Revolt of the Apes

Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Barn Owl now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. Read the entire interview here, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:

In what ways do you think your creative experiences outside of Barn Owl influenced your sound in ways that are surprising even to yourself? How – if at all – do you think your sense of confidence in your sound has changed since the beginning of Barn Owl’s life?

Jon: The Barn Owl sound has evolved gradually out of our consistent collaboration over the years but I feel it has defined itself more clearly recently with the use of new instrumentation. We have brought new methods into our setup but continue to focus on achieving the same musical goals. Clearly defining these goals, even subconsciously, was a big part of figuring out how to create them with new tools. We’re at the point in our project where we have an intuitive sense for what we want to achieve and in that sense we are more confident in what we want to do as a band.

Evan: We were very young when we started the band so we’ve grown up a lot. Learning your strengths and weaknesses and developing your sound, these are things that can only come with time and practice.

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.

The first song we ever heard by Zig Zags is fifty seconds long – which equates to it being about thirty seconds longer than it needed to be in order to secure our love and support.

As it turns out, while that fifty-second ode to suicidal bikers of the black magic kind was the first song we ever heard by Zig Zags, it was not the first time we ever heard Zig Zags. That honor would go to the band’s earthquake inducing, soul-Sabbath swing at Betty Davis’ “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up,” featuring raw vocal power from James Newell Osterberg, Jr., a man many people refer to as Iggy Pop.

Sadly, we recalled the song as being solely the work of Pop, without the pep of Zig Zags, their very name erased from our memory, perhaps the result of the use of the delivery system referenced in the band’s namesake. Yet we were in luck because we just might have picked up … a tape.

A tape featuring no less than fourteen fuzzy, freaky formulations of the awesome kind. A tape that opens with “Psychomania,” the fifty-second wheelie through your brain mentioned above, and then follows through on the promise of amplified adrenaline overdose until the very end. A tape that guarantees – guarantees under threat of pain from Captain Zag himself – that Zig Zags will this time remain in our memory, no matter how cloudy and resin-caked it may become.

Zig Zags seem incapable of writing riffs that aren’t nitro-charged and six-hundred and sixty-six stories tall, as evidenced by the scorching “Scavenger.” Surprisingly, their three-piece thrift-store boogie-thrash is balanced beautifully with some comparatively more mellow moments, like “Sauer Jam” and “Eyes,” reminding us that the band is coming from California with an aching in their heart, broken and bruised as it may be.

Still, when Zig Zags enter your world, you’re welcome to leave your dream-catchers and picnic blankets in the trunk. Those items will only weigh you down as you traverse the land of monster wizards and turbo hits, the band’s natural habitat. Zig Zags may be wanderers, but they’re never far from home. If we’re in luck, they’ll stay around, too.

Zig Zags music is available at their Bandcamp page. 

“To wander through the desert feeling very thirsty represents our inner yearning for joy, happiness, and peace, which we try unsuccessfully to satisfy in the outside world. The excitement and delight experienced on seeing the pool in the distance correspond to the feeling that arises in the first jhana [meditative absorption]— the realization that there is something that, though it is still ‘in the distance,’ can ultimately bring us complete satisfaction. Knowing it is there, the mind moves toward it.” – “Who Is My Self?” by Ayya Khema

Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Earthless is up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. Earthless is, of course, a band of interstellar awesomeness that defies description, though we tried our best when naming the band Revolt of the Apes’ “Band of the Week” late last year, declaring their “From the Ages” album to be “loaded with enough clean-burning rocket fuel to have us searching the album’s liner notes furiously, dead-set on confirming our suspicions that the whole thing was recorded at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories.”

Read the entire interview here, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:

Can you think of a band that you’ve grown to appreciate only relatively recently, after many years of either not “getting” it, or simply ignoring its existence? What do you think is different about you today that allows you to appreciate that music, in a way that you couldn’t – or just didn’t – previously?

Deerhunter. The last couple LP’s have some really great songs on them. I can’t say I know or like everything but the songs I like – I REALLY like them. I never ignored them but I guess it just took some listens to sink in. I love when that happens. I’m stoked to have seen them play somewhat recently as well.

Can you recall the first time in your life you can remember that not only are you a musically-minded person, but your approach to music might be slightly out-of-step from the norm? Not that the music you made necessarily sounded different, but that you may just think about it differently? Or do you feel that is even the case?

I can’t say that I have ever thought about it that deeply. Being a drummer primarily, I just have always tried to be as open as possible to hearing & trying new things, new sounds or “types” of music. I just always hope that I can bring something to the table creatively and help out with makin’ it super tasty! Music is like a meal, and you want a meal to be super tasty, right?

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.

Who wishes to describe the music of Is/Is? Who would enjoy the attempt – an attempt, by definition, in vain – to put words to the sounds that live well beyond words? Who wouldn’t rather just ride through these eight songs, one at a time, one more time, simply letting each song exist in space, just as it is?

Is? Is. Just as it is. When it comes to sound, it’s impossible to say what Is/Is … is … but it’s not difficult. It’s uncomplicated, but it’s not easygoing. No, not easygoing. Radiant. Sharp. A revolving embrace of confusion and awakening, pressed into the shape of songs. Guitars and drums and voice. Impossible – not difficult. Their sound resounds, shining down with pure effort – effortlessly.

We could set up camp on the island that is Is/Is-land, though the band’s land is not an island at all. They come from the land of the ice and the snow, where “MST3K” was filmed and Daughters of the Sun rose. Yet there’s something warm in the sound of songs like “Hunter,” which we either mistakenly translate as a pulse that beats for the thaw of the heart, or fail to recognize as the serpent’s coil, in the trance of the freezing moon. It is. It isn’t. Is/Is. It can obsess you.

Beware, warriors of ice! Enter into des mysteriis dom Is/Is. Turn it up.

The new self-titled LP by Is/Is is out on Manimal Vinyl.

“The world and the self really do appear to us as frozen. Our personal problems, our self-definitions, what we hear from those around us—all these convincing and compelling experiences invite us to clutch at concepts, positions, worries. We naturally build vast structures of ice to hold in place the world and the self, chilly and confined. But the experience of art can shake us free of all that. Art can save us from freezing.” – Norman Fischer 

Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Kikagaku Moyo is up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. Read the entire interview there, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s our understanding that the name Kikagaku Moyo translates to “geometric patterns” – what is it about this phrase that led you to select it as the band name? Do you feel a particular personal connection to geometric patterns? Did you ever have, or perhaps continue to have, a personal or spiritual fascination with geometric patterns?

When we first started jamming together, we would play music all night long. While we played for six hours straight in the darkness, I started seeing colors and patterns behind my eyelids. We were between sleep and awake, but would keep playing music. That is where I got the inspiration for the band name.

One of the many things that immediately appeals to us about the music of Kikagaku Moyo is its free-floating nature, unrestrained and never tied down to a specific, definable genre for very long – which one might view as the opposite of something as rigid as a geometric pattern. Is there anything that you might call a theme – or, indeed, a pattern – that runs through your music?

This is because we all listen to different kinds of music and have different musical backgrounds. Also, we didn’t have the intention to start a psych band or a folk band. One of the main themes when we are making music is to be aware of the connection to nature. In the nature, you can find many geometric patterns: in snow flakes, honeycomb, or patterns on leaves.

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.

Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Temples is up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. Read the entire interview there, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:

What do you find most pleasing about playing live with Temples? Can you think of any bands or artists to whom you would give credit for inspiring you to move forward with performing as well as recording, after having seen them live? What was it about that performance that was so compelling to you? What do you like most about going to gigs not as a performer, but an attendee?

In the studio we have such a concise process of recording, there’s no strict formula, but once a song is recorded down it captured in a period of time. Live is the complete opposite, it’s a totally unknown field, the music turns from iron-cast into a living and breathing being. I think it’s taking our songs from the comfort of the studio into that unknown which makes them so pleasing to play. Our label mates TOY are incredible live. It’s very instinctive and they’re always exhilarating to watch. They really create a wall of sound and they move together as one, which is definitely a divine art of live music, seeing a band working together as one big machine.

Strictly sonically speaking, what do you think you’ve been able to achieve with Temples that may have eluded you in previous musical endeavors? Was this something a sound that you specifically aimed to achieve – or more of a case of being pleasantly surprised by the result of your actions and collaboration?

The group initially started as a recording project, so we’ve always had quite a strong idea as to how what we wanted our music to sound. We’re fans of producers as much as bands, so it’s something we consider as much in our songwriting as the music or lyrics. Because of this, we’ve recorded everything ourselves, which gave us complete freedom to figure a sound for each song, and it also works out well when you have no money. In many ways you could say we’ve approached the whole process backwards; we uploaded some songs that were born and bred in the studio, then tried to figure out how we’d play them live.

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.

Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Lorelle Meets the Obsolete is up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. We’ve been listening to the soon-to-be-released new Lorelle Meets the Obsolete album – “Chambers,” released by the always excellent Captcha Records – consistently for the past month and we can tell you … it’s extraordinary. Don’t miss this.

Read the entire interview there, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:

How do you feel the environment of your youth – either the geographic location or otherwise – influences the music that you make today? Did you find yourself interested in making music at a young age? What was most difficult for you about the beginning stages of creating your own sounds?

Alberto: Since I was a kid I’ve always been very fond of contemplative, repetitive and emotional sounds. “Close To You” by The Carpenters, “Rain” by The Beatles or “Zooropa” by U2 were songs that gave me certain comfort and they were all introduced to me by either my parents or my sister. I guess my parents were afraid of having a lazy kid (I didn’t do any sports) and they noticed my interest in music so they encouraged me to play the drums at age 12 perhaps but it wasn’t until I picked up the guitar that I started making music. I was probably 16 or 17 at this point and the most difficult part about creating my own sounds was to get rid of the common places found in the music exposed by the mass media.

Lorena: I was much older when I started playing and back then I was more into literature. I used to write short stories and I never thought I would end up doing music. In fact my family used to say that I didn’t have any musical skills at all. Back then I used to listen to a lot of commercial stuff of all kinds. The Cure was on of my favorite bands, still is and it was until I got to college that a friend and I started to jam together and to make songs. I enjoyed it a lot because there was something very energetic about it that I was missing with my writing. Those were very musical times. I also met a lot of friends (Alberto included) that gave me mixtapes and that’s how I got into many bands that I still like. It wasn’t that hard for me to write songs because through writing I was already used to translate my thoughts and feelings into something else. What was very hard was to learn how to play the guitar better. I’m still on it.

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.

Shana Falana wants to go to Europe. These apes happen to think this is a capital idea. But first, let us let Ms. Falana explain.

So here’s the thing: We don’t know what the people of Europe want. We’ve never even been to Europe. Japan? Yes. Europe? No. Not that we claim to know what the people of Japan want, either (we’re inclined to think it’s more than Loudness).

But really, here’s the thing: We don’t know what Shana Falana wants, either. Except that we do; she wants to go to Europe.

What we mean to say is, we don’t know what Shana Falana REALLY wants. Except that we do; she REALLY wants to go to Europe.

But really, REALLY, here’s the thing: We just happen to think Shana Falana is great. Exceptionally great. Revolt of the Apes “Band of the Week” great. And if she wants to go to Europe, then we’re inclined to help out in whatever way we can, big or small (read: small). Because we’re more than a little infatuated with the music made by Shana Falana, music that once seemed to be born fully formed, perfect and undeniable.

And yet it’s our support of sending Shana Falana to Europe that has clarified what – if we’re being honest with ourselves – we knew from the very start: that her music is not and has not ever been born fully formed, despite it often being perfect and undeniable. Shana Falana has been has been at this for years: expressing herself, refreshing herself, challenging herself, forgetting herself, remembering herself and (thankfully) recording herself. It’s for this very reason that we respond so immediately, so completely, so clearly to the sounds she makes. Shana Falana is a work in progress, always. Who would want anything else?

Well. If you do want something else, you’re in luck. Your support of sending Shana Falana to Europe can result in a copy of a truly unique listening experience, entitled “Shana Falana Sings Herself to Sleep.” Once again, let us let Ms. Falana explain:

“Shana Falana Sings Herself to Sleep … (available as a digital download and limited edition red cassette) is a living document of the mid-1990’s San Francisco music scene that I grew up in. Since last spring, Mike (my drummer/partner) and I have been painstakingly digitizing and compiling dozens of my old tapes into a 60-minute suite that partakes in the lo-fi crunch of its era (think Daniel Johnston, early Beck). The collage of demos, field recordings, and early studio cuts are tied together by my ‘audio diaries,’ which I recorded on my handheld tape recorder while … taking a bath … listening to Native American music … things like that. ALL of my different bands are represented here: 90s grunge with Thundersuite (my two piece band with Jen Shagawat of Shellshag), there are two tracks produced by Kelley Stoltz (Sub Pop, Third Man Records) who I also used to drum for, my self-help singalong group The Wonder Sisters, and the Bulgarian women’s choir I helped organize, known as Handmaiden America.

In 2003 I relocated to New York City ‘to be closer to Europe.’ I’ve included a few tracks from that time as well, including “Gone” by Skirt (a two-piece dream-pop project that I instantly fell into) because it is such a clear link from my San Francisco days to what I am currently recording. As I explain in the campaign video, the necessary promotional pieces (press, radio, booking agent) have been put into place for us to make the trip overseas. Now all we need is the funding. That’s where the tape comes in!”

And that’s where you come in. Let’s send Shana Falana to Europe … but let’s hope she comes back home, too.

Loop! Crazy, huh?!?

Revolt of the Apes’ interview with Loop is up now at the official Austin Psych Fest 2014 website. Read the entire interview there, and look for the complete text to show up here in the very near future. Here’s an excerpt:

In our unwitting and unnecessary battle with patience, it sometimes seems that patience doesn’t have a chance. It sometimes seems that patience goes against our nature. It sometimes seems like we should all just go listen to some Pentagram albums and call it a day.

But then comes Eidetic Seeing. And then comes their third album, “Against Nature.” And then comes the overwhelming bliss of submitting to the great beast, patience.

Let the record show that we hold Eidetic Seeing in the highest possible regard, in particular “Drink the Sun,” their 2012 album, which felt and sounded as if it were recorded in the aftermath of a meteor fire. This cosmic cannonball of amplification didn’t just hold our attention; it pulverized our attention – it rendered our attention inconsequential at best. “Drink the Sun” was an album we absolutely consumed, impatiently waiting for more.

More has now come in the form of “Against Nature,” and if that “more” means that we find this album to be even more aurally alarming, even more dense, even more like bearing witness to a slowly unfolding psychotic avalanche … well, it’s not for lack of patience. The album opens true to its nature, at a strictly serpentine pace, until the eight minutes of “A Snake Whose Years Are Long” intersect with the eight minutes of “White Flight,” until the two are simply one, and “Against Nature” becomes the most natural thing you could ever hear, a dizzying declaration of distortion-driven dominance.

Where “Drink the Sun” felt solar powered, “Against Nature” is glacial – not always in pace, but in tone. This is a cold album. This is a hard album. This is a powerful album, a tuned-down Tesla coil of confusion and cohesion strapped to the backs of three guys from Brooklyn, crashing themselves directly into the frozen face of space-rock mountain, resourcefully building “Against Nature” up amongst the wreckage.

Listen: On the topic of Eidetic Seeing’s “Against Nature,” our friend Mr. Atavist boiled it down to the statement, “certainly not for everyone.” We must remind ourselves that this is true. Some people are in to these sounds and some people are not. There’s nothing these apes can do to convince you one way or the other. Even if we were to tell you that “Against Nature” is certainly one of the most compelling and complete albums to pass between our ears in many a drunken sun, in many a cold moon. Even if we were to tell you that “Against Nature” fulfills our lifelong dream of wondering what Celtic Frost would have sounded like if Tom. G. Warrior became obsessed with Mahavishnu Orchestra instead of Venom. Really, all you can do is listen.

Mr. Atavist also called “Against Nature” “fucked up.” This is certainly true as well – but we don’t need reminding of this. Eidetic Seeing are there, patiently waiting to relay that message, loudly.

“Against Nature” by Eidetic Seeing is available here. It’s worth your time.You can read our 2012 interview with the band here.

“Think of anger. Anger is the mind that wishes to harm and hurt. Patience is the mind that holds back from harming or hurting. Anger is most difficult to deal with; patience is most difficult to develop. Patience is the only thing that defeats anger.

Don’t be disappointed if you can’t do it right away. Even after years of practice you may find that you’re still losing your temper. It’s all right. But you will also notice that the power of anger has weakened, that it doesn’t last as long, and does not as easily turn into hatred.

If patience comes easily to you, wonderful. If not, how do you go from anger to patience?”

– Gelek Rimpoche, “The Real Enemy”