DAEDELUS

The Bygone Bureau: When did you start writing music? Was it initially with electronics?

DAEDELUS: I studied classical music and jazz all throughout my teenage years through college. I really thought I was going to be a jazz musician when I grew up. I just surrendered to it in a way. I didn’t have that much imagination toward other kinds of compositional output. I’m going to be a double bass player when I grow up. I was composing all the time. I was writing pieces for double bass and bass clarinet. Also, I was playing in a ska/punk/surf band. I think it’s inevitable when you’re playing instruments that you meet other players… Like everyone needs a bass player or everyone needs woodwinds for a ska group. I would just try to fit in and play with other people. I don’t know if I play well with other people.

After a period of time, I got frustrated with that and started to find electronics to be a lot freer. That was around 1998. I started to really try to compose with electronics, but I had no idea what I was doing. The programs were really intimidating and all the computer stuff was really intimidating. I knew instruments and notation, but making the computer make all the sounds that I was hearing from all these records I was buying wasn’t a natural thing. It took three years before I put out my first record.

What are all the instruments you play?

Well, I don’t play any of them well. I mainly play double bass and bass clarinet. I play a little accordion and keyboard instruments. I attempted to try to play guitar a little while back. I couldn’t deal with six strings, so I have a four-string guitar. I play that with the Long Lost with my wife. It’s a modified tuning system. B-flat is the E string tuned down, and the other three strings are all tuned up. It’s silly, but it makes everything sound sonorous. When you make any shapes it kind of plays itself.

How often do you tour and perform with the Long Lost?

Not often enough. My wife isn’t a big fan of touring. I wouldn’t wish the touring life on my worst enemy. There are wonderful highs and terrible lows. A lot of the highs come from being in front of people and sharing this great experience. So, if you’re not doing that and you have all the lows of being constantly on the run and moving around, it’s not that fun. She doesn’t join me on my touring that often, but when we tour together, it’s wonderful. We just finished a tour of Japan late last year, and we toured Europe early [last year]. We do dates occasionally in LA when we find unique venues that deal well with quiet music. The world doesn’t deal well with pretty music.

To make sad pretty music is a life long dream of my wife’s and mine. Songs of longing and loss.

What’s your songwriting process?

It varies. I try to find a device that works for me — a musical device, a reason to write a song. If you don’t have a reason to write a song, why are you doing it? There has to be a story. There has to be some kind of plot. Because if you’re just making sounds for sounds sake, it just kind of sits on the page and it doesn’t really fly. My whole thing is that I want it to be evocative. Songs write themselves.

I’m also a vastly unhappy person with my output.

Why is that?

It never works. In my mind, I’ll write a song that really captures a feeling of drowning. I did a song called “Dreamt of Drowning” and I had kids approaching me saying, “Oh this is our couples song; this is the song we share when we’re falling in love.” You guys failed to see the point of the song! I was angry at myself, but it’s totally valid on their part. It just means I have to write another song. That’s okay. Being sad with things just means you have to do it again. That makes me sound like a melancholy person, but I’m really not.

I’ve noticed you play with a Monome. How exactly does this machine work?

It’s an open source OSC (open sound controller) music controller. It’s some clever programming by a whole team of people, but mainly by this guy named Brian Crabtree who invented the device and also made a lot of the original software for it. It allows for endless improvisations, in my case with sample material. So I’ll take my new music or other people’s music and just twist and turn, change it about, make new melodies, and make new rhythms. It’s fun. You can easily feel like a kid in a sandbox that has really cool sandcastles.

Is there a reason you play with the device facing the audience?

There are two reasons mainly. One of them is really silly and one is more obvious. The obvious one is that the audience has a lot to do with any kind of improvisation — to allow the audience to see the mechanism that they’re inspiring. I’m not sitting there just dictating a night to people. I’m waiting for input. That one dancer who’s really good on the floor — I’m just playing for [him/her]. It’s cool if there are other people in the crowd, but that one really good dancer is the person who’s inspiring me. I want to inspire them to go further or whatever it is that we’re doing together. So by facing the Monome [at the audience], the interaction is more obvious.

The silly, academic reason is that every major instrument has a forward-facing stance. If you imagine the electric guitar, it doesn’t really need to be faced forward. The display of performance is a really integral part of what musical performance is. Turntables are kind of an exception to the rule. They face the user. Piano kind of is too, but there’s always an emphasis on the movement of the hands. I guess I’m kind of here to take it back to the old school.

What were some of the bigger musical influences you had when you were getting started?

One huge one for me was a talented producer named ACEN. He was a rave producer in the ’90s. He did this perfect combination of real interesting difficult breakbeat, hardcore, strange loops, bleeps, and string samples from like John Berry and all over the place. He’d fuse them together in this really beautiful way be it R&B samples from like Prince or whatever it was, but found this way to have noise and beauty push forward that was really listenable and extremely danceable. That’s what I listened to as a kid, but I got caught up in all that jazz stuff. I love Charles Mingus and all of those hard bop guys that came out. I listened to a lot of Archie Shep and a lot of that free stuff.

I really didn’t want to worship at the altar of dead people. It kind of gets morbid after a while. That’s classical music in a nutshell. There’s something gray goth about it.

What are some of your hobbies?

I was very enthusiastic about martial arts for a time. I fell out of it for a while though.

Also video games. A lot of RPG, fantasy, and storytelling kind of games. I think it’s pretty obvious that I did a lot of [Dungeons & Dragons] playing.

Where does the name DAEDELUS come from?

Daedelus was the greatest inventor of his era in ancient Greek times. Father of Icarus, a petty man who killed his cousin and created labyrinths that were the destruction of many men. He killed his son by accident… all this wonderful Sturm und Drang, this German term used in music often for this lightning and thunder kind of feeling, real tumultuous.

How has it been working with artists like MF DOOM, CYNE, and Prefuse 73?

Great mostly. Any time you get a chance to get out of your own skin. Whether it’s hip-hop, or you’re remixing people, and you have a chance to collaborate with them, it’s great. I feel that way with my samples and records. When I’m taking a horn sample, it’s like I’m collaborating with them. Someone like MF DOOM especially, he comes up with a story and it’s the easiest thing in the universe. You just get a little out of his way and let him go with it.

“Impending Doom” is amazing. It feels like most of the time there’s not a solid beat going on.

I mean, he picked it. It’s great. I gave him a lot of beats, and most of them were traditional boom-bap and he picked that one. He’s a fantastic individual, however crazy and villainous he is.

I’ve noticed that you have switched record labels pretty frequently, releasing albums with Plug Research, Alpha Pup, Mush Records, and Ninja Tune. You have an album coming out on March 23, Righteous Fists of Harmony on Brainfeeder.

It’s a reference. It’s the self-imposed name of the boxers from the Boxer Rebellion. The boxer rebellion was a war that happened in China from 1898 to 1901. 100,000 well-trained martial artists rebelled against the British. They were imposing a rule over China. These Righteous Fists of Harmony killed foreigners and thought themselves to be the supreme warriors to do this task. They thought themselves to have magic powers: the power to fly, raise the dead, and being invulnerable to bullets. The cannon fire of the British opposition killed them.

There was one promotional video for the song “Fin de Siecle” put out recently. This song is pretty ambient. Do you feel this album will be mellower?

The album is quite done. The album ranges quite a bit, but it is more on the mellow side. That song is the last track on the record. It has more of a feeling of an overture or a requiem. It has this finality to it. It was a really interesting choice to use for the video. The rest of the tracks have beats and bass. There are some vocals on the record. My wife sings on a track, Kid A sings on a track, and I sing on a track.

You were mentioning all of these labels before. Every record label you work with has a personality. You make the record that’s right for that personality. You’re in a group effectively with that label. Ninja Tune is like a partying UK kid, so you try to make a record that tries to party in the UK.

Would you say Mush and Plug Research are pretty similar?

Now they’ve blended together a little bit, but for a long time Plug Research was like Emotronica. Emotionally charged evocative electronic music. Of Snowdonia and Invention really fit that, I hope.

What would you say Mush is?

The bastard child of hip-hop. The forgotten son of Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Nosaj Thing

The Bygone Bureau: When did you start playing music? What instruments do you play?

Nosaj Thing: I started playing music when I was in third grade. I started out playing saxophone, and a couple years later, I switched to clarinet. I started DJing when I was twelve and started playing guitar around the same age. My best friend was a tomboy that had a Technics 1200 set up. I was really interested in DJing but didn’t have enough money to afford equipment. So I would just go over there and practice every single day. Her older brother had access to a whole record pool. They had fourteen crates of records.

What kind of music did you initially start mixing?

Hip-hop. That was in the late ’90s. I really liked the mainstream stuff that was coming out around that time. Later on in high school, I started going to raves and was spinning house and drum and bass. Eventually I went into production. I got a bootleg version of Reason and Fruityloops and would use it every day. I used Logic for a while, and now I use Ableton Live.

What were some of the best shows you went to growing up?

A lot of raves. I went to quite a few. I can’t pinpoint the best one. 2000 or 2001 there was this rave in LA called Nation. That was the same promoters that did the Audiotistic [Music Festival] where they combine hip-hop with drum and bass and house to appeal to a bigger audience. They had some of my favorite drum and bass artists — J Magic, Shy FX, and DJ Hype — with some of my favorite scratch DJs — DJ Qbert and D-Styles. I was so into scratch DJing.

What creative inspirations have had the most impact on you since you started playing?

Seeing all the acts. One of my inspirations for doing the visual show was this indie band from Japan, Cornelius. I was so blown away. I didn’t want to do a show that was just me doing my thing. I wanted to create more of an experience than a show. [I] put together a team: my girlfriend and a mutual friend. They’re both going to design school.

Tell me about the Nosaj Thing Visual show. Who did lights/visuals for that? How many visual shows did you have? Do they have any other productions?

Julia Tsao and Adam Guzman. They got more interested in doing visuals after that show. We had a video clip that became a little viral. They’re working with Flying Lotus for his Coachella show.

I did three visual shows with them. One in LA, one in San Francisco, and one in Montreal. It’s still in a beta version. They just got out of grad school and will have more time to work on it. We’re doing it this summer at Sonar in Barcelona.

What artists have you done remixes for?

I did quite a bit.

I’ve seen a long list.

It’s getting ridiculous. I almost have as many remixes as original material.

Is that something you have a problem with?

Not really. These opportunities just came in. I’ve been getting remix requests from artists I really like. How could you say no to that? I have a couple more to finish and then I’ll be spending my time on the next record. I just finished the xx, a band from the UK. I did a remix for Charlotte Gainsbourg, who has a new project with Beck. I also just started a remix for Fever Ray right now.

You released your last record Drift on Alpha Pup. When are you expecting to release another album or EP and with who?

Next album, hopefully if it goes as planned, will be out first quarter of 2011. We’re having a remix EP released on Alpha Pup over the summer: Dntel, Dorian Concept, DAEDELUS, and maybe Fly Lo (Flying Lotus).

What is your beat-making process?

I tend to work on stuff when I feel like I have the urge to do it. When I’m writing music, it’s very therapeutic for me. It’s an emotional release every time I do it. It works best when some type of incident has happened to me.

What is your favorite Nintendo NES game?

For some reason, I like this game called RC Pro-Am a lot. It was a three-quarter aerial view where you drive this remote control car.

Have you worked with any MCs? Do you expect to work with MCs in the future or stay mostly instrumental?

Recently, I did the first track off Nocando’s recent release. I also did a beat for [rapper] Busdriver. I did a remix for this Mc Donis out of Atlanta. DJ 8-track released his EP.

I have been secretly working on beats as well outside of Nosaj Thing. That’s why I started. I was a big fan of Dre and always wanted to be a hip-hop producer growing up.

When I’m at home I don’t listen to too much electronic music. Of course, I listen to what’s going on out there, but at home I like listening to indie rock or classical music. Actually, I like listening to mainstream hip-hop radio while I’m driving. When I’m in LA, I drive a lot.

How has touring with DAEDELUS been?

It’s been amazing. I first saw DAEDELUS in 2003 when he first started using the Monome controller. It’s crazy, it’s been seven years now. I used to go to all of his shows. I’ve never seen anyone perform electronic music like he does. 2003 was a time where music technology and controllers were booming. To see someone like DAEDELUS work a prototype version of the Monome was really inspiring to me. After seven years, co-headlining a tour is really crazy.

Digital or analog synth?

Both. Analog will never go away. You can’t emulate that sound of analog. Maybe. It’s getting close right? I think being a younger dude being around a lot of software has influenced me. It’s tough to record with midi or find that one patch to make the right sound. I really like working with software instruments. We’re at a time where you can make things sound amazing.

DAEDELUS and Nosaj Thing are touring together until the end of February. Check their MySpace pages for dates. Photos by Daniel Adler.

I interviewed Temple and the rest of the band after their show at Chop Suey in Seattle on June 25.

Here We Go Magic; photo courtesy of Western Vinyl.

The Bygone Bureau: Do you expect to keep both names of Luke Temple and Here We Go Magic going?

Luke Temple: Yes. Right now my heart is set in playing as Here We Go Magic. I’ve never played with a solid band before, and it’s a lot of fun. I’m sure Luke Temple stuff will keep happening though.

How did you guys end up playing together?

Temple: Well I’ve been playing with Mike [Bloch] for a while. He’s my roommate as well.

Michael Bloch: We met and picked up our keyboardist [Kristina Lieberson] from a show we played with a project that she was in. Luke really liked her voice.

Temple: We also met our bassist [Jennifer Turner] from another show. She was the only one at that show who was really ecstatic about our music. She asked if we needed a bass player, and we currently had been trying another one that wasn’t working very well. So she came out and played with us. The first song we played went on for like twenty minutes, and she just stood really close to our drummer [Peter Hale] and felt out what he was playing. That was one thing he was really struggling with when we were playing with the previous bass player. So, it was a good sign that things were going to work out.

What kind slower/spacier/ambient music inspired songs like “Ghost List” and “Nat’s Alien”?

Temple: At that time, I was listening to the soundtrack to the remake of Nosferatu a lot. It was done by Popol Vuh, which is really cool German Krautrock.

Is it hard to go from recording everything solo to playing live as a band? What was that process like?

Temple: It’s really hard. The first time I played with a band, we had six days to figure out how to play all the songs as a live band. But I don’t currently play with that group anymore. This time around, we had a few months.

Bloch: It felt like a few months, but really it was six weeks.

Temple: Okay, well… six weeks. We really got to work through our songs this time around though.

There were a few new songs you played at the show tonight. Are these also songs you wrote and then tried to figure out as a band?

Temple: No, these are more band-oriented songs. All the live versions of songs are band twists on my original ideas. I write the core of all the songs, but the songs have a much different feeling when they’re written out with the band in mind. It’s a good feeling.

When do you think you’ll record next?

Temple: We’re set up to be recording in August and should have the record done sometime in September. We’re putting it out with Secretly Canadian.

How was touring with Grizzly Bear?

Temple and Bloch: Amazing.

Temple: [It's] really inspiring how four people could make so much noise on stage.

Bloch: They have done a really good job of recreating their new album [Veckatimest] on stage. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Temple: They have such a full sound with every little detail tweaked to perfection. We play within the limitations of our equipment and try to be creative with it.

This philosophy is shown through in your recording. Your recording process has always been analog. Why do you like analog better than digital?

Temple: I’ve always really liked what tape does to music. It compresses all of these audio signals on to just one thin strip. I also just listen to a lot of older music and like how those recordings sound.

What was the recording process of your recent album like?

Temple: I recorded the entire album, which was recorded on a four track and GarageBand with one microphone. I would record four tracks and then bounce them to two tracks in GarageBand and put on all sorts of effects. Then I would bounce these back as two tracks onto the four tracks and have two free tracks to record more on. I’d continue with this process and have unlimited tracks to record on the four track, but still have that tape sound.

The last song on the album is different…

Temple: That song came from a Luke Temple recording session. I was playing with Mike and a few others on that track. It’s the only song on the album that I didn’t entirely record.

Here We Go Magic is closing their tour in Europe. Their self-titled debut album is out now on Western Vinyl.

Women performing at Chop Suey; courtesy of Steve Louie.

The Bygone Bureau: Where did you get your band name from?

Matt: We need to start coming up with a better story.

Pat: We wanted to be filed as close to wipers and wire. (laughs)

Matt: Yeah, exactly…

Or come up with the most un-google-able name.

Matt: That’s what people are saying.

Pat: The more I hear about that, the more I feel like… “Yeah, don’t find us.”

Matt: We don’t want you to find us. (laughs)

Pat: I don’t know, people always say that. Don’t you know how to use the internet? Don’t you know where a band’s from or what record label they’re on?

Matt: Grandmas can’t find us on the Internet.

Pat: I had a few tracks called elderly woman…

Matt: I just said, “Hey lets call the band Women.”

Pat: We were talking about how miserable of a process it was to come up with a band name. I just said, “Okay, done. I don’t want to think about it.”

Matt: We needed a name because we were playing our first show in November of 2007, and weren’t really a band yet. This was before we even had songs or had done any recording, and we just needed a name. I said “Women,” and we just went with it.

Pat: But I’m starting to enjoy that it’s really generic. It’s a ridiculous band name.

What was the process from inception of group to touring around all the time?

Matt: I don’t even know what happened. It seemed like yesterday.

Pat: Basically what happened, was a year and half ago I was playing in this band. No, I was eating shit. I quit that band, we recorded two songs and everyone was excited. But, I was like… wait a minute, I fucking hate this.

Chris was playing bass in this band too, and sometimes we would play guitars afterwards. So I quit that band, broke up with my girlfriend of two years, quit my job, and started Women. Within five months, we had four demos recorded from my apartment. Ian [Russell], the owner of Flemish Eye, came in, and we gave him a CD. Then we started recording with Chad [VanGaalen].

Matt: Then I guess a few songs leaked on the internet and Jagjaguwar heard us, and we started hitting it off with them. They came to see us in Calgary. I say it’s luck. The press has been great.

Pat: Yeah, they like forcing people to listen to it.

Matt: It’s been less than a year to go from Pat’s apartment to headlining shows in London.

Matthew Flegel of Women; courtesy of Steve Louie.

A lot of your songs have elements of syncopation where guitars seem to have melodies that layer over top of each other. Would you say your songwriting revolves around that?

Pat: There are different types of songs. In some of them, the guitar parts is what we’d rather have songs revolve around.

Matt: The poppier stuff definitely revolves around the vocal melody. These days we’re more of a band now, and it’s going to be revolving around the music first.

Do you guys write lyrics together?

Pat: Yeah. There’s not a single song on the whole album that was written by one person.

On the first song, “Cameras,” there’s some synth, and other songs there are over layers of production. Who creates this?

Pat: On that first song, the whole thing is live. We recorded “Group Transport Hall” on a ghettoblaster. There are just two 57’s hooked up to a tape deck.

Matt: I’m playing drums for some reason. I was as hungover as I’ve ever been. I think I might have passed out to Thelma and Louise.

The last two songs totally sound different.

Matt: Those were recorded in a totally different space. Those were recorded late at night in a crawl space.

Pat: Those are actually band favorites.

Matt: The dark ones…

Do you think that’s where your music is going to go now?

Pat: We really like drone. The songs Chad VanGaalen produced, he really did produce. Most of the songs we did together, we wanted to sound like drone. Originally, we recorded “Black Rice” to just sound like that. He would push our songs in certain directions. Everything was just buried in the recordings. It’s really a privilege and honor to be recording with him.

Matt: It’s a good mix for us because he really pushes it to the middle ground.

Pat: At the end of “Upstairs,” Chris [Reimer] said, “I know where we’re going to go with this song.” And we all did a round of theremin, a round of cello, and I think there’s fucking saxophone in there!

Matt: Yeah, Chad hid sax in there.

Pat: We just wanted it to be really sonic. We really wanted to be able to just recreate things live. We didn’t really do what we set out to do with this record.

Matt: We didn’t know what we were doing. We were drunk in a basement for a few months. That was it.

Pat: We just really wanted to sound like our favorite bands and recordings. We wanted it to sound like Jane from Occupied Europe, one of our favorite Swell Maps albums. It’s recording art. They don’t fucking care about anything. “Lets bring in, like, fourteen tracks of swelling.”

How long have you known Chad VanGaalen?

Matt: I ended up playing bass on a couple of his songs and doing a bunch of touring with him. Then I told him about Women, and he wanted to be recording engineer for a band.

How has touring with him been?

Matt: It’s great because he has constantly been taking the piss out of the situation. We ended up doing this private show in Portland. Some guy noticed we had a day off and contacted us. We got there an hour before we were supposed to play, which was when we were told we were going to play. We started playing and everyone just left. Except for the one guy. So, we ended up just noise jamming.

Pat: One of the songs we’re playing tonight is really noisy.

Matt: A newer one.

Pat: Yeah. It’s weird sometimes we write softer ones like stuff off of Chelsea Girl [by Nico] and then other days we write darker ones.

Matt: The most evil shit.

Are you planning on playing any new songs on your tour?

Pat: We are playing four new songs.

Matt: Five.

Pat: Five…

We started headlining shows with less than a half hour of material. We like playing through around a half hour. We hate it when bands play for two hours. We’re playing five new songs on this tour.

Matt: They might start turning into completely different songs after recording.

What was touring around with Dungen like?

Matt: They’re kind of rock stars.

Pat: They smoke cigars.

Matt: “Where’s the babes?”

Pat: They weren’t assholes.

Matt: They just enjoyed themselves. They’re amazing to watch live. They are such crazy talented musicians. They raised the bar for us.

Pat: That was a huge turning point for us. We never have motivation to practice. We can half ass it. Actually, we always think we kind of suck. We’ll just get really drunk and play Wire covers. We don’t figure out entire songs. “Okay let’s do that again; okay let’s do it.” And then we’ll just noise session. We had just gotten done touring around in Canada, and were embarrassed playing with Dungen after that. They really blew our minds.

Matt: They were really fun.

What are some of the best concerts you’ve been to?

Matt: We got a day off in Belgium. Deerhoof’s German booking agent is the same as ours, and we got to see Deerhoof. I don’t know why their last album didn’t get that great of a reception.

Pat: Silk Flowers.

Matt: Playing with Abe Vigoda was really cool.

Pat: The thing they have with guitars is really weird. When you’re at a ghetto venue, they’re just a wall of guitars. Our bandmates Mike [Wallace] and Chris [Reimer] used to play with Azeda Booth.

Matt: They sound better as a three piece now though. They’re really weird.

Do you guys play other instruments?

Matt: I dabble.

Pat: You’re not a bad drummer.

Matt: I can drum. I started by playing guitar, then bass. I’ve recently picked up drums. I played accordion with Chad a bit. I actually did a world tour with Nina Nastasia as her accordion player. She use to be on Touch and Go Records. I was her accordionist, which was funny and not cool.

You have definitely blown up since the release of your record.

Pat: Fuck! Really?

Women is currently on tour. Their self-titled debut album is out now on Jagjaguwar in the U.S. and Flemish Eye in Canada.