This is Spiegel’s first time touring the world, though he’s done one-off shows here and there. But he’s definitely no stranger to travel. As anyone familiar with this record knows, it was six years in the making, taking the duo all over the U.S. (from New York, Miami, Atlanta and Houston to Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Hawaii, and some town in middle-of-nowhere Northern California where Tom Waits has a studio) — then across borders to cities like Kingston, Stockholm, San Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. This was necessary to catch all 39 guest artists on The Spirit of Apollo’s 17 tracks. Of course, travel also plays a big role in the album’s sound, which Spiegel describes as “a big mish mosh of everything, whether it’s Brazilian music, Tom Waits, hip hop, [or] baile funk.”

Mixing different musical worlds is something Spiegel has personally lived, having grown up in ‘90s New York and later moving to Los Angeles, where he started out working in production and ended up doing music full time. He was student of “the golden age of hip hop,” and cites two major influences: the Native Tongues crew (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Black Sheep, Jungle Brothers, Leaders of the New School, Busta Rhymes), who “were, like, the shit…It was all about fun”; and Wu-Tang Clan (“It was like, wow, this shit has some power behind it, and it was inspiring and exciting”). A handful from the latter group, including the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, actually appear on the Spirit.
“I’ve always had a very eclectic taste, but I was obsessed with hip hop for a while,” he says. “There was this great UHF channel that had like a hip hop music video show at like 4:30 or at like 5 everyday. I would watch that every single day.”

That obsession got him into funk, soul and jazz samples as well as requisite hip hop instruments like the MPC, which was used heavily on the album. “Some of the producers and production from that era definitely is reflected on the record and how we would chop stuff,” Spiegel says. He adds that it wasn’t just New York-spun hip hop that inspired him at the time, but music from Texas, the Bay Area and Los Angeles as well.

Today, he calls L.A. home, where he scores for films, TV and commercials, and produces and remixes for a pretty diverse list of names in pop, rock and hip hop (like Kylie Minogue, The Eels, Iggy Pop, to name a few) out of Crack Alley Studios in Hollywood. And, of course, he DJs. Spiegel calls Los Angeles one of two“epicenters of electro-culture” (the other being Paris), a place that’s helped spawn a new generation of club DJs whose Twitter following is directly proportional to their skyrocketing popularity. “A lot of people like to hate on Steve Aoki,” he says, “but he was a big force in shaping this really fun new electro scene, through his DJing, but more so through Dim Mak and through his events. He was always just bringing all the best electro acts to LA all the time and really building the scene at Cinespace and at Banana Split. He’s great.” He also lists Banana Split co-host DJ AM and the DJ/production duo LA Riots, who did an electro house remix of one of album’s tracks, as big scene makers.

And the kids in LA go “apeshit” for it. “They’ll be fuckin’ moshing at a DJ show at a club. Like, that generally doesn’t happen anywhere else and in LA it happens a lot.” There’s been an infusion of new energy at the clubs too. “All the Latino kids from the east side [who] didn’t used to go out to the parties and stuff in Hollywood are now coming out. There’s just a really good scene there now. The crowds and the kids at the shows are crazy and so fuckin’ fun,” he says. “I’d say that’s had an influence on me too, you know? My style of DJing has changed a lot in the past few years, influenced by that.” Now he spins much more uptempo, Baltimore club, funk, freestyle, and “shit that’s on the blogs that’s not even for sale.”

What makes the L.A. party scene unique, in Spiegel’s opinion, is that it’s cool to be excited and enthusiastic. Being “into stuff, not over stuff” is a spirit reminiscent of the days heavy rave culture and that golden age of hip hop. “It’s just a fun positive energy to be around,” he says. “I don’t think that all cultural movements are built out of that kind of optimism—like, obviously punk rock isn’t—but I think that this kind of movement or scene really is built out of that optimistic enthusiasm and it makes it thrive.”

And when it comes to bringing to people together, it seems Spiegel and Gonzales have a special gift. The album’s list of guest artists includes (deep breath): Fatlip, David Byrne, Kanye West, Karen O, Lykke Li, Seu Jorge, MIA, over two dozen more top friends on their Myspace. “It was a very communal record, you know… even though Ze and I were kind of the masterminds behind it, everyone that was involved with the record contributed in their influence, and their feeling, and their heart that went into it,” he says. Still, critical reception of the album was lukewarm at best; the main complaint was that it lacks originality: Blender called it “blandly anthropological” while the L.A. Times suggested that N.A.S.A. “forgo some of the crate-digging for more mind-digging.” Critics and listeners debated whether any of these bold names really shined, whether the integration of different world rhythms produced something compelling, whether the album is cohesive as a whole. Despite all that, there’s an inarguable, transcendent significance in the album’s larger concept: Simply stated in the opening track, it’s a promotion of peace and unity. “Music and art have the tremendous power of bringing people together…[Our aim is] to show through these media that we are all one race.”

“It’s just something that I really believe in,” he says. “And I think that there’s a lot of shit that separates us that’s all totally meaningless shit, like different beliefs, religious beliefs, races, politics, whatever. Really everyone has a different opinion and we can respect everyone else’s opinion and still live together in a happy place. I know it sounds kind of hippie-ish, but I do believe that.”

This may explain why, when asked if he ever doubted the project would all come together, Spiegel was quick to say no. “We were just really patient and never gave up and never settled. I mean, we could have put it out long ago, but we wanted to make sure that it was right and we felt good about it.” Getting it right meant coming up with names of artists to go along with preliminary instrumental tracks, in combinations that seemed haphazard but “somehow make sense in a weird, fucked-up way.” It meant writing a letter to each musician, explaining the project and his/her imagined role on the tune, and then waiting for a yes or no. And, of course, it also meant meeting up with those artists—finding them on tour, if they couldn’t come to L.A., or hopping on a plane to their cities. Like the time they went down to Sizzla Kalonji’s Kingston Rasta compound, Judgment Yard. “It was just like 50 Rasta dudes hanging out and smokin’ spliffs and cooking Rasta food and feeding it to us. It was really just a really fun experience and the way that we got to see Jamaica…people don’t really get to see it. A very authentic way.”

Toking up and getting to visit Stone Love, Jamaica’s biggest sound system, was no huge sacrifice, and Spiegel admits that. But he wanted to capture that spirit of exploration, comparing the project to [the real] NASA’s Apollo missions. “Basically they went from having a man in space to, like, committing to, ten years later, landing a man on an alien planet and, you know, that’s really crazy! So I related that to how I wanted the N.A.S.A. record to be. I mean, obviously it’s not as vast an accomplishment as that, or as brave an exploration, but I wanted it to be about people exploring and people venturing out of what they’re comfortable with and not being scared of the unknown.” He adds that there’s another meaning for him too: the message of peace. “If you hear any astronauts from that era or even the presidents around there, it was like, ‘We venture forth from this planet as one race of human beings, maybe this shows that we can all get along in peace.’ You know? Everyone involved had a very unified feeling about, like, being just human beings and not being separated by all these boundaries and borders that we have.”

And so they go, two humans beings crossing boundaries all over the globe with their four-turntable set-up and computers full of remixes and edits — if in fact, as it’s been anecdotally reported, all the kids in Europe already know the words to every song on the record is any indication of their future journeys.

“I’m so happy to go tour the world this year, you know? And I want to go to really weird places, too. I’m hoping to play in like Israel, and I think we want to hit China and Thailand, just see the world.”

***
http://www.myspace.com/nasa

The Morning After Girls—who recently released an EP, “The General Public”—do well by the shoegaze resurgence with impeccably delivered vocal harmonies, which, both on record and during their live set, creates a beautiful, textured sound. Maybe that musical complexity is attributable to Sleeman’s own sophisticated playlist: “Music? I don’t tend to listen to much music. If anything, it would be classical music; Chopin, Rachmaninov, Haydin,” he recently told pluginmusic.com.

Not all their songs are subdued—the setlist included some upbeat pop numbers—but most induced a sleepy, hypnotic trance that was broken only when dance music mysteriously started to blast from the DJ booth (due to a technical glitch or phantom disc jockey). The show was pleasant, if not somewhat sedating. But, then again, they’re not called The Dancing Sexy In Front of Stage Left Girls.

***
myspace.com/themorningaftergirls

In this world, it seems no one has forgotten about the UK electronic dance trailblazers—composed of members Liam Howlett, Keith Flint, and Maxim Reality—though for many of us, hits like “Firestarter” and “Smack My Bitch Up” are the last we remember. No matter. The Prodigy picks up from their glory days: screaming vocals, thunderous drums, relentless strobe lights and all. Keith and Maxim perform their own frenzied dance-offs throughout the set, which includes the aforementioned hits plus many surefire ones from the new album, like “Omen,” Run With The Wolves,” and “Take Me To The Hospital.”

The Prodigy’s unflagging stamina is admirable, but much of the songs’ textures are lost in a messy, grimy noise, burying their catchy synth hooks and samples, and making us lose interest after a few. The pounding beats, the dizzying stage lights, all the rhetorical questions of “where are fucking are” and “what we’re gonna fucking do,” and especially Keith’s spread-eagle, god-like posturing, just make us wish something really crazy would happen, like Liam setting fire to his eponymous Moog Prodigy or someone ripping off his fitted white tank. That moment never comes, though, so eventually we go back to reading the T-shirt witticisms around us until the circus is over.

Photos by Mike Jones

***
myspace.com/theprodigy
www.theprodigy.com

Unfortunately for anyone who’d wanted to catch Scotland’s Calvin Harris on his North American DJ tour, he got sick midway through and had to cancel the rest of his dates. If you’re interested, you can watch the drama unfold on Twitter as the disease takes over his body—he goes from “feeling really bad” to “just got up to answer the phone and almost passed out” to “back in the U.K. after my disastrous U.S. tour attempt,” all sandwiched between giddy excitement over Tiesto remixing his newest track and the effect of antibiotics on specific bodily functions.

Anyway, we were lucky enough to catch his first night of his tour at Webster Hall in New York City and can attest that it was off the charts, with Harris spinning a number of his own tried-and-true dance hits (including “Acceptable in the 80s,” “The Girls,” his Ting Tings’ “Great DJ” remix) and keeping a crowd of smashed partiers shaking on a cold Friday night.

The aforementioned new track is called “I’m Not Alone.” It’s a poppy dance gem, and we’re expecting that it—or the Tiesto, Deadmau5, or Herve remix versions—will carry us into the summer.

***
myspace.com/calvinharristv
www.calvinharris.tv

“At the end of the day, I’m not Trent Reznor and I don’t have a million dollars in the bank. What do I do?” reflected Claudia Gonson, a musician in Magnetic Fields and Stephin Merritt’s manager, on an artist whose particularly vocal criticisms of the music industry culminated in his making the latest Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, free for download. (Note: as a non-NIN fan, this worked for me; after downloading the album on a whim, I had “Discipline” on loop for weeks.)

Last week I attended a seminar called “Tekserve Presents: The Future of Music 3,” featuring a panel that included Gonson, Sadat X (member of the hip hop group Brand Nubian), Adam Ferrell (head of marketing at Beggars Group, a family of indie record labels) and Peter Rojas (co-founder of RCRD LBL), moderated by hip hop activist and music journalist Harry Allen. No, it wasn’t about the latest technology from the NAMM show (though, really, how cool does the JazzMutant Lemur controller look?), but a discussion to answer some pressing questions: How will artists survive in this era of album leaks, free-for-all downloading, and music blogs spreading the fire?

The short answer: there’s touring, merchandising and licensing, but beyond that, everybody’s still trying to figure it out. For a couple years now, the RCRD LBL team has been trying to inject some honesty back into the mix by offering free legal downloads from their own online record label as all as a “curated roster” of independent ones. “I think it’s about being respectful,” Rojas said. But as everyone knows (and I’m definitely guilty), illegal downloading is still a problem and artists are frustrated. “There’s gotta be other ways to make money [besides record selling records],” Gonson said. “I’m easy about how.”

But maybe the statistics aren’t so grim. Adam Ferrell pointed out that because of all the blog buzz, Bon Iver’s Blood Bank EP sold 23,000 copies. Despite leaks, Lil Wayne has sold millions of records. And the pleasant surprise of the evening: “Vinyl sales are through the roof,” said Ferrell—Gun N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy sold “a lot” of vinyl copies.

In conclusion: for the love and preservation of all your favorite artists, go see them play live, buy a T-shirt, keep watching Grey’s Anatomy, or get a record player, while we hope for a solution.

Obi Best is the electro-pop act of L.A.-based musician Alex Lilly. The songs off her debut album, “Capades,” (Social Science Recordings) are quirky, catchy, sweet—and, unlike most pop, too smart to be cloying. Think brilliantly textured keyboards, synths and punchy beats. In an interview with LAist, Lilly says: “[Me and my friends] decided maybe I should call it “fancy-pop” because it’s a little pompous and aware of itself.” Obi Best just started a West Coast mini-tour with revered duo The Bird and the Bee (Lilly sings backup), and they’ll be jetting across the states throughout February and March. I’ve seen Lilly play a few times with a cadre of LA’s finest talent and they are delightful to watch. See for yourself in this charming video of “It’s Because Of People Like You.”

***
www.myspace.com/obibest
www.obibest.com

The Sky Crawlers is an anime film by Mamoru Oshii (director of Ghost in the Shell) about a group of young fighter pilots called “Kildren”—a breed of humans that never age past adolescence. The story centers around Kuichi, a young man who arrives at a new air base and is immediately rapt in the mysteries of his surroundings: the secrets of a seductively enigmatic female base commander, the fate of the pilot who preceded him, and the workings of an elusive enemy known as Teacher.

Based on a book by the same name, the film is alluring in the quiet beauty of its simple dialogue and exquisite visuals. The film feels timeless, but in an introductory video before the screening in New York, Oshii says he intends for it to be a message to the current generation of young individuals who, perhaps because of the comfort of their economic stature, are never forced to grow up.

***
Special Note: Credit for the translation goes to Ribo of NEW YORK – TOKYO (http://www.newyork-tokyo.com).  

***
www.sky.crawlers.jp

Princeton is a four-piece indie band of guys who grew up together in Santa Monica: twins brothers Jesse Kivel (vocals, guitar) and Matt Kivel (vocals, bass), Ben Usen (keyboard) and David Kitz (drums). They’re currently taking their show—think Belle & Sebastian-esque pop—on the road with Ra Ra Riot. Tonight should be a night off, but they wanted to put in some overtime at Brooklyn’s Union Hall. We sat down with them after a game of indoor Bocce ball, in between bites of French fries and sips of PBR. Read on for their thoughts on everything from the state of music in Los Angeles to how Jesse became a good dancer (a fact which is verified during a drum machine and Nord-backed number called “Shout It Out”) to what makes Portland so cool.

EM: How many times you guys been in New York?

Ben: Three times.

Matt: We were born in New York. We’ve been here a million times. Exactly a million.

EM: So that’s, what, like five thousand times per day?

Matt: Yeah, we keep coming back. We just stood on the border. [Jesse jumps back and forth over an imaginary border.]

Ben: That’s how Jesse got so good at dancing.

EM: How did you guys connect with David?

David: We all went to the same high school. And actually the same middle school as well. Even Hebrew school. They’re a couple years older, so they were in the same grade as my older sister. So I always knew them very indirectly. I saw the twins play. Then randomly, on the first date that I was having with my current girlfriend, she does the licensing for bands and film and TV and she represents Princeton. They were having their first meeting with her when I was having my first date with her. They were finishing the meeting when I was picking her up, so we kind of linked up and the rest is history.

Jesse: I remember in high school, I went to this terrible battle of the bands and David was drumming with this hardcore band. It was horrible, but David was so good. He was like insanely good. So when we got him, I was like, I remember this kid who was really good at drums. We had another drummer at the time, and we wanted to see if David was as good as that drummer. He wasn’t. No, no, he was really good.

EM: Then you took all the hardcore stuff and put them into the Princeton songs.

David: All the double bass.

Matt: Well, he’s a versatile drummer. He can do a lot of different things.

David: I’m no longer into the hardcore. I was like 15.

Jesse: The best drummers come from hardcore bands because the technical stuff is so hard. Eventually those drummers grow out of hardcore, then they become really good rock drummers. Like David.

David: Thanks, guys. I’m really excited to be in the band.

EM: That’s sweet. So, one of my questions is: Do you think there’s a distinctive L.A. sound?

Matt: I think it depends on what you’re referring to. I think that there’s, at the moment, there’s a lack of an L.A. sound over all. There are tiny pockets that are cultivating certain sounds like the bands coming out of The Smell have really sort of put their own unique stamp on like, it’s like, post-rock sort of. It’s noisy and malleable. And all these bands, they don’t necessarily sound similar, but I feel like there’s a shared sort of thinking that goes behind the music. But if you listen to each of them, there’s not too much in common with like Mika Miko and No Age, Abe Vigoda, and HEALTH. Those bands are just loud, that’s the only thing in common. But the music’s very different.

As for pop bands, I think there is a sound to the L.A. bands that, for instance, tend to get a lot of radio airplay on like KCRW and play at the Hotel Café and things like that. I think it’s a very polished, technically sound sort of way of writing songs and usually has to do with emotional singer-songwriter kind of material. And that’s also an L.A. sound.

But I think as for what we’re doing, I don’t think it really falls into either one of those, like, really different categories. I don’t think we fit the L.A. sound, but there definitely are a couple of L.A. sounds.

Ben: I think what the bands in L.A. do have in common really has nothing to do with being musical. I think, especially after coming to cities like New York and playing shows where there are so many bands where everyone seems really serious, L.A. bands, it seems like they just want to have a good time on stage, and have fun, and get the crowd involved and stuff. That’s the one thing I’ve been able to link all the bands together. For the most part, bands are just up there having a good time. That’s in other cities too, like Portland and stuff. But New York – that’s the main difference. It seems like bands are really serious here and like really cool.

EM: What are your musical influences?

Matt: Bands who have been major influences for us are The Kinks — Ray Davies is easily one of my favorite songwriters and I think that sometimes shows in our music. Leonard Cohen has been a huge influence for me. John Cale, Serge Gainsbourg, especially the way his records are produced and orchestrated, has affected us a lot, the way he gets things to sound. Arthur Russell — we love Arthur Russell and listen to a lot of his music.

And then noisier bands have been a really big influence on me, and not necessarily for Princeton but just in my development as a fan of music and a songwriter. [Jesse and I] have side project that does more shoegaze stuff and My Bloody Valentine is like a huge band for me, and Sonic Youth and stuff like that. You might not hear it all the time in Princeton’s music, but I think sometimes you will. But not on our EP now.

EM: Do you have a name for your side project?

Matt: Yeah, we’re called the Sleeping Bags. We played at Pehrspace a few weeks ago.

EM: Do any of the rest of you have personal side projects?

Matt: Ben’s the manager of Sleeping Bags and he’s going to try out on bass, we’re not sure yet.

Ben: I might be the bassist-slash-manager. My nickname might be Plum.

David: I’m in a band called Think Alike and a band called Open Spaces. Neither of which are too active now, but Think Alike is currently doing a four or five song demo.

Jesse: And I have a side project called Gold Room, which is a disco side project.

EM: No way. What do you do with that?

Jesse: I DJ — I’m starting to DJ — and I make disco music. I have about three tracks right now that are influenced by great disco of the ‘70s.

EM: Who does that include?

Jesse: It includes Cerrone, Patrick Cowley from the ‘80s, I like Arthur Russell’s disco, Giorgio Moroder, Alec Costandinos. There are others, Donna Summer.

EM: You have sort of a literary influence in your music. What are your favorite books?

Matt: The one that I enjoy the most is John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces. It’s a novel. It’s basically like a modern day Don Quixote figure living in New Orleans in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He’s really out of step with the world. He’s really fat and he goes on all these crazy sort of misguided missions that are based on his personal philosophy and ideology about the way the world works. He’s an outcast and I just enjoy strange characters like him. I love that book.

EM: Is literature and stuff like that still going to continue to be an influence in the music you make or was that just for the Bloomsbury EP?

Ben: That was just for the EP. That was the concept. It’s possible we might revisit some literary references in other albums or EPs to come, but for now, we’re recording our album and there’s no concept behind it, there’s nothing really literary about it. Bloomsbury was just an EP that was its own.

Matt: It’s not really even a literary EP. We made these sort of semi-character portraits. Some of the songs aren’t even portraits, they’re like mini-vignettes, like stories about small episodes in these people’s lives. To me, it’s more biographical, rather than literary.

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

Matt: I think Portland was the most fun to perform in.

Ben: That’s true. We went on this West Coast tour, this really D.I.Y. West Coast tour, and we played two shows. One was at a really shitty place, and that doesn’t define our Portland experience, but the night before we played a house party and there’s this whole basement scene in Portland, where all the houses have these really tiny basements, but they have shows there. And people packed into these really tiny basements, they’re just packed full of hipsters, just like ready to dance to anything they could. It was really fun. It was really great.

EM: That sounds similar to how the D.C. punk scene started, in basements, then moved above ground.

Ben: Yeah. Right. And I think this one started because all the cool venues in Portland are 21 and over, just like L.A. So that’s why all the under 21 kids…

EM: They have their own scene.

Ben: Right. They have their own scene. And that’s where they go. It was a really young crowd, it was like 15 to 21.

EM: How many people fit in the basement?

Ben: It was such a small basement, but it was packed full. There probably like 80 people there. We played in a little corner with a P.A. system, there was no stage made or anything. It was hard to see if you were stuck in the back. We played with two local bands. We just got in touch with a band that we found and liked called The Dirty Mittens, and it was at their house. We played with them and a band called Southern Belle. They were all young and both really good bands. I really was impressed. It’s really cool and next time we go to Portland, we really want to work on having two days there so we can do one basement show. We kind of want to move there.

***
More at myspace.com/princetonmusic and princeton-band.com

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
***

Apollo Sunshine is playing tonight at Spaceland in Los Angeles.

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

Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
Live Review: 10/29/08
***
Halfway through their set, Apollo Sunshine’s Jesse Gallagher (vocals, bass, keyboard) laments over the microphone at the lack of hecklers in the crowd. “You suck!” someone kindly offers. “Ok, asshole ,” he responds mockingly .

Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. The members of Apollo Sunshine—Gallagher, Sam Cohen (vocals, guitar, pedal steel) and Jeremy Black (drums)—possess expert musicianship that surpasses that of most rock bands playing at smaller venues like this one. They deliver their eclectic brand of psychedelic rock—pretty, jangling, funky—with captivating polish. It’s this kind of talent a band would need to take on the formidable challenge of performing an entire set of, say, Jimi Hendrix covers—which is exactly what they did.

But first come a solid set of songs from their recently released third album, Shall Noise Upon . On “Singing To The Earth,” Gallagher’s steady, folksy voice balances Cohen’s graceful pedal steel work. Maracas and tom drums fill out a lively, upbeat version of “Honestly” (“You can salsa to this one!”). And the set is cloaked in extensive use of hypnotic, Hendrixian distortion pedal and feedback—the latter of which serves almost as an instrument on its own. After a short intermission, the band members reappear onstage dressed as Hendrix himself, each man’s wig meticulously matched to the color of his beard. They play dizzyingly authentic, riff-filled versions of a couple songs, including a drawn-out “Are You Experienced?” Gallagher admirably channels Hendrix’s voice, only breaking character slightly during “Foxy Lady” when the lyric comes to “I’m comin’ to get ya!” where, amusingly, he sounds somewhat sheepish.

At some point in the first set, someone requests “Katonah,” a song off their first album by the same name. After a few moments of fumbling, they stop. They can’t remember how to play it.
“We suck,” Gallagher says.
“We don’t suck,” Cohen says. “It’s not like, ‘we’re 29 , we can’t riff anymore!’”
Evidently not.

Photo credits: Mike Jones

***
For upcoming tourdates, visit www.myspace.com/apollosunshine or www.apollosunshine.com

Look out for an EM interview with Apollo Sunshine this week.

Lots of things have happened since that day, of course. “Give Peace a Chance” became an unofficial anthem against the Vietnam War, which ended six years later. It was remembered again after Lennon’s shocking death in 1980. Ono, along with a celebrity “Peace Choir,” recorded a version in 1991 to protest the Gulf War. This past June, exactly 39 years after the song’s first recording, she released several dance club remixes of it-available only by digital download in an environmentally conscious “green” effort. And its lyrics appear to be as relevant as ever, with seemingly interminable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consuming the American political consciousness, igniting the newest wave of impassioned pacifism. So for Ono, how has its meaning changed over the years?

“Oh, it hasn’t changed at all,” she says. “I mean, it’s a great song and it’s a kind of upbeat song. It’s not saying (she adopts a commanding tone),‘Give peace a chance.’ It’s (she sings), ‘Give peace a chance!’ Like, very joyful, you know? It’s not confrontational, you know. And it was really great that way. People loved singing it.”

“But I think that not just singing, but they can dance!” she adds. “I mean, I think dance is it, you know. Dance is very, very important. It’s for the health and for the health of the mind as well, you know. It’s beautiful. Instead of being confrontational, instead of being depressing, instead of being angry-when you’re dancing, you’re not angry, you know. It’s just a joyful way of going through life. And that’s how we should be.”

There was “Cut Piece,” a 1964 Tokyo work of performance art in which the audience was invited on stage to cut off pieces of her clothing until she sat almost completely exposed. There were the years when she and Lennon were friends and supporters of Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, the progressive black political organization that-marked as a threat to political order-fell under attack by the FBI in the late sixties. (Despite the Black Panthers’ militant image, Lennon stated that he believed in their “Ten Point Plan,” which asserted a right to defend against attack by armed forces and the police.)

And in 2004, as a reflection of vigorous gay rights movements throughout the country, Ono recorded two new versions of the song “Every Man Has A Woman Who Loves Him”-originally co-written with Lennon-this time titled “Every Man Has A Man Who Loves Him” and “Every Woman Has a Woman Who Loves Her.” They now celebrate the legalization of marriage in a select number of states. “I’m totally protective about gay people,” she says of the songs. “I really think that it’s such an injustice done for such a long time, and it’s great that now they can get married.”

But make no mistake: despite Ono’s recent involvement in various civil rights battles, we’re still a generation that largely identifies her as “the woman who broke up the Beatles.” Or, more recently, remembered for being the person who sued Ben Stein for using Lennon’s “Imagine” in his pro-intelligent design documentary. Even in more favorable light, some might see her merely as a flower-child icon of a long-gone decade. For all the derision thrown her way, it’s a wonder that she chooses to remain in the public eye, one that has and will probably always be quick to criticize her. We might even question her relevancy now-as an artist, a musician, a peace activist. During our conversation, I wanted to get a better sense of who she is, what she thinks of the current state of the world, and what keeps her going.

I start by asking her to reflect on the feminist mantra, “The personal is the political,” and how she lives it out in her day-to-day life. She directs to me her website, imaginepeace.com. “I’m promoting people to think peace and act peace and spread peace,” she says. “I still of course believe in peace and so I’m doing that. You know, we’re all together now. That’s the funny thing. Together, we can probably create a peaceful world.”

The website is a collection of videos, photos, artwork, essays, poems and statements memorializing her past and present peace efforts. She calls it an Internet billboard. “It’s like the most modest billboard on the busiest street of the city, surrounded with colorful signs selling commercial goods, none of which belong to you,” she writes in a message on the site. Encouraging visitors to download the Imagine Peace logo to make their own buttons, posters and T-shirts, she also suggests “sending in suggestions of important films to see, books to read, and statements by the greats of all centuries to chew on. Bring in good food for thought for the family!” Letters submitted by individuals spearheading their own peace projects are posted regularly, with encouraging personal responses from Ono. Clicking through the site reveals handmade peace posters from schoolchildren in Poland, a pledge from one artist in Massachusetts to construct hundreds of thousands of paper cranes representing lives lost in Iraq, an Imagine Peace birthday cake made in memory of Lennon.

Among the website’s archives is a 1982 essay published in The New York Times, titled “Surrender to Peace,” in which Ono urged the United States to initiate world peace, “to work together through affirmation and reaffirmation of our unity.” In October 2007, she wrote an addendum:

This was my statement in the 80’s.
I am amazed and saddened that the situation is incredibly similar now. But we overcame in the 80’s. We can overcome again now. We are larger in numbers now.

I ask for her thoughts on the statement, which appears to be an expression of discontent over the Iraq War. “Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that it’s starting to happen, really,” she says. “I think about all the things that have been said to really try to make this country well. More people are working on it, yes, because there are more people too.” She laughs. “More people born as well, but anyway, yes-there’s a lot of people working towards a beautiful world, a beautiful, creative, and peaceful world. And I’m very, very honored and happy that I’m part of it, you know.”

And part of it she continues to be, with seeming pertinacity. Since the time we spoke, the “Give Peace A Chance” remix hit number one on the Billboard dance charts. Music, of course, is one of our most powerful modes of expression, and served an integral role of the anti-war protests during Vietnam. I ask Ono if she thinks today’s music sends as strong a political message as it did during that decade.

“In the ‘60s and ‘70s too, we sort of expressed the statements that we hoped would change the world,” she says. “There’s a lot of people now who are really wanting world peace, and that didn’t happen in those days, you know…. I mean, of course, many people say, ‘Well, it didn’t work because we’re in war.’ Yeah, but it’s almost like…we’re in the same boat. And if people in the left side stand up, and the people on the right side don’t stand up, then, you know, the boat is going to topple. So just even to balance it, you have to keep saying, ‘give peace a chance.’”

In the end, promoting peace isn’t just a matter of saying “no” to violence and war, Ono reiterates. “It’s kind of like an exchange: they like to sing too and we like to sing too, and we keep singing the same songs together, you know.” This rather non-radical, self-focused, and meditative approach really comes across at the end of our interview, when I commend her for her ongoing work. “Oh, thank you,” she says. “Yes, well, you know, we’re sisters, you know, and you’re doing your own thing and I’m doing my own, and we understand each other. That’s all. It’s great.” In taking the focus off herself, her “imagine peace” philosophy seems to make the relevancy issue irrelevant, after all: she is not Yoko Ono, the iconic activist, but a member of the family, charged with the same duty to “think peace, act peace, and spread peace, and tell all our friends to imagine peace.” I ask if she still identifies with her self-described fiercely rebellious nature, once such a large and memorable part of her public persona. “I try not to be too rebellious,” she says, “but it seem like the very fact that I am what I am is creating some controversy.” In that case, how has her idea of being fierce changed- as an activist and an artist?

“I haven’t changed, you know,” she insists, laughing.” People don’t change so much.”

***
http://www.imaginepeace.com/

Trackademicks
The Macklovitch brothers, aka DJ A-Trak and Dave 1 from Chromeo, celebrated Fool’s Gold Records’ one-year anniversary at their CMJ showcase. Aside from some classic tracks from a stellar line up of DJs, we got to hear a few from Bay Area-based Trackademicks. We especially liked their performance of super chill “Topsidin’.” They’ve got a couple more dates in their Fool’s Gold/Scion Tour.

Photo Credit: Mike Jones

www.myspace.com/trackademicks
www.myspace.com/foolsgoldrecs

***

Kid Sister
“Ya got a cocktail? You ladies got a motherfuckin’ cocktail???” Kid Sister wanted to know. Commanding the stage at the Fool’s Gold showcase, we can tell she plays just as hard as the boys. Couldn’t tell if her fingernails were really matchin’, though.

Photo Credit: Mike Jones

www.myspace.com/kidsister

***

Late of the Pier
“Your U.S. powers have rendered us synth-less,” said U.K’s Late of the Pier, who didn’t let the malfunction diminish their set at Pete Tong’s Insiders showcase one bit. We anticipate more rattling 8-bit electro rock from their album, “Fantasy Black Channel,” due out in January.

www.lateofthepier.com
www.myspace.com/lateofthepier

***

Soulwax

Seeing Soulwax play live is a mind-blowing experience. They completely floored us with their intensely energetic dance rock, and their spot-on cover of Justice’s Phantom Pt. II was breathtaking. They’ve got a couple more U.S. tour dates. Or catch their documentary “Part of the Weekend Never Dies,” which is out now.

soulwax.com
www.myspace.com/soulwax

***
For more recaps of the CMJ festival, visit: http://www.cmj.com

Webster Hall, NY
Live Review: 10/18/08
***
The Secret Machines: rarely does a band’s name match so well, without literal adaptation or obvious gimmickery, with its style of stage performance. Its three members, Brandon Curtis (vocals, bass, keyboard), Phil Karnats (guitar) and Josh Garza (drums) remain black silhouettes through most of the set, hardly moving outside their own four-square-foot radii. This is partly because they’re locked in by a collection of pedals and cables, but also because, overhead, they’re restricted by a geometrically intricate web of strings, which one of their reps tells me was constructed by the same set designer who worked on Kanye West’s Touch the Sky tour. Towards the end of the show, the webbing is illuminated with bright colored lights, creating a striking visual effect. Meanwhile, you can hardly see their faces and they don’t utter a word between songs, almost robotically producing one number after another of their signature psychedelic space rock.

The New York-based band embraces a droning, dark, reverb-heavy sound, driven by thudding beats. Played live, it translates into thick noise that fills every space of the venue. They draw out long instrumental passages, creating a brooding, contemplative atmosphere—in the darkness, as they play “The Walls Are Starting to Crack, ” from their new album Secret Machines, you’re left to think up accompanying images in your mind: maybe a slow-motion shoot-out scene from a crime movie, or a snapshot of a desperate man in solitary confinement. And out of the steady sonic haze rise a number of transcendent moments, each building up with Curtis’ voice riding over the loud, murky layers of Karnats’ pedal effects and the clash of all Garza’s cymbals ringing at once.

By not engaging the audience in any direct or obvious way, the band creates a space for individual interpretation and experience. In the crowd, a small puff of smoke rises over someone’s head, a guy throws up the sign of the horns, cigarette lighters flickers here and there—they’re symbolic examples of varied responses to a liberating and open sonic landscape.

***
For more info check out:
myspace.com/thesecretmachines

www.thesecretmachines.com

EM: How does it feel to be back in New York? You lived here for a while, right?
CC: Yeah, it’s good. Sorta good to come back to where it all started, you know what I mean?

EM: Yeah. So, if you could have anyone remix your songs, dead or alive, who would it be?
CC: Um…probably like, I dunno, Jimi Hendrix. Or I’d do a cover of one of his songs.

EM: Why Jimi Hendrix?
CC: Just because it’d be good, I dunno, he’d just do some crazy shit to it, I reckon.

EM: And if you could remix anyone, who would it be?
CC: Um…who would I like to remix…The Beatles, I guess.

EM: Any specific song you’d want to do?
CC: Um…the ”I Am a Walrus” song.

EM: Any ideas of what you would do to it?
CC: I’m not sure. I’ve never really thought about it! But, I dunno, just have fun with the drums.

EM: So what instruments did you grow up playing and how did that influence the music you make now?
CC: Well, I started with the drums and I was just like in the school marching band, because you have to do a march every year and when you got to the top of the street, you’d get an ice cream. So it was more of the ice cream that sort of influenced the drums. But then, I dunno, I guess, I dunno, I just love drums and rhythm, so I guess all my songs are quite sort of rhythm and drum-based, if you know what I mean.

EM: Which marching band drum did you play?
CC: Just the snare drum.

EM: What’s the inspiration behind the music you make? Do you think being from Australia influences that a lot?
CC: Um…yeah, I definitely think, like, our freedom influences us. Just, I dunno, we’ve really got no rules, so it’s just sort of whatever we want to make, we make. We’re definitely not speaking to a genre or this or that. We just sort of…yeah, whatever comes out comes out.

EM: Do you think it’s a different approach in the States?
CC: Um…yeah, I do. I dunno, I think your habitat definitely influences the music you make.

EM: I also read that you’re influenced by Basquiat. What about his work impacts you?
CC: I think all of it. Just the spontaneity of it, the rawness. I don’t know, his marks – just feels real. I don’t know, it’s just sort of quick.

EM: Are there any other musicians you’re influenced by currently?
CC: I’m influenced by a lot of stuff, I guess, like a lot of older music. Pop music, I’ve always been heavily influenced by. Sort of everything really, there’s pieces in everything that can sound good.

EM: What kind of older stuff are you into?
CC: At the moment, I’m really sort of listening to, like, I dunno, like Sun Ra and earlier stuff like that. A lot of old sort of funk, what else…there’s so much music out there, it’s just endless.

EM: What else do you listen to on your own time?
CC: I listen mostly to a lot of my own stuff, because I sort of make a lot of music that by the time I get bored of it, I’ve got all the music that I can listen to. But also I like to listen to nothing sometimes. I think when you make so much music, it’s nice for your ears just to listen to, I don’t know, just natural sounds or sounds that you can’t stop. Just anywhere, really. Sometimes I like just sort of silence.

***
Check out the Bumblebeez website for a few upcoming U.S. dates:  http://www.myspace.com/thebumblebeez

EM: If you could have anyone remix one of your songs, who would it be?
KM: We’ve had some pretty good luck so far with the remix guys that we’ve chosen. We pretty much get whoever we pick, except we’ve been trying to get Maurice Fulton. We’ve asked three or four times. I would for him to say to yes once.

EM: How do you approach your remixes? Do you try to transform the song into something new or do you try to refine what’s already there?
KM: We’ve stopped doing remixes for other people—if we spend time doing music, we’d rather be doing our own stuff. When we did do remixes the plan was to grab the vocal or the acapella and build a brand new track underneath it. It’s not even remixes—it’s kind of covering the song, in a way, or writing a completely new bed for the vocal.

EM: What about remixes of your own songs—what makes a good one?
KM: It depends on the song, but generally we try to get a couple of different people to do different vibes. That’s the main thing for a remix, is to get DJs to play it. Because a DJ will generally not play an original—they always want to play a remix. It’s good to balance it out. We’ll try to get someone who’s got, like, a big club sound, something that’s kind of deeper and more spaced out, something you could imagine a mainstream DJ playing. Then smaller club remixes, which you could imagine more cooler DJs would play. More chin-stroke-y, sort of. Then you have sort of more clever—not necessarily dance—more artsy remixes or whatever. Get all those things kicked off in a 12-inch. It’s a pretty good package.

EM: How would you say the music you make as K.I.M. is different from the music you make as The Presets?
KM: Well, it’s very different. It obviously doesn’t have half the input from Julian [Hamilton] that it has as The Presets. It’s pop music in The Presets, so it’s geared towards that kind of goal—traditional song structures, choruses, a little bit of vocals. I guess the stuff that I do by myself is kind of like sketches, or like experiments that become fulfilled ideas. And it’s generally geared towards the dance floor. There’s no particular one sound that I’m going for. I’m trying to experiment with production styles, and musical and creative ideas that I have. Yeah, it’s quite different…I’m not following any rules when I do my own stuff. It’s really like absolute vomit.

EM: Did you just call your music vomit?
KM: Yeah, absolute vomit. Like the perfect spew.

EM: Haha, okay. How did you learn to play the drums?
KM: Well, when I was growing up, my mom was a crazy, crazy Pentacostal Christian and she would take us to one of those fucked up Christian church places, where they speak in tongues and fall on the ground. There was a rock band there and different players would teach different instruments. My sister decided to learn the drums. She’s six years older than me. I said I wanted to learn the drums too. We went to two classes and she stopped going. I found a teacher and I learned and learned and learned. I’ve been never played drums in a band until The Presets, actually. Like, I switched over to classical percussion and vibraphone and stuff like that. That’s what I learned when I went to high school and university.

EM: So a bunch of Australian bands are huge right now, like The Presets, Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts. Do you think there’s such a thing as an "Australian sound"?
KM: Not really. If you asked the other guys—who are all really dear friends of ours and we’re really big fans of—they’d probably say the same thing. They come from Melbourne and we come from Sydney. I guess we’re similar in the kind of clubbiness of all of these three bands, but musically it’s pretty different. And, yeah, it’s weird, for us guys in it…if you take away two bands in those three then you don’t have an Australian sound. I guess it’s just like one of those weird timing things. The more I talk and think about it, actually, The Avalanches—they had a big record about 10 years ago—I think they really had an impact on bands like The Presets and Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts. They are an amazing band that came out of nowhere in the time of, like, DJ Shadow and great sample music and pop music or whatever….It’s just like far out and great, and we kind of look at them as the real torch-bearers of what we do. It’s not really even similar music, but it is in a way because it’s kind of like pop music gone wrong, but done right.

EM: What are the top three songs that get you dancing right now?
KM: 1. Guy Gerber and Chaim—It’s kind of really spaced-out techno chants, which I really love.
2. A remix of one of our songs, “Talk Like That,” by Optimo Espacio, that will be out soon.
3. “What What (In The Butt)” by Samwell—It’s pretty gay.

The Presets and Cut Copy
Joint Headline Tour Dates 2008

SAT 9/13 – Monolith Festival – Denver, CO
MON 9/15 – The Record Bar – Kansas City, MO
TUES 9/16 – Fine Line Music Cafe- Minneaplis, MN
WED 9/17 – Metro – Chicago, IL
FRI 9/19 Sound Academy – Toronto, Ontario
SAT 9/20 – Club Soda – Montreal, Quebec
SUN 9/21 – Webster Hall – New York City, NY
MON 9/22 – Webster Hall – New York City, NY
TUE 9/23 – Paradise – Boston, MA
THURS 9/25 – The Trocadero Theater – Philadelphia, PA
FRI 9/26 9:30 Club – Washington D.C.
SAT 9/27 Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
MON 9/29 – Emo’s Alternative Lounge – Austin, TX
TUES 9/30 – Granada Theater – Dallas, TX
FRI 10/3 – The Glass House – Pomona, CA
SUN 10/5 – Mezzanine – San Francisco, CA
TUES 10/7 – Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
WED 10/8 – Showbox At The Market – Seattle, WA
THURS 10/9 – Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, B.C.

***
www.myspace.com/kimberleyisaacmoyes

www.myspace.com/thepresets