Can you tell us about what sorts of inspirations guided the making of the single “Souweija”?
I think I read the name Soweija in a book written by Sandor Marai. I have to say I think because, flipping through the pages of his books I still own, I could no longer to find this name and…I’m not even sure that it was so originally written. Let’s say that I liked the sound and I stole that name, good to become the subject of a story. The initial idea was talking about the consequences generated by a dismissal after an accident at work in a steel mill. I have myself worked for a few months in one of those factories when I was a teenager; lights, sounds and noises of hell. Even if it’s just a song, the scenario to which I try to refer is visually more distant in time, early twentieth century, although perhaps more current is the idea of being unemployed and unable to find another job. A little bit more direct are the references to a certain pop music working world.
What is the key to translating feelings of jubilation in sound?
I recently had to make a compilation to be played before a concert of a band I was playing with. Looking in my discography something that sounded light and joyful, I found absolutely nothing except a Sirtaki record. After the show a friend asked me ‘hey, what’s that melancholic stuff..?’. Despite this during after-dinners I still try to entertain guests with my bouzouki, the success are discontinuous. I love Greece!
Other artists, authors & auteurs that have captured your attention lately?
I follow Kurt Vile from the Smoke Ring for My Halo. I really like his latest album B’lieve I’m Goin Down. His little stories always manage to put me in a good mood and he is one of those artists that I use to define a little wild, intended as a compliment, artists who seem to me always looking for something they hadn’t try before, as well as the Two Monkeys or PJ Harvey.
Summer & fall & winter wishes & hopes?
This fall, after the release of the album I will do, alone with my amps, a series of shows in Italy. I am currently rehearsing with the band, but I think we will not tour until December 2016 or January next year. The desire is to create the foundation for a live act very ‘played’, enjoyed and hopefully amusing, in which we can freely move on the song of the album, intended as basis, a canovaccio open to some improvisation.
Giovanni Ferrario Alliance’s new album Places Names Numbers will be available in October from We Were Never Being Boring.
déCollage
Denver’s déCollage recently released their new album Magnetize available May 27 through the Moon Magnet imprint’s Lunadrifter (an app from Ghost Time Games) and today gift us with the premiere of the mystical & enchanted Aaron Long video for “Better Things Part 2”. The Moon Magnet Stuio boss Reed Fuchs enlisted assistance from the collective’s own personnel from groups like Rose Quartz, Sound of Ceres/Candy Claws, & Rubedo that together continue to keep the Denver scene wild, beautifully weird, vibrant & thriving like never before. Keeping the vibe spirited & DIY; déCollage brings about a kind of natural liberation of the body, mind, spirit & self in a holistic way that many of us outside of the mile-high-city are just now beginning to comprehend.
Aaron Long’s video for “Better Things Pt 2” from déCollage features appearances from creative contributors Megan Crooks & Cody Coffey (of Ancient Elk/Wild High), songwriter Kyle Gray (of Rubedo), bassist Ben Weirich (from The Other Black), along with Pistachio the kalimba turtle portrayed by by Clay Cornelius (of Rose Quartz/Wild High). The déCollage pop aesthetic is presented like a pagan kaleidoscope soaking up all the solstice rituals & revelry where the group keeps all matters mystical & upbeat. Breaking through to similar supernatural ground like fellow kindred spirits The Ethereal and Queer Show (check out all of our EATQS coverage). Feelings and yearnings to be loved are expressed the group dressed like colorful faeries & pxies that play about their local surroundings with balloons, charms, jewelry, and beautiful facial adornments to add to their otherworldly style. The chorus refrain of “into the ground, soak up the sun, it has begun, growing season” burrows it’s way into your mind amid the electrical zips & zaps that are all accompanied by spiraling, sweet-psychedelic visuals that transforms Denver, Colorado into a whole new world of enchantment & intrigue. déCollage’s Reed Fuchs & Megan Crooks talked with us in an interview session featured immediately after the following video debut for “Better Things Pt 2”.
Describe the magnetic forces at work that guided the making of Magnetize.
Reed: Magnetize, the album, was written over the course of four years with whoever was in Moon Magnet Studios at the time; which led to an element of chance, chaos, and spontaneity. The oldest song “;) Semicolon Parentheses” was four years old, whereas “Crystal Choir” was a week old at the time of mastering. Considering the timespan, all of the songs fit together pretty cohesively and there weren’t any songs that we debated adding or subtracting from the record before mastering. Four of the tracks have the word “Magnetize” in the lyrics, which wasn’t planned. The collaborators on the album were like minded and it helped foster a vortex of unbridled creativity in the studio.
How do you all draft, write & record your song ideas & inspirations together before they become complete songs?
Reed: Most of the songs went through three or four final versions before becoming what they are now and each song was written very differently. I wrote Cerulean Chasms with only a computer mouse and without a piano keyboard for a midi orchestration project in college. The Better Things things drums were recorded in Matt Tanner’s tiny practice studio when I visited LA and he originally recorded them for another song. When I got back to Denver, Kyle Gray (Rubedo) and I decided to lay synths and bass over the drums temporarily for a song doodle that became Better Things. We became attached to the drums and decided to keep them. Rise Above was written over a guitar and banjo jam with Alex Mackenzie Lowe (A-Mac DZ). Magnetize was written in one night until sunrise with 13 people in the studio during the last night of a local music fest. Kyle Gray and I started a new band called Babes at Night for a while around Gotta Good Thing Going & Better Things, then we realized we didn’t have enough time to focus on another band.
Tell us about what sorts of better things informed the song “Better Things Pt. 2”.
Megan Crooks: “Better Things” is about acknowledging the importance of femininity and masculinity, both in the cosmos and in ourselves: and applying that balance to being the best version of ourselves to better our brothers and sisters and the Earth itself.
What sorts of betterment & bliss also aided the making of the video for “Better Things Pt. 2” from Aaron Long?
Reed: It all started when Aaron Long told me that it was possible to rent lady bugs from a hardware store. He said that he heard they come in a box and you open the box to let them out and then you put some nectar in the box to get them back in and the hardware store weighs them to make sure you bring most of them back. Our local hardware store had no idea what we were talking about. It turns out you can buy them online, but renting them is a myth. We ended up buying a few thousand on Amazon for $30. Megan and I put nectar and ladybugs on our faces and it turned into an episode of Fear Factor. It was totally worth it though. Wait, what was the question?
Future dreams from déCollage?
Reed: We play shows as a 3-5 piece and have been recording our next record over the past year. I think it sounds like the freak folk child of Erykah Badu and Hiatus Kaiyote, even though my band members probably wouldn’t agree. For either that record or the one after I want to get some of my favorite musicians together. I’ve met on a few occasions / played shows with Avey Tare (Animal Collective), Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear), Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips), and Kevin Barnes (of Montreal). I’ve been talking to two of them about producing a song in LA or Denver and I think if two of them are onboard it would be feasible to get all of them onboard. Those artists all made an impact on me around the same time period and I think it would be rad to hear them all on one album.
déCollage’s new album Magnetize is available now from Misra Records.
Lavachild
Introducing Brooklyn’s Lavachild, the focus of Chantel Marie, oka Chantel De Lava, along with a host of her collaborators & friends who presents the world premiere of “Kandy”, directed by Wolf Daniel and Chantel Marie with photographic assistance & spiritual advising by Rebecca Tiernan. “Kandy” is an ethereal beating electro track that plays about a personal & vulnerable candy-land of shadows and intimate exhibits of inner thoughts. Lavachild brings us to those nostalgic realms of familiarity, where worlds of illusion, make believe & more are dressed in the most decadent electro-fitted pop around.
The video for “Kandy” finds our heroine Chantel de Lava in solitude pondering questions of love & longing. Desires of “wanting it all” reach out toward angelic heights, calling upon the archangel Gabriel, gazing upward toward the infinite skies, to shadow dances & waltzing with a vintage doll. Lavachild creates a molten sound that springs imagination to life like bubbles of oxygen that rise up from the viscuous streams of incomprehensible temperatures of smoldering brimstone. The river-flow flood of feelings moves about the channels that send you from the second start to the right, and straight on ’til morning heading toward that Never-never-land that must exist somewhere outside of nursery rhyme fables. Lavachild described the song & video for Kandy to us with the following insights:
As a child I’d often dream of places like these. A dream state where a lone girl plays dress up, and it’s softly glam and intimate but bleary. Then there’s a playful character take on Peter Pan’s shadow, luring the subject through more play and dance, through his labyrinth of horrors, excitement, and the desolate fall out.
Crypt Thing
Crypt Thing has recently released the four-track EP Shodan via South-East London label squareglass, who emerged this week from the wings to provide some exclusive words along with listen. Spring-boarding off concepts of artificial intelligence, supercomputers & more; Crypt opens up the gates that digitally enhanced technology, consoles & instruments allow us to create as a method to conjure together a portal into unknown places.
Shodan begins with the atmospheric title cut that traverses into the subterranean networks of tunnels where danger & intrigue exists at every turn. “Solace” is something ripped from what we imagine to be the moodiest & scariest computer game imaginable where east meets west tropes all collide in the cavernous bowels of an ancient dungeon. “Normad” scans like a radar searching for enemy vehicles amid the thick of fog, smoke, and obfuscating vapors. Crypt Thing ends with the bouquet of synths on “Euclid” that measures up an affection for ambient elements with nu-cinematic facets of what could be the nu-industrial sound.
