Death Should Know Better

I can still remember the day I first heard You Forgot It In People- slumped on a beat up couch in college at 3am in a state of tired half-consciousness. The record created a paradigm shift in how I thought about and listened to music. It opened this world of full album listens; the soundtrack to just laying around and absorbing, or many a night drive. All comparisons aside the Oakland duo, Silian Rail, brings me to those ethereal places I first start exploring over a decade ago with their latest album, Parhelion, a beautifully flowing and engaging instrumental record. I spoke with Eric and Robin from the road who helped shed light on their studio approach, how they arrived at their current sound from not even owning guitar tuners, and why they’re a band without a mission statement.

TheBloodBeat: It’d be great if we could start with a little bit about your backstory…
Eric: Sure. We’re both from North Carolina originally and we knew each other when we were like 11 & 12. I was first starting to play in a really bad punk band. We parted ways with each other for a long, long time and randomly we met in SF because Robin was doing something with I was in a band in at the time that we both knew from North Carolina. And we started playing music together. Kind of a funny coincidence.
BB: And how’d you meet up with Jon over at Parks and Records?
E: Well, I met Jon through Daniel, who I was in a band for a while. And Jon knew some people in Daniel’s other band. We share a practice space now so it’s all kinds of random connections.
BB: It’s crazy how all of those relationship interweave when you’re in the same circles. Especially in San Francisco, it seems like a very tightly knit music community.
E: Definitely.
R: Yea, I’d say Oakland even more so.
BB: I know Parks and Records has a pretty strong green initiative. Is that something you identify with strongly?
E: Absolutely. Awareness and protection of the environment and our wonderful natural world is something we both feel very strongly about, and do much in our everyday lives to address from bicycling to recycling shower water, etc. We also like that its a label which is focused on good music, but also has a larger world vision and set of concerns that it integrates with its artistic aims.
BB: Great. So you guys just put out Parhelion on July 13th. And you’re actually I think the first instrumental band that we’ve interviewed. It’d be great if we could talk a little bit about how you approach building songs. Do you get an idea and you both jam on it… and then you slowly piece the parts together…? How do the songs come together?
R: Sure yea. I’d say that at first when we were a band it was much more me coming up with guitar parts and saying “This is the song” and Eric would write parts on top of that. But we’ve been a band for a couple years so its been much more collaborative. So I’ll come up with a part and show it to Eric, and we’ll work on the arrangement and transitional ideas together. It’s become a very collaborative thing. I wouldn’t say we jam a lot, that’s not really my personal approach.
E: Not in the sense of improvising on both sides. Robin will come with some really long and involved parts and play them over and over again for me. Then I’ll play everything I can possibly think of that would work. Then we’ll go back and figure out some of the things that clicked, what works dynamically and piece it all back together. It’s all pretty organic and involved.
BB: So Robin when you’re coming up with guitar parts, do you record them at home, see what you like from the sessions, and go back and restructure it?
R: No, I usually just write it and remember it. Sometimes I’ll record things on my voice memo on my phone, which I guess is kind of low-brow. But usually I’m pretty good about having ideas and keeping them in my head.
BB: Is there any sort of theme to the record? It’s sort of an abstract question. With instrumental music its difficult to tell if there is an overarching objective, you know?
E: I would say that question could be answered both yes and no. There’s definitely things that’s we’ve been working on to move things in different directions. But we’ve never been a band with a mission statement. We try to leave that really open and not focus too hard on that sort of thing. On this record, we definitely widened our dynamic range and break out of habits that some of the older songs fell into. So we got a little dreamier and explored more places. But it wasn’t necessarily a conscious thing.
R: We worked with a different engineer and in a different studio on this record. I think that was another goal of the record was to have something that was more representative of how we sound in a live setting and the songwriting has improved over time so we wanted an album that captured those things. Like we imagine we sound and to finally have that was really rewarding.
E: And our engineer did a really good job of using the studio to our advantage completely which was something we haven’t achieved as much on previous recordings. Something like finding the right tone for each song or part to really deliver it.
R: For us especially being instrumental and having a lot of different dynamics going it really benefited us a lot to take the time and figure all of that out.
BB: And where was it recorded?
R: The Hangar. Its this studio in Sacramento.
BB: And who was the engineer?
E: Robert Cheek. Like tongue-in-cheek. He’s very, very talented.
BB: The quality on the record is really nice. One of the things I think is really interesting is that you do create this dynamic throughout the record but compared to some of the other bands I would loosely associate you with, bands like earlier Broken Social Scene or Mogwai, you seem to have a pretty pure approach to sound and effects. It seems like you spend a lot of time focusing on the tonality but you don’t muddle it with all of these effects like delay and what not that a lot of other instrumental bands fall into.
R: Definitely, I would agree with that. I try to be judicious in my use of effects. It has become a certain replacement for interesting songwriting and parts to just layer effects on guitars and I find that to be pretty boring. If you can use them sparingly and add them at the right time, I think they can be good, but I don’t need it in every song. It’s definitely a crutch for bands in this genre sometimes. And thank you for the nice comparisons.
E: I also think one of the reasons that it’s easier for us to have that approach is when we started playing, the tone consisted of just the clean guitar through an amp, I don’t even think Robin had a tuner at that point. So yea, we’ve adding things really slowly and when you go about it that way, you only add what you really need. Its making sure that a part sounds ok on its own without the effects and using them to highlight it rather than its whole basis.
BB: It’s a nice approach. It makes the album feel really pure, instead of some synthetic piece of studio work. It could feel like a live album.
R: I would say it was fun to be in the studio and be able to add over dubs, and we like to take advantage of that a little, because its fun and makes for a cool listening experience. But we try and keep it pretty close to how the live show would be. We didn’t go through tons of over dubs or other weird instrumentation. So it’s  stayed pretty representative of our sound.
BB: And then xylophone comes in out of left field and you’re like ohhhh shit! There it is!
E: Haha, yea. That’s one of those things that.. over time we’ve added instrumentation but only when we really feel the part needs it.
BB: I’m just kidding, it was tasteful and totally fits. But going with that, on your website it looks like you have a pretty long list of people you include in your musical family. Is that more like a touring support thing, or is it more of a studio thing?
R: Touring is mostly just the two of us. We just started to collaborate. We have so many talented friends and musicians in the Bay Area that sometimes its fun to just work on something together and add another element for a show or recording. On the new album we have a guest guitarist on one song. We have an acoustic EP that has violin on a couple songs. Its just a fun way to add dynamic and have a little more fun and employ the talent of our friends. But for touring, 99% of shows are just the two of us.
BB: Switching gears a little bit, I don’t think we talked at all about what your influences are. I’m always interested, especially with smaller bands, in what each of you brings to table; where you come from musically speaking.
R: That’s always a tough question because we both have super varied tastes. I think we share a lot of the same likes but also very all over the place. There’s nothing specific. In the past I did listen to a lot of Broken Social Scene. It’s funny you mentioned it because I think you’re maybe the first person to pick up on that as being an influential band for me. I used to listen to a lot of that back in the day, but not as much these days. I’ve been listening to a lot of local stuff, there’s this great band called Worker Bee from San Jose that I’ve been listening to probably more than anything else in the past 6 months. So yea, local bands have been a big inspiration for us. I wouldn’t say to a lot of Explosions in the Sky or that kind of the stuff. It’s kind of comical how little I listen to that kind of music now…
E: And I actually probably listen to even less of the kind of music we often get grouped in with. I’d say oddly enough the place where our musical tastes overlap the most is probably in Americana and folk. And then the local band thing of course.
BB: There’s kind of a contemplative feel on the record so it’s interesting to hear where that comes from.
R: Yea I don’t know. It’s a combination to me having listened to all these things over the years and having a specific of style and approach to music that Eric happens to understand and compliment really well. It’s not an influence of a particular band or genre, or us going for a particular sound.
BB: It just must be intense sitting down to write a 6 minute instrumental. I imagine its a time intensive process creating it.
E: Yea, I would say more so in the last year its gotten much more involved. I’d also say I’ve played in a lot of bands, and this band is better than any of those at playing and not over-talking or over-thinking things which makes the process a lot easier and enjoyable to just try ideas and play them out; see what we both end up feeling like.
BB: Well I know you’re busy on the road… you’re on a short west coast tour and then you’ve got the album release party at Rickshaw Stop on August 1st. Do you think you’ll be hitting the road again this year after this one comes to a close?
R: Yea I think so. We were talking about touring again in October which will probably be another west coast thing and hopefully in the spring doing a more extensive, full U.S. thing.
E: We do a lot of the Bay Area even when we’re not touring. So we’ll have a bunch of local shows between then as well.
BB: Well I’m looking forward to catching you guys play on the 1st!

- matthew hunt

End Times

Deep in the SOMA district of San Francisco there exists a room that resonates with some seriously charged shoegaze about 7 nights a week. Its the practice space shared by Weekend, The Young Prisms and Leagues. Residents within a 5 block radius should be issued ear plugs by district government mandate. The ratty white canvas on the back wall spray-painted “Punx Not Dead” should begin to paint a picture of the environment and influence in the room. If your sense of smell is stronger, the scent of burning plastic permeated the room from a blown out PA speaker. Elsewhere, the floor is littered with pedals, guitars, speakers, recording equipment, and three drum sets. Needless to say, it’s a busy room. But it’s not all about aggression and topped out amps in this grungy practice space. I spoke with Kevin and Shaun of San Francisco’s own Weekend, who gave me a rather cerebral run down on why their upcoming record is anything but lo-fi, the reason they turned from punk to something more aesthetic, and why their music is like a kamikaze jet.

TheBloodBeat: Alright, maybe you could take me from the beginning, we can cover some of the stock shit first. How’d you guys get to playing together?
Shaun: Ha! Alright, I get the stock shit. Well I’ve been playing music with Taylor, our drummer, since fourth grade. We’ve been in various bands off and on. We’ve known each for 15 years or so. We knew Kevin since middle school as well. He moved to Truckee for a bit, and we were both doing our own musical things for a while, but we’ve kept in contact. We’ve always wanted to collaborate, and finally got the chance. We moved to SF from Santa Cruz, we started something for a little, but it sort of fizzled out because I was into other things besides music at that point. Then a year or two later we met up again and we got way more adamant about starting something up. So we started a band again, and wanted to make it something serious.
Kevin: I moved up here to go to school. That was around 2005. And we tried to start the band but there was just too much shit going on. I ended up dropping out of school and picking it up again in another place, so the music was put on the back-burner until a year and a half ago. I moved back up here, we got this practice space and got Taylor in on it.
BB: How long have you guys been in this space here?
K: A little over a year I think. Maybe a year and a half.
BB: And that was around the time you started playing full time together?
S: Yea we went through a month of, sort of a teething period first. Taylor officially joined in October 2008 I think? We started writing our first real songs in 2009 though.
K: It’s been a project in development for many years. It’s been an idea for a long time.
BB: Tell me a little bit about how you got started with your labels. Seems like you’ve worked with a few different guys now. The split was on Transparent. You did the 10” with Mexican Summer..
S: Yea, and then the full length is going to be on Slumberland. I guess when we first started we didn’t have a recording budget or anything like that. I did some rough demos on my computer at home, sort of like placeholders of how we wanted things to sound in the future, sketches of how we wanted things to sound. Keith from Mexican Summer contacted us looking for some recordings and we were really into their philosophy of making music tactile again and really pushing vinyl again. Then we saw the roster and were really into a lot of the bands on there.
K: They were the first label to contact us. We were pretty clueless really…
BB: You were lucky to fall in with such a good group. Those guys have great taste.
S: Yea Keith has been great. He just heard the demos, asked for some recordings, and it just so happened that day we got out of the recording studio to clean up the demos so we sent those along and he said great, lets put something out. And then Transparent was one of the first blogs to put out one of our original demos. They were the first ones to write about us and give any recognition.
BB: And they are in the UK right?
S: Yea they’re in London. They’re great, we met up with them at South By South West.
K: They were just such a small operation back then. They seemed like some cool guys in the UK, back before they even put out the Washed Out 7”.
S: We were really into them because they actually took a lot of time to listen to our music and write about it, not just some circular blogging atmosphere. They do something that’s actually original which is great.
BB: So did Keith see you at a show or something? How’d he find out about you?
S: No, no, I don’t even think we’d played any shows at that point. Maybe a couple I guess. I think it was truly just a myspace find.
BB: So he just saw some of your friends, heard your stuff, and said cool I should talk to these guys?
K: Yea pretty much. I think added Captured Tracks to our friends at one point and maybe Keith saw us then.
BB: Great. So where did you do your recordings?
S: We’ve recorded all of stuff at Function 8 studios. A friend of ours does all of the engineering there. Ruminator Audio is his production company. He’s actually an old family friend of mine. He used to play in a band with my dad in the 80s, so it’s a pretty funny connection. We’re stoked to have him on board because he truly understands what we want to do, and has the technological know-how to get there.
BB: And originally you did a couple of the demos on your computer at home?
S: Yea, just on GarageBand, slapped together a few things. It’s great if you’re going for that lucent, sloppy aesthetic. There is a certain charm to the haphazardness.
BB: That lo-fi, DIY sound. Totally. Going along that direction, you obviously listen to a lot of My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth type of music. Do you all have a similar taste? Or is there a dynamic where somebody is really influenced by a certain style and that meets the other interests in the middle? Or is it more collective? Help me break all that apart.
K: I think Shaun and I are really closely related musically. We both grew up listening to a lot of the same stuff. We’ve experienced a lot of the same musical discoveries together. We’ve analyzed and interpreted a lot of those things together. The interesting thing is bringing Taylor into it because he’s just incredibly eclectic and digs on all the stuff we like. But he also comes from this super deep history of grind core and metal, so he kind of gives it all a new spin.
S: We all grew up listening to hardcore, metal, punk and whatever. I’d like to think all of that is still alive in our music, and Taylor certainly brings that out of the songs.
BB: So, when you think about noise and feedback… A lot of the lyrics seem to be going for that incoherent, drifty style. Reverb obviously seems to be a big piece of it as well. Could you talk me through how you think about all that, how you approach it?
K: For me getting into shoegaze music was a very punk rock thing. To me it was a very punk idea to make your guitar so noisy and inaudible. I stopped listening to punk because to me the music got uninteresting. It wasn’t punk anymore. So for me I think the draw to shoegaze music was that punk rock aesthetic. Something that’s just totally weird, and new, and fucked up. I think a lot of people make shoegaze to be personal and pretty. But I think there’s also another side to it that’s really punk. We saw My Bloody Valentine play and it was just insane. It was the loudest, most aggressive, intense show I’ve ever been to.
BB: They had a reputation for that.
K: Yea but when you listen to their records you just think: lost in translation.
S: I guess for me I still really favor the shoegaze stuff that’s really aggressive. I’m not particularly into that dreamy, ethereal stuff. My favorite shoegaze record is  Isn’t Anything, the first My Bloody Valentine record, just because it still has that aggression in tact while they were messing around with textures, noise, and you’re not just totally floating there.
BB: [points to the A Place to Bury Strangers record on the wall] Those guys are pretty aggressive, speaking of all that.
K: Oh yea, we played with them. It was amazing. Their live show was just…
BB: Full throttle?
K: It was full throttle. But still in such an intense, controlled, wonderful sounding way. I was totally blown away. I hope we get to play with them more.
BB: You guys listen to that band Suicide? That’s a band I think you are hearing a lot more of shoegaze today. Its a more beat centric and all that.
K: Yea. That’s a band that could write something totally weird and fucked up, but still groovey. That’s the other side of it I guess. Is not wanting to write something totally atonal and textural because that’s not the world we live in. There are still other people in it and other melodies. There’s a lot happening outside of that dissonant noise.
BB: That’s a great point. I’ve never really thought about it that way. Shifting gears a bit, you have the full length coming out in September?
S: September or October.
BB: Cool, so how many songs is that going to be? Is it continuing on a similar trajectory? Are there many surprises?
S: Yea I think there are going to be a lot of surprises.
BB: Haha alright good, well don’t give the whole thing away.
S: I think the releases we’ve had so far have been written knowing that they’d be released in that matter. We knew we had a 7” coming out so we wrote a song for a 7” so it was a little more concise and pop centric. The 10” even that was pretty tight. On the full length there is a lot more space in the songs. I think there is a larger emphasis on the atmosphere.
K: We had the time and space to really develop ideas. We hopefully have pulled a lot of tracks together into this larger thing and don’t have to convey the whole message in one or two tracks. So that gave us some liberty to do some new stuff.
BB: And is it entirely just the three of you?
S: Stef from The Young Prisms sings on the track that’s on our 7”. So that track is on this as well.
BB: Oh wow, I didn’t realize she was on that track.
K: She sang back up. She was on the “ooh la-las.”
BB: And then after the record comes out are you hitting the road to do some touring?
S: We’re in the process of figuring that out now. We’ve been working on this album for over a year or so, so we want to make sure we do it right when it comes out.
BB: And you guys have day time gigs for the time being?
S: I just graduated from school so I work at a bike shop and a graphic design studio right now.
K: I work for the city doing urban planning for bicycle infrastructure for the city of San Francisco. I kind of just fell into it. I studied art in college but during that time I was really involved in the bicycle community. So I decided I wanted to be involved helping to make San Francisco more like Europe: a lot more bikes, a lot better facilities.
BB: So, sorry back to touring, you made it down to play SXSW this year?
S: We shared a van with The Young Prisms. There were 8 of us… 9 of us? 8 of us. That was intense. Along the way we made it out to Denver, we played in Oklahoma, Arkansas. We got into some strange stuff out there.
BB: I think I saw the single most racist piece of anything I’ll ever see in my entire life in a bathroom stall in Oklahoma.
S: Haha, wow. I think we played one of our best shows ever in Arkansas. It was insane. We played at this house that some college kids owned. This nice, huge suburban house on this corner. They packed us, Young Prisms and Woodsman into there. A bunch of kids showed up and we decided to do a round robin set. Each band played one song and the next band played a song and the next band played a song, and all of the kids were just in the middle swirling. At the end we all played together for 20 minutes or so.
K: And all of the amps were blocking the exits. You can imagine it right? Young Prisms have some pretty big amps and lots of gear. We have big amps and lots of gear. Woodsman are pretty loud as well. All three of us playing for twenty minutes was just total white noise. Crowd surfing inside the living room, the floor was just wilting underneath the pressure of all these kids…
BB: A couple of grandma’s urns got broken…
K: Ash just flying everywhere!
S: There was actually a sorority on the other side of the street. They didn’t show up though…
BB: You also played on Day Trotter recently?
S: It’s funny, we recorded that back in I think January? Whenever Noise Pop was. A long time ago. It even says it just came out. I think it said “Recorded June 25th, 2010,” when it was recorded like five months ago. They came to town for Noise Pop. They took over this studio downtown, Studio Paradiso. They contacted us out of nowhere and said, hey do you want to come down? We put our amps in a taxi and went down. The whole thing was one take, no re-dos, no mixing.
K: It has a certain energy too it.
BB: It sounds really pure.
S: Live recordings usually just sound really bad but it has this charming energy that you can’t really recreate. We actually did a lot of tracks on the full length live with all of us in one room and just separated some stuff, maybe did some overdubs. We realized it was a) much faster to do everything at once and b) really hard for us to recreate that live energy sitting alone in a room with headphones on.
BB: And your type of music is well-suited for that recording style too.
K: Sure. We didn’t really cut any corners though. We had this opportunity to work in this really professional studio and we didn’t want to half-ass it. We tried to make the record as interesting and high fidelity as possible.
S: It’s anything but a lo-fi record.
K: Some people are really scared of the studio and having all of that potential to make their music sound polished. I think some of the most interesting records actually take advantage of all that equipment and those really interesting sounds you can get if you try. Just pumping shit out of a loud speaker into a cannon and recording that, but also doing that with a clean guitar track with a $4,000 ribbon mic or something and using all the sounds together. Not just sticking to some really plain aesthetic.
S: And not just throwing it into a mixer tape.
BB: There’s enough of that around.
S: It’s just dumbing it down.
BB: Last question, hypothetical: if you were to assign your style of music to a single mode of transportation, what would it be?
K: Bicycle!
S: Kamikaze jet!
K: Is that really a mode of transportation?
S: Transportation to hell!

Catch Weekend live  at their upcoming show at Milk Bar on 7/15 with Ty Segall, Terry Malts and Whirl. And be sure to keep an eye out for their LP on Slumberland this fall.

- Matthew Hunt, photo by Lorna Pacheco

I recently caught up with the Sandwitches over a few drinks to hear what’s been going on since their record, How to Make Ambient Sad Cake, and get a little more sense of how these Bay Area suburbanites came to make their rustic jams. If you haven’t heard their brooding Americana meets melodic 60’s doo-wop yet, do your eyes and ears a favor and check out their video for “Kiss Your Feet”:

TheBloodBeat: So tell me a little bit about what’s going with you guys now? You put a record out last year (How to Make Ambient Sad Cake), you played a bunch of shows..
Heidi: Yea, we played a bunch of shows. We went on a short tour, and then we went on a long tour. And now we’re taking a bit of an extended hiatus to mess around and work on ourselves.
BB: Thats always important.
Grace:  Yea it will probably be at least another couple of months.
BB: The record was on Turn Up Records. Tell me a little bit about how you got in with those guys?
H: Marc is a friend of ours. Last year he called us up, said he was thinking he wanted to start this label and wanted to put on a Sandwitches record as his first release because he liked our songs and was a real supportive. He thought it’d be a good way to start off so we were like yea, sure, of course! And he was kind of old fashioned about it. He was willing to put up the money and have us go into the studio and do the recordings and do it in a real cool way so it was great.
BB: And where is the studio?
H: In the East Bay.
G: This place called The Wally Sound Studio, run by this guy Wally. He’s a cool rockin’ dude and this place is in his garage.
BB: So Sonny is also on the label?
H: Yea Sonny is. Marc is doing I think 5 of his 7”s. Sonny is doing a series of 100 7”s as this conceptual masterpiece.
BB: I saw it at Gallery 16 when you guys played there, and he played as well. Really cool idea.
H: It’s so cool.
BB: So are you friendly with Sonny as well? He’s like a Bay Area staple huh?
G: We both recorded on some of those 7”s.
BB: That’s cool. And Grace, you put out a solo record recently, Grace Sings Sludge?
G: Yea, I recorded a bunch of songs on my own. It was a bunch of recordings I made last year and my friend liked them and put them out as a limited tape release.
BB: Very cool. And you also in your other time work at Amoeba Records?
G: Yea, I’ve been there about 3 years. It’s like a big dysfunctional family there. Everybody’s really nice and usually a musician.
BB: You must listen to a shit load of music from working there?
G: I’m not quite as obsessive or expert as some of my co-workers. But yea…
BB: Is there anything you’re really stoked on now that you’re listening to?
G: My friend is putting out a Michael Yonkers record so I’ve been listening to him a lot.
H: I got a bunch of music from my roommate recently. So I’ve sort of been slowly making my way through. I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz recently. John Surman, Don Cherry, and am seeking some new pop experiences.
BB: So how do you guys know each other?
G: We met through her ex-boyfriend who worked at Amoeba.  So we became friends and hit it off. She gave me a bunch of songs that I really liked. Then she gave me a CD of her recordings.
H: Yea we both did a bunch of recordings, we swapped, and both liked each others stuff.
BB: What do you use for home recording equipment or software?
H: I just use my computer. Mostly GarageBand on there.
G: I have a little digital 8 track that I use sometimes. But mostly GarageBand as well.
BB: More recently you put out the video for “Kiss Your Feet,” which Joey Izzo produced, how did you guys get hooked up with him?
G: He’s my honey.
BB: Oh nice. So when you’re working on new music, it seems like you split on the vocals, do you both bring in stuff you’ve been working on and go from there?
H: Yea, pretty much. I think we both enjoy being in lead and supporting roles so that works out nice. Both vocally and instrumentally. Songwriting wise its a pretty happy union, because all the different sides of it are different and satisfying.
BB: You have really complimentary voices, it make sense.
H: Ha, yea we like singing together.
BB: So any plans for shows coming up?
G: Not for a little bit.
H: I think our next show is in August. We’re not really trying to book anything until that.
BB: The first time I saw you guys play at Cafe de Nord you had a guy drummer, and then when I saw you at Gallery 16 you had a girl drummer…
H: The girl, Roxy, was our drummer on the album. Lance is our current drummer who went on tour with us.
G: He’s in a few other bands and he had a show that night at Gallery 16. He plays with Tongue and Teeth.
H: I thought they were going by Zoo?
G: I think it might be Teeth and Tongue. Or Zoo, haha.
BB: I read somewhere that you used to play with the Fresh & Onlys?
H: Both of us. We were back-up singers. We met through my ex-boyfriend who is Tim Cohen, who is the lead songwriter.
G: He recorded our EP that’s coming with Wymond from the Fresh & Onlys.
BB: When is that coming out?
G: Pretty soon.
H: I think we just got the record sleeves for it.
BB: Is that two legged cat going to be on it again?
G: No, we did the art for it this time.
BB: Is that on Turn Up as well?
H: No, it’s going to be from Secret Seven and Empty Cellar.
G: Our friend Greg recorded it.
H: Empty Cellar is part of Empty Nest. There are levels this collective I guess. It’s Arvel Hernandez and Greg Gardner. Arvel doesn’t work at Amoeba anymore but he once did. So it’s those two guys putting it out.
BB: And no bassist right? Is that intentional?
H: We’re always looking! We’ve had some candidates. Bunch of flakes!
G: I like the way the songs sound with the bass on the album but I’m not really in any hurry to expand the band. We’re getting better. We’ve been working on harmonies on the guitar to make it sound a little fuller.
H: There’s always a touchy social dynamic in a band too. Bringing in another person is kind of a terrifying prospect. It’s gotta be the perfect person.
BB: Where do you practice around here?
G: In the TL at Park and Taylor.
H: Francisco Studios. It’s three stories, there are tons of bands there. Francisssco.
BB: Did you both grow up around here? Your music sounds much more like a small town, country folk origin. If you told me you both grew up in Oklahoma I’d be like, yea I know…
G: I’m from the suburbs.
H: Menlo Park.
BB: Well where the hell did you come up with this sound?
G: I have no idea what comes out.
H: It just happened pretty naturally I guess. We had those songs and that’s just how they sounded when we played them together. And we played them together a bunch so we filled them in. Everybody has kind of a good ear so we just heard it out and it felt right.

- matthew hunt

Time Bandit

Casa de Sanchez in the Mission District is a colorful establishment, its interior painted brightly in primary colors. Old, beat up classical guitars dangle from the walls between murals of mariachi bands. The atmosphere smells of Mexican history, which smells a lot like carne asada burritos… As I shovel chips and salsa into my mouth, I await the members of SF indie rock/twee-pop up-and-comers, Social Studies. Though the name might evoke over-sized textbooks and stodgy professors, the quartet is nothing to sleep through. We spoke of their upcoming full-length album over a few Pacificos before they hit the road for their tour-

The Blood Beat: “So you’re about to start a pretty nice tour on the west coast?”
Michael: “Yeah, we leave on Saturday. The tour is a little under a month up and down the west coast, and then ending in Chicago, so some of the Western states along the way as well.”
BB: “And Tom, will you be going back there for good?”
Tom: “I’ll be back there for about a month”
M: “Tom and I are from Chicago so that’s like a second city for this band.”
T: “Yeah, I just flew in two day’s ago to start the tour.
BB: “Well it looks you’re going to be playing with some great bands, especially in L.A.”
M: “Yeah, The Radar Brothers, The Entrance Band, The Growlers, Foreign Born, and a ton of other L.A. bands. We’re actually the only non-L.A. band playing this festival. It’s a two day, out door street fest. Its supposed to be like an alternative to Sunset Junction, which is this big outdoor festival in L.A. But that tends to be wider known acts, so this will be fun.”
BB: “So Tom and Mike, you’re from Chicago. Natalia and Jesse, you’re from the Bay Area? How’d you all end up playing together.”
Natalia: “Yeah, I’m from the Bay Area, born and raised. Jesse is actually from Paris. Michael and I started the band.”
M: “We’ve been through a few line up changes, with people moving on to their adult lives and pursuing other things, or focusing on their own projects. We’ve known Jesse for a long time. He was really involved with the band before joining the band. Initially Tom got invited to play on one tour and everything worked out really well. So now Tom’s moving out to California.”
T: “Yep. Sold all my shit and headed out west!”
N: “We basically poached him.”
M: “So we had a couple openings and conveniently knew some talented people that were into it, so its all worked out pretty well.”
BB: “And you practice around here?”
M: “Yeah, we’ve been practicing over at Secret Studios on Cesar Chavez. In between the Mission and Bay View. But it’s a secret so let me tell you the password to the gate…”
N: “It’s a terribly kept secret.”
BB: “Sounds it! So, you put out a 7 song EP a few years ago…”
M: “Yep, and the full length will be out soon, in July on Antenna Farm. There’s also a 7” that will be coming out, May or June. Probably early June. Nick, one of the members of Sugar & Gold [label-mates on Antenna Farm] is starting a label so this is the third or fourth release. They’re good friends of ours. There’s going to be two tracks, one of them is a new, unreleased song and the other is a remix by Nick of one of the songs that’s going to be on the LP. ”
BB: “So they’re friends of yours, is that how you got in with the guys at Antenna Farm?”
M: “We’ve have a lot of funny, old interactions with Antenna Farm. They’ve been doing great things for a while. We’ve been emailing back and forth with Paul for a while. I think it probably helped we have a couple of friends on the label who probably forced them to listen to our record and from there they made their own decisions. I know they get a lot of requests and music sent to them. It’s always a slow, flirtation process…”
N: “When we started talking to them, it just felt like the right partnership so we’re really excited.”
M: “Yea, they’re great. They work really hard and we have a lot of respect for what they do and also for their catalog.”
N: “Its really nice to be on a roster where you like all of the other bands.”
BB: “It seems like they are growing pretty fast as well.”
M: “I don’t want to speak for them, but it certainly seems like they have more stuff in the works.”
BB: “And did they record the new record as well?”
N: “No, we actually recorded the record with some friends here and there in pieces. But all with local people and engineers and did some stuff ourselves. We pretty much gave them a near finished product.”
BB: “And then they did some post-production work on it?”
N: “We actually had it mastered and mixed, as a complete package. I think more and more this is what’s happening. As the bigger labels are starting to fail, the smaller labels don’t necessarily have the capital to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in bands. So a lot of labels are picking up finished albums. And as musicians, its a nice advantage to be able to do things yourself. Then you have less to pay back.”
T: “And fewer people to answer to.”
BB: “Less people in the denominator is always good.”
M: “You know, I think that was a nice thing about this record. We were able to make the record we wanted to make and we had complete creative control over it. It was a labor of love and we were able to come up with something we were all really pleased with.”
BB: “The EP was all recorded yourselves as well, right?”
N: “Yea the EP was even more so home mixed and home everything. We recorded it at this school called Expressions. They do free recordings and a lot of local musicians have utilized them. Then we did all the mixing ourselves.”
Jesse: “But it’s an audio engineer school though. Not an elementary school.”
M: “The production level this time around was a lot higher in terms of mixing. The sound, and everything about it is a big step up.”
BB: “I definitely got that from the three new songs you have up on your myspace page.”
N: “The tracks on the new album are recorded with a buddy of ours who works at a major electronic studio. I did a lot of preliminary mixing but we wanted to run it back through a board. I was doing it at home, so we took the tracks, reset up the mixes, ran it through the board and printed the tapes that way. There was a lot of collaboration. Jay Pellici mixed a lot of the tracks at Hyde Street Studios. And Laura Dean mixed some of them at Tiny Telephone, so a lot of San Francisco studio talent involved. A lot of changes were made to the tracks after they were initially recorded. We’ll usually record the songs live, or come up with the melody to arrange it all together. But especially on this record we did a lot of work after the foundation was laid. Its nice to have that time to sit with it and hear it. Playing it live is so much different then the recorded album. Some of the changes are incorporated into the live show, some of them we just kept on the record. Not everything works live and vice versa.”
BB: “Tell me a little bit about the song-writing process on this record.”
N: “It really depends since we’ve worked and played with a lot of people. Right now, generally it tends to be me coming in with a sketch for a song and we’ll arrange and write it together. We labor over our songs and spend a lot of time with them. They change a lot from the initial recording.”
BB: “You can definitely hear a lot of transitions and key changes, particularly on the new ones. That adds up. Was there any theme or stuff about the last record you didn’t like that you wanted to change on the new one?”
N: “I think the structures and melodies are pretty similar, but really this record is a lot more adult. We’ve grown up to and I think that’s reflected in the music. Maybe a little deeper, maybe a little darker.”
M: “I think there’s more of a range. It covers more ground sonically, and emotionally as well.”

You can find the new album Wind Up Wooden Heart on shelves (digital or otherwise) on July 27th via Antenna Farm Records. In the nearer future as part of the SF Popfest, Social Studies will be playing on May 27th at the Rickshaw Stop with the Tune-Yards, Eux Autres and Knight School. Tickets available here: http://www.rickshawstop.com/calendar/event_details/?tfly_event_id=7429

- matthew hunt

Weekends and Treehouses

Gone to Clear Lake

TheBloodBeat.com is proud to debut our feature section with SF locals, The Young Prisms. If you haven’t heard these guys yet, you probably will. They’ve recently played with Best Coast, Harlem, The Sandwitches, Washed Out, Small Black, along with many others at SXSW including Real Estate, Dum Dum Girls, jj, and Woodsman. I spoke with the Bay Area shoegazers from their practice space in SOMA, where they have been working on some new songs.

TheBloodBeat: Hey guys. So tell me how you all got together? You all grew up in the Bay Area mostly?
Gio: Yea, 4 out of the 5 of us. Jordan is from…
Jordan: I’m from Detroit. Well… not really Detroit
G: He’s from suburban Michigan. We all went to high school together.

TBB: Got it. And I read you all live together?
G: We did until recently, while kinda. Stef, myself, Jason and Matt lived on an apartment on Mission St and we shared it with Jordan’s girlfriend for a while. So it was kinda all of us living together for a while, but we recently moved out. We had to get somewhat temporary situations because its expensive to live here and tour.

TBB: So I take it you haven’t officially quit your day jobs yet?
G: We’re still doing the day jobs.
J: We’re hard working Americans.

TBB: Can you tell me a little bit about the song writing process? Is that pretty spontaneous?
G: For the most part we’re usually all together. Its been kinda different every time. Every song has had a different approach or technique I guess. Some of them have been written individually. The majority of the newer stuff has been written all together though.
TBB: So its a pretty open atmosphere for you guys?
G: Yea, yea definitely.

TBB: How’d you get in with the guys at Mexican Summer?
G: Well, I’m kind of a computer nerd, so I was just emailing Keith for a while. He was really into it from the start, so got the relationship going in the cyber world. And then they were super awesome, pressed the record, invited us to New York for CMJ, so it was like cool introduction to them. We kinda found them because I was really stoked off this Ariel Pink 7” they did and Matt was really into this Wooden Shjips 12” that they did. So we found them through other musicians and then decided to hit them up.
TBB: They’ve got great taste over there.

TBB: So I know that you and some other California lo-fi bands, not to lump you in with them, are getting the My Bloody Valentine comparison. But your music is a lot sunnier and groovier than that. Can you break me out of that comparison and share a little bit about what kind of sound you guys are aiming for?
G: We’re definitely all really big My Bloody Valentine fans so its true to an extent. They’re definitely a big influence for us. You mind if I ask who else you think has that going?
TBB: You know who I saw who kinda has that thing going the other night with Surfer Blood is those guys Ganglians from Sacramento.
G: Oh yea, those guys are totally awesome. We were just talking about them before this.
TBB: It was a wacky show.
G: Those guys are fun to watch man… anyway what were we talking about?
TBB: Oh yea, your influences, what kinda sound you’re thinking about when you’re getting equipment. That kinda shit.
G: I don’t know. What kinda tone we’re looking for?
TBB: Yea sure.
J: We’re just trying to trip people out.
G: Yea you know… weird, fuzzy, tremolo, noisy… There’s definitely not one specific sound. Its kinda multiple sounds. And once we land on it when we’re fooling around, we’ll just get stoked and way into it.

TBB: You guys put out a 5 song EP towards the end of 2009 through Mexican Summer. And looking at your Myspace you have split release coming out on May 30?
G: Yea that’s with the dudes we share the practice space with who we were just on tour with. They’re kinda that My Bloody Valentine, shoegaze thing too from San Francisco. They’re called Weekend.
TBB: Cool, so how many new songs are on the split?
G: Its actually just going to be one song from our upcoming LP. Same with them. Its like a split single that this label in the U.K. is going to do. Its a really small run for kids out there to check us out.
TBB: And you have an LP coming out later this year you said?
G: Yea, hopefully sometime this summer. We’re just trying to finish it up. That’s what we’re doing in here now actually. Working on some new stuff that we’re going to try to record this week.

TBB: I saw you guys in SF earlier this year at Cafe du Nord with Harlem, Best Coast and The Sandwitches. And then you guys came back to the Rickshaw Stop with Washed Out and Small Black. Seems like you’ve been lumped in with some pretty fast growing artists, which is awesome and deserved. It must have been a really fast year for you guys, huh?
G: Yea, we’ve definitely done a lot this year. Its kinda cool to be able to play those shows with bands that started relatively around the same time we had. Its been somewhat comfortable since they’ve been doing the same type of thing around the same time. Obviously all those bands have kinda blown way more than we have. But for instance the Washed Out dude, Ernest, just did his first stuff with them like a year ago, about the same time we started.
TBB: Seems like you guys are due?
G: Ha! Yea, hopefully.

TBB: And you just got back from your first time playing SXSW. How was that?
G: Oh yea, we just got back from that trip this week. It was fun. There was a lot of alcohol consumed. A lot of hazy memories. But it was awesome. We got to meet a lot of cool people and meet up with a lot of our friends that we’ve made over the year. It was kinda like a weird reunion you know? You tour and meet all these awesome bands. And then they’d all come through here and we’d play together in San Francisco. So it was great to hang out with them all again there.
TBB: Totally. I was thinking that lineup looked like a tour reunion for you guys.

TBB: Even back here, it seems the SF music scene is in a really good place these days. It must be a very cool thing to be a part of.
G: Oh yea, we were just talking about that a few days ago. How there’s all this attention back on California and San Francisco. Its cool that we’re getting in with these awesome bands and labels, and to be part of a San Francisco scene that is just really growing. Like when we got hooked up with Mexican Summer, they were growing really fast too.

TBB: So as far as touring goes, sounds like in the near term you’re just working to get the LP out?
G: Yea, for the next couple months we’re really just locking down on it. But then we’ll do some traveling later this summer.
TBB: Do you know who that’ll be with at this point?
G: Nah, we have some ideas but nothing solid yet.
TBB: Well if you could tour with anyone, who would it be?
G: Ha! That’s kind of an awkward question to answer… Stef says Pure Ecstacy. Matt says Ganglians. I’d liked to tour with our friends in Dominant Legs. We’ve been listening to their stuff a lot and they’re good friends of ours. They were good friends of ours when we were on Mission Street.
TBB: Oh yea, they’ve had a pretty good year too.

TBB: Well I don’t want to take up any more of your practice time. Anything else I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to add?
Jason: Grip it, rip it and shred hard.
TBB: Ha! Good advice. Thanks again guys. I’ll catch you at Hemlock for the split.

- matthew hunt