Apollo Sunshine’s live set is more like a psychedelic jam session—intense, hypnotic, freeform. At their last show, they launched into somewhat of a three-person drum solo, with drummer Jeremy Black holding down a steady beat on the kit, bassist Jesse Gallagher pounding the floor tom with a pair of mallets, and guitarist Sam Cohen tapping out an interlocking rhythm on the sides of a conga. But right now, they’re in a different kind of jam: Their van just caught on fire. Something about the transmission. “For some reason we had four gallons of water in our car and we were able to put it out. It was pretty fuckin’ scary,” Black says. He was nice enough to take our call, over the sound of crunching gravel and flying trucks, as they waited for a tow truck in Arizona.

EM: I read that you tour in a school bus that runs on vegetable oil. Is that true?

That is very true. A big blue school bus and we run it on vegetable oil that we get from restaurants and things.

EM: Wow. How did you get set up with that?

Well, years ago some friends of ours who were touring were doing it, and so we decided to give it a try. At the time we had a brand new Ford van and it actually didn’t really work on that one because it was too new and all the computer systems in the car and stuff didn’t really know what was happening, and we kinda just had a total loss on that vehicle. But we were pretty determined to try again, just ‘cause it’s a cool thing and saves us money and it’s good for the environment and all that stuff. So we bought this school bus and we did a ton of research and we found this place in Washington D.C. called Golden Fuel Systems and we had them install the whole set up, which is way more high-tech than the original one we had, like gauges that tells us how much fuel is in there and we have an additional portable pump to get the grease from restaurants. A bunch of things that we didn’t have the first time around that really make it work.

EM: The new album, Shall Noise Upon, has a bit of a nature theme, right? What as the inspiration for that?

A little bit, yeah. Umm…I think we just pull a lot of our inspiration from what’s around us and the outdoors and things like that just really inspire us as people and translates into the music. I don’t really write any of the lyrics so I can’t really speak for that part of it, but, musically, I think nature definitely…I mean there’s so much sound, when you just walk outside. All the ambient stuff that makes things have, like, a realness to them, you know?

EM: What is the music-writing process like for the band?

It’s pretty varied. Sometimes people come in with an idea and we’ll sort of flesh it out in the studio. But a lot of stuff on the new record we just got together in the studio and set up all the mics and started making tracks, and started coming up with song ideas or melodies or something. This place that we were at also had all these amazing instruments all around, like all these weird keyboards and strings and upright basses, and music would just pour out of you. So it was just being in an environment that led to a lot of the music that we made.

EM: Do you have a favorite city to play in?

Umm…I don’t know. We just went over to Ireland and that was pretty amazing. We played in this one town called Greystone. It’s right on the water. And as we were pulling into town, there was a rainbow over the whole city. It was pretty unreal.

EM: Yeah, you just got back from Europe, right? How were the crowds there?

It’s hard to say because we’ve done so much touring here on our own, but over there we were kind of lucky because the band that got us over there was this band called The Dirty Pretty Things, it’s all these guys from that band The Libertines. They’re a pretty big band over there so we get to go over and play in front of massive crowds on our first trip. They’re a super, super enthusiastic crowd. Like in London, we played to 4,000 people. That was our first real gig over there. But yeah people were really enthusiastic and they’re really open to new things over there, like in the mainstream level. They’re willing to take a chance on a new band if they like it.

EM: Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?

I dunno, man…it’s a tough one. There’s been so many. Obviously, we all love the Beatles. Growing up, that was the music that we all gravitated towards. As we’ve grown up, we all got into different types of things. Sorry about all the trucks whizzing by.

EM: Do you have any big non-musical influences, like authors or visual artists?

Uh…yeah, I just can’t think of any right now. I wish you could see the sunset that I’m seeing right now though. We’re in Arizona. It’s, like, so massive. I’ve never seen anything like this.

EM: How did the Mickey Moonlight remix (of “Singing To the Earth”) come about?

Well, we were kind of just curious about different people to do that sort of thing with our music and we liked his single, “Interplanetary Music.” So our label got in touch with him and asked him to try it out, and he did that. It’s pretty cool. It’s not music we would make. But it’s something for, I think, a different sort of audience that will help our music reach new people with a different set of ears that wouldn’t normally check out our band on their own.

EM: What’s next for the band?

The plan is we want to go record again, actually in January. And we’re talking about making a dance record. Kind of switch gears a little bit.

EM: Oh really? Why?

I don’t know, it’s just something we’re we all feeling right now. Just kind of making an album that’s fun and probably less heavy than our last one. I don’t know, it’s hard to say until it actually happens, but we want it to be a record that you can dance to.

EM: And what are you guys listening to now?

Recently, I got into the new Ratatat album, which was also made at Old Soul, where we made our record. And uh…I don’t know, we’ve been listening to a lot of random old reggae stuff in the car.

Photo credit: Mike Jones
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Apollo Sunshine is playing tonight at Spaceland in Los Angeles.

More at myspace.com/apollosunshine or www.apollosunshine.com

via Lydia Fong, 14 November 2008 5:40am | |