LR: Hi. How is it being in Mahogany and living in New York at this time? Do you feel like your style of music is overlooked or do you have a niche carved out with steady fans?
Katrina Rudmin (voice, piano, synths): Being in Mahogany and living in NY is the best thing for me at this point in my life.
Ryan Hancock (guitar, voice): Being in Mahogany is excellent and a lot of hard work. However, I do not live in NY. I live in a little place called Philadelphia, PA. Mahogany is not concerned with being “overlooked.”
Roy Styles (bass): I do not believe that we are overlooked, we have new and exciting opportunities opening up for us all the time.
Jason Holmes (percussion): New York is becoming a playground for the rich thanks to Giuliani and Bloomberg. I hope that we have not pigeonholed ourselves, after putting so much time and energy into this project. That would be truly depressing.
LR: Can you tell our readers how Mahogany got started and how things have progressed for the band over the years?
Andrew Prinz (voice, guitar, engineer): I had the same Gibson bass guitar that Gene Simmons used in KISS, it was a factory second. Santana designed the pickups. I traded it for an old synthesizer and started Mahogany.
Katrina: I joined the band around November 2005 in its most recent incarnation and we have progressed as a group in the past year and continue to grow together.
Ryan: I became involved with Mahogany sometime in 2004. Ana Breton: (vox, guitar) Mahogany started about 10 years ago in Lansing, Michigan. It was Andrew and those closest to him like his sister. Mahogany still carries the sense of that familial tradition. Jason: I am new to Mahogany. I joined the band one and half years ago after an invitation from Andrew. I am thankful to have worked on Connectivity!, and I hope to be able to maintain Mahogany’s pulse indefinitely.
LR: Congrats on the new record, it really is different and more modern sounding than I ever expected, although I expected it to be good anyway. With that in mind, what was your initial approach when recording this album? Did you have specific objectives you wanted to achieve that weren’t explored on Dream of a Modern Day?
Andrew: The Connectivity! record started out as an idea for a 7-inch single, with 'Supervitesse' on the A side. Then it just grew from there. With each album, you have a different set of people playing and writing together, so that brings different colors to the instrumentation. But the idea for both records was to put together an album that reflected all of what we were sharing.
LR: Did you consciously abandon any sounds or styles that you would normally rely on with other recordings? What did you specifically want people to get out of this album?
Katrina: Joy and pleasure. Jason: I think this album connects people to modernity on a more accessible scale. Mahogany’s language has developed to incorporate a wider range of voices and textures and at the same time our ideas become more concrete and specific.
Jeremy Scott (bass, engineer): Of course it would be great if people have fun listening to the record, but I also like the idea of people being able to associate aspects of it to parts of their lives and the world around them.
LR: What’s the best part of working with Robin Guthrie? Do you prefer to work with producers that are closer to what you grew up listening to or would you ever consider having a producer come in who isn’t rooted in dreampop/shoegaze?
Roy Styles: The album was mostly self-produced, Robin helped out on three songs.
Jason: I would prefer a producer that did not know what shoegaze was. That way all our preconceived notions are disposed of and we can evaluate our process on its own terms.
Jeremy: I would have to be very comfortable to have someone produce a record I am working on. As I am not rooted in dream pop/shoegaze I would like someone outside that direction to produce on of our records.
Ana: The best part of working with Robin was that he was open to collaboration, and letting our ideas influence him as much as he influenced us.
LR: So you’ve upgraded the band to an octet. How long does it take to set up? What are the advantages and disadvantages (if any) of the bigger lineup?
Katrina: It takes a long time to set up but, I wouldn’t want anything less, in fact I am going to be adding more gear to our live show (piano and synths).
Ryan: Set up time depends on the venue. It seems that were getting more efficient with every show. It is a rush to be present on stage surrounded by people that you respect and admire. It makes for a fun show.
Roy: Set up? Too long! We have a much more dynamic and energetic sound with the new line up….
Jason: There are more people to try to fit into the van. Almost too many but we like it that way. In fact, we even make room for other on occasion. Jeremy: We need an Octet roadie crew. Must of us have complicated personal setups, so it is tough to be fast.
Ana: We are an orchestra. The collective is necessary. LR: How are the fans reacting to your live performances and the new songs? What’s the most common reaction from people during and after the gig?
Katrina: Audiences seem to really enjoy the new songs, there’s more dancing.
Ryan: No pillows necessary.
Roy: Reactions include dancing, clapping and uncontrollable smiling.
Jason: People like the way we fill the space with ourselves and our sound. At the last show people were dancing like mad.
Jeremy: Lots of fainting…not really but people seem to be into it.
LR: What’s in the future for Mahogany? SXSW? US/UK touring? What do you envision the next record to be like?
Katrina: The next record will be awesome.
Ryan: Rumors of mainland Europe, Spain and Portugal in November of '07 and Peru. Of course we will continue to play shows up and down the East Coast and would like to make it out to the West Coast. It is a bit hard putting together travel arrangements for eight people plus equipment.
Jeremy: Writing, more shows and another in ten years.
LR: What kind of music have you been listening to lately? Is there anyone in L.A. that you’d like to say “Hi” to?
Katrina: I have been looking backwards at music my friends made a few years ago, mostly Kepler “Fuck Fight Fail” and “Missionless Days.”
Ryan: Sound Consumers from Sweden, remixes by Dave P., Ulrich Schnauss and the Estonian composer Arve Part. LA friends – Jonathan Krisel, Arthur Magazine, all of the people in California that email and ask if Mahogany would please play their town.
Roy: I have been listening to lots of psyche pop and dancehall…an odd combo I know. Ana: I am really into Freescha and Relay (Bubblecore) right now and I heard Lorelei are back together so I am desperate to see them play live again.
-Scott McDonald
Swervedriver rule. Talk to anyone about their first experience listening to or seeing the band live for the first time and you’re bound to hear adjectives like “rocked”, “amazing” or “fucking awesome”. Their debut album Raise (Creation, 1991) stunned listeners, American audiences, and would soon defy the categorization of “shoegaze”; it’s simply a great rock album. The UK press labeled them as shoegazers right from the get-go because of their washy guitar sound. But the Oxford-based quartet excelled at making super-melodic rock that was both dreamy and technically dynamic. Adam Franklin's soaring vocals and screeching wah-wah leads turned heads in the music world and launched a wave of internet discussions about his tunings and tablature.
"Sci-Flyer" kicks off the album with a barrage of guitar noise and relentless wah-wah thanks to main man Adam Franklin, more reminiscent to J. Mascis and Led Zeppelin than a shoegaze wall-of-sound. “Pile Up” and “Sunset” showcases the band’s relentless rhythm section of bassist Adi Vines and drummer Graham Bonner, who eventually disappeared during their first North American tour only to emerge later in San Francisco with the notorious BJM. Knock-out singles “Son of Mustang Ford”, “Rave Down”, and “Sandblasted” are epic washes of sound with Franklin’s dynamite guitar riffs and melodies propelling the songs into space. The album never lets up, never gets boring, and emanates a freeing, wide-screen spirit unlike any bands coming out of England at that time.
After you buy Raise take a further look into the band’s catalog with Juggernaut Rides ’89-’98 on Sanctuary records. It contains all of their best work and many limited, out-of-print singles that emerged between albums and labels. Buy it here, you won’t be disappointed.
-Scott McDonald
Remember Archers of Loaf? They got compared to Pavement quite a bit and had that bass player who looked like the WWF’s Hacksaw Jim Duggan. 1993’s Icky Mettle is noisy, angular, and brutal. They raised the bar of “Indie Rock” after the mushy, and well-deserved, accolades of Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted. But when I listen to this album in particular it represents a specific time, a leap forward, and also brings to mind so many other bands that one can hear in their music (Dinosaur Jr., Superchunk, Mudhoney). This isn’t a nostalgic indie-rock trip down memory lane, this is one of the strongest debuts of that decade. From the cool “All I Ever Wanted…Was To Be Your Spine” convincingly declared on ‘Web in Front’ to the angular punk on “Sick File”, Archers of Loaf rocked and Icky Mettle is a must have.
LR: Hey Britt how’s it going? Britt: Good. LR: Where are you at the moment?
Britt: I’m at my studio here in Austin, Texas working on songs.
LR: Cool. So what made you decide to take on this project?
Britt: I was invited to do it and I thought that it would be fun.
LR: Were you already aware of Brian Reitzell and his soundtrack work?
Britt: Yeah. I had seen Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation. We also met a couple of years ago and he contacted me when he was in Austin and we went out to dinner, just talked about doing something someday. When this one started getting developed he asked if I wanted to come down and work on scoring it with him. I didn’t really know how to do that at the time but I thought that it would be fun.
LR: When you were working on the movie how did you decide which Spoon would be right for a particular song?
Britt: Brian picked the Spoon songs and decided where those would go. The thing I worked on him with was the scoring of the instrumental music. And I wrote the new Spoon song for the movie, but I wasn’t quite sure initially where that was going to go.
LR: In the bio it says that there are "fuller vocal versions", I had no idea that certain Spoon tracks were longer or had different versions out there. Britt: I think what they mean is “The Way We Get By” is in the movie instrumentally and he’s referring to the fact that these are versions without the vocals.
LR: Ahhh, that makes sense. So when you’re doing the arranging of the instrumental tracks with Brian what was the best part of that?
Britt: Just figuring out that I could do it. I remember when I went to Los Angeles there was some feeling that I didn’t know what I was doing or how it was going to be done. And when we started working it just kind of came naturally and I don’t know if that’s because of Brian or what. And it also was kind of freeing to be able to work on music that wasn’t going to be pop song. It was like…here’s a scene and what kind of mood do you want to bring to this scene? It was such a different experience.
LR: That must have been nice.
Britt: It was, it was a new experience. Pop music is a fairly unrestricted type of format where I can do anything or make any sound and release it as a Spoon record. It was just a little bit more distancing for me, it wasn’t just a reflection of me, it was something I was doing to compliment the movie. With that sort of direction in mind it made it very clear where we should go with that.
LR: So while you’re watching this movie did you get to a point where you started to think about watching other movies in a different way because of this experience?
Britt: It definitely made me look at this movie in a different way because I just saw it for the first time with everything in it last week and it doesn’t seem like a normal movie. When I watch movies, I don’t know if everybody is like this, but I can get really emotionally attached and just kind of lose myself in it. I know my ex-girlfriend couldn’t sit through a whole movie and would get kind of antsy. While I was watching this movie I couldn’t do that because it’s like I know how that happened and I remember seeing this scene a hundred times while we were working on it.
LR: So if you would have gone back and seen this movie for the first time, including you being a part of the soundtrack, would you have thought of this movie in a different way?
Britt: Oh yeah totally. It’s a really good movie and I know that because I really enjoyed when I first saw it before we started to work on it. I’m sure I would have been drawn in just like most movies I like.
LR: Are there any ideas for music or projects that this movie kind of opened the door up to? Would you want to do more scoring like this?
Britt: To me I really just want to do rock and roll. It was a fun thing to do and if something else comes up like this and I want to do it then I’d love to do it, but rock and roll is the main thing for me.
LR: Right. You guys are working on a Spoon album right now, how’s that going?
Britt: Yes. It’s going good. It’s taking a long time, but it usually takes a long time. We don’t know what label it’s going to come out on but I think this record is going to be a good one.
LR: What are your thoughts with your next label? Is there something you have in mind for Spoon or do you want to approach promoting it differently?
Britt: Well, I don’t really have anything new or new ideas for that. It’s just that we don’t actually owe anyone a record. It could still come out on Merge, which would be cool with me, but we haven’t worked on that aspect of the music. We’ll figure all that out later.
-Scott McDonald
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Everyone has their favorite Sea and Cake album from the nineties, I would offer 1995's The Biz as their essential record, or perhaps a good starting point for those unfamiliar with the band. The Biz is highly accessible yet highlights all of their trademarks. The album begins with the jazzy and upbeat pop of "The Biz" showcasing the amazing minor chord variations of Archer Prewitt against John McIntyre's clever drumming and the soulful, bluesy delivery of vocalist/guitarist Sam Prekop. The poppier and straight forward numbers like "Leeora", "The Assassin" and "The Transaction" reveal Prekop's strongest moments on the mic. And the angular jazz of "Escort" further demonstrates the band's experimental capabilities and outstanding musicanship with Prewitt knocking out mathematical guitar riffs. The Sea and Cake were the brainiest band that I had ever gotten into at this point. Freeform jazz-pop never sounded so professional and indie.
Washington D.C.'s amazing pop band Unrest lit a fire under the indie-rock scene in America with 1992’s Imperial f.f.r.r. (short for “Full Frequency Range Recording”). Unrest originally started as more of an artsy-hardcore band in the late nineties until new bassist, and ex-Velocity Girl member, Bridget Cross joined the band in 1991. The band became more "pop"and sharpened their tools, this album shows the band making more catchy and precisely strummed bangers a la Sea Monsters. Unfortunately after releasing the Perfect Teeth album for 4AD, they broke up in 1994. Singer/guitarist Mark Robinson is still playing and known as the founder of Teenbeat Records (home to his other projects: Air Miami, Grenadine, and Flin Flon).
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