop though.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
JM: "Our Band Could be Your Life" by Michael Azzerrad
"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace

Listen to: Bees (mp3) and In The Fall (mp3)

For more on Jared Mees please visit his website and for more on Tender Loving Empire go here.

Band of the Week

Aether

I have always been fascinated by the alias' of electronic producers. In most cases the producer takes on a new alias when they want to explore a new sound while still being able to return to their old form. It has been going on like this for years, and with each new moniker the beats and production becomes increasingly creative and adventurous. There is a sense of freedom behind an alias, but there is also the responsibility to craft a sound that fits the name.

Diego Chavez (a.k.a Aether) is one half of the duo A.M. Architect, and an extremely talented electronic music producer from San Antonio. His work has appeared on compilations under his own name and as ÆTHER216, but on his solo debut it is just Aether. Artifacts (due out Nov. 25th, Exponential Records) is a collections beats, samples, and soundscapes that are as beautiful as its cover (which was also made by Diego). As the beats wrap and float, and the samples build up, an underlying tranquility is uncovered. The way Diego crafts a song is unique and I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Recently, Diego was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): On November 25th you will release your first full-length album as Aether. What can you tell us about "Artifacts"?
Diego Chavez (DC): Artifacts is a collection of beat sketches I've had for over four years. Some made from last winter, some from the summer, and some made so long ago that I've lost the original production files.

OA: You, like several electronic musicians, record under several different names. What does using different names for different projects allow you to do? Why is "Artifacts" an Aether project?
DC: Revealing music under various aliases allows me to explore different soundscapes and collaborate with other musicians on a clean slate, bouncing ideas back and forth. Artifacts is released under the Aether moniker due to the nature of production. Everything listed under Aether is extremely intimate and has been made as a form of self-medication-solo productions made for nobody else but myself. The tracks are created at odd hours-4 am, 5 am, 6 am. It's the early hours that I feel displaced from "time," and enter an altered state, intoxicated by a melody that suddenly transforms into a three-part act.

OA: The album is not a straight collection of just electronic beats, there are a few tracks, like "Anywhere", that feature some beautiful vocals. These do not sound like samples, who did you work with on the vocal tracks?
DC: Actually, Artifacts is a collage of audio samples. I carved out bits and pieces (vocals, instruments, drums) then layered them together. I'm working as a sound sculptor, re-presenting found objects. In the future, I hope to collaborate with more vocalists to further explore and produce future albums. Artifacts acts as a demo-tape, a blue-print of my production.

OA: You are also a graphic designer, and designed the cover for the album. What do you look for in a cover, and where did you begin with this one?
DC: I initially began with a minimalist design for the album. However, the sterile design conflicted with the depth and origin of the album's sound. Seeking inspiration, I began digging through archives of earlier works and re-discovered my graphic design--The Tecolote. The image was powerful enough to further convey the artistic nature of the album. An album cover engages the viewer through the aesthetics of design. The visual image invites the viewer to further explore it's content.

OA: What are your thoughts on the electronic music scene in Texas? There seems to be a lot of activity in electronic music and music in general in Texas right now?
DC: I'm happy to hear that local artists are gaining respect worldwide. Exponential Records is the rising catalyst on the electronic music scene in Texas. This independent record label has grown and gained much love through a grassroots approach. Texas-based musicians and supporters continue to work as a creative collective with the belief that good music can come from anywhere.

OA: What's next for Diego Chavez?
DC: Music collaborations, creative design, & film are all on the horizon.



Aether - Milla Ann from Diego Chavez on Vimeo.

Bonus Questions:
OA: Coffee? If yes, where can you find the best cup in your area?
DC: Coffee yes. Ruta Maya & Bubble Head in San Antonio, TX.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
DC: More like fun reads...I'm reading "When You Are Engulfed In Flames" by David Sedaris and "No One Belongs Here More Than You" by Miranda July.

For more information on Diego Chavez please visit his website, and you can order his album on November 25th from Exponential Records.

Band of the Week

Election Day Special with Mr. Lif

In what seems like a matter of weeks the language of a nation has changed. Recession, lay-off, unprecedented, crisis, these are new words for many Americans. Too young to understand to volatility of the early ‘80’s, and only having read about the great depression, these last few weeks have been hell. The tension, the waiting, the uncertainty, it is a greater weight than most have ever felt. Individuals are questioning everything they do and everything they have ever done and evaluating each breath they take, each movement they make. I know I asked this question a couple weeks ago, but I will ask it again; where do you turn? Is all of this meaningless, I have I wasted two years of my life? Will people turn to the arts and resources like mine for enjoyment, or will it all be lost in the struggle for employment, shelter, peace of mind, and security?

Over the last few weeks a song lyric has repeatedly been flowing through my thoughts. It was writing by Boston’s Mr. Lif and included in a song called “Home of the Brave” back in 2002. Lif said, “The country's headed for recession reminiscent of the Great Depression”. In the same song he goes on to say “It's easy to control the scared so they keep us in fear”, and in a way I feel this economic crisis is another form inflicted terror in an attempt to control. The problem is this attack is much more real and relevant and hitting hard on all levels then anthrax or color coded terror levels. This affects every single individual living in American today, and as I look into the eyes of my children and question the choices that I have made and the choice I will make today, I pray that they can not see the fear and distress behind the pale blue. I pray that we may all look back that these days and these frantic words and laugh, but today I search for encouragement, for answers, for guidance, I search the knowledge to make the right decisions for my future and my children’s future. It’s clear that I understand how to asked questions, I have interviewed over 240 artists, writers, and musicians, but today I am being asked to supply an answer… “And it causes pain, stress”. “Ask me if we need a different way of life, YES”.

So on Election Day, I give you my interview with Mr. Lif, and ask you to vote, be heard, speak your mind, and pray.

Orange Alert (OA): Your latest project is unique in that it will give your audience an up to the minute look at how you are reacting to the Presidential race. Why do you feel it is important to have these singles released each month?

Mr. Lif (ML): I have shifted my focus a bit from following the presidential race (which I'm currently sick of due to over saturation) to just writing song inspired by this extremely tumultuous era we are living through. It’s important for me to contribute at least one song a month because we are bombarded with endless programming daily.

OA: With all of the media outlets these days do you feel that the monumental events of our time, like the war and the election, are being covered properly and fairly?
ML: This is a tough question. I just feel like there a whirlwind of information out there and it depends on how you process it.

OA: The incredible I Phantom album is a rare hip-hop concept album following the life a criminal turned father, turned successful businessman. Then something happens that makes everyone and everything seem very insignificant. Did you originally set out to write a concept album? Where did you begin with I Phantom?

ML: I never really thought of "I Phantom" as a concept record until people in the media began to refer to it that way. The design of the album is a reflection of the way I think about things in general. I am always analyzing situations and experiences in hopes of gaining knowledge. So when I make songs, I naturally analyze how they relate to one another to form a larger picture.

"I Phantom" grew from songs like "Earthcusher" and "Live From the Plantation" until it became a finished record.

OA: On the 2006 album Mo' Mega, the title alone makes a much needed statement about the growing divide between the rich and the poor or as you put it "the slave and the elite". Do you feel the rest of the album follows that idea? For example, Take, Hold, Fire! I feel speaks directly to this topic. Has the way you define or view "Mo' Mega" changed at all in the last two years?

ML: I would say "Mo Mega" does not stick to the issues introduced in the title. That album represents a very difficult era of my life. In my opinion, the divide between the rich and the poor becomes more clearly defined daily. The wealthy are so powerful now, that they are showing no humbleness in exhibiting their control.

OA: One of my favorite things to do is hunt for obscure Lif collaborations, be it with Jedi Mind Tricks, 7L & Esoteric, Del, DJ Vadim, Aesop, etc. How do you approach these guest spots? Is there an artist you have wanted to work with but haven't yet? The spot with Guru on the Perceptionists album was great, what about Rakim?

ML: I'd like to work with Nas, J. Electronica, Rakim, GZA.... There are others... I'm glad I got to work with Bahamadia, Dumbtron, Vinnie Paz, and Metro on the "I Heard It Today" album.

OA: Given your ability to vocalize your political views, and your skill for writing have you ever considered writing a book or maybe a collection of essays?
ML: I started writing a book, but it was sci-fi. You'll hear more about that soon.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?

ML: "A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism" by David Harvey

OA: What's next for Mr. Lif?

ML: What's next for me is to finish the "I Heard It Today" album and deliver it to the people on Inauguration Day (January 20th, 2009). This album captures the vibe of this tumultuous era we're living in and gives voice to the all too often ignored citizens of America.

Anyone who wants to be involved in some interesting conversations about important issues and hear my new music should visit me at www.myspace.com/mrlif. I take great pride in communicating with my fans.

Listen to: Presidential Report Vol. 2 from I Heard it Today (mp3) and Presidential Report Vol. 1 (mp3)

Today Lif releases he third single from his upcoming album I Heard It Today, "Welcome To The World". For more information Mr. Lif please visit his website.

Band of the Week

Emperor X

There is a difference between a musician and a performer. True, there are times when the two can manifest in the same person, but I have seen many musicians who are not performers. I didn't fully come to this realization until I saw Emperor X (aka Chad Matheny) perform last May. Chad is an amazing performer, full of energy and excitement, who rallies the crowd to sing and dance as he runs around with his mini guitar and portable amp. He just happens to be a great musician as well.

Chad's first album was released ten years ago, and his style combines aggressive folk music and electronics. At one time a relentless performer, Chad now stays closer to home, but the quality of his music and performances continues to improve. His latest album, The Blythe Archives Volume One, was released by Burnt Toast Vinyl, and as you will find out he has many more projects in the works.

Recently, Chad was kind enough to answer a few of my questions.

Orange Alert (OA): You have built up the reputation of a traveling ministerial of sorts, consistently on tour. What is it about live performances the you enjoy so much? Do you feel that you are slowing down?
Chad Matheny (CM): As flattering as that reputation sounds, I'm sad to say that the notion that I'm constantly on tour isn't accurate. I toured far more in 2004-2006 than I have in 2007 and 2008. As gas prices soared and my financial situation deteriorated after I financed several releases and promotional campaigns on my personal credit, I simply couldn't afford to leave town as much as I used to.

I diligently searched for and landed a job that let me get out of town whenever I wanted within reason; I drastically reduced my living expenses; most of all, I rethought how I was going about the business aspect of being a performer. Nowadays, if I'm on the road for an extended period of time it's usually at the grace of a close friend of mine who's willing to drive and play with me, or of another band who's kind enough to pack me in the van and take me along for a few dates.

These new austerity measures caused a slowdown in the reckless quantity of shows, and forced me to concentrate more both on making money at the shows I did play -- at least enough to pay for the trip and pay myself a living wage -- and, more importantly, on the quality of shows I played. It's much more satisfying to play a well-thought-out five day string of dates at which people can appreciate what I'm doing than it is to play thirty booze bars in a row for $20 a night, sleeping next to a gas refinery at a truck stop and waking up in the van covered in sweat and weird rashes.

In 2007 and 2008 most of my touring has been strictly fiscally responsible -- me, by myself, using public transportation, often on short mini-tours of ridiculous dates that don't pay anything that I deeply want to play, anchored by higher-paying college/university/gallery concerts that I also deeply want to play. My performance equipment nowadays consists of only with what I can carry. It's a dream lifestyle for me, and I feel very lucky to be able to support it by playing music. On the average I'm playing concerts anywhere in North America between six and ten weeks out of a year, and that's what I hope to sustain for the rest of my life. It's less than the marathon pace I was running in 2004-2006, and that's fine with me, because I find myself happier, more productive, more able to absorb each place that I visit, less burned out when I am out playing shows, and less stressed about money when I'm not. My job also frees me from having to think about money as much as I otherwise would, and allows me to do ridiculous things I couldn't otherwise afford.

There's a lot to laud in the dedicated lifestyle of a roving troubadour, and in doses it's certainly something I endorse. For example: a few months ago, after playing music on a whim for two drunk youth pastors at a Huddle House in Sandee, SC, I walked across six miles of forest with all of my gear and played songs and recorded the sound of power poles in a state park and made a music video with paper airplanes. That's the kind of thing I live for. But I don't live up to the mantle of the minstrel. A minstrel does that and nothing else. I'm out there for maybe 25% of my life, and the rest of the time I'm staying in and recording/composing/reading/researching. I'm less of a consistently possessed artist, and more of a dedicated researcher who's been lucky enough to have the knack of turning the possessed artist button on and off at will, for better or for worse.


To answer your question about live performances:
Recording/synthesizing audio material and playing music for a live audience are profoundly different art forms. So many times we see great bands at shows opening up for the act we came to see, unknown bands so great that we're inspired to buy their recording, and when we get home their recorded material disappoints. So many times we've loved an act's recordings and shown up to see them play and left feeling empty because of an uninspired performance. I think most musicians are aware of this, and it's a harsh reality to face, especially for a solo performer like myself touring with a backpack's worth of gear trying to do live justice to recordings that often have 16 tracks or more of overdubs and washes of effects. For me, the fun lies in taking the compositions that underlay the recordings and starting from scratch with the material at hand, re-arranging things, changing keys, deleting or adding whole sections, etc. The performance process done well translates the underlying composition into something fragile and human and temporal and overwhelming in the same way that the recording process done well translates the underlying composition into something massive and physical and eternal and overwhelming. I think a good performance is one that makes this process, and the effort it demands from the individuals involved, clearly visible to the audience.

In more concrete language:
I often think about music before recording technology. I think about Vienna and the stories about how, during the classical era, performance of difficult pieces and improvisation and composition were pursuits of common people, like watching television is for most Westerners today. I think about the fact that many of the great composers were also virtuoso performers and improvisers: Bach, Buxtehude (who Bach walked hundreds of miles to see perform!), Mozart, and Rachmaninoff, just to name the first four that come to mind. If the human being is capable of this kind of greatness, and if in Vienna in the classical era even the common man approached it, then I think I'm doing any audience I may have a disservice if all I do is spend hours and hours splicing together fragments of audio and manipulating them into something I could never even approach doing live, and show up at a concert weighed down by technology and its expectations and cave by playing along to a single audio track. I think that's capitulating to technology, not using it. I think I'm doing my job as a recordist/performer when I think about the underlying nut of each song as the source of what is generated, and follow it as a loose guide in the creation of the performance, neither letting it dominate and playing a failed duplicate of a recording or ignoring it and playing something else entirely. It's hard, and I think an audience can see this effort when it happens, and I think they call it a performer "getting into it." It's something I aspire towards.

There's also this nasty notion that is blamed (unfairly!) on punk rock that insists one doesn't have to be a good musician to play music. That's ludicrous. Punk, and maybe rock in general, expanded our notion of what good musicianship is, and placed a bit more emphasis on style and content and spiritualism and individuality. I think too many artists mistake this freedom as a license to ignore the live domain entirely, or worse, as a license to suck, or worst of all as a license to not practice. For some artists (techno, ambient, etc.) that exists almost entirely in the domain of lush, technological audio, "live" means being played by a DJ at a club or live-composing on a laptop, and that attitude is appropriate and exciting. But for singer/songwriters it's a dereliction of duty.


OA: My favorite part of your performance here in May was the way you got the audience involved. Do you feel like that is an important part your shows?
CM: Audiences are bored. That's nothing new -- watching performances is an inherently boring act most of the time. I think interactivity is one of many ways to snap people out of their yawning and get them to shift their perceptions and join the music for a few minutes. The experience of being absorbed in a musical event is so wonderful that people will put up with hours and hours of boring performances and appreciate what they can in them just for the chance of getting to be there when something powerful like that happens. There are plenty of other more and less subtle techniques for getting people to pay attention and join you in the sounds, but I think there is something special about directly involving a crowd. It's just plain fun to sing along! Why not? It feels anarchic and full of possibility for everyone involved. And, if you want to get highbrow about it, the performer can think about the crowd as an instrument to be played and write parts specifically for them.

There are a LOT of people doing this right now, foremost among them I guess would be Jason Anderson, so I think it just must be in the early 21st century water. Maybe it's a consequence of the Internet and crowdsourcing and blogs and all that -- the notion that we're all [insert specialization here].

That said, I think there are good sing-a-longs and bad ones, so it's not like it's a magic bullet if you're having a bad show. I've tried the crowd participation on a night I was sucking and it bombed, just like everything else.

OA: I was also fascinated by the equipment that you used, the small portable amp and taped up microphone, tape player, etc. Does the equipment player a role in your sound?
CM: The equipment one chooses during recording is responsible for the sound of the finished work. Unless you're improvising, performances aren't the same kind of ground-up act of creative synthesis. People are more forgiving about things like timbre and so forth, so it's probably not as important. I think that it's far more personal. The kinds of objects that a performer feels comfortable with, and knows how to manipulate, are the kinds of objects they should use in performance. For bonus points, the recording and the performance are imbued with a special kind of unity if the same or similar equipment is used for both.

A lot of my thinking goes toward analogue media, electromechanical (as opposed to digital) sound filtering and synthesis, and the power of portability. I think that's reflected in the kinds of equipment I tend to take with me when I play concerts. Almost all the amps I use, for example, are battery powered, partly because I like the idea that if the power went out I'd still be able to play a show. I also like to be self-contained and stay as uninvolved from the house PA as is feasible, for the same reason. This also frees me from awkwardness if I disagree with a well-intentioned sound engineer on some aesthetic issues.

All of the above notwithstanding, I think the most important determining factor of what I choose to perform on is: "Will it fit in my carry-on baggage?"

OA: With all of the tour the must not be a lot of time for recording. Do you enjoy recording? Is there a new album in the works?
CM: I have plenty of time for recording. Way too much, even. I enjoy it so much that I rarely finish anything because I keep moving on and recording new idea after new idea. I'm only traveling at most two or three months out of the year, so there's plenty of time to record. And I tend to bring portable recording gear with me when I tour too, so a lot gets done even when I'm away.

There are several new releases forthcoming. I don't have solid release dates for any of them, but here's a rough outline:
1) The Blythe Archives, Vol. II (late '08 hopefully)
2) Tranvia Geosincrona/Tranvia Lunar (Spanish-language E.P., late '08 or early '09)
3) A split 7" with my friend Ben Horowitz a.k.a. Porches
4) a few comps, on one of which I'll be covering a Twelve Hour Turn song!
5) The Blyteh Archives Vol. III (sometime in the future)
6) The Blythe Archives Vol IV (sometime in the future)
7) whatever comes after the Blythe Archives series

OA: Your most recent album was released by Burnt Toast Vinyl. What was your experience like with BTV? How did you get involved with them?
CM: Scott Hatch runs BTV. He's a great guy, and we've been friends for a little over two years now, at least as much as dudes who live in separate cities and talk a few times a year can be friends. He offered to include me in his nifty series of one-sided LPs after attending a performance in Philadelphia. I've met some cool people through Scott, and he has a lot of great bands on his roster.


(if you look closely you will see me in this video!)

Bonus Questions:
OA: Coffee? You seemed to have a ton of energy is coffee the source? Where have you found the best cup?
CM: I hate coffee! I might drink green tea once or twice a week, if at all. I think the source of energy I have when performing is the insane nervousness I feel.

OA: What was the last great book you have read?
CM: Hmmmmm.../To Have or to Be/ by Erich Fromm, I guess.

For more information on Emperor X please visit his website.