INTERVIEW: Viewfinder (Brian Wilde)

1) When I first saw your band name, I thought of the toy which is actually called a "Viewmaster", so I thought up a bunch of questions about that I had as a kid and apparently still exists to this day. A viewfinder is a part of a camera, which is something visual, so why pair it with something audio?

Photos can capture a moment in time that could have otherwise been forgotten. That's really what I try to do when I write my songs, the songs are personal and capture a moment from my life that I want to document and immortalize in song. Sometimes I try to leave a little bit up for interpretation for the listener. As my songwriting progresses, I hope my songs can really paint a picture for the listener and effect them in the way a really great photograph could.

2) Your music has many tags on Band Camp, but one of them I think you missed is grunge. A lot of people feel like grunge died with Kurt Cobain, but i feel like he was so influenctal on bands that some bands are even being influenced by him second hand.

Do you feel like, in some way, you're perhaps grunge?

John, Mike, and myself listen to a wide range of music from the late 80s and 90s and we take a lot of unintentional inspiration, more so in the instrumentation, from bands like Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Hum, Husker Du, Smashing Pumpkins, My Bloody Valentine and Lemonheads. I love the balance of catchy melodies and lyrics with aggressive guitar in bands like Nirvana, where it almost sounds like it's all almost falling apart but being held together with something that just gets stuck in your head. I definitely think we could fit the description of Grunge but I also think we have the ability to bridge a lot of gaps. We really try to just write the songs as they come out and then we jam them for a while in a full band setting during a practice and just never really go for anything specific, other than being happy with what we're playing. I guess we'll have to add Grunge to our tags!

3) Your EP was recorded in a mere two days. Polly Scattergood will release her second album in June and it took her two years to get it perfect. I guess the moral of the story is, music can be made in any amount of time and come out sounding really good still, right?

I definitely believe it can. I think first take, quickly written albums have their place and some of the best albums are written/recorded this way. There are mistakes, misplaced mics, out of tune instruments, screeching computer chairs in the background and crappy vocals but there is something endearing and raw about albums like that that you can't get with more heavily produced and perfected albums. I don't really think that is what we were shooting for with our EP, we essentially just wanted to hear ourselves and have something to give to people at shows and the quickest and cheapest way to do that was to record the EP in my basement. We clicked record and the three of us played the songs live, no individual tracking or anything. We will definitely be going for a better recording on the LP we are working on currently, but if there is a dog barking on a track or thunder outside or whatever, that is probably something I would like to leave in the mix faintly to kind of keep the organic feeling. Another important thing to us is that we sound just as good or better live as we do on a recording.

4) Do you have any plans for a full length in the future? Perhaps on vinyl?We most definitely do, we are working on writing songs for the full length right now. It will include the original four songs on the EP, but re-recorded and nine or ten new ones. Our goal at the moment is to have CDs, Casettes, and Vinyl of the new LP!

5) I often like to ask bands who their favorite band to tour with would be, as in who they'd love to play with, but I'd really want to see you guys on a show with Porcupine and Dinosaur Jr. Would that sound about right to you?

Playing shows with bands like Porcupine or Dinosaur Jr. would be amazing! We'd have made it at that point, right? It seems so out of reach, haha. At the moment, we are having a blast playing with the bands we get to play with. While playing house shows, record stores, bars, and all that, we have had the fortune of meeting some very awesome people and getting to hear some really rad bands. We've got a lot of ground work to put in before we get to even fantasize about playing with the bands we call our influences.

6) You are from North Carolina, which I know very little about except for Michael Jordan. What is music like there?

North Carolina rules. All the bands that come from NC are always really proud of the state, we have a wide range of artists, and most of the liberal cities welcome all types of music with open arms. Asheville, NC is probably the best music city on the planet. Just take a look at The Orange Peel's lineup of bands or the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit's lineup! I can't really say much more about it, there's just too much to go into detail about. There is something for everyone here and I suggest any band trying to book shows on the East Coast makes a stop in Asheville.

7) Final thoughts, plugs, questions, concerns, etc...??

Thanks for the interview! Great questions. I'll take a chance to plug some of our NC friend's bands, labels, and record stores!

Muscle & Bone, Old Flings, Late Bloomer, Pleasures of the Ultraviolent, All Hell, Pullman Strike, Keisman Pedals, Means Well, Self Aware Records, Lunchbox Records, 641 RPM, Museum Mouth, The Rise of Science, Loven House Underground, Wood Circle, Skateboner Magazine, 828 Prints, Boonelive, Junkyard, and I'm sure there are a ton of people I'm forgetting, but you all rule the same.