INTERVIEW: Is and Of The

 1) Your name is a combination of small words that usually appear in between other words to form band names (Something is Something, Something and the Somethings, Somethings of Leon, etc.) Was it something that you did as kind of an alternative to having to be a one word band name or a version of the other names?

 

2) You are from Washington DC, which is a big enough city in the United States that I imagine it having a vast music scene. Do you think it's hard to be a musician in DC and not have a political agenda? (I always think of DC as being hardcore punks who sing about the government, i.e. Strike Anywhere)

 

3) Your newest album combines the words "late" and "April", or "Late April", to form "latepril". Is it only because I have a less than two year old son that whenever I see that I think of Dr. Seuss?

 

4) Your releases are all either up for free to stream or download on Band Camp. One day, would you ever make a vinyl boxed set?

 

5) Your music can get pretty trippy, to the point where it can feel like you're on drugs when listening to it even if you're clean. Have you somehow found a way to transfer hallucinogens via earbuds?

 

6) Emily Bach has guest vocals on your song "Swoopy". How does something like that come about, you know, where you say, "Oh, I really think this song needs some vocals" and you drop her an email?

 

7) Final thoughts, suggestions, predictions for when and how the world will end, etc...??

1 - haha that's cool i never noticed that! well it's the name of a song by k.c. accidental that i've always felt really close to. i got lost in a forest once listening to it for an hour or two, best thing that ever happened to me. but beyond that, i think names/titles are pretty important for music that doesn't have such audible lyrics in it. so i like having this vague phrase as a name cause it makes me feel more comfortable when i need to try new things with it. wasn't thinking about how it's harder to search for on the internet at the time but whatever! i really like it

2 - [sidenote -  i don't really know what's up in dc's scene to be honest! and maybe it's that i'm just too antisocial to go out and find what's going on, i just (like many others) have no idea where to look. i'm from philly originally and almost everyone i know there is in half a dozen bands. they have this crazy network of people that put on shows what seems like every night. if dc has a scene as extensive as theirs and i am not aware of it than i must be a total loser! but i'm moving to a new area soon so hopefully i'll find something.]

(but to answer your question) i think it's impossible to make music that isn't political, in the social sense of the word. like i vote and i hope we as a whole elect the right people, but all of that is such a TV show at this point - it's still very important, but real change starts and ends with people. the changes we need are things you can't vote for, like love or an end to hatred. those things are communicated between people, and i think anyone's music is political in the sense that they hope to spread something they found to a world they think lacks it. dc makes it hard for me to forget about how music does that, because here you're constantly faced with reminders of the increasing irrelevance of our government to our problems.

3 - yeah, but also true is that you have a son because you read dr. seuss!

4 - yeah just yesterday i was thinking about printing our last full-length (know not) on vinyl. i definitely like having our releases we work on as a full band in some kind of physical form. our first album (heads phased) was the three of us and our label had printed CD's of it. i fucking love all of the art my friends have allowed me to use for our releases too, that stuff is as important as any other aspect of the music. seeing it take up space in a room as opposed to on your screen is always really powerful. 

5 - it works for me when i listen, so i guess! haha. but i also meditate and like figuring out ways to induce different states on my own. so when i was talking earlier about that inevitable sociopolitical side of music, i definitely like to focus on my experiences with that when i'm writing. i think it's something a lot of people should know, that they have that much control over their bodies. 

6 - ahh well i guess there's no real method to it. i usually have an idea of what i want to trigger in a listener, like how sculptors talk about seeing the finished work in a block of marble. or, like, clay. i doubt many people can relate to marble cutting. anyway, emily and i go way bach (hehe), always loved her voice and the song had this attitude about it that reminded me of her. when i work with anyone, whether it's the two guys that are in the band with me or someone like emily singing on a track, i always prefer that they do whatever they want with no direction by me. but i think it's really important to have lots of people be involved with your music. when a stranger enters that space they are a HUGE mirror to yourself.

7 - thoughts - i'm thinking about finishing this wonton soup and having a cigarette. i'm wondering if it'll be 50 degrees again tomorrow, cause it was 90 the day before that and my body really can't take much more of nature's indecision.

suggestions - don't let negativity affect you because you and i and everyone else on this planet suck at preventing ourselves from spreading it around when it does affect us.

predictions - the world ends and begins every day