Download: RT & The 44s “O Death”

(from the self-titled album releasing tonight at Echo Country Outpost)

The three members of RT & the 44s sit inside RT Valine’s farm house drinking whiskey at 12:30 PM. Perched on a steep, hidden Highland Park hilltop, RT tends his chickens and goats and busks around town with his band for a living. On this particularly dry and sunny February Saturday, the band will continue leisurely emptying a bottle until nighttime, then play the final set at the Echo Country Outpost. RT has a voice reminiscent of Johnny Cash. Swimmy plays the washboard and Brendan plays a standup bass made from a washtub, a drum head, and a few nuts and bolts. The band’s country bar sing-alongs stir up devils, toddlers and grandmas alike. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Did your common fashion sense play a part in the band coming together?
RT Valine (vocals, wood ‘n’ wire): I think it’s ‘old shit.’ We play instruments cobbled together out of garbage and wardrobes cobbled together out of garbage. This was my gay uncle’s jacket. [To Swimmy] Did your lady get you that one?
Michael ‘Swimmy’ Webb (washboard): I found this one up in Arrowhead at the Pendleton store.
Brendan Willard (banjobass): I stole this vest from a 3-year-old’s birthday party. It was a dress-up theme. I think the buttons are elk.
How is ‘old shit’ new again?
BW: Old shit’s been happening for a while but we noticed that the response became much easier. We’re the perfect band for the recession. We’re not going to turn anyone away because their guitar only has two strings on it. We’re probably more inclined to invite them to play with us.
RV: I like that about folk music or whatever this whole thing might be. It’s inclusive. You’re trying to involve people, and that’s where it gets special. You’re not just playing to other musicians. You’re playing to people that aren’t necessarily interested in hearing something exclusive. Maybe that’s what is refreshing. If it is connecting with people, maybe it’s because it’s simple and basic and dictated by the parameters of being flat out broke. Can’t get crazy with a Korg and make beats when you’re somewhat limited by finances. They hear the music that’s being processed in music factories and it’s nice when someone can take it back to a little more basic, and experiment with that.
Where you get your microphone cans?
RV: You can make a microphone out of a can and a little Piezo transducer with a sprickler. Trying to bring DIY to every element of the group. Trying to keep it simple. I guess there it gets a little more complicated.
BW: Here’s another good thing about the band. I’ve been in a lot of bands I wouldn’t expose a 3-year-old to or my mother. We’ve been doing a lot of busking and we regularly have little strollers roll up. It can be rowdy bar music or we can play a preschool.
RV: We have old people buying the record too so we have to tell them, ‘Hey, there’s a couple unsavory phrases there.’
How do DIY principles create an inclusive environment?
RV: It lets people know that everyone can do this. You don’t have to have a $1,200 Martin guitar. You can play that dime store guitar that your grandpa gave you, even if it doesn’t stay in tune. You can still have fun. I didn’t feel good playing a lot of these songs in L.A. before. I’d go out and play ‘Nine Pound Hammer’ and ‘Wrong Side Of Trouble’ and people weren’t that receptive to it. Ten years ago, there was a different thing going on. A lot of people were image-conscious and self-conscious and not necessarily going to start singing along. But lo and behold people let down their guard. Some crowds are still tough—they don’t want to sing along and you really got to break them down. But then other folks are more receptive and that’s where the magic starts—when you get everyone involved, and it’s not just a dog and pony show: ‘Aren’t-we-cute?’
Brendan, do you tune your bass with a wrench?
BW: Yeah. I use a box wrench but I always lose them at the end of the evening after we play ‘Stiff Drink’ and someone passes whiskey around.
Swimmy, how long have you been playing washboard?
MW: Almost a year. I’d done the DIY thing a little and played bass and tinkered on some other things and RT was like, ‘We’ve got this Cold Springs show that Brendan booked for his birthday, and he asked me if I wanted to play washboard.’
BW: We’d been at it like a week or two, and I thought, ‘We might as well book our first show.’ That’s as far out of town as we’ve been. RT has all these animals to take care of.
RT: It’s tricky to get away from the critters.
Does your lifestyle and music stem from some particular philosophy?
RV: Things are overcomplicated? It’s nice to simplify things and try to be, again, inclusive, not exclusive. I read this Mao quote the other day—about this frog at the bottom of a well only being able to see the sky at the top of the well. Only seeing this one thing. I like that concept. It’s about perspective. Sometimes we’re only seeing things through a certain eyehole, so to speak. I believe everything is relative. Everybody has got a bad day. Some people’s days are relatively worse. Just take joy that we get to be on this planet and be a human being here and not get too caught up in why or who put us here—‘Did I pay up my insurance policy on the afterlife?’ It’s a pretty good opportunity just to be humans, so enjoy it. The fact we get to taste and smell and we have cannabinoid receptors in our brains.
MW: I just like to keep my life as simple and uncomplicated as possible. I like to work as little as possible. I enjoy my free time as much as possible. I try to keep an open mind about as much stuff as I can—music and philosophies. Kind of really take in influences from bits and pieces of everything.
RV: The goal of entertaining people is to make them feel happy, not try to impress them necessarily. Some groups have a different agenda. There is no agenda with us aside from giving people a good time, break down any guards—maybe that includes getting them drunk first or during.
BW: After the grandmas and kids are gone.
RV: That also thrills me. The kids love it. They don’t understand the words—thank God, cuz half the songs are about death. But all the way from the toddlers to the grandmas, we’re making people happy.
BW: A little girl in South Pasadena the other day, she heard half a song and soon as we finished, she rolled right up and pointed at my instrument and said, [impersonating a sassy 4-year-old girl] ‘What’s that?! I like what you guys play.’
BW: We had her, the 2-year-old in a stroller and the 90-year-old woman in a wheelchair with a blanket, who listened to the whole 50-minute set. We set up at a crosswalk by the Metro Gold Line, so the train comes through and we hold people hostage. People can’t cross the street so they’re forced to listen for a little while, and if we can draw the kids in, then they control the parents. We’re the drunk clown at the moon bounce. You hire the clown and he smells like whiskey.
Why is death a recurring theme in your songs?
BW: It’s not something to be afraid of—maybe to embrace that a little. A lot of these songs about death are catchy. You sing along, stomp your foot. That’s the way I see it. Death is not such a big deal.
RV: It goes back to trying to appreciate the chance we’re given here, for whatever reason. It’s a great opportunity to love each other and have fun with each other. Death isn’t that scary because in the meantime we’re all together and we all have to take that trip so might as well enjoy it. We should only take care of the people we care about—the people we love.
BW: That’s the beauty of this scene that we’ve been around lately. All these people doing great things coming together supporting one another. These shows at the Outpost—a whole community is there, building up.
Who is the live audience on ‘Stiff Drink?’
BW: That was at Hyperion Tavern. We thought it was better with the live energy.
RV: You really need the people clinking their glasses. The Hyperion show was special. People were swinging from the rafters. There’s a few live ones on the album but the rest of the tracks we recorded in the house. We tried to do it exactly as we play it. No added tracks.
Are the live ones from memorable shows?
MW: They’re all memorable shows. Except the ones we don’t remember.

RT & THE 44s RELEASE SHOW FOR THEIR SELF-RELEASED, SELF-TITLED ALBUM ON FRI., APR. 1, AT THE ECHO COUNTRY OUTPOST, 1930 ECHO PARK AVE., ECHO PARK. CONTACT VENUE FOR DETAILS. ECHOCOUNTRYOUTPOST.COM OR LAFOLKFEST.COM. VISIT RT & THE 44s AT MYSPACE.COM/RTNTHE44S.

Stream: Manhattan Murder Mystery “Smoky Mountain”

(from the self-titled LP available Saturday, Mar. 26, from Hello My Name Is Records)

Manhattan Murder Mystery are an alcohol-powered emotional-nudity machine and their debut LP releases this weekend for L.A. locals only on Hello My Name Is Records. You can get their last 7″ at classy liquor stores and their new LP a month before anyone anywhere else by visiting their release show and release party this weekend. They speak from Zac’s magical garage about their new song “Smoky Mountain.” This interview by Chris Ziegler.

How much Canadian Mist whiskey was used to power this record?
Matthew Teardrop (vocals): That’s a common misconception that it’s powered by Canadian Mist. We were actually doing Edward 40-hands during the recording of this song. I was doing Colt 45 that particular weekend. I like Hurricanes, but you can’t really find those in California.
What do you find to be the most creatively inspiring beverage?
MT: It’s a close run between Kessler and Canadian Mist. Kessler, the price went up so I switched.
What image, book or geographic location provided the first germ of inspiration for this song?
MT: The song started kinda weird. My dad writes songs also—kind of folk-y songs. He always used to sing this song about ‘Rocky Mountain’—I think John Denver? So I was messing around with this song and I tried to do like he did, except ‘Smoky Mountain.’ It just snuck in there.
How did you get to Manhattan Murder Mystery from John Denver?
Katya Arce (bass): We were trying to come up with another song—for a compilation we did.
MT: Tim from the Movies was about to move out of his recording studio, and he asked us to come in and record a couple songs before he moved out. We kinda ran out of material—I did this song just on my Casio keyboard and it sounded a lot different, and he was like, ‘OK, try another one!’ So I was just thinking of that song—I started playing it and the rest is history, I guess? It was all written, but I think the vibe changed a lot. It became a little more … waltz-y? We recorded this in Zac’s garage, and he lives next to—I don’t know if it’s a school or just if a lot of weird kids hang out there. We had a three-day recording binge. And the neighbors were really coming down on us—a lot of people coming over worried this was a permanent thing, this three-day party.
I’m amazed they let you go for three days.
MT: He’s got wonderful neighbors! We’d have our friends over pretty much every night. We’d play all day and then everybody showed up. It was a three-day marathon.
How were the mornings?
MT: God’s honest truth, the mornings were not easy.
How does Manhattan Murder Mystery cure a hungover morning?
KA: We’re working on it!
How much of this song is autobiographical?
MT: It’s mostly 100% autobiography.
So that’s a real phone number in there? Is that legal?
MT: I guess we’ll find out pretty soon! But that is a real phone number! Just a nice young lady. The general vibe of the song—the first verse, I’m going through my whole story of leaving Virginia where I grew up. I felt kinda shitty there. Down in the dumps. So I decided to leave. There was girl troubles and all that—so I was like, ‘I’m ghost.’
Did you actually say that?
MT: Well, I didn’t know the term at the time. But I left. The girl I was leaving because of, that wasn’t even her phone number. She was just kind of mixed up in the whole thing. I left and I thought about things. When I was out here, nobody in Virginia wanted to talk to me much—I could be kind of an asshole, I guess. But just a couple years ago, I could stop by anytime and that wouldn’t be weird at all. Now I can’t. So I was like … ‘It’d be nice if I could just stop by, say hello, watch the TV…’ And the phone number seemed to fit right in there.
What is the brightest part of this song?
MT: The bright side is … what can you do? Acceptance! Travel around some if you want? It’s like—I was talking to this girl a little bit, and I didn’t necessarily wanna get back with her, but just be on good terms. It’s about trying to come up with something good to say to bring it back together.
KA: Wishful thinking?
Is this song more about love or more about death?
MT: This is a love song but not in a marriage kind of vibe. It’s just feeling bad if you treated somebody bad.
Why is this the first song released from your album?
MT: This song was a turning point for me personally—in the direction of the band or in the way I’m even writing songs. I used to try and write poetry, but this is even less straight-up. The last verse, there’s no analogies or anything to figure out. Less beating around the bush. It’s easy when you write it but now that it’s at the point where this shit’s going on tape and everybody’s listening and people are working on it—people at some vinyl plant I don’t even know!—it’s a little weird. I guess I’ll find out what the repercussions are!
What repercussions might those be?
MT: Having everybody up in my business!
How naked do you feel about this song? Like at the beach in speedos? Shirtless in a fancy restaurant? What is your exact level of emotional nudity?
MT: I can break it down to you like this. Last weekend I went on a camping trip to the Salton Sea—Slabtown by Salvation Mountain, and we all went down to the hot springs. I was hanging out with some dudes I rode up in the van with, and we had about a mile walk back to where the tent was. I didn’t know this guy that well, but a mile walk when you’re wasted—we were talking about the girls we were into and where our lives were headed, like a real man-to-man heart-to-heart conversation. ‘It’s great to get to know you.’ ‘Yeah, great to know you to.’ And we gave each other kind of a hug and I realized he was bottomless. That’s kind of how it feels. I’m having a bottomless heart-to-heart talk with a man.

MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY RECORD RELEASE DAY ON SAT., MAR. 26, AT ORIGAMI VINYL, 1816 W. SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 5 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. AND WITH HEALTH CLUB, PEG LEG LOVE, DEADLY WEAPONS AND ORANGE REV AT A HOUSE PARTY. CLICK HERE FOR INFO. MANHATTAN MURDER MSYTERY’S SELF-TITLED LP RELEASES LOCALLY ON SAT., MAR. 26, ON HELLO MY NAME IS RECORDS, AND NATIONALLY ON SAT., APR. 16. VISIT MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY AT MYSPACE.COM/MANHATTANMURDERMYSTERY.

BIG SEARCH 7″ RELEASE SHOW w/ JOHN WEBSTER JOHNS + WHITE FENCE ON WEDNESDAY, FEB. 2 AT THE ECHO, 1822 WEST SUNSET BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES. 8:30PM/ $5 / 18+.

OLD MAN MARKLEY RECORD RELEASE PARTY w/ ROSES PAWN SHOP + COOPER MCBEAN + DUSTBOWL CAVALIERS ON THURSDAY, JAN. 13 AT THE ECHO, 1822 WEST SUNSET BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES. 8:30PM / $10 ADVANCE, $12 DAY OF SHOW / 18+.

Download: King Cannibal “So… Embrace The Minimum”

(from Let The Night Roar out now on Ninjatune)

King Cannibal likes his basslines nasty. The producer finds pleasure in dark, gritty beats that barely support a booty shake. Instead, take the lyrics to “Colder Still” off his latest, Let the Night Roar: “I believe in death. I believe in disease. In justice, torture and anger. I believe in murder.” Knives slash. “I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime, stink, and in every crawling putrid thing, every possible ugliness and corruption you son of a bitch!” Some shimmers. “I believe in you.” Doesn’t that just make you feel warm and fuzzy? This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Where did Zilla end and King Cannibal begin?
King Cannibal: I didn’t do many productions under the Zilla name. I did some remixes and mixes. I made some tracks but it was me just sort of finding my feet. I ended up having to stop using the name because it turned out there was a band in the States already called Zilla, after I had already started releasing material. I was going to put a record out with Kid 606 but it got too difficult to try and battle for this, which was ultimately just a name, so I became King Cannibal. At that point I started making music that was darker and different from what I had been doing before. It was a happy coincidence.
So you are now flesh-eating royalty.
King Cannibal: You could say that! But at least these two words together don’t draw up a whole lot in Google. As long as you have Google safe on.
Have you ever seen a dead body?
King Cannibal: Not up close and personal. In film. Wait, what am I talking about? After they die, in the hospital, some family. I’ve not stepped over bodies to get to my front door, no.
Blood and violence can be really cool as fiction, but when you see a dead body in the street, you have to wonder—is it OK to mess around with these ideas?
King Cannibal: I understand what you mean. Life and death become very real in that sense. It’s quite easy to think of it in abstract terms. You see so many films, people getting killed, and you don’t really think about it. Up close in that situation, but it was not something I had thought about. As long as I don’t kill and eat anybody I should be OK.
Cannibalism is interesting. I mean, it makes sense for the music you make—cutting, sampling, mixing.
King Cannibal: That was the whole idea. I do taste a lot of other tracks and if you think about music eating itself in terms of sampling … It was born of that. Rather than trying to sound scary. My music has gone down a dark route but I had not set out to sound so heavy and gruesome. The music came out of me that way.
Where does the darkness reveal itself in a dance song?
King Cannibal: For me there’s so much lightness in pop music—there’s an abundance of that in dubstep right now. It’s all quite melodic. The wonky side of things. I’ve always been a fan of aggressive, energetic music. Growing up I was in punk bands. That stuff excites me. The darker stuff allows me to do stuff that is slower in tempo but still sounding quite energetic. It can swirl around. I like to have a lot of sonic things constantly occurring. I find it hard to do that in a polite, melodic way. Coming out of punk music I got into drum and bass in the late ’90s. The darker side of any genre that’s around has always attracted me. I don’t know why it speaks to me more than anything else, but it does. That’s what I have. I couldn’t really say what effect it has on other people. Everyone reacts differently. Some reviews have said, ‘Oh, he should lighten up. Hasn’t he heard everyone’s making more melodic music?’ But what’s the point of doing what everyone else is doing?
Some of it could easily translate to the dance floor, despite the slower tempo. It’s electronic and uses dance structures. But I want to listen to it rather than shake my bum.
King Cannibal: A lot of music gets made for the dance floor but I didn’t make the album with that approach, so you’re right. It’s not meant to fill the dance floor in terms of structure. Most of the music I listen to is on headphones when I’m out and about. I wanted to listen to this in the same way. That’s why there are so many sounds going on. If it were meant for the dance floor, the tracks would be a lot simpler and more conventionally composed really. Dance floor records are good. They’re useful for DJing and can be good pop things, but I want to make something you can listen to over and over again, and pick up details. People say it’s a barrage of sound. I love that.
You love that bass sound. It’s an album dedicated to that beat.
King Cannibal: I’ve always been into different types of bass music—not so much dancehall. I know what I like. Drum and bass and dubstep now. I like a lot of techno as well. There’s not a whole lot of bass in that though. The Baltimore stuff doesn’t grab me so much. It’s just kick drums. I can’t be having that. I really enjoy making basslines. That’s the main reason the album is so bass-y. That’s the thing I enjoy the most in music-making—making nasty basslines.
What silent film would you like to make a score for?
King Cannibal: This is something I’ve been looking into actually! I’m torn between Electric Dragon: 80.000 V, which is a Japanese cult film. There’s a film called Begotten. It’s sort of like Eraserhead but more messed up. It’s about the Earth being born again. It starts off with God ripping his internal organs out and Mother Nature being born from that. You watch it and the only score on it is this drone—it’s quite messed up. It’s like 90 minutes of saturated black and white film that looks like Rorschach tests. And just people cutting their insides out. It’s quite a grim film. The director, Merhige, also did Shadow of the Vampire, but that’s totally different. It’s like what the hell happened here? How did this guy make both these films?
Would you rather be a vampire or a werewolf?
King Cannibal: Ah, a very current question considering the fashion status vampires have in the world these days. I’d probably be a vampire because a werewolf has no say of when he turns into a werewolf, but a vampire is always a vampire so you can learn to be a vampire on your own terms rather than be like, ‘Christ, a full moon is coming.’
What’s the most important evolution you’ve seen in dance music?
King Cannibal: It’s probably been the emergence of dubstep. In a few years it’s gone from being a small thing to playing at festivals—it’s around everywhere. It’s really dominating. It’s going into house music. Even Pharrell and those sort of guys are doing tracks with English dubstep producers, which is crazy seeing it from where I’m watching. The decline of modern production techniques also. Everything’s changed to software now. Every modern pop record. I detest the sound of it these days. It’s so overly layered, these plastic synths—uch, it just sounds so brittle and nothing’s real in that. You can’t reach out and touch anything in the track. That’s the biggest thing I don’t like that I’ve seen over the past five years—or the aughties, as they’re calling this last nameless decade. It’s the change-over from people using hardware. It’s not a road I want to go down but it’s easier for people. Everything’s there in front of them. It’s good to have something real in a track. Which is what I like about the old drum and bass music. It’s very simply produced in modern terms, but I find it amazing that a track that’s fifteen years old can still sound futuristic. That’s what I’m interested in, rather than something sounding of the moment that will sound old in three years. It’s going to date so quickly. Look at anything on the Prototype compilation. That’s been a big influence on me. It still sounds fresh. That came out in the late ’90s. I need to add dirt to something for it to sound solid. I need noise. I run things through quiet guitar distortion so it sounds realer. When you have drums, they should have a lot of punch to them. It should sound like a heavy drum kit rather than ‘the perfect snare must be 200 hertz’ … a flat sound that things have now. Hardware is expensive, and yes, I use some software, but I try to make good with what I got.
Why do you think people are interested in torture and pain? What’s the fascination?
King Cannibal: I make music which is easily transposed onto that sort of thing. But I think it’s exploring the human potential, what people are capable of. Even taking my album title, Let the Night Roar, which is from a Jim Jones speech—the last one before 990 people were killed in a mass slaying suicide. I just enjoy reading up on these things. I don’t know why. I certainly hope I’m never caught up in something like that. But it is interesting to know what this human being is able to do and what leads to these things. Jim Jones, when he started doing his preaching, he was one of the first people in the South with mixed congregations. He was one of the first to adopt a black child. It started with good intent and then somewhere along the line he got massively screwed up and killed a bunch of people. It’s just interesting. Maybe it’s a voyeuristic thing. People are capable of a lot of good and a lot of bad as well.

KING CANNIBAL WITH DNTEL AND NOCANDO ON WED., FEB. 10, FOR THE RELEASE PARTY OF NOCANDO’S JIMMY THE LOCK AT LOW END THEORY AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 10 PM / $5-$10 / 18+. LOWENDTHEORYCLUB.COM. KING CANNIBAL’S LET THE NIGHT ROAR IS OUT NOW ON NINJATUNE. VISIT KING CANNIBAL AT GODSOFWAR.WORDPRESS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/KINGCANNIBAL.

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: Xu Xu Fang Mix Tape Podcast by Bobby Tamkin

1. Jane’s Addiction “Trip Away”
2. A Place To Bury Strangers “I Know I’ll See You”
3. Jackie Mittoo “Get Up and Get It”
4. Bob Marley “Natural Mystic”
5. Lee Hazlewood “For A Day Like Today”
6. David Axelrod “The Mental Traveler”
7. Kraftwerk “Spacelab”
8. Gas “Eins”
9. Igor Stravinsky “The Rite of Spring Part I: Danses des adolescentes”

Xu Xu Fang like pictures of horses better than pictures of people and will release their new EP Seven Days Now this week. Founder Bobby Tamkin speaks to Scott Schultz about radio drama, fog machines and stoned Oklahomans who like Gossip Girl.

The new EP Seven Days Now is more electronic than These Days’ stoner rock psychedelia. Was the shift a matter of incorporating new musicians to the sound or were you consciously looking to change?
Bobby Tamkin: That’s the weird thing about the band. Most styles of music have elements that I like, and I want to explore those. Sometimes I don’t know if the guitar song is going to fit with the electronic beat-based stuff, but it’s not a conscious effort. If there could be different styles of music back to back, I would love to do that, but I don’t know if that would make a cohesive record or show.
You use a lot of sound effects in your music. Do you factor the effects into your songwriting, or do you add them after the tracks are recorded?
It depends on how the song was created. It may have started with a keyboard sound or an effect, or it may start with a drumbeat. There’s really no rhyme or reason. Suddenly it ambles into something, and at some point I will stop and figure it’s ready to go. Some of the sounds I personally record, probably 85 percent of the effects you hear. I like to run around with a microphone and capture sounds. I love the sound of horses.
Where were the horse sounds recorded?
The horses were a combination of both homemade and post-production. I had a recording that I made of horses, but it wasn’t strong, so I enhanced it with a little sound effect synth sound. Part of the fun is creating it all on my own.
How many musicians have been members of the Fang?
It’s unfortunate that it’s been a process. It comes down to whether people are up to do it. Show up and play—no drama. Enjoy the music and play it. If that’s the case, you’re all set, but there have always been different circumstances. Everyone is always a little unique. It would be cool if it was the same setup all the way through, but it’s getting there, it’s getting there. Our current lineup played together for the first time when we opened for Swervedriver at the Fonda. That was a little over 11 months ago.
Your music seems influenced by movie soundtracks and radio theatre. Do you have any favorite soundtracks or soundtrack artists who inspire you?
Oh man, that’s almost an impossible question. The score I’ve been listening to a lot lately is Bernard Herrmann’s North By Northwest. Bernard Herrmann is pretty much my favorite. It’s like hearing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ over and over and over again, but there are subtle changes. He died in ‘76. The last score that he did was Taxi Driver. He died in the middle, but he was awesome. He’s partially responsible for the modern sweeping scores that you hear today.
Did you begin the radio drama piece with script, music, or concept?
I had a few bits of music that I recorded and didn’t do anything with. I really liked those old radio theater mystery dramas with the sound effects and I thought, hmmm, it would be interesting to make something like that, but make it a little more contemporary musically. I came up with a loose idea of what I wanted the story to be, and then I scripted out simple scenes and had friends do the voices. Then I wrote a bunch of new music for it to fill it out.
How many characters did you voice?
Just one.
The rat who turns in his friend to get whacked?
Yeah—terrible voice! It was so poorly acted. If you don’t know me, it may seem like the character was supposed to be that way, but if you know me, you know that I could have been so much better. Once I had the band together, we decided to play live. We didn’t have a singer yet, but we figured it would be cool to have images up behind us of L.A. in wintertime, and L.A. WEEKLY wrote a story about it and said that we played a live soundtrack to film, and I was like, ‘Hell no—this isn’t a film!’ I went back and shot hours and hours of more stuff, and I ended up editing all over again and finally it became some sort of a narrative and what it had been described as. It was never intended to be a score to a film.
From there, how did you segue into actual songs?
I didn’t want to make another film. I could have improved upon it, definitely, but I didn’t want to make something that would compete with it. Songs seemed like a good challenge: to write a song. It’s hard.
What was your first song?
‘These Days.’
Do you have more new songs beyond those on Seven Days Now?
We have eight new songs that haven’t been recorded yet. So we’re going to write two more and then make a full length with all new stuff.
How would you describe the new music?
That it’s more like The Mourning Son. Less dancey, more guitar. The real shape of it will happen when I get into the studio. At that point who knows what it could turn into.
You had two songs played on Gossip Girl, and they’ll be using a third song this month. Are you attracting Gossip Girl fans?
I guess it’s a testament to the producers and music supervisors that they would put songs like ours into a show like that. It was a total surprise. There are probably some 16-year-old stoner chicks in Oklahoma who check us out on Myspace after seeing Gossip Girl, and that’s totally cool.
Adam Franklin of Swervedriver found you on Myspace and gave you an opening slot when they came to L.A. last year, and Gossip Girl also found you with minimal hype. Are you just lucky?
We seem to have some sort of homing beacon like Batman for cool people. Adam Franklin liked the concept of the horse heads, and that drew him to us, and then he checked out the songs and like the music.
How did you come up with using the horse head pictures for the band photos?
I didn’t have a band when I put my first song up, and I wanted to put portraits of people to represent each musician, but then I figured if I put up a horse head, I wouldn’t have to change pictures. So I came up with a bunch of unique looking horse heads until I could get my band together, and then I just kept it. For a while it was funny—certain horses were more popular than others and would get more comments. I don’t know why.
You guys have some heavy jam breaks during your live songs, where Barbara (Cohen—vocals) dissolves into the murky mix with all three guitars going full rumble. Are you looking to make your jams even larger onstage?
We’ve always talked about doing one jam for the whole show. Just play ‘Good Times’ for an hour. It would be really fun to play that way, but the audience will get bored after a while unless they’re on something.
How long has Xu Xu Fang been using fog onstage?
Since day one. We also use the Stargate and really we’d really go nuts with the lights if we could. We’d need a full time person just for lights and fog. Barbara and Jenna (keyboards) don’t like the fog, because they say it messes with their voices. We had a residency at the Silverlake Lounge and we fogged that place up like crazy. I think he may have told us to stop at some point.
Your first CD had a very L.A. quality. Is the city a character within the story?
I love the atmospheric sounds, the rain—which we don’t get a lot of, but I think it has a real evocative sound in this city. The blasé—neither here nor thereness—fits the tone of ‘These Days.’ This city is so unique and there are so many great bands from so many scenes that are each unique but distinctly L.A., like Jane’s Addiction, NWA, The Doors, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Love, Van Halen…I think the bombast of the city is definitely in our stage show. The music is intelligent, but it’s not afraid to go huge.

MANIMAL VINYL AND RADIO FREE SILVERLAKE PRESENT XU XU FANG WITH VOICEsVOICES, DOWNTOWN UNION AND THE VOYEURS ON THU., APR. 30, FOR THE RELEASE PARTY OF XU XU FANG’S SEVEN DAYS NOW AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD.,ECHO PARK. 10 PM / FREE / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VISIT XU XU FANG AT XUXUFANG.COM.