Natural Velvet [Interview # 116]

1. Leather is to pleather as Natural Velvet is to?

Pleather is imitative. We like the idea of questioning naturalness. So, we have no idea what Natural Velvet is, in relation to an object. We suppose it might be moss, hair, or skin, or something. But is it natural? We're at a loss here.

1. Having Velvet in your name, are you fans of The Velvet Underground?

Definitely, but it wasn't an immediate reaction to our favor of them. The band name was actually decided upon in a previous incarnation by a good friend, who found it scribbled in a sketchbook or a magazine. We do owe a bit musically to The Velvet Underground. It may just be the energy and soul of that group pervading our work from time to time, or for the fact that they were involved with the visual arts, as we are also.

3)      Does living in Baltimore make you close enough to DC to be political or just Orioles fans?

We are political mostly because we are American. Washington D.C. Is a radically different city than Baltimore. We are really proud to be from Baltimore, and we're proud of the weirdness and authenticity of our city. The two cities aren't very comparable. However, yeah, we're totally Orioles fans—our drummer shares the name of a favorite Baltimorean center fielder, Adam Jones, so how could we not?

4)      Having an album title with the head of John the Baptist in it, do you find religious crazies to get upset over it?

We haven't experienced said crazies (yet) but we look forward to being approached about the topic. We're drawing inspiration from Oscar Wilde's play, from the 1923 avant-garde film “Salomé” directed by Charles Bryant, as well as the gnostic tales of Salome's fate. It seems doubtful that many religious fanatics would be casually reading Oscar Wilde's Salome in their spare time, but stranger things have happened.

5)      Final thoughts, questions, plugs, designer fashion tips, etc…??

We have three illustrators and a painter in Natural Velvet, so we gather a lot of inspiration from the visual arts. This is why Salome was so interesting to us, conceptually, because there were lots of examples from culture, i.e., plays, films, texts, etc., that were related to it. This is how we make a lot of our songs, taking from something culturally and intellectually.

Also, we love clear plastic things and french fries. Designer fashion tips? AllSaints for my angels. Alexander Wang too. That's how we do.

Stay tuned because we're doing some collaboration soon, we're making some videos for songs, and we have a full-length album in the works that we're aiming to release this winter.