Do you feel because of the improvised nature of the music, the events going on at that particular time in your life, heavily influence what you play at that time?
Oh yeah, absolutely. For instance, we recorded Fire The Lazers!! back in June – as far as recording all the tracks to it – and we felt like we’ve come such a long way since then. Now, it’s December, and just with this fall tour alone, and all the things we did during the summer, we’ve evolved a bunch. We listen back to _Fire The Lazers!! _, and we know that there’s a whole bunch of things that we’re doing now that didn’t get captured on the recording. We can hear that recording, and picture where we were at, as far as the type of instruments that we were playing, and the type of music that we were creating. But that’s going to be the nature of what we do all the time, especially as far as the studio. Probably the best thing to do is to go in the studio and record what we record, and mix it and master it right there, so it’s out within a months time. But, a bunch of months go by, and it feels like, “wow,” it sounds like we found (laughs), something from back in that period.
Do you feel like you employed new techniques, and approaches on Fire The Lazers!!?
Oh yeah, for what we had gotten to, in that moment. One of our really big influences was being at the Shambhala Festival up in Nelson, British Colombia. That prompted both me and Travis to dive back into stuff, and get all sorts of other sounds created, to have that kind of impact we saw when DJ Excision did his set at Shambhala. It inspired us to get a bunch of new stuff together for fall tour. I think that’s how it’s always going to go, there’s going to be something that’s going to come out and we’re going to be like “Wow, we got to reach for that.”
What do you feel is the through-line that connects the eleven tracks on Fire The Lazers!!, whether thematic, or otherwise?
More stylistic – we were definitely going for a little bit darker, dub step, and some glitch-hop stuff. I think all the tempos are pretty close to the same. Anything that we did outside of it, that we tried, like a house track or down-tempo track – we have a bunch of outtakes – didn’t make the record, because we wanted to make it a little bit more, stylistically, all in the same zone. Where on some of our other records, we tried to be sure we had some house in their, we tried to be sure we had some drum and bass, but maybe not dubstep, I don’t even think we were even playing it at that time. But we tried to cover all the electronica genre with the other two CDs. On this CD, we wanted to keep it in the same stylistic range.
How do you feel being 100% improvised, all the time, effects your thoughts and approach to improvisation in general?
Well that’s sort of our art form, as far as our contribution to the improvisation world. Particularly in jazz, but really in most types of improvisation, you’ll have at least a chart to follow of chord changes. Then you practice getting good playing over those chord changes, and trying to develop your solos, so that they’re melodic, or they tell a story over those chord changes, and you take the band along with you for the ride, and the audience. With what we’re doing, from an improvised stand-point, instead of practicing improvising over the form, we practice improvising the actual song structure. For instance, when we start out with a new theme or a new song, or whatever, we know that these different accompaniment parts have to be laid down first, whether it’s the drums, or different layers of sound, or guitar, or whatever. And then we know after that there has to be some kind of strong melody that cooks it all together. After that has all been introduced, we know we want to either increase the intensity, or break things down, or start taking parts in and out – so they start sounding like different sections – and then reintroduce the theme again. By that time, it’s times to move on to another theme.
So our practice is in the actual improvising of a song – making it sound as much of a song as possible, before we move on to the next one. Let’s say, when you’re doing a guitar solo, in rock, jazz, funk, or whatever, you know you hit the solo section, and that there are these certain chords you’re going to improvise over, and the whole band is going to do with you. Sometimes it’s kind of open ended how long you’re going to spend time there, but ultimately, you’re going to come back to whatever song you were just in. It’s just more of a different, even thought, of improvisation, where we’re not improvising over chords per say, but we’re improvising actual songs. It makes a world of difference when you’re trying to fill up a whole night of improvisation.
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