Múm Interview

Múm
Interview by Alexander Laurence

Múm is an Icelandic band that started in 1997. They are well-known for
their music which is often experimental and for their unusual instruments. They
have had many members in their collective, but the two main members of the band
are Gunnar Örn Tynes and Örvar Póreyjarson Smárason. Their sixth album is called
Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know (2009). I caught them at CMJ in New York
City at their first American show in a few years. I spoke with Örvar and we
all ran down to the bar to bet on racing cars.


AL: What have you been doing these past two years? Have you taken some time
off from music?

Örvar: We were still making music most of that time. We were making the
album the whole time. It’s all periodical. There is the time for the album and
the tours. It has been exactly two years since we did a proper tour of the
States. We were at Coachella in 2008. I remember when we were in Kansas for
Halloween exactly two years ago. We all wore costumes.

AL: Was there any games plan or concept with the new album?

Örvar: We always try to steer away from game plan. We are not good at
deciding something and then following it. We never decided to make music. It’s
more like turning on a faucet. The only thing we planned was making a little
more simpler.

AL: How many songs did you end up writing?

Örvar: There were twenty songs. We are using most of them. There are two
that we didn’t finish yet. We had an EP come out in October 2009. Now we have
exclusive tracks that will come out in Japan only. We have exclusive tracks
for Australia. Everything is so complicated now. You want people to buy
these records with extra songs. We want to have another EP in the Spring as
well.

AL: Did you do some other collaborations besides the one with Animal
Collective?

Örvar: A few things. The last one we did was a radio theater. We love doing
that. We have two radio plays in Iceland. We won a Scandinavian Award for
best radio play. We have done plays based on works by contemporary Icelandic
authors. We have worked with a director who makes adaptations from novels.
They are poetic books.

AL: Many of us in America have heard of Halldór Laxness, but not many new
writers in Iceland. We don’t have a lot of translations over here.

Örvar: Yes. It doesn’t get translated in English very often, but French and
German obviously more often. It’s hard to get published. I wrote a novel a
few years back, and I had it translated. It came out in Italy as well. I had
it translated into English, but I couldn’t be bothered with sending it to
people over here, because it is different.

AL: Did you find that it was easy to write a novel?

Örvar: It took a long time. It was something I wanted to do for a long t
ime.

AL: I have met Henrik from Singapore Sling.

Örvar: I used to play guitar for Singapore Sling. Henrik was in a car
accident recently. I hope that he is okay.

AL: Henrik told me that people in Iceland are often in multiple bands.

Örvar: That is what I have done for the past ten years. I have been in
twenty-five bands. I like playing with a lot of bands. Now I am only playing in
two bands. The other one is a dance technopop thing. I only sing some disco
vocals.

AL: There was a documentary film called Screaming Masterpiece that came out
a few years ago. What did you think of that movie?

Örvar: Well. The people who did that movie told us that they were making a
film that would not go in the same direction that every film about Icelandic
music. They were really excited about it. They promised to us that it was
going to be a loose study of a thousand years of Icelandic music. It was
supposed to be about how bands interact. It ended up being a landscape tourist
video. I had to shut it off halfway through. People like it but it wasn’t for
the bands.

AL: What songs are you playing in the live show now?

Örvar: We play mostly songs from the new album, and the last album. We play
at least one song from every album.

AL: Do you bring gear to the United States?

Örvar: It’s really difficult. We used to tour with a lot of gear. We try to
bring less with us so we don’t have to pay taxes. They charge by weight. We
have t-shirts and CDs from here, and we buy some gear from here. It’s
cheaper buying amps and gear here than bringing things over.

AL: Do you have a lot of music stores in Iceland?

Örvar: None.

AL: So if you have a guitar amp in Iceland, you are a popular guy?

Örvar: We have so many amps loaned out in Iceland. We don’t even have a
space to store them all. Our amps are all over the place and being used.

AL: Are these new songs personal songs, or are they about stuff going on
right now?

Örvar: I wouldn’t connect these songs to any year. The feelings are a
starting point for the songs, and there is a lot of reflection. I often go back
to childhood in songs. I think people do that all the time. Sometimes you
smell something in the air, and you think about some moment you never thought
about before. Sometimes it doesn’t seem so important, and then that memory
comes back to you. That is very important for me. I live for stuff like that.

AL: It’s like a magical moment.

Örvar: Exactly. It’s a really nice feeling. We have always made music based
around that notion, but it’s also us just playing around.

AL: When you are writing a song, do you sit around with an acoustic guitar
and figure out some chords, or do you play around with sounds, and record
sonic ideas?

Örvar: We do both of those things. We do a hundred song ideas before it
gets cut down to these twenty songs. Some songs begin by playing the piano or
acoustic guitar. Or getting some beats out of an old Casio. It comes from
there. We like to record beats on a cassette tape recorder like the one you
have taping this interview. It has good compression.

AL: How do you decide who plays with you in the band?

Örvar: It’s pretty free and open. It’s a big group of friends.

AL: How many people have been in Múm?

Örvar: About twenty. Now we have these seven people, but it is always
changing. Some people can’t make it. We have had a few different drummers.

AL: Are there any bands that you have been excited by recently?

Örvar: I listen to some Icelandic bands. There are some teenage bands that
I like. The next generation of bands is really interesting. They are very
colorful and energized. It’s happy music. There is no style. There is no scene
that dominates. There are never two bands who do the same thing. That is
frown upon.

AL: Have you played a lot this year?

Örvar: We played a few UK festivals and we did a European tour. We have
been playing for about three months. We went to Israel and Japan. We are
playing until the end of the year.

AL: Is there anywhere in the world you like to go?

Örvar: Japan. We have played there ten times.

AL: Was that one of the first places you became popular?

Örvar: Yes. We play our biggest shows there. They get quiet and they are
very respectful. It’s very quiet. I have had art shows there too. I have shown
my drawings and paintings.

AL: They get loud at the art shows. You don’t have to be polite there.

Örvar: Yeah

Website: www.mum.is

Happy Birthday Bryan Adams!

Zaza Interview

Zaza
Interview by Alexander Laurence

Zaza is Jennifer Fraser (bass/keyboards) and Danny Taylor (guitar/vocals).
They live in Brooklyn. They released a great 6-song EP called Cameo (2009).
I saw them in Hollywood earlier this year supporting The Morning After
Girls. In a short time they have created their own world of atmospheric acid
rock. They played a few successful shows at CMJ this year. I was able to be at a
few of the shows at Cake Shop and Webster Hall. I was able to talk to them
for a few minutes recently. They have a show at Pianos on November 28th.
Hopefully they come back to the west coast again soon.

AL: How long has the band going on for?

Jennifer: The band started a year and a half ago. I was in another band. In
between tours I would be working with Danny on new music. We were indoors
and we had the headphones on and recording music.

AL: Danny, were you in other bands too?

Danny: No. I had just moved to New York, and I was in limbo. Everybody who
moves to New York goes through that period where they are 86ed from every
bar. You get on a first name basis with every bouncer. It was a big
adjustment. New York is such a complex animal to wrestle. Especially when you don’t
know anyone.

AL: Was there one song that you wrote together, that you said to yourself
“Hey, this is a band. We have our own sound.”

Danny: I think the first song where things came together was “Sooner Or
Later.” It’s on the EP. All the writing was done with us on headphones.

Jennifer: I think “Dark House” was the first song we wrote.

AL: Were you just laying done a ton of tracks?

Jennifer: That is why we used a drum machine. At the beginning it was just
Danny and I. It was a necessity. We didn’t have any intentions.

Danny: At the beginning it was very experimental. We had acoustic guitars
and autoharps. It wasn’t guitar-bass-drums. It was like a clusterfuck of any
sounds we could find.

Jennifer: We had all these loops of harmonicas

AL: When did you play your first show?

Jennifer: It was a year in October 2008.

Danny: We had all this gear onstage. We had brought our own mixer. It was
great.

AL: There are so many records out there with crazy sounds. Then you have to
bring it to the stage.

Danny: It’s great when you are in your loft or practice space doing that
stuff. Then the kick of reality sets in when you get onstage and you realize
you can’t pull it off.

AL: When did the live performances catch up to the recordings?

Danny: I think it was when we recorded some stuff and became comfortable
with what we were doing. We sat down and thought what we were going to do
live. We still use a drum machine. We have a live drummer to play on top of
that. I end up playing more guitar onstage, and Jennifer plays bass and
keyboards. Right now we are working on that process more. Jennifer is doing more
vocals. We are using samples more. I would like to play piano more. I am not
really a guitar player, but we needed that sound.

Jennifer: I never played keyboards before this band. We had to play
everything. There is no formula how we write songs or who plays what onstage.

AL: It’s dull when people in the band are designated the guitarist or the
drummer, when maybe you don’t have drums or guitar on a track.

Danny: That is how we work. We have three people in the band for live shows
now. We are going to stay like that for a while.

AL: Did you do the Cameo EP at home or did you work with a producer?

Jennifer: We worked with Ryan of Asteroid #4. We went down to Philadelphia
to do that. Ryan did a lot of the engineering. We were at his house and Ryan and
his wife were fostering kittens, and these kittens were crawling
everywhere. They were housing twenty-five kittens. You got to be kidding.

AL: What songs are you playing in the live show now? Do you have new songs?

Danny: Yeah! We play all the songs we have. Every between the songs we
improvise. We don’t stop songs and begin others. Every transfer from song to
song, it could go any way.

Jennifer: Our live show is much simpler than the recordings. We change
everything. There might be even a different structure.

AL: Is every show really different?

Danny: Every show is an experience rather than just a replication of the
recordings. We like things to be backlit, rather than front lit projections.

Jennifer: We have been working with visual artists. We are ourselves visual
artists. We want to have some sort of visual accompaniment. We drag around
these big light boxes. We bring our own lights. We arrange them.

AL: I saw you play with The Morning After Girls earlier this year. Have you
played with some other interesting bands?

Jennifer: We just opened for Echo and The Bunnymen. It was really
interesting. They sounded amazing. It was at the Mercury Lounge. We were dancing
around. It’s hard to enjoy your own party. We played with the Raveonettes and
Pains of Being Pure At Heart.

Danny: It was a honor being asked to play with Echo and The Bunnymen.

AL: The EP came out in August?

Danny: Yeah. We had a free download. Kanine Records released it as a CD and
Vinyl in August, with two more tracks.

AL: What is the plan for the winter?

Jennifer: We were thinking of going to somewhere warm and recording an
album. That is what we said last winter. Danny said: “Let’s go on a jet plane
somewhere tropical next winter.”

Danny: We might do an Australian tour. I think we are going to do a record
before we do an American tour again. We are working on the new record right
now.

AL: Is the Cameo EP a sample of what is coming?

Danny: The Cameo EP is great. It has the essence of us forming and coming
together. I think the first full-length album will be a more solidified Zaza.
The other stuff was, as Jennifer said, what we wrote when we first met.

Liars

LIARS "SISTERWORLD"

NEW ALBUM OUT 2010

LIARS announce the release of their fifth studio album, "Sisterworld," in early 2010.

"Sisterworld," the follow up to "Liars" (2007), was written and recorded in Los Angeles by Liars and Tom Biller (Kanye West, Beck, Where The Wild Things Are / Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind soundtracks)

This is the first Liars album to be recorded entirely in the USA since 2004’s "They Were Wrong, So We Drowned" and sees Angus Andrew, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross taking inspiration from fringe characters lured to LA and the resulting subcultures and alternate spaces that they generate.

"Sisterworld" is Liars’ own space, completely devoid of influence, somewhere
remote from the false promises and discarded dreams amassed in LA. In it Liars explore the underground support systems created to deal with loss of self to society.

Say Liars, “We're interested in the alternate spaces people create in order to maintain identity in a city like LA. Environments where outcasts and loners celebrate a skewered relationship to society”.

Enter Sisterworld.

www.liarsliarsliars.com
www.myspace.com/liarsliarsliars
www.mute.com

The Answering Machine Interview

The Answering Machine
Interview by Alexander Laurence

The Answering Machine is a band from Manchester, England. I read about them
in the NME earlier this year. They sounded really interesting. I saw them
play in March 2009, in Los Angeles. They were definitely an exciting band
with fresh ideas on music. They are Martin Colclough (vocals/guitar), Pat
Fogarty (guitar), Gemma Evans (bass), and Ben Perry (drums). They played a few
shows at CMJ. They considered New York City their favorite city, and home away
from home. They recently played at SXSW 2009 and Glastonbury. I got to ask
them about their new music. Their first album is Another City, Another Sorry
(2009).


AL: When did the band form?

Gemma: We formed in the last year of University in late 2005. Pat and
Martin were introduced through a mutual friend and just decided to start writing
songs together, they used to meet at uni, get a crate of beer from the
supermarket and just go back to Pat's get drunk and write songs. I was on the
same course as Pat and he asked me to play bass, we played some gigs for a
year or so with a drum machine. Ben joined on drums in 2007 and we haven't
looked back since.

AL: Do the members in the band come from a musical family?

Gemma: Well there's no famous musicians in any of our families but they
definitely had an influence on us. Pat and Martin both used to be in bands
with their brothers, Ben's dad is a brass musician and his uncle is a tour
manager. In fact I think I probably come from the least musical family, my
brother can play The Pink Panther theme tune on the clarinet and that's about
it!

AL How does a song begin for the band? Is it music first or lyrics and
melody first?

Gemma: It's changes, usually Pat or Martin will come in with an idea on the
guitar, either a little riff or sometimes more of a structured song. We'll
then play it in our rehearsal room until it becomes a more fully formed
idea, or we decide it's not going anywhere and move on. Usually lyrics and
vocal melodies come last.

AL: How was your experiences at CMJ this year?

Gemma: It was a complete blur, I was really ill for it so I have pretty
hazy memories of forcing myself to get out of bed and going to play a show.
The atmosphere around all the venues was amazing though, there'd be loads of
people and bands just hanging out. It was always a mad rush to get onstage
and soundcheck and then play the show it was very raw and ramshackle but a
lot of fun to do! We were really pleased that even though there were loads of
bands playing we still had a lot of people come see us.

AL: Can you talk about making your video with the ice skating? How do you
go about making videos?

Gemma: We always like to use our friends or friends of friends to make our
videos, we know a lot of talented people and are lucky that they want to get
involved and help us out with stuff like videos. The Curling video was the
most fun we've ever had, it just came out an idea to do a sort of spoof
video similar to Mighty Ducks or Blades of Glory and these guys in LA said they
could make it happen. We had some shows organized over there anyway so it
all fell into place!

AL: What other bands have you played with in the past year?

Gemma: We've done a ton of support shows, probably the most exciting was
The Manic Street Preachers support tour. We've also played with Bombay
Bicycle Club, Casio Kids, The Charlatans, Ra Ra Riot. On our recent tour we had
The Crookes and Driver Drive Faster on the road with us, both are exciting new
bands.

AL: Are there any other bands do you like, apart from those?

Gemma: We saw Phoenix play at Monolith festival earlier this year and they
just blew us away at how good they were, they've become a firm favorite.
The other bands on our label are awesome as well LoveLikeFire and The
Pomegranates. Other records that have been on repeat include Dutch Uncles, Bad
Veins, The Antlers. We always cite our classic band favorites as following The
Strokes, Shout Out Louds, and The Radio Dept,

AL: Can you recommend a book for us?

Gemma: I could recommend several but today i shall go for Michael Ondaatje
'Coming Through Slaughter' it's this beautifully written poetic prose that
really captures the life of the New Orleans jazz musician it depicts. It's a
short book but leaves you stunned as to how good it is.

AL: What should people expect from the band in the shows in 2010?

Gemma: I'd say a more mature sound and more developed, adventurous song
writing, We've been working on our guitar sounds and collecting guitar pedals
so that there'll be more depth to our sound. And obviously we'll be playing
live loads, if anyone's got any gigs, we'll play 'em!

AL: Will you come back and tour the USA?

Gemma: Yes of course we will if you'll have us. We love it out here and
just hope people want us to come back!

EXITMUSIC interview

EXITMUSIC
Interview by Alexander Laurence

EXITMUSIC is Aleksa Palladino and Devon Church. They both play guitar and
sing. They lived in both New York City and Los Angeles. I spoke to them in
Brooklyn during the CMJ Festival. That week they played a show at Cameo
Gallery with some other bands on the Manimal Vinyl label. Their album is called
The Decline of The West (2007). More people should hear their music and go see
their live show. Check it out now!

AL: When did the band begin?

Devon: The band technically began when we moved to Los Angeles. We started
messing around on the four-track in New York before we moved. We tried to
collaborate but we never quite came up with anything. We were both writing
songs. We were both private as songwriters. Gradually we tried to meld it
together. It was a long process. When we got a computer and started
multi-tracking. We decided on a project and a name. That was five years ago.

AL: When did you start playing shows?

Devon: We recorded our album first. It was finished already. Then we put
together a terrible band. We started playing shows about two years ago. We
started out as a five piece, and now we are a two-piece.

AL: Was there a song that you thought “We have a band here?”

Aleksa: The thing with us is there was never a big plan that we were taking
steps toward. We worked on things for a long time before we were ready to
share it with anyone. At first, we were doing it, because it’s just what we
did. It is a natural part of being. I have been writing music my whole life.
When we started writing together, it moved to the next level. We realized
then that it was worth sharing. We were just speaking with Voices Voices. They
told us that they booked a show before they even had written a song. We are
totally the opposite of that. We had finished doing our first album before
we had booked a show.

Devon: The performance is the last piece of the puzzle with us. We write
and record stuff, and then figure out how we are going to play it live.

AL: When you are recording, are you laying down tracks all the time?

Aleksa: Yes. It’s all a process of layering, right as you hear it. The more
you add to it, the more it tells you a story. Sometimes we have certain
ideas about a song. Sometimes that will get in the way. The song will go where
it wants to go.

AL: You don’t grab an acoustic guitar and play some chords?

Devon: It’s happened, but it’s really not our process.

Aleksa: The best thing for us is when things start out with one sound. For
some reason that speaks so much. From that, you start adding all these other
sounds to it.

AL: How do you know when there is too much going on in a song?

Aleksa: I don’t think we knew that for a long time actually. (laughter).
How do we know that now? I guess it’s when you lose the clarity of the
feeling. It gets too busy. Also the vocals dictate what is working or not working.

Devon: We use less layers. Performing it, we try to do more with less.
Before we would layer a lot of guitar parts. We became better at playing live
and mixing recorded parts with two guitars.

AL: You used to have a drummer in the band. What happened to him?

Devon: He is visiting Afghanistan. We write on computer. Computer sounds are
part of what we do. We like the different textures you can get from
electronic drums.

Aleksa: The kind of people that we are. There is a full vision. We are not
nice and trusting, and want to give something over to someone else, to add
their thing to it. The world is a mess. We control what we can. We know what
we want to have on the album cover.

AL: Who did that picture?

Aleksa: My grandfather. He’s an amazing artist. We are very involved with
everything.

AL: Are you playing some shows soon?

Aleksa: We always love to tour.

Devon: We will probably tour next year. We will be playing a few shows in
New York in the next few months. Aleska is doing a show on HBO for the next
six months. So we will be on the East Coast. We will be releasing our next
record next year at the beginning of summer.

AL: So, most of the time you have played in LA?

Devon: We played a ton of shows in LA the past year, with Warpaint, Miranda
Lee Richards, and Voices Voices.

AL: How is the new record coming along?

Aleksa: It’s finally going. It’s hard. It took us a while to find the next
identity, or overall statement, of what the next record is going to be. The
Decline Of The West was such a strong vision. It takes a while to exhale
one project, and begin something new. I think that we just got there in the
past few months. We are halfway through the next album, in terms of writing.

AL: Will it be a continuation of the first album, or a new vision about
where you are right now?

Devon: It’s a different sound. Things are dictated more by what we want to
express rather than the form and the gear we are using. It’s a little early
to say what the new album is about. There is this theme of earth being used
up.

Aleksa: It’s starts with sounds. But our songs are only really about a
couple of things. We have a bird’s eye view. It’s a view of life, rather than
specific details. We are stuck in life, with all this beauty, and there’s the
impossibility of being human.

AL: Are there any other influences on your music?

Aleksa: Everything influences you, whether you know it or not. I think
sometimes music is the last thing that influences music. I am influenced by
decay and abandoned buildings. Empty spaces.

AL: Haunted places?

Aleksa: Not haunted. Just that sense of being alone. There are places
filled with silence. It mirrors the place in me that I come from when I am
writing. I am attracted to that. There is something in loneliness that I find
gorgeous. There are all these abandoned structures that earth has reclaimed. T
here is fresh life growing on abandoned cars. It’s that feeling of something
new coming in a space that was dead.

Devon: There is more life in decay. Abandoned places have lost all their
pretensions of culture. All the things that are supposed to be important are
not important there.

AL: It’s not for sale?

Aleksa: It shows how easily all our achievements and efforts can be
forgotten. There’s something painfully stunning about human effort amounting to
nothing. It’s heartbreaking and so beautiful.

AL: What else are we going to do? We know there’s failure, but we can fail
in a beautiful way?

Aleksa: We are all in a boat, and we know it’s going to sink. But we know
we have to sail. We know what the end of the story is.

AL: What is the end of the story?

Aleksa: We all die.

AL: And the spirit may live on. Is there any room for spirituality in your
world?

Aleksa: I don’t know. That is a weird word for me because I don’t live
with religion, or a way how things are going to happen. The only spiritual
impulse I have is to get out of my own way, and be a person who can help in some
way. I think the most important thing you can do with your life is help
animals and people. My whole family are artists. There is a strain of humanity
we are trying to defend and protect. My family has always felt the power of
being human, and the ability to give back beautiful things back to the
world.

AL: It’s good to surround yourself with inspiring people and people who
care what you are doing?

Aleksa: We should just take care of one another. That is so lost in our
culture.

AL: We are so disconnected from one another.

Aleksa: Absolutely. Most of the time when I walk down the street people
don’t even recognize that I am a human being. There are so many feelings that
come from that, because I am in their way. It takes us away from the real
experience. It’s just looking at someone, and sharing this daily human thing.
That is spirituality for me.

AL: You must try to connect with people on a daily basis.

Aleksa: Just smile at someone and you change their day.

Devon: A lot of our music is about the falling away of pure experience.

AL: Music is it’s own language.

Aleksa: It’s so hard to say what your music is about because it’s a
mixture of everything that you are going through. Sometimes for us, that
experience is a little heavy, because there is this desire to be more connected in
general. It’s a long-standing ache that people can’t remember why they are
aching. Our music is about everything and nothing. I don’t know.

AL: Listen without fear.

Aleksa: Or with fear.

AL: Because you are scary people.

Voices Voices @ cameo gallery

Live photos by Angel Ceballos