So how was your breakfast? You mentioned that it was a bit nasty?
Chris Hrasky: No it was good, but you know, not that American breakfasts are particularly healthy, but somehow English breakfasts seem even unhealthier than American ones, which is a pretty tall order.
I’m always amazed that you have pancakes for your breakfast.
CH: I’m always amazed that you don’t!
Matthew Cooper (Eluvium): I don’t like the sweets for breakfast either. I usually just move straight to lunch.
CH: But English breakfast is like baked beans for breakfast!
Do you not have that?
CH: No, that’s crazy! We have eggs, sausage, toast, bagels...
MC: Pancakes, waffles, cereal...
What, all at once?
CH: If you want, you can do it all at once.
So is your food free then? We saw one of the PR people last night incredibly stressed out because someone wasn’t eating the catering…
CH: Well, all the bands get it catered.
Any idea who might not be eating it then?
CH: No, I don’t know, I mean today was actually really busy, Ghostface was over there this morning, The National were over there, Constantines, Beach House, Animal Collective, Jens Lekman. This was the first time I haven’t seen Dinosaur Jr. over there eating, so they’re enjoying it. I don’t know, I would think maybe Ghostface…
MC: But he was over there, enjoying it.
Anyway, this interview isn’t just about breakfast…
CH: It could be, I could go on and on about breakfast…
I am quite hungry, so best not, but how did the idea come about for you to curate All Tomorrow’s Parties then? In the ATP passport you compared yourself to janitors?
CH: We just feel very surprised that they asked us to do this, we’re excited by it but like it says in the passport, we’d kind of talked to Barry [Hogan, the man who started ATP] every time we saw him, just like “maybe er, if you’re looking for anybody to curate…” and he was like “yeah, yeah, really you guys wanna do it?”, and that’s been going on for years. Finally, he just called us last fall and asked if we wanted to do it, we obviously said yes and just gave him the list.
So you handpicked all the bands then, how did you choose who to play? Was it a mixture of bands that you wanted to see live and bands you were friends with?
CH: Kind of a mixture of both, but the bands we’re friends with are also bands that we also liked, but yeah the four of us just made our each individual list and a lot of the stuff was the same, so we just whittled it down, then ATP will go and ask people and say “okay, we need a second list, or we need to shorten the list or lengthen the list”. It was trial and error really, just this process where you have to get forty to forty-five bands.
Was there anyone that you wanted to play that was unable to?
CH: Yeah, we wanted to get a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion, but that didn’t happen, Bedhead reunion, Jawbreaker reunion, Unwound reunion, none of those happened, but we got Polvo which is pretty exciting.
And Dinosaur Jr as well.
CH: Yeah, but they’ve been doing their whole thing.
Chris is interrupted by an hungry seagull, which he compares to the ducks he has been feeding cookies to in his chalet…
CH: These guys are not like the ducks! Look how nice those ducks are! There are a few bands we asked that couldn’t do it for various reasons, but most of the bands we asked said yes. I think bands have either played ATP before and enjoyed it, or heard about it and want to play it.
I think most people try for Bob Dylan…
CH: We were at one point thinking “shall we try and ask for Neil Young?”, but they couldn’t get Neil Young, maybe they could, I don’t know.
Maybe in a few years you can come back.
CH: Yeah, and get Neil Young, maybe he’ll take a lower fee or something.
I was interested in the remix EP for All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, where did the idea for that spring from?CH: Well, it was more…
Chris is again interrupted by the now angry seagull…
CH: You gotta get out of here! Go to your nest!
MC: Should I scare him off? (Matthew flails towards the seagull, Chris continues…)
CH: Actually, it was our U.S label’s idea, because we had been approached about doing remix records before and never wanted to, we’ve never really liked remix records. When a band has a remix record I’ve always never really listened to those, and I think the whole idea was they wanted to make this to maybe counter downloads, put out something so that you have to buy the CD or whatever. So we were like “ahh, okay” and he let us pick people to do the remixes, and I kind of like the remix record better than the actual record. So it turned out really well, we were expecting kind of “ahh, whatever”, but we were really pleased with it actually. (Addressing Matthew Cooper) Good work, Coops.
So this isn’t the first time you’ve visited All Tomorrow’s Parties?
CH: We’ve played the Cambersands one in 2004, and we also did one in Los Angeles, the Modest Mouse one, which was very different to this kind of one. I think they stopped doing it there as it was a lot more like a normal festival, it didn’t have this kind of feeling at all. It didn’t really work that well.
Because there’s a New York one as well.
CH: Yeah I think that one’s going to be more like this.
There’s quite a good line up for that one as well
CH: Yeah, the My Bloody Valentine one, I think I’m going to go (addressing “Coops”), are you going to go?
MC: Yeah, it’s Built to Spill, My Bloody Valentine...
CH: Yo La Tengo, Mogwai, Dinosaur Jr.
Will you be heading to that one for free then, seeing as you’ve already curated one?
CH: I think I can get some tickets, I’ll talk to Barry about it, (addressing Cooper) I’ll see what I can do buddy!
See, you haven’t curated one yet, as soon as you do though…
MC: I think that’s a long way off.
CH: Oh, come on now, next year, I’ve already signed the deal for you.
Have a chat with Barry, I’m on first name terms with “Barry” now and I haven’t even met him.
CH: He’s a cool guy, he’s wandering around here every now and again, he’s very busy, frantic, but he’s put this thing together and I couldn’t put this together, it’s so complicated.
So Butlins is all shut down now then, because when we arrived we saw a very large family trying to get in…
CH: Yeah, it’s just ATP here.
We felt a bit like, “did you not realise this was going on”?
CH: Yeah, the rides are shut down and there’s going to be a lot of crazy people running around, you don’t want to bring your kids to this.
It would have been quite funny though if the kids genuinely wanted to go to ATP.
CH: They probably would have been, there aren’t any crazy jerks, are there?
MC: I don’t know, you did the list!
CH: True, that’s true, I don’t know. The ducks are here to play with though.
I’ve read in a previous interview that you’ve described a song as a “story”, what sort of stories were playing out on the last record then?
CH: We never have really specific stories. I guess it’s more that we want them to move like a story, as a kind of beginning that builds to something. Almost like a three act narrative, I guess, in terms of ever having a specific story, like “this is a story about a guy who climbs a mountain and finds treasure”, it’s never really that specific. It’s more that we want it to kind of have the movement of a story, where it’s not just a traditional song, not like a verse and a chorus and things just repeating, not that there’s anything wrong with that, that’s just not what we’re doing. It’s more like we just want it to feel like stories, as opposed to having a specific story.
I’m glad, as I read that and thought “I’m not really getting anything specific from this!”
CH: It sounds kind of goofy but we kind of like the idea of people listening to it and sort of making up their own little stories, if they care to, or they can just have it on in the background and do the dishes.
Are you working on anything new at the moment? Are there any new songs in your live set?
CH: We have a few new songs, well just little bits and pieces of new songs. We’ve been touring a lot, so once that’s done, in a couple of weeks, then we’re going to start working on new stuff, and one of the guys in the band is going to have a baby in September, well, he’s not, his wife is.
Arnold Schwarznegger style?
CH: Yeah, we’re doing Junior 2 with Mark Smith! So he’s going to be kind of busy, hopefully we’ll start work on stuff this summer, and then maybe take some time off in the fall.
A small black bird lands on the table next to us…
CH: Look, there’s a new bird!
Is it a crow?
CH: That’s something cuter than a crow; I don’t know what that thing is. I like him though. But yeah, hopefully it’ll [the new record] not take us two years, but it might.
How is touring for you?
CH: It’s a little tiring, and we can’t do any writing, there’s just no way for us to do that, and you just kind of miss home.
Am I right in thinking you’re in the middle of a world tour?
CH: For the last year and a half we’ve been touring non-stop, but we’ve been going since January with a couple of breaks in between, now we’ve just got a couple of weeks left. Then we’re done (addressing Cooper), you too buddy.
MC: Then I gotta go back out again I think.
CH (jokingly): Oh yeah, best of luck, we don’t have to do it though, so I don’t really care! No, so it’ll be nice, this has been a nice vacation break in the middle of the tour, then we just have ten or twelve shows left, it’ll be nice to be home.
Is it weird when you have a break in the middle of a tour?
CH: Yeah, we just did a five week U.S tour and we’re home for a week went to Japan for a week and we’re home for two days, and came over here for five weeks. It’s kind of like at those times at home you’re like “ahh, Christ” just counting down to when you have to leave again. Not that we hate touring, but it takes a while to get back to being at home and enjoying it. I’m probably going to start crying when I get home in a couple of weeks, it’s going to be so great, and I’m going to do nothing.
What’s your home-town like?
CH: Austin’s a real good place, that’s how I’m going to describe it. It’s really the only city in Texas that I would want to live in, just because the mindset there is not really like the rest of Texas. Most of the rest of Texas is George Bush country, but Austin’s kind of this little oasis, there’s a huge university there, but it’s bigger than a college town, there’s lots of music, lots of art, it’s a fairly calm city and a friendly place. For me it’s very comfortable and easy to live in. I don’t think I could live in New-York or London, it’s too much for me, I need a backyard and things like that.
SXSW is based in Austin, have you ever played that?
CH: Yeah, we’ve played it a few times, we haven’t played it in several years though, we kind of avoid it, at all costs at this point.
It’s turned into a bit of a media-circus…
CH: It’s sort of ridiculous, I think it’s kind of a big, I don’t know if I should say that it’s a scam or something, but it’s just the kind of thing where they convince all these bands to come play and then the bands get paid like a $100, and there’s these guys who are organising it are making tons of money off of it. There’s something about it that’s not right, but again people seem to come and enjoy it and have a good time.
Yeah, half of our bands here all go off and our newspapers go off, and they’ve all got the promise of coming back with a record deal…
CH: Yeah, I guess that can happen, but they seem to be really good at tricking people into thinking that “you’ve got to play this”, and I think that at this point in music it doesn’t really matter, you don’t have to do stuff like that to get noticed. I feel that if you’re good then someone will hear it. We kind of avoid it, but it’s nice because a lot of friends will come into town and stuff, although it’s not really that nice because then we have to chauffeur them everywhere and tell them where to go and they have to stay at our houses and stuff.
So the idea of it’s nice...
CH: Yeah, last year we were on tour, we kind of plan tours around it sometimes, we’ll start it like three days before SXSW so when that starts we’ll be gone, but again, a lot of people come and have a good time. It’s a big deal and I haven’t been down there in a few years, but it’s hard to get into shows, it’s just kind of a big nightmare really.
We have that problem here though, a few years ago there was a Raconteurs show that was meant to be a fans only thing and hardly any fans were in there, it was mainly the press.
CH: A few years ago The Flaming Lips played a show, I think the club held like 250 people, so people are waiting like two days in line to get in to a show like that, but no fans get in. It’s all the people who’ve spent two thousand dollars on the big press pass, or record companies and big magazines, so then you read in the magazine “Oh cool man, the Flaming Lips are playing this cool show for 250 people”, well not really and then they got in the magazine about it.
With The Rescue you made the decision not to write any riffs specifically for it, what was behind the decision for that and did the idea carry on through later records?CH: Someone just came up, I think it was Michael’s idea, it was at a time when he was doing a lot of learning about home-recording and stuff on his computer, and he just wanted to do this experiment to challenge himself at recording. So he came up with this idea of showing up each day at noon and one of us will go in and record something, spend an hour, make something up and record it, then someone else will come in and add stuff to it. Then we would do that until 6pm or 7pm, then Michael would mix it later that night, then we’d come back the day after and do it again. It was kind of an experiment but we ended up liking it. We tried that approach with the new record and it just didn’t work for some reason, so we ended up doing the same thing where we labour over songs for weeks. We definitely want to try to get away from that with the next record and hopefully we won’t fall into the same process. It was also fun because it sounded a lot different to anything we’d done and I feel like we’re at a point now where we want to not make another record that sounds like the last four, we’ll see.
As The Rescue is available for free online, would you ever think about releasing something for free online again?
CH: I don’t know, maybe.
We hear a lot about record companies being worried by this way of releasing music, from your point of view, are they genuinely worrying?
CH: I think the big record labels are, from who I’ve talked to, Jeremy who runs our label Temporary Residence, he doesn’t seem worried about these sort of things. I think with independent labels, because people who listen to the music on them are more likely to understand that to support a band or a label means buying the record, and there are people who like to have artwork and that sort of thing. I don’t think it’s really hurting independent labels the way it is with major labels.
MC: I agree, I think it’s actually working to my advantage.
CH: I think it’s definitely worked to our advantage, more people have heard us that way, I download stuff all the time and if I like it I’ll go and buy it.
MC: I mean, I don’t want to sell the record to somebody that doesn’t want to buy it in the first place. You just have to hope that the math adds up in the end I guess.
CH: It’s gone alright for us.
Chris and Matthew are met by fellow band member, guitarist Mark Smith.
CH: Cooper’s playing the part of Mark!
Mark: Thanks, Cooper!
CH: I think it doesn’t seem to be hurting us in any way.
A lot of people counter-balance downloading with the fact that they attend the bands shows and buy merchandise, if someone isn’t going to buy a record, would you prefer them to buy tickets etc, or does it not make much difference either way?
CH: Touring for us, in terms of financial things, we make more money touring than we will from selling records. I mean we do alright selling records. I don’t know, it’s hard to say, I’m curious what things will be like in three years, if it will be that nobody is buying records anymore, who knows. It’s clearly changing; in five years no one’s probably going to have DVD’s anymore. I don’t know, I don’t know how to answer that one, I hope people keep buying records, not just for the money but we take pride in putting together a package, with the art, we put a lot of thought and effort into that. We kind of consider that part of the record, the record is not just the songs, it’s the whole presentation I guess.
How involved are you with the creation of the art-work?
CH: Our artist guy, Steven Esteban, he does all our art and sells our merch and stuff, I don’t know if you went to a merch table, he has this gigantic black beard, that’s him. He does all our art-work and we work real close with him and kind of beat him up and stuff, make him do stuff over and over again, but we kind of have these vague ideas and then we just talk with him until we get firmer ideas, then he goes and does something, he shows it to us and we make him do it over again, he gets upset, it’s pretty laborious process for him and for us. But again, it’s important for us to have artwork that we all really like, we’re very happy with what he does.
A few years ago Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai were the two main acts mentioned when discussing anything vaguely instrumental, how do feel about the fact that you’re now being mentioned as often as these two when describing instrumental music?
CH: It’s pretty crazy, without a doubt, I don’t think we’d be an instrumental band if Mogwai wasn’t around, when we formed they were definitely a band that the four of us were the most excited about at the time. So it is a little weird to be put in that world now, it’s just kind of strange. When we started we were just in Austin working our day jobs and listening to Mogwai records, and then going to practise stuff, it’s strange that now we’re doing this. We’ve been doing it for nine years but I still think we’re kind of surprised by things, and I’m hoping we stay that way, I hope we don’t ever take it for granted. It’s pretty cool.
Have you ever listened to one of the many new instrumental bands that are constantly tagged as “for fans of Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky” and thought, “they sound nothing like us”?
CH: Well that’s the thing, obviously there are similarities between us and Mogwai, but there’s a lot of differences, the easy way to describe something is to say “that sounds like Mogwai”, but people do it all the time, they do it with pop singers too, it’s weird, but to be honest we don’t listen to a huge amount of what could be considered as instrumental rock. We listen to a lot of weird ambient stuff and electronic stuff, but a lot of the stuff we listen to is just like The National, songwriters and stuff, which is strange, because we don’t write any music like that, but I feel we’re somehow more influenced by that than anything else, I don’t know how exactly. One thing I think we try to do is not just be background music, and that’s always a struggle, sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don’t. We try to look at a song as having hooks in it, having something you can sing or hum along to, that’s pretty important to us.
Chris’ friend, the duck, returns to the door his chalet
CH: there’s nothing in there for you unless I’m in there! He’s my friend, he wants more cookies. Oh look, he’s going over to his other buddies; he’s going to chase that female duck probably.
Matthew and Chris imitate David Attenborough
MC & CH: and why, remains a mystery.
CH: We’re big David Attenborough fans (continuing with his Attenborough impressions), the sleuth comes down the tree to defecate, and why, remains a mystery. I love that guy, he’s amazing. Life of Mammals is the greatest thing ever made,
MC: It gets me through the tour.
CH: Yeah it does.
We had an April fools on the BBC this year that involved footage of penguins flying and him uttering that “something amazing has happened."
CH: (more Attenborough impressions): we don’t understand it, penguins, are flying!.. He’s so awesome, yeah, I love him. (more Attenborough) The Polar bears cub needs food.
And he teaches you so much as well.
CH: I’ve learnt so much, there’s so many animals I appreciate in a new way because of that man.
MC: (looking at seagull) Aside from that jerk
CH: I don’t like the seagull, but he’s not a mammal, he does have Life of Birds though, which I’ve not seen yet.
MC: I haven’t either, or Life in the Undergrowth.
CH: I’ve not seen that either.
MC: I’ve only seen some of Blue Planet.
CH: Oh, Blue Planet is fucking great!
MC: I’ve just seen Planet Earth and the Life of Mammals
Weren’t you used for some of the music at some point? I’m sure I’ve seen a few BBC adverts where they’ve used your music
CH: Possibly, I know we’ve had stuff on some BBC commercials. God, that’s what we’ve got to get Ben Dickey on to, scoring the next Attenborough or whatever it is, that’s what I want to do, that’d be amazing.
MC: What does he have left? Life in Space?
CH: I don’t know, they’ll think of something, the vicious seagull versus man. What’s that thing hanging out of his mouth? (the seagull has what looks like a feather attached to his beak)
I think it’s part of his markings
CH: Attenborough would know, if he were here right now, “what that is, remains a mystery.”
MC: But at least then we’d know!
The last question really is then, that there’s a bit of a rumour Placebo name-check you in one of their songs, have you heard about this?
CH: I have heard about this.
We’ve got the lyrics… “The sea's evaporated/Though it comes as no surprise/These clouds we're seeing/They’re explosions in the sky/It seems it's written/But we can't read between the line.”
CH: I bet that’s not about us…it could be about us.
According to Wikipedia it is, so it must be true…
CH (pointing at Matthew): he probably wrote that. I don’t know, I had heard that because…I’m embarrassed to admit but I do check our Wikipedia page, and I was like “huh, well that’s not true! Well, I guess that’s true.” I don’t know, I wonder, can you guys ask them?
Yeah, we’ll give them a quick call later. Do you ever delve into the world of your fans and see what they’re writing about you?
CH: I don’t really know what message boards are out there, other than our Temporary Residence one, I’ll check that, but it’s like the same five dudes over and over again, writing about whatever.
I’d be far too scared to do it!
CH: I think we used to do it a lot more, but now it’s just kind of, I don’t know. It was pretty funny that when this was announced that we were curating ATP and they announced the initial line up, on the Drowned in Sound message board there were people just hating the fact that we were doing it, (writing) like “how the fuck did Explosions in the Sky (get to curate), they’re the most boring fucking band in the world!” It was just like, well, then don’t go, then don’t buy a ticket.
MC: You’re not being forced,
CH: Yeah, no one’s forcing you to come! But generally, we’ll read e-mails but I don’t go searching for stuff, I mean I wouldn’t really know where to look. Our friend Carlos, he’s a part of our crew, he’s always searching message boards, (saying) “oh look what this guy says”.
MC: Or he threatens to put strange footage of us on Youtube.
CH: Yeah, he’ll just videotape and then (say he’ll) put it on Youtube, and (I’m like), “I don’t care, most of it’s fine.” In terms of that sort of thing we read e-mails and stuff and try to respond to as many of them we can, I like talking to people about the music, but I don’t really go on the internet, because I could see myself getting obsessed with it then and I’d rather just not think about it, “What does he know about anything!...Calm down, it’s just some guy, it’s fine.”
Do you ever think about getting involved though, because you do cause a lot of “hoo-hah” on the internet, people seem to get excited or get angry?
CH: I kind of like that though, there is something I like, in some weird way, reading the stuff when people are angry, I don’t know why, it’s just like, “why are you so angry?”, we’re just a band. It’s just a rock show; it’s not really that big of a deal. There’s no need to be this angry about it, you could be directing this energy towards something else, there’s other things in the world that you could be more upset about. I kind of enjoy reading bad stuff about us; Pitchfork always makes fun of us.
Really?
CH: Well, they generally liked us, but lately they’ve been making fun of us.
It’s probably because you’re in competition now.
CH: All I know is that ours (ATP curated event) was at the bigger venue. We win! They’re weird, but whatever.
Well, Pitchfork can be funny folk, but we’ll leave it at that. I’m sad we haven’t solved the Placebo mystery though.
CH: We’ll look into it, Attenborough can solve this mystery, he’s fucking Attenborough, he’s got the resources.
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