Austin, TX’s Ghostland Observatory seemingly came out off nowhere in 2005 with its soulful electronic debut delete.delete.i.eat.meat. The album was a grassroots hit and the group’s colorful live show—which features two men on drums, guitar, synthesizers and vocals, as well as a silver cape—helped Ghostland score spots at festivals ranging from Nateva to Bonnaroo to Vegoose and ACL. After a relatively quiet year, Aaron Behrens (vocals, guitar) and Thomas Ross Turner (drums, synthesizers) returned to their home studio to begin work on their fourth studio album, _ Codename: Rondo_. The album not only reclaimed Ghostland Observatory as one of the funkiest bands on the electronic music circuit, but also reminded the band’s principals why they started making music in the first place. Below, Thomas Ross Turner discusses Codename: Rondo, his record label Trashy Moped Recordings and why Austin is known for both its raves and Widespread Panic concerts.
Though last year may have seemed like a quiet year for the band, Ghostland Observatory was actually quite busy working on a new studio album. Can you start by bringing us up to speed on the past few months?
We’ve started to work on Codename: Rondo but touring just kind of kept going. We did Coachella and a couple of other festivals and a lot of offers kept coming in. So we just continued to keep doing shows and then after New Years this past year, we decided, “Let’s just take a break and focus on a new record.” So that’s what we did—we did a New York show and then we came back to Austin and locked ourselves in the rehearsal room and just started working on the new record. We worked on the record for about 3 or 4 months straight and then we went into the studio—into my studio—and started laying down the tracks and got it knocked out.
It sounds like when you were working on the album you consciously isolated and fully immersed yourselves in the process. Was this process different from previous recording sessions?
Well, for this record especially, we got in the frame of mind of pretending that this was our first record. The first record we did, we just had so much fun doing it and there were no distractions like, “Oh, this has to be better than our last record, I hope people are going to like this new direction…” We just wanted to make a record and we didn’t care—we had no worries or concern. It is just a natural process and then you keep making records and you grow a fan base and you have all these kind of things that interfere with the creative process.
So, on this one, we just wanted to go back to, “Let’s just go have fun, go in there, create, work hard and see what comes out.” So, we both kind of clocked in around 9 or 10 PM and then we’d work through the early morning hours until 2, 3 or 4 AM. There were really no rules, it was just like, “Let’s be creative and experiment and not be concerned with anything else.” I’ll start working on a track or messing with sounds and then Aaron will hop on it and we’ll kind of just go back and forth off of each other. Then we’ll create a little grid for each song and then just work it out. We’ll move onto another one and then later on in the week we’d go through the songs, play them, pretend like we were playing them live. And then if they suck, they suck. If not, we just moved on to another thing. So that was kind of the process—just kind of being really free with a lot of clean slates. We said we do something Tuesday and we thought it was good and we’d go in Wednesday and we’d be like, “I don’t know if that’s really working.” So, we’d just erase it and start over with something completely off the wall. It’s really fun doing it that way and we had a blast. I think we had the most fun doing this record than any other record we’ve done.
Do you feel that because you had been on the road so much and become known as a live act, Codename: Rondo is tailored more for your live show?
Yeah, I think even in the beginning when we were playing small bars, we were never making music for ourselves. It was always like, “We got a show this Friday, let’s make a new song for it” or “We’ve got a show next week, let’s try to make something that will go over well. I think that was always in the back of our minds: to play music that goes over with a hang live.
It’s always just been us two—there’s never been anyone else in the room when we write. It’s also the relationship. We’ve been together for seven years now. So any relationship has its ups and downs or things going on outside of the band or whatever. There’s different emotions and I think that kind of comes through on our previous records. But [on] this one we just tried to block all that out. Once we went into the room we blocked out everything and had fun: “This is our time to just have fun and keep everything outside of the [box] and turn the equipment on and just go where we want to go.”
Any band who’s been together as long as you have, people get other priorities, commitments and families and slowly things change. But it is great that you figured out how to bring back that sense of excitement with this album.
Yeah, that was really important [and] I think that kind of comes through. There’s always an element of fun and in this record there’s extreme experimentation—like pretty far out stuff, but there’s still an element of fun to it, where it’s not like we’re taking ourselves too seriously or trying to prove some kind of point or anything like that. It’s just two guys having fun, creating [and] having a blast doing it.
I think that’s one of the reasons why the live show has always been so well received. Even, like you said, if the music gets experimental and psychedelic it doesn’t get too self indulgent or weighty.
Yeah, totally. We like to try to keep it a full-blown experience from as soon as we walk on stage until we take a bow and it’s over. We try to keep everyone interested and involved and keep everything flowing and if we look out and people are smiling and dancing and having a good time or going berserk, we feel great. It’s a good feeling and we play harder. So, that’s definitely what it’s about.
In terms of presentation, Ghostland is still a duo. Would you consider expanding to a player band onstage with the Black Keys or Jack White?
I think Ghostland is just the two of us. Ghostland started as a two-piece because we were unable to find other members who were committed to the project with us. We would try having a drummer and a bass player and then I would just play keys and Aaron would play guitar. Either the bass player would flake out or quit or the drummer would just disappear, and then after a series of that we were just like, “All right, these are the tools that we have. Me and you obviously want to do this, [so] let’s just make it work as a two-piece and then take it as far as we can take it like that.” I think that’s how it started, and it’s worked out well that way, and I just can’t change something that works good the way it is.
Austin is home to a number of underground music scenes, from country to indie rock. What types of shows did you check out as a young music fan?
Well, for me there was more of a rave scene. The rave culture was really big in Austin—this was like the mid to late ‘90s, early ’00. It got pretty huge. There were some underground parties going on with 10-20,000 people. Obviously Austin is kind of a relaxed town and people enjoy their blues and rock and Widespread Panic and all the other jambands that would come through. They embrace everything here so that’s what’s really cool about Austin—the same people you’d see at a rave, you’d see at a jamband concert or whatever. People just want to go out and hear music and experience it and have fun with it. So, that’s kind of a blessing about starting out in Austin because you have people who are very accepting of all kinds of different genres
Do you feel that Ghostland found its jamband audience through being on the festival circuit?
I think it is a combination of that and also the progression and the acceptance of the new sound. I guess seven or eight years ago—when we first started doing electronic music—there was still this mindset like, “Oh, that’s techno” or “I don’t do dance music, I do rock and roll.” Now, other bands have implemented electronics and synths and stuff into rock. So it’s a lot more acceptable to have a four-on-the-floor beat or an electronic sound in your music. And people just kind of stripped away that barrier like, “Oh, I don’t do that because it reminds me of disco or dance or something else.”
Now, it’s just kind of like people don’t care, they just want to have a good time with it. But the jamband thing, yeah, doing the festivals, tons of people go to festivals for different reasons, to see different acts, and you know, people that stumble upon our show may have gone there to see something completely different, and they enjoyed it. And that spreads around and all of a sudden you look out in the crowd and you have young kids, you have hippie kids, you have older people, hipsters, college kids, just all kinds of different people just coming together for experience and that’s great. I mean, we never wanted to just play for any certain crowd, we wanted everyone to enjoy our music so the more people that are into it the better.
Austin, in a lot of ways, is a precursor to some of the modern festivals where in the late ‘90s you have electronic rave music and indie showcases and jamband festivals. And now, whether you go to Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo, or Nateva, you can find all these different types of audiences, which is kind of cool.
I think that’s really cool because it gives someone an opportunity. Maybe they’re going there to see Radiohead and they’re just killing time until Radiohead goes on or whomever their favorite band is, and they go and stumble upon some electronic act that they thought they would never like and end up having a better time at that then they did at the Radiohead performance. So, having all these bands at all these festivals and different acts playing, gives other people an opportunity to see what they’re really into.
At a certain point, electronic music was just considered dance music but over time it’s expanded to become a type of music people incorporate everything in, kind of like hip hop in a way—it can be psychedelic, or dark and experimental or it can just be fun to dance to.
Yeah, and that’s really good because I could never get that. I mean, I like all kinds of music, but some people have this perception, “Oh, it’s electronic music, it’s dropping ecstasy and going to raves,” and I don’t do that. And same thing, some people that were into electronic music, that’s all they were into and they wouldn’t hear anything else; they thought everything else was dumb. I think you gotta open your doors up to everything and once things start combining and you get new forms of music, it doesn’t have to be the same thing all the time.
You started your own label. What initially inspired you to start the label and what is your role in that label these days?
Sure, well even before I met Aaron, I wanted to have a little boutique label. I thought it would always be cool to have a small label that, maybe there wasn’t a huge roster or anything, but maybe had five or six acts of really cool stuff; it was either experimental or pop or whatever, just really interesting things that kind of stood out. Always in my mind I wanted to do that, and when we started Ghostland and started to make music and stuff, Aaron encouraged me. He was like, “Dude, I think this is the perfect opportunity to try it out,” and I was like, “All right, I’ll go for it.” And I started the label and then as time went on, started a distribution deal and just kind of kept going with the Trashy Moped thing and as it went on, Ghostland took up so much time, especially with the touring and the growth and everything, that instead of focusing a lot of time on signing new acts or trying to discover new acts, I was just on the road, or touring, or getting this taken care of or that. So, I hadn’t found new talent as much, but now I’m starting to, and I’m excited about that because I think it’s cool—the whole idea of the small boutique label still really appeals to me. It’s something that’s tasteful, kind of like what Warp was back in the day. Just like if it was released by Warp, maybe you didn’t love it or anything, maybe it wasn’t your thing, but you knew it was going to be interesting, you knew it was going to be different than probably most of the other stuff out there.
The current cover of Relix is on a couple different labels that are similar to your situation—a band or a musician who started their own label. It’s kind of cool how artists are able to take that into their own hands these days.
Totally. I think it’s a great thing because now when you are putting out a record and you have people that their main concern is how much money they can make off of you or what the bottom line is gonna be on profit, you’re gonna do a record, they’re gonna listen to it and other people are gonna listen to it, and they’re gonna give opinions on what the single is or what needs works or this needs that. When you’re just making music to make music or you’re making music for a label that just wants to put out cool music, that stuff really doesn’t come into play. You just want the raw form of what it is and what it really is at that moment, and then you want to put it out and capture it for what it was instead of trying to make it into something that will sell a lot.
Now that the album is done and you’re bringing it on tour, is it easy for you to translate that into a live setting, or are there still situations where you kind of have to reinterpret it for a live show?
No, there’s always room for change. I think the way our set is now, after incorporating it with some of our new songs, it flows really well, it’s cool. And you get to add things that aren’t on the record just like our own songs. There are improvisational parts and things that are changed that sound nothing like what’s on the record. So, it’s cool. I think that’s the cool part. You record it and it is what it was at that point in time, and then when someone hears it live, they’re like, “Aw, that’s my song,” but there’s this added two minutes of stuff on top of it. I think the fun part is you record it and take it out live and see if it works live and kind of change things around and that makes it interesting each time you play it.
Finally, I saw Ghostland recently played a Facebook party. I was wondering what that experience was like. Was it an actual live show or is it a webcast?
That actually came about like a week before that party. Someone called our booking agent and they were like, “Hey, we want to have a surprise band play at our Facebook show” or party or whatever it was. I think it was a company party or something like that, and we were just like, “Yeah, sure, that sounds cool.” I think it was a company party if I remember right. Seriously, it was like a week before. They were like, “Can you get here? Can you do it? Can you bring the lasers?” and we were like, “Yeah, sure” [laughs]. It was pretty fun.
