Revolt of the Apes’ interview with the Brian Jonestown Massacreis up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. It’s hard to express just how incredible it feels to be able to type the previous sentence – we’ve been listening to the BJM for about twenty years now, and remain just as intrigued as the day we first heard them. Our BJM pin never, ever leaves our jacket lapel.
Read the entire interview here, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:
What is your earliest musical memory, or perhaps, the first time you can remember being personally moved by music in a way that had a long-term impact on you and your life? Do you believe that you were destined to live a musical life? If not making music with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, have you ever considered what the focus of your life would then be?
My mom use to play music around the house and my baby sitter would as well. My older sister even loved and had great taste in music. Various family members would send gifts of money for holidays and birthdays and by the time I was two and a half, I had my own Mickey Mouse record player in my room, I take it because it was unnerving for a toddler to be using my mom’s stereo. I was born in 1967 and she was in her early twenties, so she had an awesome collection of some great records of that era, including the great middle period of The Beatles. I took most of the good stuff to my room and would play Simon and Garfunkel until i slept. My actual love of music grew from that kind of stuff, and buying albums with my mom, to stealing my older sisters’ albums as punk and new wave came about.
I had no idea I could actually play music in a band or anything until I was a teenager with my friends. I really felt like the punk people were idiots and that was empowering to me; I mean, when you watch someone like Paul McCartney play something perfect on TV or jimmy page or whatever, there’s nothing they do or did that shows you as a child you can ever do it, because you can’t – they’re unique … but the garage and folk thing is something else. Music by the people for the people and I was inspired by and built on that, I think.
Revolt of the Apes is pleased, stoked and chuffed to support Austin Psych Fest 2014 through a series of interviews with many of the artists involved, answering the kind of ridiculous questions you’ve come to know and – maybe – love. Many more coming soon.
Which planet did Woodsman descend from, fully-formed and possessed of such halcyon harmony? Though we’ve been told repeatedly that the answer is Earth, we’re not prepared to believe such an easy solution, certainly not after hearing their recently released third album.
Conversely, if Woodsman sounded any more natural and organic on said album, we would declare the album to be nothing less than the perfect and unexpected merging of fuzz pedals and photosynthesis. Emerging from such well-cultivated sonic ground, the album feels strongly rooted below the surface, resulting in a beautiful blossoming, an uncategorizable unfolding.
The question of Woodsman being of terrestrial or extraterrestrial origin is unlikely to be answered any time soon. Certainly the album’s song titles – “In the End, Remember When?,” “Healthy Life,” “Rune” – offer no firm evidence either way, and the band’s focus on instrumental invocations leaves us no lyrical content to interpret. And while the band claims to be Denver-born and Brooklyn-based, is there even a second of this album’s note-perfect thirty-seven and one-half minutes that sounds anything at all like the work of a band that made the conscious choice to move away from Colorado?
After repeated listenings, we were at one point content to declare this Woodsman album to be the result of telluric current, plugged in to the electrical charge running through the earth and seas, yet flowing in a general direction toward the Sun, toward a more stellar sphere.
And this still may very well be the case. Upon further reflection – or more accurately, upon further repeat listenings of the album’s ultimate track, the blazingly brilliant “Teleseparation” – we’re finding it unnecessary to determine the origin of Woodsman, whether galactic or grounded. It’s both and it’s neither, and it’s completely undeniable. What holds “Teleseparation” securely is the sort of container (maybe not exactly Can, maybe not exactly a “Box of Rain,” but holding much) that can hold anything, with room for everything. It’s a microcosm of Woodsman’s sound, writ large: the use of space, both one-hundred thousand light years away and right in front of your hands. Use two ears and listen forever.
Woodsman’s self-titled third album is available from Firetalk Records. It’s brilliant.
“When the Light of the Endless was drawn in the form of a straight line in the Void… it was not drawn and extended immediately downwards, indeed it extended slowly — that is to say, at first the Line of Light began to extend and at the very start of its extension in the secret of the Line it was drawn and shaped into a wheel, perfectly circular all around.”
– Philip Berg, “The Kabbalah: A Study of the Ten Luminous Emanations from Rabbi Isaac Luria with the Commentaries Sufficient for the Beginner, Vol. II”
“Welcome to the land where the brainwashed rule the dust,” goes the first line of Moon Coven’s first album, the hypnotic “Amanita Kingdom,” acting as an appropriate if arcane introduction to the band’s shape and sound. For listeners on the quest for a more vivid than vicious realm of mushroom-fueled riffs, amplification and ice-cold lunar hymns … thy kingdom come.
Could it be that we’ve been at least slightly brainwashed by the efforts put forth by the rulers of this kingdom, the heretofore unknown group of Sabbath-summoning Swedes who built this “Amanita Kingdom”? Without question. However one defines the magick born of Malmö that runs through the collective veins of Moon Coven, it’s clear that we’ve been full-on mesmerized over the course of many, many dozens of spins, over the course of waking up for days in a row with the album’s heavy, hummable and heavily hummable melodic moments bouncing freely through our brain, before any light even enters our eyes.
Of course, what we consider a dream could just as easily be seen as a nightmare, depending on the visions one sees when the light of the sun bends and breaks across the face of the Moon Coven. They say one ape’s trash is another ape’s treasure, and your willingness to scale the castle walls of “Amanita Kingdom” may vary. Moon Coven seem to travel in an orbit of the middle way, perhaps too heavy for daintiest devotees of Donovan, perhaps not heavy enough for those whose sole aim is to ascend the “Dopethrone.” This merging of differences seems to reveal itself even in the album’s cover, beauty in a Baphomet pose. Despite this – or, perhaps more accurately, because of this – we find “Amanita Kingdom” to be a perfectly satisfying sonic prayer, Moon Coven divine deliverers of doom. Long may they reign.
“You must remember, too, that the experience is safe (at the very worst, you will end up the same person who who entered the experience), and that all of the dangers which you have feared are unnecessary productions of your mind. Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them. Avoid grasping the one or fleeing the other. Avoid imposing the ego game on the experience.”
Listen: It very well may be that there’s nothing we can do, say or write to compel you to listen to Negra Branca, to turn off your mind, relax and float down, up and all-around the everlasting stream.
The point is not to compel. There probably is no point. And if by chance there is a point, we don’t know how to show it. Because we don’t know much about Negra Branca, except that it is the project of Marlene Ribeiro, long-time member of the essentially member-less, barrier-less Gnod, our love for whom is longstanding and immense, whom, not coincidentally, honor a free-form approach to both membership and sound and, not coincidentally, stand as our human-enough physical representation of our alien concept of music that we hear as exceptional and inspiring. Which is to say that Gnod is fucking awesome.
Coincidentally, it’s no coincidence that the debut Negra Branca release is likewise exceptional and inspiring. And really fucking cool, too. But there’s no point in pointing that out. You can just listen – at dawn, at noon, the moon hanging low, the moon hanging high. Good friends, we mean to say that the sounds we hear on this Negra Branca album exist outside of time. Put it on repeat, and repeat as needed. This is perfect.
Negra Branca’s debut release is available from Tesla Tapes, along with a healthy heaping helping of other zany sounds.
“The Landscape is a space of possibilities. It has geography and topography with hills, valleys, flat plains, deep trenches, mountains and mountain passes. But unlike an ordinary landscape, it isn’t three-dimensional. The landscape has hundreds, maybe thousands of dimensions.”
– Leonard Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design”
It’s difficult to believe that more than a year and a half has passed since we properly praised Far-Out Fangtooth on this ridiculous website. It’s even more difficult to believe that we failed to officially put down any words of praise about “Borrowed Time,” the spectacular album they released late in 2013 (although we have blathered on about our love for the album on Twitter regularly since its release).
Sometimes there’s simply not enough time in the day, week, month or year to write about all of the great music we’re fortunate enough to hear.
But as it relates to Far-Out Fangtooth, we’re prepared to rectify the situation right now: “Borrowed Time” is not one of our favorite records of 2013. “Borrowed Time” is not one of our favorite records of 2014. “Borrowed Time” is truly revealing itself to be one of our favorite albums of all-time. Like, ever. And we’re old. In more ways than one, we are living on “Borrowed Time.”
Below is a new video for “Admit It,” one of nine far-out songs that appear on “Borrowed Time.”
Far-Out Fangtooth are heading out on tour now, and will also be a part of the appropriately massive annual SXSW “Levitation” party, produced by our friends at Austin Psych Fest. Dig it.
“Open your eyes and let’s see time from a different angle! When you see your life from the broad view of time, you see that your life is not something separate from time— your life is time.” – Dogen Zenji
Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Kadavaris up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. This band has probably forgotten more great riffs than many bands record in their lifetime; their second album, “Abra Kadavar,” is an absolute monster and highly recommended.
Read the entire interview here, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:
Are all three members of Kadavar from Germany originally? How would you characterize your adolescence in Germany? How much or perhaps, how little do you that think where you grew up influenced not only your interest in music but in the type of music you’ve come to play in Kadavar?
Our bass player is from France, but Lupus and I are German. My adolescence … I think I grew up pretty late. On the one hand, my mother had a record collection which could have been the reason, but especially within the last years my interest for older rock strongly developed and become an inspiration, not only music and sound-wise, but also from the production side. When I listen to music, I love when I can hear the musicians character – the way they play their instruments. But aside from The Beatles and a few other acts, my mother’s music wasn’t my growing up soundtrack. I listened to punk and hardcore music. I come from a small town in western Germany where you could go to shows and also play music. Everybody had a band when I was fourteen. You could express a lot with just a few chords. That was good to start. Even if I’d say I didn’t have a clue how to make music back then, this is an important part of my life as a musician.
We ask this in part to learn more about Kadavar, but also because Germany is one of only a few countries that can, by name alone, evoke a certain kind of sound, with what is commonly called ‘krautrock,’ or perhaps more pleasingly, ‘kosmische’ or even ‘Deutsche Elektronische Musik’. Was this type of music important to you in your personal musical evolution, even though Kadavar’s sound is much more riff-centric? Is there anything exciting or compelling to you about the current state of musical affairs in Germany?
T: Krautrock has definitely been important and influential for us as a band since the beginning. At one point you’ll come across that chapter of German music and it will soak in if you are interested in the history of music and sound. I think we are in a way looking for something cosmic in our music, but we choose very simple and straight ideas as basic elements of our music and play them in a real rock context. When we are just messing around in the studio, we are often sounding like an evil version of Neu! and Guru Guru. The repetitive elements in bands like them made me listen to beats in a different way, for example. It can teach you to really dig deep into something entirely simple. And that’s something I am always looking for when we write songs. Elements that won’t get boring if you repeat them over and over, even if we don’t do it exactly like that in a finished song.
Germany’s musical landscape is weird. Everything mainstream or successful is REALLY bad; I don’t even want to talk about it. At SXSW last year, the Germans just put some pictures of our fucking president on a flip-chart in the exhibition hall to promote the music of our country because there probably just wasn’t anything better to show. But 90% of the music consumers in Germany seem to want exactly that. The kind of rock music relating more to psych, art or krautrock is still there, or there again, but more as an underground phenomenon. Berlin is a good city for these genres and there’s a growing amount of bands. You know The Blue Angel Lounge probably as they’ve played Psych Fest, but also Mystical Communication Service or Suns of Thyme are Berlin-based bands I follow with interest.
Revolt of the Apes is pleased, stoked and chuffed to support Austin Psych Fest 2014 through a series of interviews with many of the artists involved, answering the kind of ridiculous questions you’ve come to know and – maybe – love. Many more coming soon.
“Sky Is Hell Black” declares the title of the new album from Has A Shadow, a band of appropriately shadowy sonic soothsayers from ‘round Mexico way, yet they never get around to an explanation of how this “Hell” sounds so heavenly.
Then again, it’s in the showing, not the telling, right? And even while “Sky Is Hell Black” tells us to keep listening, it shows us that there are countless reasons to fall for Has A Shadow.
This musical merging of opposites, of shadow and light, of form and emptiness, should be nothing new, nothing confounding. Dark as it may be at times, our ears find “Sky Is Hell Black” more comforting than confounding. Has A Shadow, for their part, leave the confounding to the cocksure choice of titling the first song of their first album “John Lennon.” Hey, we’ve heard of that dude!
To say it works would be an understatement. Resistance is futile – Has A Shadow is en fuego.
Yet it’s the title track that follows, however, that manages to bury any and all resistance we could possibly muster. A motorik stutter swims beneath the sixteen-ton bass-line, a singing synth makes dramatic and desperate stabs in the air, apparently locked in fierce battle with a dying nine-volt battery, which ushers in the complimentary axe-attack, leaving just enough breathable air for the death-rock vocals to announce the presence of the living dead. Forget Joan Crawford – Has A Shadow has risen from the grave.
Here’s an album built for the long-haul, an eternal would-be mix-tape classic, over-modulated and (probably) under-appreciated. You should, by all means, cross paths with “Sky Is Hell Black.”
We wouldn’t feel complete in our mission if we didn’t also at least sprinkle in a few kind words regarding the latest from Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, labelmates and countrymates of Has A Shadow.
We know what you’re thinking – ANOTHER neo-psych-and-roll-and-gaze-and-whatever band from Mexico with a name that references “Seinfeld”? Of all the bands in the world that fit such a description, we’ve no problem declaring Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to be the best.
Nor do we have hesitation with calling “Chambers,” the latest album, one of the best of this year, or any year, really. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete clearly operate outside the constraints of time.
In our recent interview with the band – available at the Austin Psych Fest 2014 website – the band gave credence to describing their sound as “pattern music,” characterized by “repetitions drowned in distortion, delay and reverb.” It’s a fair description of a sound we could otherwise describe as indescribable and undeniable.
Given the band’s rapidly expanding discography, we recognize another pattern emerging with the release of “Chambers”: a pattern of Lorelle Meets the Obsolete creating some really fucking phenomenal songs.
Distortion, delay and reverb: They might as well be described as members of the band. Armed with these tools, “Chambers” does nothing less than reflect the universal and the particular in song, interacting with both and hindering neither, amplifying a deeply aware sound of light and dark locked in harmony. In the midst of a conflicting and competitive world, it’s a neat trick. If the pattern of “Chambers” continues, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete will never know the obscure.
“This inner enemy is extremely dangerous. The destructive potential of an external enemy is limited compared to that of its inner counterpart. Moreover, it is often possible to create a physical defense against an external enemy. In the past, for example, even though they had limited material resources and technological capabilities, people defended themselves by building fortresses and castles with many tiers and layers of walls. In today’s nuclear age, such defenses as castles and fortresses are obsolete. In a time when every country is a potential target for the nuclear weapons of others, human beings still continue to develop defense systems of greater and greater sophistication. I do not know if it will ever be possible to create a defense system capable of guaranteeing worldwide protection against all external forces of destruction. However, one thing is certain: as long as those destructive internal enemies are left to themselves, unchallenged, the threat of physical annihilation will always loom over us. In fact, the destructive power of an external enemy ultimately derives from the power of these internal forces. The inner enemy is the trigger that unleashes the destructive power of the external enemy.” – Tenzin Gyatso
Is there a certain musician – or artists, author, etc. – whose talent you are in awe of to such a degree that you consider them to be perhaps wizard-like? What is it about what they do that is so appealing to you, and what is it about their technique or output that you find so confounding? With apologies to the Lovin’ Spoonful, do you believe in magic, how the music can free you, whenever it starts?
As a kid my dad was obsessed with Neil Young and used to serenade me with “Old Man” and “Needle and the Damage Done” to get to sleep. Over the years I’ve slowly converted myself into a super-obsessed mega-fan, too. The breadth of his work is pretty astounding and potentially wizard-like. I even love modern-old-cooked-crazy Neil. I’ve been listening to “On The Beach” pretty much every day lately
What was on your minds when you made the decision to call yourselves King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard? Was the person who suggested the name laughing at the time, or were they dead serious? Is King Gizzard a reference to an actual person? Is the Lizard Wizard related in any way to the “lizard king”?
The band was never supposed to play more than one or two shows so we didn’t think it mattered. It was just a joke, off-the-cuff type decision that wasn’t meant to be used more than a couple of times. It was a bit of a jam band at the beginning. A joke band, actually. Now, the joke is on us.
Revolt of the Apes is pleased, stoked and chuffed to support Austin Psych Fest 2014 through a series of interviews with many of the artists involved, answering the kind of ridiculous questions you’ve come to know and – maybe – love. Many more coming soon.
Sometime shortly after our initial thrall over the colossal Hey Colossus album that led to last year’s dubious honor of being named “Band of the Week,” we heard rumblings of sort of a Hey Colossus project undertaken under the unassuming name Henry Blacker.
Rumbling being the operative word here, in the form of the debut Henry Blacker album, “Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings.” How can these hungry dogs have any dirty pudding, if they don’t eat their filthy meat? It remains unclear.
What’s not unclear is the intention of Henry Blacker: to blow our head clean off of our shoulders. Mission accomplished.
It would appear that Henry Blacker have found an endlessly streaming fountain of riffs – herculean riffs (you thought we’d say colossal, didn’t you?), brilliant riffs, memorable riffs. As a result, they’ve taken these riffs and – just imagine – formed them into songs. Herculean songs, brilliant songs, memorable songs. Eight of them in less than thirty minutes? We’re inclined to applaud.
There’s an intensity to “Hungry Dogs …” that defies any cut-rate cultural comparisons we could possibly choke up. It’s a sound that rests somewhere between the earliest sounds of some stone-age queens and the kings of getting stoned. It’s a sound that rests somewhere between listening to Tank and getting run over by one. It’s a sound that rests somewhere between the moonlit sorrows of “Into the Pandemonium”-era Celtic Frost and being beaten bloody and senseless by The Moondogs. Let sleeping dogs lie; let “Hungry Dogs” split your skull in two.
In our eyes, there’s nothing lacking. Be that as it may, occasionally what we need is a damned good whacking. Enter Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.
To avoid fainting, we’ll refer to the band from here on as PigsX7, who not long ago released their first (and so far, only) release, a split LP with The Cosmic Dead (more on them in a moment).
PigsX7, we can say without a snort, would seem to have something broadly in common with the afore-praised Hey Colossus, if not Henry Blacker as well – something perhaps beyond sharing a country of origin. A shared sense of the sensation that results from sonically tearing a hole in the very fabric of time and space? That’ll do, PigsX7, that’ll do.
But where Henry Blacker chose a sniper-like efficiency, PigsX7 have something more cosmic in mind, a warpage of time, and it’s bliss for everyone.
Those in the know may have already assumed as much after reading the words “split LP with The Cosmic Dead,” but PigsX7 give themselves over to the universe in the form of a twenty-two minute silver-machine ride, “The Wizard and the Seven Shrines,” a mesmerizing mass of metaphysical metal, tenfold through the deadly black hole.
Hypnotic isn’t the half of it. It’s massive. It’s madness. It’s music that’s unleashed as much as it’s performed. The fuse has been lit and the band has begun their ascension toward the amplified realms of no turning back. We faint. We levitate. We briefly believe the band’s singer to be screaming about pizza.
Eight minutes into this rocket ride, we reach riff flameout, intercepted by the communications system of Cygnus X-1. For the moment, we’re prepared to bid farewell to the exalted kings, we think. But we’re not even halfway there – not halfway to the end of the PigsX7 journey, not halfway to describing its sound.
It’s only here that we recognize that the guitar is not being played through a power amp set to explode, but rather doing a direct-in to the third ring of Saturn, topped by screams that are either longing for Valhalla on the face of Venus, or excitedly claiming to have found it.
Just as the whole endeavor threatens to crash directly into the side of space-rock mountain, the riff machine recalibrates, ghoulish guitar gnashing growing like the ghost of Glen Buxton, reanimated just in time to join Napalm Death in the enslavement and obliteration of a fallen cyborg-Christ.
What we’re saying is, it’s a hell of a first impression.
All that being said … what can we possibly say about The Cosmic Dead? While we would hope that our regard for the band – the highest possible regard, in league with that of such eternals as White Hills and Gnod – would be well understand, we also realize it’s been over two years since we featured the band on this ridiculous website.
In those two years, The Cosmic Dead have … what? Given birth to an unparalleled array of releases, coming on like an even less-sober Ash Ra Tempel with a Bandcamp page? Solidified their reputation as a levitation-inducing live act? All of this and more?
Yes. We could say that.
We could say that The Cosmic Dead’s contribution to this split LP – in the form of the also twenty-two minute version of “Djamba” – is a dubbed-out delight that must have achieved magnificent things in a prior life, or an alternate dimension. We could say that the song is built on the backbone of a bass-line that slowly seduces all senses, gaining trust before secreting its venom. We could say that The Cosmic Dead have expressed nothing less than the very sound of the yawning abyss, the void between day and dream, the communion of the Alpha and the Omega.
We could say that. We could say that the Gnod’s honest truth is that listening to “Djamba” aroused with startling clarity our memory of once buying a copy of Buddy Miles’ “Expressway to Your Skull” on acid. This is a true statement. And if this band of gypsies known as The Cosmic Dead haven’t appropriated the bass-line from that album’s “Funky Mule,” I’ll eat my hat (note: I do not wear a hat).
We could say that The Cosmic Dead offer you the chance to experience nothing less than total rebirth, the turning of the wheel within the span of just a song. We could say it’s palatable. We could say it’s energizing. We could say it’s life-changing.
We could say their upcoming album (“EasterFaust”) on Sounds of Cobra Records is – believe it or not – even better.
We could say all this and more. But we won’t. Because in space, no one can hear you scream, let alone prattle on nonsensically on your blog. And besides, The Cosmic Dead have said it all – and said it better – themselves, both in their deeds and in their words:
“No nostalgia – no nostalgia. It’s not about nostalgia. This music is about right now. The true and visceral is not steeped in others narratives – it is our own. Perhaps it resonates with you? Maybe you listened to similar music growing up? Maybe! We use the same instruments and we tread the same path as many before us but we make music for the present, always. We are guided by certain rules and principles but permanent flux is what we are.”
The Cosmic Dead / Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs split LP on The Old Noise is, of course, already sold out. Why not enjoy it digitally?
“EasterFaust” by The Cosmic Dead is coming real, real soon from Sound of Cobra.
“To what extent are we simply seduced by the allure of the new, sacrificing the essence of the teachings as we ‘reinterpret’ them in ways that suit us? To what extent, driven by nostalgia, do we ossify them, stubbornly resisting change?” – James Shaheen
We suppose it’s not been that long since we bestowed the dubious honor of “Band of the Week” upon the Michigan mystics we know only as Haunted Leather, at least depending on your perception of the passage of time. But it feels like it’s been long enough that the band falls on these ears less as a mystery and more as the presence of a very familiar stranger.
Such is the strength of the band’s amplified hypnosis that some call rock and roll. Such is the strength of the afore-praised “Red Road” and its grit-and-glimmer, faithfully flowing follow-up, “In Her Golden Room,” and EP as surly and satisfying as any full-length album you’ll hear this year (at least depending on your perception of the passage of time, as we said long ago).
They make their noise, they say. We agree. Come and join us, they say. We will.
Familiar and strange, that Haunted Leather. What more could you want? We’re more than pleased to some of these haunted few answer our ridiculous questions below. Enjoy.
What does the word “haunted” mean to you? Does it express something emotional or something realistic in your mind – or perhaps both? Is there anything in particular that you feel haunted by, and if so, do you think it directly impacts the music you make?
Jack: It seems like the idea of somethin’ being haunted brings reality together with the unreal. The natural and esoteric coexist within the word – it’s enticing. There may be a beat down drugstore someplace with wood in the windows that you couldn’t give a shit about, but as soon as somebody tells you it’s haunted, you want to get in and have a look around.
How do you think music has impacted your overall outlook on life – beyond simply the enjoyment of or involvement with? Can you think of a specific song or a specific band that has affected you in such a way that you truly believe you would be a different person if you had never encountered that music? What was it about that music that you found so compelling?
Jack: After I heard “White Light White Heat,” everything changed. I wanted to be Lou in NYC, fucking around with The Factory folks. I was a kid that found somethin’ finally that I liked. It was a childish, a real kid-ish love in the way that I just wanted to be them.
Dusty: Hearin’ some of the blues shit I heard, John Lee Hooker’s hypnotic guitar work where there a lot of the words were in the fingers that spoke instead. I wouldn’t have wanted to be alive without that music.
Ross: Everything revolves around music. What was that Velvet Underground comp? “Another VU”? At 15 I heard that; then at 21, Neil Young’s “Bottom Line ’74,” with almost all of “On the Beach” live. Between ‘n from those two I found it all: kraut/afrobeat/the meaning ‘n way of life and beyond … etc. etc. etc.
Can you think of one key element or emotion that you desired to be expressed by Haunted Leather upon your initial formation? Was this something you had tried to express in previous musical adventures, without satisfaction? How do you think that desire has shifted or evolved since you began Haunted Leather?
Jack: Dusty and I (Jack) would run around to bars getting fucked up when we could afford it. There wasn’t much here that we liked, but really there just wasn’t much from here that we’d even heard. But that didn’t matter. We wanted to be on the dark side of things, the niche, the weird shit – the opposite that we understood to be happening here. We’d been playing some bluesy garage shit for a while and knew that we wanted somethin’ different. Our second show like that was at a dry venue and a bunch of people left and thought it was loud and shitty and wondered why we were gettin’ drunk in the back. It seemed like people wouldn’t be on our side either way, so we might as well get louder and darker. We weren’t sure that people were against our stuff, but it helped to imagine it that way; to have somethin’ to oppose, to be contradictory to. Since then it’s changed some. All of our friends that hung, we’d just invite them to join the band. We still like the other side, the unexamined side, but now, more or less, instead of being against everybody, without them, we’d rather to be with ’em. Fuck it. We’re all makin’ music, and need each other.
Our introduction to the band was through the “Red Road” album, which to these ears, seemed to come out of nowhere to express a ghostly charm. What can you tell us about how this album came together? What are your thoughts on it with some distance from its initial release?
Jack: We’d started playin’ songs that’d be on Red Road during an art instillation called “Fortified” or somethin’ like it. Each piece invited was to set up a space and create a vibe for it, and live in it for the time you could. We set up an opium den. Dusty told me about the time his mother had been instructed by her brother’s clan chief to relay a message to him. In this meeting she was to convey that, upon death, he should take the red road. Death was the red road, the one to travel in between. We wanted to take the idea of the in-between, and mess around with it some through music. Our friends all joined us and seemed to want to do the same thing. In retrospect we did on “Red Road” what we do now. We made an album that we wanted to listen to.
How – if at all – do you think the band’s geographic home of Michigan has contributed to the sound of Haunted Leather? How do you think the band might sound different if you were from a different part of the country, or a different country entirely?
Jack: In a way, what we do, it sounds like the bands we love, because we love them. But really, what we make couldn’t really sound different from what it does; we’re just stuck here with what’s here and we make some shit up that sounds good to us. It’s the seasons, especially the hard ones, the tough winter and tough summer, too. They’ve got an extra say in our sound, and it couldn’t sound different, I guess.
Would you care to comment on the rumor – the rumor that we are attempting to start right now – that there is a Haunted Leather tribute band playing bars and basements around the country, under the name “Spooky Pleather”?
Jack: It’s tough, man. From what we understand, they rule shit when they play. They’ve got good grass, and we think they’re another group called “The Plantains,” or “The Omecs,” or somethin’ like that.
Your latest release is the fully enveloping “In Her Golden Room.” How do you think the band approached this recording in a way that’s different from “Red Road”? What can you tell us about the title, “In Her Golden Room”? Is it coincidence or by design that your previous two records have colors in the title? What does the opening invitation/invocation “Come and Join Us” mean to you?
Jack: We were just feelin’ off of “Red Road.” We were making an extension of that album; stopping off at other places, and finding some other sounds; we were checkin’ out another scenery. The colors are maybe just a coincidence. The albums sounded visceral to us, and so, they took on visceral names. The colors are abstractions and they help you to see where you are. “Come and Join Us” is a track that pleads just that. It offers a suggestion, and is a hopeful sonic transmission to reach other heads.
What music have you been listening to lately? If push comes to shove, what’s your favorite song by The Velvet Underground and why?
Jack: VU’s always around here, but other that that we’ve been into …
Spectrum – “Highs, Lows and Heavenly Blows”
Harmonia – “Live ’74”
Bad Indians – “Are the Chocolate Factory”
The Jesus and Mary Chain – “Psychocandy”
Henry Miller – a huge Velvet Underground fan in his own right, we’re sure – once wrote the following:
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such”
Your thoughts?
Jack: Hell, we agree with Miller. He said it just fine.
What’s next for Haunted Leather?
We’re just about to record a full-length that we’re in love with. It’s not the same as we’ve done, and it feels good to play this new shit. After that, a tour in spring ’14.
Revolt of the Apes 
