Good To Be Back
Kit here, and back from a long seeming hiatus filled with exploration, intrigue, and romance. Maybe not so much, actually. What I HAVE been doing in this break is scouting out some groups on the rise and compiling lists of records, must hears, and other fodder for my favorite group of critics (yeah, that'd be YOU) to decsend upon with your trained ears and honed senses of musical afficiandoship. My job is to bring you the latest and do I have a band for you to snap up. The Hysterics, a Brookyln based group of four teens with a psycadelia meets post punk sound crank out trippy anthems and tight yet sprawling tunes of adolescenthood. I spoke to lead singer and songwriter, Oliver Ignatius, about all things 'hysterical'.
Kit L: So, would you mind relaying the story of your uncommon discovery to
me?
Oliver Ignatius: A former science teacher of mine (the inimitable JP Connolly) was shown a demo track I'd recorded at summer camp, played all the instruments but drums etc, for a song that appears on our album as "Mostly Untitled" but was then provisionally titled "You Are Good." He posted it on a blog he co-curated, Music for Robots, and there was a surprisingly and excitingly fervent response. One of the cats who spotted it happened to be Joseph Patel of MTV who wanted to do a feature on me. But my loyalty lay with my brothers in the band and the wicked noise we create together, so I told him that it was us four Hysterics on the rug or nothing at all. And he went through with that. Blastoff, an MTV You Hear it First feature, keeping screentime company with characters and artists we wouldn't think to stand next to. So that went down in a maelstrom.
(The Hysterics above. Ignatius, second from left)
KL: You've been compared to bands like Apples In Stereo. Do you draw mainly from modern contemporaries or influential industry heavyweights?
OI: A kid I know accosted me at a party a few months ago, extremely high on cocaine and said something along the lines of, "I like what you guys are doing but remember, the Apples in Stereo did it first." That was funny because then, and to this day, I've never listened to them although I very much dig into other Elephant 6 groups, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control etc. IWhen I was 14 or so, I was an avid reader of the NME. I'd excitedly ride the hype waves with them, discovering some great groups like The Libertines but also getting inexplicably excited over bullshit acts like The Datsuns. Around the age of 15 I started getting stoned all the time and went backward. All that posturing and unattractive rawk noise started to hurt my ears and The Beatles, my first favorite band from way back, reentered my life through Rubber Soul. Then I got heavily into Forever Changes by Love, hearing that shit on headphones looking up at the sun and expecting the asteroid to come crashing down any second. It snowballed from there. But hearing "Good Vibrations" for the very first time, tripping on acid that year, was what shot me up over and they became the band I was dangerously obsessed with. Meanwhile the other guys are all over the place...Charlie's deep into Phil Spector tracks and Stevie Wonder, Josh floats on The Grateful Dead and folk, Geoff is a rap and jazz aficionado...I like to think we synthesize. On our first record, my songwriting was quite young and quite heavily indebted to those sunkissed psychedelic acts from back when...as a result, the record is somewhat stylistically monochromatic. Recently we've been blowing new sounds in every which way --- the main innovation is that we've been getting heavily into soul, blasting through what we like to call "satanic R&B." Our next record, whenever the hell someone gives us money to do it, is gonna be the grand freakout..balancing the impetus for kicking out Motown with the raw four-piece with where we have to go which is questing into mindblowing experimentation, at times opulent orchestral harmony laden perfection, at times wild sonic terrorism. To get across, in music and lyrics, the feel of a trumpeter swan's clarion call, or an early 20th century nautical voyage, or the sound of being swept up by an elephant's trunk to end up in the basket on top, militants on elephants with guns banging drums and screaming. A war in Persia, an empty whistling graveyard alone alone alone, CHRISTMAS, the DEVIL, mental discord and collapse, sweet swooning love, and in the end resolution. Look what we've been through, it's come out alright....but then, even though we're on the level and sort of laughing about the intense trip we just took, there's still a little remove, something that we know that the listener doesn't. And to convey that musically, through a vocal quirk or something. All sorts of wild blasts of sonorous vibrations...........zang! Oh by the way, I really like the Panda Bear and MIA albums from this year.
KL: Can you give me an idea of what the Brooklyn music scene is like?
OI: For whatever reason, we don't have many ties or roots to a particular New York music scene. It's a problem because we crave brothers and sisters in rhythm. What we do have are brothers in arms of art and exploration and joy. There are Griffin Newman (who made our music video) and Jett Strauss, budding cinematic geniuses, I do mean it...Then you've got people like Sam Ashford and Milo Carney who are just so fucking brilliant at art that I can't believe it...Milo did our album art, he did a spectacular job. These people inspire the hell out of me...collaboration and artists banding together is so important because there's strength in numbers and everything great starts small. Stand tall and if you fall, fall together! You know? There's a whole world for us.
KL: Has anything outside the musical field influenced your music (i.e. literature, places you've traveled, etc.)
OI: I'd say everything has influenced everything, if you're creating art you can't help but take in the things that affect you. I grew up overseas, living in Russia, Belgium, Hong Kong etc...I wouldn't say that my songwriting sounds particularly American, although it's certainly rooted in influence. I don't know that I could necessarily link it to a specific country, really. And I'm a culture junkie...books, films, I devour it and find myself totally inspired. I named a song on the first record after the Tom Wolfe book "Radical Chic or Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers," because at the time I felt like a badass little 15 year old lovelorn militant. Recently I've been thinking about Atticus Finch...I don't know that I've ever seen a more perfect archetype for the raising of children; he has such a wonderful idea of going about it, that is to say brutal honesty and utmost respect. Because children know when they're being lied to. I'd like to find some way to reflect that attitude musically.
KL: Tell me about how alcohol and drugs have affected the band's career, the music, and the psychadelia factor.
OI: Drugs have played a role. Getting stoned certainly opened up doors of musical insight for all of us. Then there are the big bad drugs like cocaine, amphetamines...they're the devil's work, the former more than the latter. I find that amphetamines can sometimes inject you with a sort of focused vitality, sharp, you know? Cocaine has nothing to recommend itself for. Tripping though, hallucinogens have been so important, I think for all of us but particularly for me. You just learn things. Suddenly you know. It's the only drug from which you can actually retain good things after it's over. Just seeing into EVERYTHING, how vast it all is and all over the place but also how completely connected everything is. I mean these are things that you can surely learn through wisdom, experience, meditation...in that sense, acid is sort of an underground railroad. It gets you THERE but you might miss the sights along the way.
KL: Has being discovered at such a young age jaded or exposed you to the music industry?
OI: The young thing...man, I don't know. We didnt have a manager or a website or anything, so we didn't exactly capitalize on the buzz. But I'm glad, I think. It would have been a shame to be marketed as a youth group, go on tour with Click 5 or whoever the hell was big then and fizzle out, maybe even break up. There are a lot of jading things in the industry. Last year we signed with V2 records, a wonderful label who sadly went bankrupt. They gave us the money to finish our record, which is cool, but it was a sad story emblematic of the difficulties the music industry faces right now (LOWER THE PRICES ON CDS YOU FUCKING IDIOTS, MAYBE THEN LESS PEOPLE WILL SOLELY DOWNLOAD MUSIC)...we're selling our record ourselves now on www.cdbaby.com/cd/hysterics. ; Who knows what will happen next? For the time being we're just hunkered down in my basement, playing, learning, new songs all over the place..........we have some new recordings I'm planning on sending to a bunch of great labels, Fat Cat (Animal Collective's label) for instance, etc...it's a wicked game.
KL: If there was one question you could be asked in this interview what would it be? And what is your answer
OI: I'd like to be asked "What did Gilbert do to deserve what he got?" And my answer would be "23!"
The Hysterics album, as mentioned, is available for purchase on www.cdbaby.com
More later,
Kit
Kit L: So, would you mind relaying the story of your uncommon discovery to
me?
Oliver Ignatius: A former science teacher of mine (the inimitable JP Connolly) was shown a demo track I'd recorded at summer camp, played all the instruments but drums etc, for a song that appears on our album as "Mostly Untitled" but was then provisionally titled "You Are Good." He posted it on a blog he co-curated, Music for Robots, and there was a surprisingly and excitingly fervent response. One of the cats who spotted it happened to be Joseph Patel of MTV who wanted to do a feature on me. But my loyalty lay with my brothers in the band and the wicked noise we create together, so I told him that it was us four Hysterics on the rug or nothing at all. And he went through with that. Blastoff, an MTV You Hear it First feature, keeping screentime company with characters and artists we wouldn't think to stand next to. So that went down in a maelstrom.
(The Hysterics above. Ignatius, second from left)
KL: You've been compared to bands like Apples In Stereo. Do you draw mainly from modern contemporaries or influential industry heavyweights?
OI: A kid I know accosted me at a party a few months ago, extremely high on cocaine and said something along the lines of, "I like what you guys are doing but remember, the Apples in Stereo did it first." That was funny because then, and to this day, I've never listened to them although I very much dig into other Elephant 6 groups, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control etc. IWhen I was 14 or so, I was an avid reader of the NME. I'd excitedly ride the hype waves with them, discovering some great groups like The Libertines but also getting inexplicably excited over bullshit acts like The Datsuns. Around the age of 15 I started getting stoned all the time and went backward. All that posturing and unattractive rawk noise started to hurt my ears and The Beatles, my first favorite band from way back, reentered my life through Rubber Soul. Then I got heavily into Forever Changes by Love, hearing that shit on headphones looking up at the sun and expecting the asteroid to come crashing down any second. It snowballed from there. But hearing "Good Vibrations" for the very first time, tripping on acid that year, was what shot me up over and they became the band I was dangerously obsessed with. Meanwhile the other guys are all over the place...Charlie's deep into Phil Spector tracks and Stevie Wonder, Josh floats on The Grateful Dead and folk, Geoff is a rap and jazz aficionado...I like to think we synthesize. On our first record, my songwriting was quite young and quite heavily indebted to those sunkissed psychedelic acts from back when...as a result, the record is somewhat stylistically monochromatic. Recently we've been blowing new sounds in every which way --- the main innovation is that we've been getting heavily into soul, blasting through what we like to call "satanic R&B." Our next record, whenever the hell someone gives us money to do it, is gonna be the grand freakout..balancing the impetus for kicking out Motown with the raw four-piece with where we have to go which is questing into mindblowing experimentation, at times opulent orchestral harmony laden perfection, at times wild sonic terrorism. To get across, in music and lyrics, the feel of a trumpeter swan's clarion call, or an early 20th century nautical voyage, or the sound of being swept up by an elephant's trunk to end up in the basket on top, militants on elephants with guns banging drums and screaming. A war in Persia, an empty whistling graveyard alone alone alone, CHRISTMAS, the DEVIL, mental discord and collapse, sweet swooning love, and in the end resolution. Look what we've been through, it's come out alright....but then, even though we're on the level and sort of laughing about the intense trip we just took, there's still a little remove, something that we know that the listener doesn't. And to convey that musically, through a vocal quirk or something. All sorts of wild blasts of sonorous vibrations...........zang! Oh by the way, I really like the Panda Bear and MIA albums from this year.
KL: Can you give me an idea of what the Brooklyn music scene is like?
OI: For whatever reason, we don't have many ties or roots to a particular New York music scene. It's a problem because we crave brothers and sisters in rhythm. What we do have are brothers in arms of art and exploration and joy. There are Griffin Newman (who made our music video) and Jett Strauss, budding cinematic geniuses, I do mean it...Then you've got people like Sam Ashford and Milo Carney who are just so fucking brilliant at art that I can't believe it...Milo did our album art, he did a spectacular job. These people inspire the hell out of me...collaboration and artists banding together is so important because there's strength in numbers and everything great starts small. Stand tall and if you fall, fall together! You know? There's a whole world for us.
KL: Has anything outside the musical field influenced your music (i.e. literature, places you've traveled, etc.)
OI: I'd say everything has influenced everything, if you're creating art you can't help but take in the things that affect you. I grew up overseas, living in Russia, Belgium, Hong Kong etc...I wouldn't say that my songwriting sounds particularly American, although it's certainly rooted in influence. I don't know that I could necessarily link it to a specific country, really. And I'm a culture junkie...books, films, I devour it and find myself totally inspired. I named a song on the first record after the Tom Wolfe book "Radical Chic or Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers," because at the time I felt like a badass little 15 year old lovelorn militant. Recently I've been thinking about Atticus Finch...I don't know that I've ever seen a more perfect archetype for the raising of children; he has such a wonderful idea of going about it, that is to say brutal honesty and utmost respect. Because children know when they're being lied to. I'd like to find some way to reflect that attitude musically.
KL: Tell me about how alcohol and drugs have affected the band's career, the music, and the psychadelia factor.
OI: Drugs have played a role. Getting stoned certainly opened up doors of musical insight for all of us. Then there are the big bad drugs like cocaine, amphetamines...they're the devil's work, the former more than the latter. I find that amphetamines can sometimes inject you with a sort of focused vitality, sharp, you know? Cocaine has nothing to recommend itself for. Tripping though, hallucinogens have been so important, I think for all of us but particularly for me. You just learn things. Suddenly you know. It's the only drug from which you can actually retain good things after it's over. Just seeing into EVERYTHING, how vast it all is and all over the place but also how completely connected everything is. I mean these are things that you can surely learn through wisdom, experience, meditation...in that sense, acid is sort of an underground railroad. It gets you THERE but you might miss the sights along the way.
KL: Has being discovered at such a young age jaded or exposed you to the music industry?
OI: The young thing...man, I don't know. We didnt have a manager or a website or anything, so we didn't exactly capitalize on the buzz. But I'm glad, I think. It would have been a shame to be marketed as a youth group, go on tour with Click 5 or whoever the hell was big then and fizzle out, maybe even break up. There are a lot of jading things in the industry. Last year we signed with V2 records, a wonderful label who sadly went bankrupt. They gave us the money to finish our record, which is cool, but it was a sad story emblematic of the difficulties the music industry faces right now (LOWER THE PRICES ON CDS YOU FUCKING IDIOTS, MAYBE THEN LESS PEOPLE WILL SOLELY DOWNLOAD MUSIC)...we're selling our record ourselves now on www.cdbaby.com/cd/hysterics. ; Who knows what will happen next? For the time being we're just hunkered down in my basement, playing, learning, new songs all over the place..........we have some new recordings I'm planning on sending to a bunch of great labels, Fat Cat (Animal Collective's label) for instance, etc...it's a wicked game.
KL: If there was one question you could be asked in this interview what would it be? And what is your answer
OI: I'd like to be asked "What did Gilbert do to deserve what he got?" And my answer would be "23!"
The Hysterics album, as mentioned, is available for purchase on www.cdbaby.com
More later,
Kit
posted by Kit "Blanche Deveraux" @ 2:14 PM
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