Download: Random Patterns’ EP Creatures Of Teeth

Straight out of Highland Park and reppin’ Heard of Elephants Collective, Random Patterns takes to music like the first word in their name takes to the second: soaked in paradox. Consider “Corruption In The Licorice Den,” which begins as an acid-fried Texas wail but quickly turns into a saxy surf-rock affair with a slow psychedelic organ coda. The whole thing speaks of late-night collisions between the Butthole Surfers and the Doors at a funk club with pink lighting.  Much credit for this strange gooey cohesiveness goes to drummer Dan Melancon, whose oh-so-crisp cymbals and snare/kick thunderstorms direct the listener through the wandering rapids of each song. Kudos too to saxophonist Mike Allison for his beautiful melodies and outstanding subtlety in the otherwise treacherously obnoxious world of rock saxophony. Mad apropos. Chris Frias’ vocals sound almost perfectly like Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers reference #2), but the wryness of his downtrodden wit strikes a better balance between silly fluff and straight-faced songwriting. Creatures Of Teeth demonstrates a mysterious talent at vacillation between cathartic explosions and jazzy minimalism, raising the question, “How slow a song can you tap your foot to?” This is certainly not to say that Random Patterns favor the lower gears, rather they’re just more comfortable with it than most. And then, when they do finally pour it on, the jubilated breakdowns and crashing, noisy cascades feel all the sweeter.

—Matt Dupree

Download: The Sonics “Strychnine”

(from Here Are The Sonics! available now on Norton)

The Sonics weren’t pioneers so much as cavemen—the first humans to discover tools, fire and the absolute rudiments of chemistry. Their original ‘60s songs still sound wild and feral today, and their debut Here Are The Sonics! devours most of the million punk rock records that timidly followed it. This will be their first Los Angeles-area show ever. This interview by Dan Collins.

When was the last time you guys played the Los Angeles area?
Larry Parypa (guitar/vocals): I don’t think we ever did. We recorded down there a bunch. We went to the Whisky a Go Go and the Turtles and the Doors were there, before they got really popular.
Gerry Roslie (vocals/organ): We saw Ike and Tina Turner! It was extremely happening down there. We were like wide-eyed country boys.
A lot of L.A. bands really emulated the Beatles. But you guys didn’t seem to be Anglophiles.
LP: We loved the Beatles, and we even played some of their songs, but in no way did we try to emulate the Beatles. We were a very minor, dark sounding group for those days.
GR: We’d try to do a pretty song, and it’d just end up getting ‘nice and rough!’
Rob Lind (sax/harmonica/vocals): We loved the Kinks. We actually traveled with them and opened a number of shows for them.
LP: We played the way that we played, which was without a whole lot of technique, and real hard. A live performance—I mean, the room would almost breathe because it was so powerful. Knowing that we weren’t masterful musicians or anything, knowing that we weren’t a vocal group, we were there to pound it out. It was our style. Nobody was doing 1-3-4 progressions, real minor progressions. And they weren’t singing about the topics we sang about. And nobody was screaming!
You both had brothers in the band. Did Larry and Andy ever fight like Ray and Dave Davies did?
GR: When didn’t they? They had some real sessions. We were heading down around the Portland area, and Larry had a brand new Buick, and had his radio on real loud, and me and Andy were in the back seat. Andy was like, ‘Turn that volume down back here at least!’ And finally Andy had enough getting Larry to do it, and he was drinking a bottle of grape pop, and he poured it down Larry’s speakers while the car was going down the freeway, and the speakers go ‘bloooblublublublublublublu!’ And he pulled over, and I think they were just about ready to go to blows right there on the side of the freeway. Andy was always on Larry’s case for playing too loud.
Why did you decide to scream about things like drinking strychnine? It seems like that would kill you.
GR: Well, I’m kind of crazy by nature. I do crazy things and think of crazy things. But I’m not dangerous—heh heh. Honest, judge!
RL: The PA systems were normally pretty bad. Sometimes we just had metal horns. And so Gerry started screaming so he could hear himself.
GR: It’s a wonder I’ve got a voice left! I screamed myself silly. I was inspired by the voices of Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis of course. I liked their energy, but I don’t remember anybody doing witchy stuff. It’s just a crazy, psychotic thing. After we got going, there did start to be crazy, witchy things, like Ozzy. Everything was kind of like, ‘love and marriage, la la la la la,’ and I went ‘Nah! That’s not dirty enough! That’s not the way I feel!’
A lot of your songs seem to be about revenge—particularly upon some girl! Was there a particular relationship in your life where you’re like ‘I’m going to get even with her and write a song about it?’
GR: Do you have a couple hours, my friend? Who hasn’t been screwed over—guys or girls?
Do you secretly hope to yourself that some day, that girl is going to walk into a record store and see a Sonics poster and think to herself, ‘I blew it!’?
GR: Oh, yeah, I do hope that happens! That would be sweet!
You guys are often cited as the original punk band. Did you feel a kinship with bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols?
RL: The Clash, I thought they were hard-rocking gods. The Sex Pistols, I didn’t like a whole lot of the stuff they did, but I liked their attitude, and every once in a while I’d hear one of their songs and go ‘Whoa, that’s good. Way to go, guys!’
LP: After the late ‘60s, I didn’t listen to music much. If I did, it was probably more country.
RL: Yeah, more the Seattle guys—that’s really where garage rock started with us, and it was like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees, and Alice and Chains—it was kind of like those guys were our sons! We were real proud of them.
Let’s talk about the earlier Northwest scene. It seems like the first breakout bands were instrumental combos like the Ventures and the Frantics.
RL: The Frantics and the Ventures and Paul Revere kind of predated us. I think one of the first rock songs I ever heard was ‘Walk, Don’t Run,’ and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
LP: God, the Frantics were just a fantastic group! Even today, they really stand up. The first interest I ever had in guitar was Duane Eddy—actually it was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray, but then Duane Eddy had a song out that was all instrumental, and just really got me stimulated to want to play guitar. Not long after that, the Ventures came out with their stuff, and I tried to learn every song on the Ventures album. Another band that was more regional was the Wailers. They came out with instrumentals that had much harder rhythms than what the Ventures were doing, but then they got Rockin’ Roberts, and Gail Harris, and they would do vocals.
I used to have their album Live at the Castle. Did you ever play at the Castle in Tacoma?
LP: Yeah! In fact, we turned down Jimi Hendrix there, before he was the Jimi Hendix. He came and wanted to sit in, and we told him to get lost! It was a big club—a big dance spot for the Seattle area. You’d maybe get a thousand kids in there. There was a place called the Crescent Ballroom in Tacoma, where the Wailers played a lot. It’s like the first time I ever played there—I was 14 or 15, and probably didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. Lesley Gore came through town and for some reason, my brother [Andy] and I were part of the backup group for her. We did that with the Shangri-Las also, and we just ruined them! We knew we were going to back them up, but we didn’t learn their songs! Their songs had a lot of breaks in them, and we’d play right through them.
RL: The lead singer of the Shangri-Las said something snarky about us. So next time we played with them, we made fun of them. They were doing ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and Gerry was riding his piano like a motorcycle, and I was down on my knees, being like, ‘No, Danny, please please don’t go!’ We just humiliated them. You don’t come to Seattle and trash the Sonics! So they said they’d never play with us again.
We interviewed Mary Weiss last year. Do you want to tell her publicly that you’re sorry?
LP: We’re sorry! We played in Barcelona last year, and she was also on the bill. And she remembered! Oh, yeah!
RL: We smoothed things over. She’s playing with the guy from the Smithereens, Dennis, and we drank a lot of Scotch in the hotel in Barcelona, and we sat and chatted with Mary and her husband. Things are fine now.
How about Paul Revere and the Raiders? Any bad grudges there you want to settle? Like, who played ‘Louie Louie’ better?
RL: Oh, I think we did! I don’t think there’s any question!
Did you get just a little pissed off when the Raiders got to be on TV and in Teen Beat and you guys didn’t?
RL: Not at the time. I used to know Paul Revere, and Paul is the epitome of a businessman. The problem with Northwest rock ‘n’ roll bands—with the exception of the Ventures who broke out and became worldwide—was that us and the Wailers got trapped in the Northwest.
LP: We didn’t even think too much about what we were doing musically or where we were going. We’d hardly ever practice or anything. We would throw our instruments in the van maybe Sunday night after doing some weekend stuff, and wouldn’t pull them out again until we’d play again. We were more interested in whether we could get girls into the motel rooms that night.
It was kind of the cusp of the Summer of Love! Did you guys get to have drug orgies?
LP: We’d have the bathtub full of beer and stuff—to try to ply them with liquor. That really was a key objective. The music was just a vehicle to get us in some parties! You’d hit the road in summers, just playing one-night-stands all over the place. That was an exciting way to spend your teenage life!
The Meters recorded a live album on the Queen Mary—are you guys planning on recording one there too?
RL: No, we’re not doing that. We’re actually planning on going back into the studio in July. All new material. We need to get new stuff out.
LP: We don’t know what’s going to happen because we don’t practice. We go months and don’t touch our instruments. For this show we’re going to get together for an hour and a half at my house before going to L.A. and run through the songs again just so we can make sure we remember them. And sometimes we don’t!
I’ve heard a couple cuts from your previous 1972 reunion, which Norton added as a bonus on the Sonics Boom album. It sounds even more hard than your sixties recordings. How did you guys resist the urge to get all bluesy like Foghat?
RL: We never sat there and scratched our heads and said ‘What could our gimmick be?’ We always played real hard. Larry played guitar as hard as he could. Bob Bennett played drums as hard as he could. Jerry screamed and banged on the piano. I tried to play sax the way Larry played guitar. I tried to play as hard-dirty-nasty as I could. We used to play dances in armories or big roller rinks, where we’d have three-four-five thousand people. And we didn’t want people standing around with their arms folded staring at us. We wanted people to start dancing immediately. What a lot of bands would do is blow two or three songs and get the level right and then get into it. We wanted to get into it as soon as we hit the stage, so we came out blasting from the get-go! And that’s exactly what we do now. We are going to come out blastin’ and attempt to blow the place up.
GR: We don’t tone it down! We don’t try to blow people’s heads off, but… well, yeah, we might try to blow people’s heads off. What the heck?
Ar the end of your career, suddenly a basketball team starts up in your own town and calls itself the ‘Supersonics.’ Did you feel your name had been usurped?
LP: We thought it would be good publicity to sue them, even though we’d lose—just to say, ‘Hey, the Sonics are suing the Sonics!’
GR: It was kind of a shock! But we were out of the business. But now they’re gone, and we’re back!

THE SONICS WITH THE FUZZTONES, THE WOGGLES, THE VOODUO, GIZELLE, THE NEW FIDELITY AND MANY MORE ON SAT., JUNE 6, AT THE INK-N-IRON FESTIVAL AT THE QUEEN MARY, 1126 QUEENS HWY., LONG BEACH. DOORS AT 11 AM / BANDS AT NOON / SONICS AT 10 PM / $35-$70 / 7+. COMPLETE FESTIVAL LINE-UP AND MORE INFO AT INK-N-IRON.COM. THE SONICS’ RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE NOW ON NORTON. VISIT THE SONICS AT MYSPACE.COM/THESONICSBOOM.

Download: Cave “High I Am”

(from Psychic Psummer out May 26 on Important)

It’s nice, easy, and recommended for all folks to zone out with Cave’s 30-minute jams. If only the band’s MySpace page background could follow them around, spiraling neon colors out of sounds and frequencies, and so could we engage the ideal psychedelic lifestyle, in which a blink of an eye might transport us to an outer-space beach blanket with Sun Ra. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

You move furniture for a living?
Cooper Crain (guitar): Everyone in the band does, actually. It’s us and the band Mahjongg. We’re all originally from Missouri and have moved up here at different times. There’s a company that our friend owns. It’s not really ‘real’ but it is real. We own some box trucks and move all throughout the year. It’s called Starving Artists, and there’s a bunch of people in bands. And there’s some people who make visual art and some who write. It just makes it so everybody can leave and do what they want to do but always have a job.
You don’t necessarily think of musicians as handy movers.
Oh no—it’s great because it makes it easy to move amps or anything since for your job you move a bunch of people’s apartments and stuff up stairs all the time.
Do you ever compete to lift things?
Well, there’s certain people who are taller and their arms are longer so they’re able to carry box springs. And every now and then a move is made by somebody who figures out how to get a certain type of couch through a certain doorway. It’s a lot of fun. You work with friends and it pays cash at the end of every job so it’s nice work.
What’s the most current thing in Cave land?
We recorded a bunch of songs last winter and made a record and a single out of it and that’s coming out on May 26 called Psychic Psummer on Important Records. That’s the newest thing. But a 7-inch of ours just came out in England. This new record is the ‘new band.’
How is that reflected musically?
Big, big deal! Before it was just kind of a thing where certain people were involved and every show there would be various amounts of people. It would go from four to ten people in the band at one show. That was in Missouri and they were kind of freeform jams for the most part. Then me and a few other guys kept doing it on our own and moved to Chicago. Some people have left but for the last year there’s been an actual band. Only me and Rex who plays drums are the ones who have been in it the whole time. But this live band that’s on the album—we’ve been doing it for a year and it’s totally a great change. Before only a handful of people would be overdubbing or doing it live. And then editing jams and now it’s advanced a lot more. There’s Adam playing electric organ, I play guitar and keys, Dan on bass, Rotten Milk plays the mono synthesizer and sings and Rex on drums. It’s a five-piece now.
Are you playing full songs at shows now or just jamming?
The album that’s coming out—half of it is songs we actually worked out and half of it is jams we recorded or edited that we kind of learned in order to play live from the recording. Now all the songs that have been recorded—as far as the structure goes, we do a lot of editing in the studio but a lot of new stuff is actually just start and then end. That’s the vibe of how everything starts.
Do you have communication tricks when you play?
A few of us have been playing together in various things for a long time. All of us live for the most part near each other if not in the same household, and we work together then play together. I feel like over the last year being around eah other makes it easier. Since it’s a band now, it’s advanced the sound. It’s tighter and things can happen smoother. As far as location for when things happen—not always but every now and then, there’s a nod or two. It goes half and half.
What’s the longest continuous session you’ve played together?
The very first thing we ever did, we hooked up a tape machine and threw out a bunch of mics and that was like a 36-minute song. That’s probably the longest. Maybe we’ve played literally longer back in the basement in Missouri. Our goal was to try and not go over a half hour for a continuous jam, but it may have slipped here and there. That’s more than a side of a record. That’s why we’re releasing a single with the record. There’s one song that is actually three and a half minutes, and it was kind of written as a song rather than a jam. And we were like, ‘Wow, that’s our first actual song. There’s a lead vocal part on it! We should make it an album single—like an old 45.’ That just shocked us all. But that’s the direction it’s more going into. We’re starting to get into songs, while still maintaning the spirit of the old songs. We’re evolving, as always. It kind of started as a part someone had and we worked it out and we felt it shouldn’t go too long, not that it lacked interest, but it sounded like a song—short and sweet.
What’s the greatest guitar riff you’ve ever heard?
Aerosmith, ‘Sweet Emotion.’ I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that one.
If you could time travel to spend an afternoon at the beach with three historical figures, who would you choose? What moment in time would you like to visit them in?
It’d be cool to go back a little further when things weren’t kept so close-eyed. Mid-1900s. And hang out with some Ethiopian dudes. Maybe Terry Riley or jazz dudes? We’ve all been really into the Doors lately, but not so teenage-girl way—not so Jim Morrison, so I don’t think I would want to hang out with him on the beach. Perhaps one wild card, one TBA. No, wait, actually—though I don’t think I will ever be in this situation, I think if I could have a telephone booth like in Bill & Ted, I want to hang out with Terry Riley, David Tortuga and Sun Ra. Location: a beach in the outer-space zone. Maybe we’ll depart from the mid-1900s. But space, of course, is timeless.

CAVE WITH NITE JEWEL AND JEALOUSY ON THU., MAY 28, AT THE SMELL, 247 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES. 8PM / $5 / ALL AGES. THESMELL.ORG. CAVE’S PSYCHIC PSUMMER RELEASES TUE., MAY 26, ON IMPORTANT RECORDS. VISIT CAVE AT MYSPACE.COM/REALREELPRO.

Download: 60 Watt Kid “2012″

(from the self-titled full-length on Absolutely Kosher)

60 Watt Kid is a three-piece that has no laptops, 80-odd effects pedals, no bass, and a helluva lot of creative energy. Dan Collins interviews them after a grueling practice, on a hot night in his yard, around a smoky chiminea. A lhasa poo stands guard.

So you’re wearing shorts! Is your practice space hot?
Dylan Wood ( drums and tazers): It does get pretty hot in the practice space.
And you guys are working on an album?
Derek Thomas (guitars, analog synth, samples and electronic soundscaping devices): Yeah, we just finished recording, so we got to get it turned in, in probably like four months.
Dylan: And we’re playing Murufest on Friday! It’s the biggest Long Beach house party! Every year. It’s like free beer, free barbeque, like everything.
Long Beach has a pretty happening little scene nowadays. Did you ever play on the boat?
Derek: The Queen Mary?
Kevin Litrow (guitars, analog synth, vocals, harmonica, samples): No, they had a boat where they did punk shows. We were still in San Francisco at that time.
And now you’re based here. Dylan, you weren’t part of the San Francisco chapter of 60 Watt Kid?
Dylan: No, I just joined the band six months ago or something. This guy I know told me about them back when I was still in high school, so I went and saw them at this house party, and it was like the best thing. I was so stoked on them! And they told me they didn’t have a drummer anymore, because they were moving down here, and I was like, ‘Dude, here’s a CD I made you guys.’
Derek: He drew this really nice drawing on the CD—on paper that he’d folded—and after all the effort he put into making it, I felt like I should check it out. I put it in, and I was like ‘Oh, this is a 60 Watt Kid CD.’ Cuz he like did a five minute loop of ambient shit right before he came to the show. I thought it might have been some of our shit, and then I was like, ‘Oh, this is Dylan’s shit!’
Kevin: We love Dylan. He’s so great.
Right now Dylan’s petting my dog, Ozzy, so I have no complaints.
Dylan: He just sat at my foot and was ready to receive!
I’ve found he likes certain types of music, like Joni Mitchell, and The Point soundtrack too. Nilsson. Have you guys been down to the Silent Movie Theater to see bands score live soundtracks? Would you consider performing something like that?
Kevin: Totally. I already did a couple shows at Echo Curio that were just soundtracks to some films, a film I did by myself and did a live soundtrack to it.
I interviewed ADULT. a few months back, and they made their own Suspiria-esque film and toured doing that as a live score.
Kevin: The Books, too! They blew me away. Because they made all their own film and edited it. They had the headphones, and were in sync with the cellos and everything. It made me cry.
Let’s talk about phones for a second. I saw you at Fuck Yeah Fest last year, and you had all kinds of phones on stage. You don’t do the phone thing anymore?
Kevin: We are going to get the phone thing back.
Derek: The phone thing is ‘on hold,’ ha ha!
When I saw you that one time, you literally called somebody, for reals, during the song, right?
Kevin: I called somebody. And Derek projected a call to the audience. The song is called ‘Every Day There’s Something Special,’ and in parentheses, ‘Hold on, I gotta take this call.’ It’s kind of like, we can recognize all the special things in the world, but everybody’s always on their cell phone and they’re not recognizing that because they’re taking time out to get on the phone. There could be a shooting star and they’re missing it, or some guy driving off a cliff!
Was there ever a time when people thought the show was over because you were all on the phone?
Derek: Our old drummer once got up and went and ordered nachos at the food stand while we were in the middle of that section. It started going into a comedy thing, where it was going away from music.
Kevin: It was starting to get corny.
It seemed like you have all kinds of instrumentation: lots of keyboards, guitar, effect boxes. It looked like you had 80 different little things up there.
Derek: I got an old vocal robot pedal, that was used in the original Star Wars, and Brian Eno used it a lot, and I used to play my guitars out of that sometimes. And it makes it sound like rhino-sauruses and elephants having wars in the jungle and screaming and screeching. I tend to trade out and buy a bunch of stuff. We try to take our equipment and use it in one way for a couple months, and then we’ll switch it around and trade pedals, and put them in different orders, and have totally different sounds. Because you can do so much with only a few pedals. I’ll trade If it’s really expensive, and I don’t use it, then I’ll just sell it back.
What’s something where you thought ‘This is going to be the most amazing thing! It’s going to make our band turn a corner and do this new thing,’ and then it sucked!
Derek: I got the new analog Prophet that was like $2000, and I never plugged it in, and it was too much, I think.
[At this point, the old wooden folding chair I had left in the rain collapsed and nearly snapped Kevin’s finger off when he tried to save himself from the ground. A lawsuit against Ikea is pending.]
Oh shit, did your finger get cut?
Kevin: It got crushed… and cut. Actually, do you have some ice? It’s like burning from… being smashed. I’m sorry, it’s just that I play guitar with this finger.
Oh, no problem! I’m frequently injured by friends and neighbors, so I’m prepared. One sec. [Our interviewer runs to get an ice pack, then returns.] Sorry about that. Is this the worst injury you’ve received with this line-up?
Dylan: Last time we toured, first stop, I slammed Kevin’s hand in the door, and he yelled out a belting scream!
And now I hurt his hand, too! Do you think in a past life, you stole something in a bazaar in Marrakesh and had your hands cut off or something?
Kevin: You know, what’s really weird is that my friend had a dream that I put my hand in the blender and cut off all my fingers!
Oh my God! It’s almost like the reality is worse, because it’s slowly but surely happening instead of all at once!
Kevin: She looked it up, and supposedly the blender means you’re blending a mix of stuff into your fingers, so it doesn’t mean all bad.
Dylan: I got totally owned in Oakland because I didn’t pay for this bag of chips in this grocery store, and when we got back my favorite sweater was missing! It’s like, karma was owning me!
You guys are telling me about committing crimes, on the record even! Have you ever been involved with Scientology?
Kevin: I’ve walked over there once, but I didn’t go in. You can get detoxes, ha ha!
Dylan: My best friend Sean went over there, and the lady was like ‘Now you can know the truth about Scientology, and it doesn’t involve aliens!’ And he just walked in there, and the first thing he saw was a huge statue of an alien playing chess with a caveman.
Kevin: That should be the cover of our album! Actually, we have a cover. A painting that my mom did of these three little flowers with a blue sky behind it.
What’s the meaning behind the title ‘We Come From the Bright Side?’
Kevin: You know, the good side of the force. Luke Skywalker.
Mark Hamill?
Kevin: Yeah, Mark Hamill. Not the new shit.
Do you think there’ll come a point in your career where you have a trilogy of albums that suck, and then a trilogy of albums that are awesome?
Kevin: I hope that doesn’t happen.
Dylan: That has to happen!
Do you think there’s safeguards you can put in place to prevent a slide into mediocrity?
Kevin: It’s weird. There’s bands like Radiohead, that slowly progress in their own sound. And there’re bands like the Pixies that just wouldn’t do that. They keep their sound like forever.
I’ve got to crack more into the alchemy of your sound! There’s a really solid way that you guys do songs. But from an outsider perspective, looking at all the gear that’s lying on the floor, I don’t know how to describe it! How do you guys start writing songs? Do you start with a riff on the keyboard, or do you build songs around the drums, or what?
Dylan: We’ll just start something, one of us, and it just progresses.
Kevin: …or Derek writes a guitar part at home, or I write a keyboard progression, and show them. Every song is different. We’re open-minded and free to do what we want.
Has anyone ever brought in a song where the other two are like ‘That’s not a 60 Watt Kid song?’
Derek: There are songs sometimes. We tried to work with Ableton Live, a program that bands try to use to do live looping. It was not our sound. It was obvious. We’re kind of glad we don’t have computers. We don’t have anything pre-looped except a few things. It’s just better that we use real instruments.
Kevin: It’s organic. We try to bring music into it so it’s not electronic music. It’s not robotic. That’s fine for that type of music, but for us, we want to bring an essence of some energy and feeling into it, where it goes out to the crowd, bounces around the walls.
It sounds like if I were to take a list of what 60-Watt Kid is not, one thing would be ‘robotic,’ another would be ‘preset…’
Derek: Being robotic is okay…
Kevin: We haven’t found a laptop program that we’re gonna use live, is what we’re trying to say.
Derek: A lot of bands that we like are moving in the direction of that. And the definition and quality is really good. But at the same time, you want to watch people perform. They sync up the loops, but… we use pedals, but none of them sync up, so matter how in time they are, they go out of time. So we like to do ambient loops against stuff.
Dylan: I’m really glad we don’t use the laptop. It’s just fun to loop live.
But you guys use samples, though.
Derek: I have some vocal samples from an old record, a child’s story book record.
Kevin: It’s called ‘The Story of Growing Up.’
Dylan: I sample my bells live, before every show, and then during the show manipulate them.
Have you ever thought a three-piece wasn’t big enough?
Dylan: Kevin will only let us be a three-piece.
Derek: We were thinking about bass and low end, but some songs Kevin’s the bass, some songs I’m the bass. I don’t think you miss the bass. For the album, we didn’t have anybody play bass.
Kevin: I’ll loop a keyboard drone, and it’ll be bassy, and we’ll play two guitars through it, or whatever. I think it makes our sound, actually.
Do you have a mental shortlist of bands who don’t have bassists, who you feel a kinship with?
Kevin: I think the Doors—Ray Manzarek is classically amazing. There’s so many bands that don’t have bass, which are like guitar and drums, like the White Stripes, more like noise rock or garage rock. I don’t relate us to that, because there’s more orchestration going on.
Dylan: We try to make it sound really pretty.
But have you ever done a song where you’re trying to sound like demons?
Kevin: We have a song, ‘Pressure,’ that’s kind of demonic. Sounds like complete hell.
I feel like all your songs are about the grander things. Do you have any songs about girls?
Kevin: I like to write about stuff that’s more about catching the time and the moment, what I see around me. I don’t like to write songs about breakups, unless I’m going through a breakup. The reason half those songs are about my mom is that she just passed away, and she was dying for the last two years.
Dylan: I really like the way Kevin writes lyrics, because he’s really good at capturing, and in performing too, the state of things when they were happening.
Is there a certain type of girl that’s like the 60 Watt Kid groupie?
Derek: We haven’t met her!
Good! A herpes outbreak could really curtail your tour plans, and we wouldn’t want that!
Kevin: We could write some songs about it.
It seems really sucky for artists right now! It’s because everything has to be given to the public for free! It’s liberating, but at the same time, it’s scary. In 1979, you could be in a punk band and still sell 700,000 albums. What do you think are the pitfalls of the times we are in?
Dylan: It’s a bummer to not be able to create all the time, if you’re going to give it all out.
Derek: That’s the downside—that you’re not going to make money, which is bad! But you can get your music out there, and be noticed.
Dylan: Also, with music, and technology, and the media, the sound doesn’t come out of one place. Now a more mainstream band is… killing the genre before it gets born in a way.
Do you think as musicians, you’re like, ‘Fuck, we need to get a more level playing field as far as radio is concerned,’ or are you like, ‘Fuck it, radio is dead’?
Derek: I think everybody’s dead right now. But I think it’s a cleansing time right now, with the economy, and the swine flu…
Kevin: We all have to shit out the toxins, and then we all start out fresh and new. We’ve all got morals again, and there’s love in the air, you know what I mean? People start realizing, ‘Oh shit, we ARE starting to lose money,’ and family starts getting more important. Working together and helping people out. People start to get a heart a little more… or not!
I can’t wait for that to come true. Is there anything else I didn’t ask that you wanted to answer that I didn’t ask?
Kevin: You could ask us if aliens do exist.
Do aliens really exist?
Dylan: They play fucking chess with cavemen!

60-WATT KID WITH AVI BUFFALO AND TIME OF WOLVES ON TUE., MAY 5, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / FREE FOR 21+ / $7 FOR UNDER 21 / ALL AGES. VISIT 60-WATT KID AT MYSPACE.COM/60WATTKID.

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.