4/28/2008

interview :: love like deloreans

i admit it, i have a local band crush on love like deloreans. i'm kinda scared about the honeymoon phase ending, but we'll just fly for now. for a brooklyn band, LLD is a refreshing diversion from the scene, sporting a 3 person synth/keyboard onslaught rather then the neo-no wave, tribal avant psyche attack i'm used to for brooklyn [which i love too, no haters]. their music is a keyboard synth dream. instrumental and uplifting, i find myself strangely happy after every set. their sound conjures the dreamy traveling vibes of krautrock, evoking comparisons to cluster and old kraftwerk. other songs take on a more direct synth pop vibe via gary numan's tubeway army, or peter's current closet admiration for 80's italian funk. [ watch video]

:: listen to how to get along with others [DEMO]

we sat down with lorna, derek, and peter to catch up with an alias pail / love like deloreans brunch. i sported english muffins and lorna made this unforgettable keesh. band history, escaping the neu music school, and derek's father's notable korg career were of topic:


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[ap]: originally, you guys are from wisconsin right?

[lorna]: peter and i met in music school in milwaukee. we were score reading partners. he brought candy to class, so i'd sit next to him and we'd read stravinksy scores.

[ap]: so your backgrounds are in classical?

[lorna]: he's compositional, i'm piano performance. we were both into the neu, experimental music classical scene at the time.

[ap]: but you're kinda burnt out from that now...

[lorna]: definitely. i just felt there was a limiting aesthetic to it, i felt uncomfortable going to concerts and being careful about stripping the brochure away from my palm, fearing it would make any noise.

[peter]: it's more fun to drink be
er and yell loud and bump into people and sweat.

[ap]: a little too proper i guess. in your songs so far, i pick up the krautrock vibes, and yet it other's it's a little more synth pop derived, is there intention to choose one over the other or a direction?

[peter]: we're just having fun with it.

[lorna]: all our influences come in. peter has more of a funk background, i like the sugar poppiness, and he likes the drones. it all mixes up. minimalism is definitely a huge influence for all of us.

[derek]: i have a neu music background too. my dad was always involved in synths and electronic music. this now, makes a lot of sense for me.

derek's father's job was a designer at KORG USA. he's credited with writing a lot of the preset demos in old korg synthesizers.

[ap]: how did you meet derek?

[peter]: lorna got into banglewood, bang on a can, and steve reich was the mentor.

[lorna]: it's this intense training on neu music. we played a 6 hour marathon. i played steve reich pieces for steve reich. that's how i met cool new musicians then decided to move to nyc. there was a whitney birthday celebration for steve reich and that's how i met derek.

[ap]: are you specific about the kind of keyboards you like to use for LLD? any favoritism?

[derek]: i'm interested in any instrument, they all have their own quirks.

[peter]: we get to a point where we program one sound on one keyboard for one song, and yet we bring the one keyboad for the whole set.

[lorna]: peter's obsessed with mini-keys now.

[peter]: there's no fucking way i'm taking a fafisa to play in a club. it's retarded. we're tailoring it down.

[lorna]: the instrument that brought us together was my first keyboard, the casiotone 701.



[ap]
: the band name? love like deloreans?

[lorna]: that's derek's genius.

[derek]: i like deloreans.

[ap]: hektor said he was researching john z. delorean, and said he was a real punk rocker in the automobile industry. the kinda outsider / genius character. since your song are instrumental, are they story line based? one of my favorites is 'how to get along with others,' what's the story behind it?

[lorna]: we were recording on a shoe box cassette tape recorder and ran out of cassettes. we pulled out my old tapes from high school. i had a cassette, from when i was skipping out on church. mom made a recording of the sermon and fed me the tape, "how to get along with others."

[peter]: if we'd pull out the original, you could turn up the other tracks and hear this sermon in the fuzz.

[lorna]:it's pretty funny. it's a very spacey sound, and i'm really into ufo's, so it takes a new meaning for us.

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we finished with other off topics, coffee, cigs, and mimosa's. filled our bellies on home cooking and lazied the rest of sunday away.



4/01/2008

preparation :: bent festival 2008

many of the alias pail circuit bends are very primitive on the technical side of circuit bending. but that's what's great, most circuit bending is very simple. just takes a couple of tools and a little curiosity. the real jewel is finding the right toy to bend. i found this little tikes toy drum off of eBay for a really low price. as the subject of a circuit bend, it's perfect. easy access to the inside and tons of empty space. the color scheme is already perfect, no needed improvements for product design.

the cool thing about the toy is that along with individual electronic sound for each of the four buttons, there's an alternate mode in which each button plays a programmed beat. some subjects for circuit bending don't allow too much variance on tweaking the pitch or the processor speed, but for this one, i was able to find the highest and lowest variances. on the high tip, the beats sound really aphex twin-ish, and the low level, you can hear and follow the low fi sound bit processing come to a grinding halt and stutter. the lfo circuit adds a little choppy start and stop effect to the beats.



fitted with a quarter inch output, if you send the signal into a delay or reverse pedal, it's amazing. the toy is also a fun showpiece for younger kids, since it's made as a necklace, inspired by flava flav's obnoxious clock wearing habits. feel free to ask to play with it after our performance at bentfest 2008 in nyc.

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