Download: Former Ghosts “Hold On”

(from Fleurs out now on Upset the Rhythm)

Thank technology for letting three musicians in three different parts of the country be a band together. Former Ghosts is Freddy Ruppert (This Song Is A Mess But So Am I), Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), and Nika Roza (Zola Jesus). It’s a bit goth, but in a sort of uplifting way that flourishes on the album Fleurs and Rupert bears his soul with Shakespearean style. Make their L.A. show your Halloween destination. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

What kind of factory would you like to work in?
Freddy Ruppert (vocals/synthesizers): Maybe a factory that manufactures cakes—a baking factory. I’d work on the cupcake line. As the cupcakes come down the conveyor belt, I’d have to pour the frosting on.
The sounds on ‘Us And Now’ remind me of a factory, which is why I asked.
Freddy Ruppert: We all grew up on a lot of ’80s goth and industrial stuff, so the weird sounds come from that influence. I guess it’s surprising that I’d say a cupcake factory, but I think the record kind of mixes the sweet with the dark.
What song reps the sweet?
Freddy Ruppert: Probably ‘Unfolding’ or ‘Us And Now.’ All the songs are kinda love songs aimed for a particular person I was insanely head over heels for. There wasn’t a plan to release them. They were written in a tumultuous time when things were going badly between us and given to her as presents while we were going through this rough stuff.
What made you decide to share them with a band and release them?
Freddy Ruppert: I quit my old band, This Song Is A Mess But So Am I, because I couldn’t handle it anymore. I didn’t do music for two years then I met her and started writing and put the songs on a blog and I’d take them down after she heard the songs. I can’t justify their existence, but this record label wanted to release them, so that’s how it came together. Me and Jamie had been friends for a long time. We were talking about starting something forever. Nika, I really like her voice so I asked her to sing and then asked her to join. But it’s hard for me to justify making it public. Other than hoping to relate to someone else, if that makes sense. I guess the girl was my muse at the time. Making it public is hoping that someone can relate to having that sort of depth and suffering and confusion.
Is there hope in it?
Freddy Ruppert: It’s hard to say. At the time of writing them, a lot of the songs were hopeful. It always felt like I was crazy—on the verge of blooming or withering. Now looking back on them they don’t seem so hopeful. They’re dark, but there’s some hope trapped in there for someone to find. I have a problem with making things too personal. But that’s how I am. I don’t have a gauge or barrier for that. And that is a problem but maybe it’s also a good thing? I think a lot of the songs have a sense of desperation. It was like, ‘I am holding on to this—why aren’t you holding on to this?’ Love is a crazy thing. It skews a lot of stuff. You get wrapped up in it. It almost takes over. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s hard to know—you know how you feel but the way someone else feels could be not as strong or stronger.
Do you compose songs structurally or organically?
Freddy Ruppert: Kinda structurally. I usually have an idea in my mind, but I approach it musically first. I set the music then I go lyrically. It’s compartmentalized. I put the structure and then I mail it to Jamie and Nika and they add in their parts. Lyrics and content stuff is more organic—based on feelings—but the piecing together of the sounds is more structural.
‘A white sheet descends over our bodies and I watch it from a distance.’ What’s that line about? Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?
Freddy Ruppert: Not so much out of body but a feeling of seeing yourself in a certain way—or in the future with someone else that you’re with in the present. Being in this moment where you are in love and captured by them and you can see yourself and this person out of your body, experiencing something else. Not necessarily floating above my body. I have a tendency to romanticize the future. That line is about from a distance seeing your relationship come apart and hoping it can be brought back to life. Like lifting a white sheet off a dead body. Seeing the relationship die.
Are you sad or do you connect with sad? Are you Etta James or Muddy Waters?
Freddy Ruppert: I would say Etta James. I think it kind of becomes a problem when I play live. It can be cathartic to a point but then it can be painful to relive. It’s a fine line. The songs are all personal expressions of my own life. So I am more Etta James. My main concern is surviving through the day.
Why the abrupt ending for ‘Choices’?
Freddy Ruppert: I guess that song is heavy. It was like I was waiting while she was sorting herself out—and I am just waiting and waiting. I feel like that crazy build at the ending—it’s this intense thing of hoping. It represents a thought process that builds up but cuts off. ‘I am waiting and going through all this stuff but you’re not realizing it.’ Then it’s just cut and that’s it. And then what do I do with that? What do I do when it’s gone?
When something can’t be put in words, does the music pick up where the lyrics can’t go?
Freddy Ruppert: Some people write crazy lyrics and the music might be happy. But music should also be representative of the emotion being expressed. When I write a song I know what the song is about. So the emotion and feeling I want to express is there and I need the music to express it. The medium is the message in a way. The emotion would be lost without the music conveying that. For me, they are intertwined.
How did you get Jamie and Nika’s contributions if they don’t live in L.A.?
Freddy Ruppert: I live in L.A., Nika lives in Madison, and Jamie lives in Durham. For ‘In Earth’s Palm’ and ‘Bull And Ram’ and ‘I Wave,’ I sent them music and Jamie did the lyrics for his and Nika did hers. For ‘I Wave,’ me and Jamie worked together. Then I sent the music to Nika and she put in her part. It worked out that their lyrics fit the theme of the record. We just seem to work together well. Nika is completely unbelievable. The first song I sent her was the last song, ‘This Is My Last Goodbye.’ When she sent it back I was like, ‘Please join the band!’ I am completely in love with her voice. She has these moments when it comes across vulnerable but when she lets loose, it’s this really powerful thing. I’m so excited to work in depth with them for the next album—in the same room. I hope she will sing more. Jamie is here now so we can practice though Nika can’t do the tour with us. Maybe we could set up a Powerbook and do a video conference with her projected on the wall so she could sing!
If someone unearthed Fleurs post-apocalypse, what vision of the past would it deliver?
Freddy Ruppert: My biggest fear is looking like a crazy pathetic person who obsessed over a girl. I would rather them see it as a romantic gesture rather than pathetic. Something that captures a past romance. In terms of music, I think the sounds are strange­—at times they are pop melodies but dissonant and off-putting in moments. If they never heard music before, maybe that would be unfortunate.

FORMER GHOSTS WITH THE L.A. LADIES’ CHOIR, POCAHAUNTED AND MORE ON SAT., OCT. 31, AT SYNCHRONICITY SPACE, 4306 MELROSE AVE., LOS ANGELES. 8 PM / COST TBA / ALL AGES. SYNCSPACELA.COM. FORMER GHOSTS’ FLEURS IS OUT NOW ON UPSET THE RHYTHM. VISIT FORMER GHOSTS AT FORMERGHOSTS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/FORMERGHOSTSSLEEP.

Download: Michael Nhat “I Love Bread” Mixtape

Rapper Michael Nhat’s new self-titled album releases Tuesday, Oct. 27, on How To Be A Microwave and his record release show is this Saturday at the House of Vermont. He presents L.A. RECORD with a mixtape—which he titled I Love Bread—and a story to go with every song.

Mozart “Fantasy In F Minor”
One of my girlfriends in 1997 played it live at her school and it made me really appreciate classical music because I didn’t before.

Sonic Youth “Panty Lies”
This song influenced me to start rapping. I had been doing it for fun but this one encouraged me to rap professionally. When people ask me one of my greatest influences, I refer to this—Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth.

Wu-Tang Clan “Can It Be It Was All So Simple”
This is what I was listening to in 1993. I bought my first 4-track and was making music for fun. I played this a lot. The beats and the music inspired me because it was at a time when rap had just finished its MC Hammer era and they were dividing themselves on East and West Coast. And I was East Coast.

Wayne Newton “Danke Schoen”
When I was a kid I heard it in the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movie. I didn’t know who sang it. But this song started my obsession with hunting down songs I would hear places. This was before the Internet.

Etta James “Trust In Me”
This came on in Chicago at a party on the Southside, and it was my first time encountering her. I immediately liked it. I wish I could sound like Etta James.

PJ Harvey “Is That All There Is?”
I heard it when it first came out in 1996 and maybe a little after that my dad died. This is the first song I played after that so it takes me back there.

Radiohead “Fitter Happier”
The writing of this song is probably the deepest influence in how I write my songs. It changed how I see the writing process. I didn’t get it at first. I just liked it for music’s sake. But as I started paying attention—I would say I emulate this style, as opposed to what everyone else confuses me with. People think I am influenced by Anticon and Busdriver. I am not. I’d never even heard of these people until I moved out here.

Johnny Mathis “It’s Not For Me To Say”
This was when I decided to quit making music as a hobby in 1997. I wanted to be normal and go to school and get a job. I had a daughter and this makes me think of her. I was going to school for film and I made a short and put this song in for her.

Otis Redding “I’ve Got Dreams”
This reminds me of the last time I robbed a house. We were looking up obituaries and found someone who had just died and went to his place. We tried to get as much as we could, but ended up just with his guns and sold them. This was something I’d been doing since I was 16. Also at that time, I got in trouble for storing crack for a friend. My dad found it and flushed it down the toilet. My friends thought I sold it or smoked it.

Sesame Street Kid “Sesame Street”
In Iowa at the parties, DJs would play songs like this at the end of their set. It opened my ears to this type of funny happy song. I started collecting songs like that. Eventually this began to influence my music, which is why my songs are so poppy.

MICHAEL NHAT WITH VOICE ON TAPE, HALLOWEEN SWIM TEAM, NARWHAL PARTY, REDEMER, BLUE TAPE RED TAPE AND LUNA IS HONEY ON SAT., OCT. 24, AT THE RELEASE PARTY FOR MICHAEL NHAT’S SELF-TITLED ALBUM AT THE HOUSE OF VERMONT, 1515 S. VERMONT AVE., LOS ANGELES. 9 PM / DONATIONS / ALL AGES. HOWTOBEAMICROWAVE.COM. MICHAEL NHAT’S SELF-TITLED ALBUM RELEASES TUE., OCT. 27, ON HOW TO BE A MICROWAVE. VISIT MICHAEL NHAT AT MICHAELNHAT.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/MICHAELNHAT.

Download: Nino Moschella “What U Do 2 Me”

(off Boom Shadow out now on Ubiquity Records)

Nino Moschella started out four-tracking funk-soul that sounded like Sly and Shuggie and Stevie in a mountain shack at midnight and exploded into fidelity once he visited the wider world. His newest Boomshadow is out now on Ubiquity. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

If you were to make a soundtrack for a ’70s crime movie like Superfly or Jackie Brown, who do you want cast in it?
I would make a crime movie that has the Muppets in it. That would be cool. Maybe not Kermit and Miss Piggy but I want to make a gangster crime movie with all Jim Henson-type muppets. That would be silly.
You sort of have an accent from the East Coast.
My dad is from the Bronx. I’m born and raised in California. A lot of people say my accent sounds East Coast. It’s my dad for sure. And my mom’s from Minnesota. My dad’s overbearing. Not really, but he’s very influential, and I guess it comes out. I’m from Cali though. I love it here. I don’t think I’ll ever move. Are you from California?
Florida!
Oh, my grandfolks moved there when they got old. It’s hot and humid. I mean, it’s hot in Fresno—gets 110. But it’s dry heat. When we go to Florida in the middle of the summer, it’s humid and terrible. Man, and big old cockroaches. They’re humongous. Tropical bugs. I couldn’t stand the humidity. You’re always wet.
What kind of bugs are common in Oakland?
No cockroaches. We have mice and flies. I haven’t seen a cockroach. We had mice for a minute but they’re gone now—luckily. I put out some traps. We were expecting our two mice to multiply but they are gone.
It only takes mice two or three weeks to spring babies. In fact, rodents are the most successful mammal on the planet. I guess they didn’t like our house.
Who is the baby chanting on your song ‘I Love Myself?’
That’s my daughter, Stella. Me and my wife and her were in my home studio where I finished the album. Stella was playing the drums. She likes to have a microphone and hear her voice through the speakers. We were asking her questions: ‘What’s your dog’s name? Who are your friends? What do you love?’ That was how the vocals came about. She was like, ‘I love myself! I love the people!’ It was one of those happy accidents that came out. It’s a spoken-word Stella piece. She’s super musical. She’s going to be four in August.
You seem interested in doing things a little bit out of the box. ‘Ok, I am going to stick a song with my baby in between all these funky tracks…’
I am not trying to do anything that is status quo. There’s no point. If I don’t feel like it’s moving things forward, then it’s not worthwhile. Mainstream music might be satisfied with mediocrity and stuff, but for me, if it doesn’t challenge me, then naturally by extension it’s not a challenge. It’s got to perk my ears. But at the same time, I’m not doing it to be like, ‘This song is this type of song and it fits in this type of category and so on.’ When I put a collection of music together, one of my goals is to personally express something I think is fresh. That also lends itself to a flow. The stuff that comes naturally and easily most times is the stuff that is exciting and fresh and new and unexpected. It doesn’t come from a lot of struggle and laboring over it. The stuff you over-think and deliberate is the stuff that can fit into a box—because you have those constraints. Freedom allows you to do things that are fresh as opposed to doing things that have already been done.
Your stuff isn’t hard to take in. It’s digestible but I can pick out the little details happening at once.
I don’t want to create music that’s just heady. ‘Oh my gosh, this is so complicated and out there that it’s inaccessible.’ One of the goals is to make music that you can listen to easily and you don’t have to go to that place where you’re totally listening to every little thing. But if you want to delve into it, it’s there. That’s the challenge as a music maker. Off the bat you don’t have to get theoretical about it to dig, but you want to create something long-lasting so people can come back and hear something new. The music that I love the most is the stuff that originally just struck me and made me feel good. It gives me an emotion or something I can relate to. What I come back to are the intricacies and that brings up feelings too. That’s the beauty of art in general. It’s not a one-shot thing. It’s not just, ‘Alright, listen to this, put it down, you’re done with it.’ I think as a culture in time, that’s naturally what we’re doing. We get something, put it down, and it’s disposable. Good music isn’t supposed to be disposable.
What’s a record you’ve held onto since forever?
There’s so many! That’s a beautiful thing. There’s so much good music and it continues being created. The first record my mom bought me was Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis. She bought it for me when I was ten. I listen to that weekly to this day. That’s the best selling jazz record of all time. Thriller, you know—speaking of which, Michael Jackson was the first musician and entertainer that I consciously said, ‘Oh man, I want to do this. I want to dance.’ I was in grade school, and popping and breaking was huge. I heard Michael and I was like, ‘I wanna pop. I want to sing.’ He was an icon. David Bowie, later, Prince. My mom got me the red Thriller jacket. It wasn’t actual leather—that shit ended up falling apart.
Your mom seems pretty cool.
She was totally cool. When I was maybe eleven or twelve, my mom took me—a kid—to Purple Rain, which was very controversial when it came out. It was like, ‘Do you know what this movie is about?’ Prince and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder—and Etta James was a huge influence. This was just the music that was in my house. Along with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Jimi Hendrix and Coltrane and Miles and Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus. My folks were into this stuff. My dad is a musician. They met in Greenwich Village. My dad was a performer at the same time when bop was in the Village. They were seeing Coltrane and Miles. Coltrane kissed my mother’s hand. Bop was huge and folk was huge in their world. That’s what they were digging. It was all going down in the same places. There was a club called the Bitter End that my dad was playing at, and Nina Simone was playing there, and at the same time Bob Dylan was playing there. Music wasn’t, ‘This is folk and this is jazz, and that’s where this goes and that goes there.’ It was all in the same club and area and thriving. Luckily that influence of my folks was accessible to me growing up. I feel blessed for that.
Did your parents give you any advice on what music is all about?
What I’ve learned is that music is about communication. Music is about expressing yourself. My dad didn’t want me to be in the music business. It wasn’t until I started making my own records and putting my stuff on the forefront and him being able to hear it, and that was just a handful of years ago. This was after I became a man—he was like, ‘Alright, you really want to do this? OK, I’m proud of you.’ He always supported me playing music for the sake of playing music but it was clear he didn’t want me to make a living at it because it’s such a hard thing. Very few people actually make it and many of them at the end of it lose everything. It’s not something you get into because you want to make money and be successful. You get into it because you have to. You will do this regardless of what’s happening around you. He knew it was a hard life because he went through it. I mean—now he is a school teacher. He still gigs but he was doing music as a living for twenty years and it was really hard to feed his family. He didn’t want me to live that life. But he realizes I understand that it’s up and down and it’s for the love of it.
Not everyone can articulate their life’s meaning that way.
It’s taken time. When I was a teenager, my idea was, ‘I wanna be famous.’ The important things with time become clear. I know for sure regardless of all the other stuff that exists in this business, I do my thing. I know it’s crucial to my existence to write songs, record them, perform them. That is the stability in it all. Nobody has control of that except for me. Nobody can tell me whether I can do that or not. Regardless of success—and maybe I am not a huge success. This is an underground thing after all. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is you stay focused on the point of it and the point of it is to express it and get it out, and if that’s to 100 people in your immediate community or to a million people globally—the point is that it has to be created for me to feel good about myself and to feel like I’m contributing to the world. I got to make music and that’s how it is. It’s still hard and all that other shit and you can’t ignore that, but when it’s all said and done, I know why I’m doing this. Sorry—this has gotten heavy.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS NINO MOSCHELLA WITH CHIN CHIN AND ARMEN NALBANDIAN PLUS DJs ON FRI., JULY 31, AT THE DAKOTA LOUNGE, 1026 WILSHIRE BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 7 PM / $10 / 21+. DAKOTALOUNGE.COM. NINO MOSCHELLA’S BOOMSHADOW IS OUT NOW ON UBIQUITY. VISIT NINO MOSCHELLA AT NINOMOSCHELLA.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/NINOMOSCHELLA.