THE APPLES IN STEREO: THE FUTURE IS NOW
I have heard the future... and it works! Robert Schneider and his ever imaginative band, The Apples in Stereo, know how to take listeners on a trip. And their latest journey, in album form, is “Travellers in Space and Time.” It’s a kaleidoscopic wonderment, building on the colors of ‘70s funk/R&B, ELO, Pink Floyd and The Beach Boys. Delightfully inventive sonic eccentricities add a futuristic sense of sonic fun. This is the indie power pop band’s second album for Elijah Wood’s Simian Records [the first being 2007’s acclaimed “New Magnetic Wonder”), distributed by Yep Roc. Schneider was born in Cape Town, South Africa and, at age six, moved with his family to Louisiana. He attended college in Denver. It was there, in 1992, that he formed the band (originally known simply as The Apples). He established the Elephant 6 music collective and label, producing albums for Olivia Tremor Control, The Minders and Neutral Milk Hotel, as well as for The Apples in Stereo. His intricate productions recall the work of Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. The first Apples album was 1995’s “Fun Trick Noisemaker.” The band’s work frequently celebrates science-fiction themes, careening through the cosmos on retro-psychedelic fuel. Their brand of sunshine pop is consistently captivating. They spent a decade on the now departed spinART Records, before finding an ideal new home with Simian. Their song “Energy” was featured on last year’s “American Idol.” Schneider, who has been featured on “The Colbert Report,” has channeled some of his infinite creativity into numerous side projects,, including his bands Marbles, Ulysses, Orchestre Fantastique and Thee American Revolution. He has also recorded children’s music, using the name Robbert Bobbert & The Bubble Machine. Though Denver is still the band’s official base, Schneider now resides in Lexington, Kentucky. In the midst of a busy day, just after enjoying lunch at a vegetarian restaurant, Robert Schneider took time to talk with Pop Culture Classics. The brilliant Schneider’s sentences come pouring out in excited torrents, like an LP played at 45 rpm. POP CULTURE CLASSICS: ROBERT SCHNEIDER: So we imagined this world of the future with flying cars and stuff like that. And like, what pop album would they be listening to in 20 years or something? And then, on the other hand. there was the idea of, how would the people of the future know that we were making a record for them? Like it’s kind of a concept record, in that it’s supposed to be futuristic. And if it’s a time capsule, how will we speak to the people of the future so that they know that we were thinking of them, that we’re writing it for them? So we figured most of those goals point towards trying to be really futuristic and sort of cram everything into the record that people from our time might consider to be futuristic, while, at the same time, not being post-apocalyptic or nihilistic or anything like that. Like I want to project a positive future. Like I believe in a positive future. Or rather, I believe that, whatever the future will be, it’ll be hanging on the points that are futuristic that people introduce now. It’s kind of like, the cities of today look fairly futuristic by the standards of the past. If we envision the future to be a certain way, whatever that is, and if we would like to see a future that’s like that, you have to start doing futuristic things now, so as to introduce it, so that, to the people of the future, it will seem normal to them, kind of like to the degree that our modern world looks futuristic, in the sense that people of the past thought of the future. Huge interstates, spiraling all over, these tall, shining buildings, stuff like that. So the degree that our world looks futuristic is because architects and planners and artists 30 or 50 years ago started trying to be futuristic on purpose, like putting up really modern buildings in the ‘60s and ‘70s. So it’s like our landscape now looks futuristic, partially because there are lots of futuristic-looking structures around that people of the past put up, trying to be futuristic. And based on that analogy, my thought is that, if I’d like the music of the future to sound like this or if we imagine the future in general to be a certain way, you have to start to put the ideas of the sounds out there now. We’re just a little indie rock band [Laughs]. I’m not saying we’re trying to influence the future. I’m just saying, I’d like to imagine a positive future where psychedelic pop rules [Laughs]. At the same time, it’ll be the future, not now. And what will our genre sound like in 20 years, 50 years? Our thought was that it would include lots of references to futurism of the past, because you’re trying to encode in your music that it is futuristic. It’s for the people of the future. This isn’t just us now making modern music. But it’s us now trying to make future music, regardless of the fact that we’re a band that lives now and we’re making modern music. The fact that we’re making modern music is forced on us, just by the fact that we exist now. I mean, really,people in the future could be listening to something weird, like brain music. Anyway, I forgot where I was going with that and I apologize. PCC: RS: PCC: Yeah, it’s cool, because, as kind of a pretext to this whole thing, it’s not like The Apples have been unfashionable, we’ve always been brightly colored and kind of interestingly dressed. But we sort of had a motley fashion sense as a band. We were like indie-rockers and Generation X. So it’s not like we generally had a very together look as a band. It was almost against the philosophy of the band to have a together look. But for this record, there was the concept of time-traveling and stuff. So we’re kind of pretending to be time travelers while we’re on tour and we’re going backwards in time, is the concept of our tour. It’s like the storyline behind our tour is that we are The Apples in the future and we are doing a tour backwards in time. So we’re hitting the tour dates in reverse. So it didn’t make sense to have a fun concept like that without being a little theatrical. And maybe for The Apples of the future, it wouldn’t be against their philosophy to be that way [Chuckles]. And so there’s this designer in New York named Rebecca Turbow. And my wife was familiar with her work, kind of fashion stuff. She’s kind of an underground designer and she does really futuristic stuff, among other things. One of the things she does is really futuristic, alien-looking fashion. So I decided, at some point, to really pull off the concept of the record like we were trying to do and have it be this futuristic, sci-fi sort of thing, that we needed to have costumes. And as soon as I said that, my wife was like, ‘Oh, I know a good designer that would make awesome futuristic costumes and would also look really fashionable and cool, not like you’re just wearing a movie prop or something.’ And she had done costumes for other bands I like, including, of Montreal [an Athens, Georgia indie band] that I saw a photo of that I liked. They’re friends of ours. So anyway, we commissioned her to do it. And she did these awesome drawings, before we got the costumes, to like propose her ideas. And her drawings are so cool, we used them in the album art. So we do have futuristic costumes and sort of our kind of posture is that they are impervious to time traveling. So anyway, we have futuristic costumes, to answer your question. I guess I could have just said, ‘Yes.’ [Laughs] PCC: RS: PCC: RS: So we made friends. He’d maybe be in New York for a show. We’d run into him here and there over the years, kind of kept in touch loosely. And then, a few years ago, our contract with SpinART, our label that we had been on since our first album, had expired. And so, without getting into too long of a story, we took a long time making ‘New Magnetic Wonder,’ our last album, because we didn’t have a deadline. Like for the first time ever, since we had started recording our first album, we didn’t have somebody saying, ‘Hey, didn’t you say it was going to be done three months ago?’ And ‘Can I hear something?’ There was nobody to answer to, so we decided we would take the opportunity to finish our album without having a label expecting it from us and to try to put everything into it that we could, to try to make the perfect Apples record with no time constraints. That’s beside the point. The point is that our contract with SpinART was up. My only point there was that it was nice to be outside of a contract [Laughs] Sorry about that. A little stream of consciousness thing going on. Elijah contacted our manager. And he was starting his new label and he was wondering if Apples were interested in being the first band that he put out. We knew that he was a big fan. We also knew that he had deep and eclectic taste in music. Deep taste, kind of like a college radio deejay might. He pretty much fits into the mold of a college radio deejay. Like, if you just look at the guy, you’d go, ‘Oh, he clearly is a college radio, late night deejay.’ Anyway, his label [Simian] had some sort of distribution set up with Yep Roc Records, which was a label we were really interested in. At that time, quite a few labels had contacted us. But Yep Rock were probably at the top of the heap for us. And then Elijah is the president of this label and then having distribution through this other label we liked, it just seemed too perfect. Because he’s a really cool kind of president of a label. You feel like he’s going to get your music and support your artistic aims, even if they’re non-commercial... or even if they are... or whatever. That’s the main thing. I kind of saw him as being a kind of anti-Seymour Stein. Like he has the potential to be this great label head with this awesome taste, sort of an influence. But Seymour Stein, I think was reputed to be not the greatest person to get into business with. The Apples ourselves were on Sire Records, which was his label some years ago. But I had hung out with Seymour and I really liked him. I’m not trying to diss Seymour Stein. I’m just saying that Elijah seemed like a really positive version of somebody like that, somebody who’s an awesome label head and, at the same time, he has a really positive kind of energy. And his interests are very positive in general. I think of him as a very positive person. So yeah, that’s how that happened. PCC: RS: But just because we didn’t know about a better microphone, it didn’t stop us from thinking that we were trying to make these hits. So we were always trying to write and record hits. Definitely it is the goal of, I would say, any pop band, and definitely The Apples, to try to make the perfect album. At the same time, we had some space between the album before ‘New Magnetic Wonder’ and that album. And so I had a greater degree of perspective on our band. And I also had a feeling about what I thought the perfect Apples record should be. And I felt that The Apples records, all of them, were really great records and solid and really interesting and different from each other. And those were some of my goals. And I think that the songs stand up, all of the songs. But I felt like, as far as just the hits, like hearing our greatest songs, that they were spread out over our albums. I imagined that, if I were a kid, wanting to recommend The Apples to somebody else, you would recommend like maybe giving them a mix tape off of our albums. And our whole band decided that we wanted to try to make an album that would be the essential Apples album, everything we aspired to do, everything that we thought was awesome, everything we thought was great about writing a song and every great kind of song, that we were trying to put everything on this one record and make like the ideal Apples album, that would be like perfect. And, like I said, we had time to be able to do that. It wasn’t like we had people pushing us to finish. There’s always people pushing to finish. But we had some freedom, with time, with this record. Every record, when you look back at it and it’s done and it’s mastered, and it comes out, there’s always some flaws that you see on your record. And you’re like, ‘Oh, I wish I could have done that differently.’ ‘The snare drum could have been louder on this song’ or ‘That song was a little bright compared to the other songs.’ Some will be worse than that, like ‘Oh, I totally forgot to put that lead guitar part on there that I’ve been playing live’ or ‘We left the Vocoder out of the mix.’ [Laughs]. Or whatever. I mean, on the new album, there were moments like that, too, where it’s like, ‘We left the background vocals out at some points’ or like only the vocoders were there. It worked out nicely. It worked out organically, but it wasn’t necessarily planned. Oh, I’d like to comment, it just occurred to me, that the larger scale the production you’re working on, and the more planning that’s involved in making it, the more unplanned things happen. It’s funny that the more you’re doing something that seems controlled and seems like it’s going to work together as a whole, the more chaos is somehow being bred internally [Chuckles]. I don’t know what the deal is with that. But I realized that on the last two Apples records where we really tried to go for a majestic kind of production. There are so many little - it’s not that they’re errors. It’s just that you would think that, with all of the technology and everything, that it would be perfection. Completely smooth perfection. And yet it actually, the more you put into it, the less perfect it gets. It’s great that it’s that way, that it doesn’t become overworked. I hope not, anyway. I like to think that it’s not. Okay, I was totally off track there... Did I answer the question? What was your question? PCC: RS: There’s definitely a danger. As a producer, your ear will get used to the new technology, when you hear it in the culture and you hear it in other people’s music. And then you don’t notice the genericness of it, when it’s being applied to your music. That’s the danger. And that’s what happens with bands, as they get older. You hear artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s now and it’s like, ‘Oh, my God! They’re using a fretless bass and like the chorus guitar’ or whatever!’ It’s like, ‘What are they thinking?’ [Chuckles]. That’s something that I feel wary of, is not becoming immune or desensitized to the sound of the technology that’s sort of generic and is smeared over all the music that uses that technology. It’s just like that music of the ‘70s or the ‘60s, part of what makes it sound like it’s from the ‘70s or the ‘60s was the technology. Most of it. If you took a ‘60s recording studio and put it into your modern day and recorded on it, it would still sound like the ‘60s, even if you’re recording now, with new people. So the smear of technology across the music is something that Apples use consciously. Like, when we’re slick, we’re really trying to be slick on purpose. And when we’re not being slick, it’s because we’re not being slick on purpose. It’s not like we’re masters of technology or something. But I feel, at least for myself, as a producer and engineer that I’m completely in control of it, even though I don’t really understand all of it [Chuckles]. Because the thing I don’t understand or I haven’t heard of before, I don’t know what it is, why would I use it? I’m only going to use the thing that I need to use. And when I hear a sound in my head and I have to figure out a way to make it happen, at that point, you’re speaking a new technology. A lot of times, though, that sound is better matched by old technology, for me. So, yeah, does that answer the question? I’m so sorry to be a little scattered. We have a show today and we’re starting the tour and stuff, so I’m a little spastic. PCC: RS: No, so basically, on this record, it really was different from our other records, because I wrote all the songs on piano. So the songwriting has a different quality. I envisioned the production to be futuristic, but while I was writing the songs, I wasn’t trying to do anything on purpose except write hit songs... and meaningful songs. There’s sort of a balance there, because, as a producer, I’m really conscious of the different sounds we’re using and we’re trying on purpose to do certain things conceptually. But then as a songwriter, it’s important for me, for it not to be conceptual. Like I don’t want to write futuristic songs for the future. I want to write songs for the public domain, that’ll last into the future. So, in the production, we want it to be like a time capsule. On the songwriting side, I’d like to make songs that are good enough, that mean enough, that they survive. So, when I’m sitting there, like chugging away on the piano, I’m not thinking about whether this is going to sound like a UFO, particularly, or whatever. That stuff definitely comes more into play in the studio, after we’ve put down the piano and the drum track, stuff like that. Basically, at that point, on this record, every single production choice that was made after the basic tracks went down - the piano and the drums and maybe a couple of guitars - every choice that was made was based on, ‘Is it futuristic?’ If it’s not futuristic, does this sound like something we would have put on our last record? Then don’t use it, use something else that’s more futuristic, that sounds similar. So like, instead of using a horn, we’re using a telephone through a fuzzbox, which has a similar timbre. Or whatever. So, the answer to the question was ‘No.’ [Laughs] Although I do love playing the synthesizer. And we’ve always used heavy synthesizers on Apples records. The difference is that these songs weren’t written on guitar, so the rhythm guitar isn’t the main, driving instrument. The main driving instrument is keyboard. It’s kind of funny, too. In my mind, this record is reallypiano-heavy. But I don’t even know if I hear the piano in it now, when I listen to it [Laughs]. There’s so much kind of outer space stuff. And I wanted that. Anybody can make a piano record. I wanted to make a UFO record. Nevertheless, it’s funny, because, in my mind, it’s really piano-heavy, but then when I actually hear it, when I walk into a store or something and I hear the song, it’s like, ‘Whoa, is there piano? Did I write that on piano?’ PCC: RS: I’ve written a lot of songs, so I don’t feel the need to like construct songs anymore. When I was younger, I used to do that sometimes. Like I would want to write a certain kind of song or I would try to take two different songs that both had good hooks and try to smash them together into one song. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Those are great ways to write songs. But now, unless the song really imposes itself on me, I don’t want to muddy up my songwriting. Unless a song imposes itself on me as being absolutely necessary, then I just won’t finish it or I won’t even start it usually. PCC: RS: Then, other times, they’ll be like a little bit more riff-based. Like I’ll have an awesome, chugging piano riff or some sort of really interesting chord progression or a great guitar riff and I’ll like play it over and over and over again. It’s not like I’m singing at that point. I’m just playing. I’ll play the riff. And as a musician, there’s a lot of pleasure in just playing a riff repetitively. So I’ll like be playing the piano riff over and over, being lost inside the sound. And then, it’s like suddenly, a melody will emerge in my head. And it happens instantly. Those are also the best kinds of songs. So like, I’ll already have a great riff, which is hard to find sometimes. I’ll already have a great chord progression. And I’ll just be playing it with pleasure. And the the melody will just pop out suddenly. I’ll try to catch that melody. That’s the other best way for a song to happen. The melody is contained in the chords somehow. And it’s just sort of like, of all the possible melodies that could be in there, one of them sort of emerges spontaneously at one point. And you have to, at that point, have a tape recorder or something to be able to quickly capture it, because it will flow into some other new melody. But sometimes I’ll think, ‘Oh, this is the hookiest melody’ and I’ll be chugging away and singing it with all my heart and it’ll be like, ‘This is a great song, a total hit! It’s awesome! This is a song for the future generations. And I’ll never forget this great song.’ Then, the next time I sit down, I’m like, ‘Oh, shit! I can’t remember it!’ And all I can remember is some slightly simpler or slightly different version that doesn’t quite feel the same when I sing it. So it’s important to capture them while you can. I guess what I like, when I’m writing a song, is for it to be as if somebody else wrote it and I just heard it, rather than I really was inside it, trying to write it myself. I don’t feel a sense, as a writer, wanting to express myself. I feel more a sense of wanting to connect to some kind of cosmic human something. I don’t know what. So that’s, for me, the most pleasurable way to write. And then there’ll be other times when it’s like a cartoon wants me to write a song for Disney or whatever. Or like I’ll have a commission to do a commercial, TV ad or something like that. And then you are constructing a song. But even then, I try to launch into it, because they’re going to want the best song. So I’ll try to launch into it with a really simple poppy chord progression that I’m comfortable with, like ‘Wild Thing’ or something, and see if a melody emerges. Like there’s so many melodies in ‘Wild Thing.’ It’s like, in constructing the song, I made the choice to have a ‘Wild Thing’-type chord progression. But then, at that point, I’ll try to jump into it with enthusiasm and sometimes a good way to write songs for me is I’ll start to play the guitar or the piano, without having any chord progression or anything, and I’ll start singing at the same time. And I’ll just see if something will happen. And a lot of times, something will, like, right away, it’s as if I’m playing a song that I already knew. So also there’s some good songs that come out that way. PCC: RS: But no, I think it started in high school, when I really started hearing it. I was interested in music as a kid, but I can remember the first time I sat down and strummed a guitar chord, and I closed my eyes and I heard an orchestra playing the chord with the guitar. I was about 15. That was one of the experiences that defined my productions and my whole life probably. And I remember sitting on my bed, as a teenager, young kid, strumming an A chord. and in my mind, there was this richness to it. And all of these flutes and violins and stuff playing. And I heard them in my ears as if they were playing at the same time, in the same room. I think, from that point on, I started really hearing dense arrangements, when I would record. I would hear some arrangements, even when I was writing a song. Even as a high school kid, I would hear a spartan sort of arrangement, bass lines and stuff like that, in my head, as I would be strumming it and stuff. I like that. It’s a nice feeling. It’s a lot of work to pull it off, though, in the studio. Like it’s a really huge effort and I’ve gone through periods where I wasn’t sure the effort was worth it, because you can get just as much of an emotional response out of something really primitive, like a cassette recording or a four-track recording. But you don’t measure everything by the amount of response you get from it. You measure it by how satisfying it is to you artistically. And it’s like, one year, you want to just play acoustic guitar and that’s what you’re into. And you feel really raw about it and that’s all you want to do is record it on a four-track. And that doesn’t mean that it’s a better year or a worse year than the year that you want to have somebody put a lot of money into letting you make a record that has like thousands of tracks on every song and sounds like space music or something. I go back and forth. Like I went through a period, before ‘New Magnetic Wonder,’ when I completely lost faith in complex production and I decided it was completely empty and like nothing but frills and that, aside from just the song and the singing, the vocal performance, it didn’t matter what the backing track was. I recorded an album with my band Ulysses that we recorded live in my garage with one microphone, in mono. And it was awesome and really raw. And I really still feel great about it, like listening back to it. And that kind of satisfied my anti-psychedelic production period. At that point, I kind of came out of it and came to the conclusion that, yes, it might be the case, possibly, that it doesn’t matter what the accompaniment is, it’s all about the song and the vocal performance, that’s all that matters. But nevertheless, accompaniment can be glorious and there’s a lot of special attention you can pay to it. It’s kind of like you can make that like a classical composition, while the song and the singing are still just a raw pop song. And that’s kind of like where I am right now. I feel like, with the backing track, I’d like to have the density of a classical composition, not that we’re trying to be classical at all. I’d just like to have that kind of intricacy. And like, at the same time, the songwriting and the vocals don’t depend on that at all. They’re not at all clever. They’re just like pure and kind of like universal. I think that’s sort of maybe the goal. PCC: RS: In high school, I got ‘Pet Sounds.’ I had gotten ‘Sgt. Pepper’ in the summer of 1987, when there was all that hype around the 20th anniversary of The Summer of Love. I was 16 that year and totally bought into the hype. I was just like, ‘Summer of Love is all over again.’ I loved it. I was so into psychedelic music anyway. So I totally believed in the second summer of love. So I had gotten into ‘Sgt. Pepper’ that year and I had read that Paul McCartney had said that ‘Pet Sounds’ was the best record ever and that it influenced ‘Sgt. Pepper.’ So I got ‘Pet Sounds’ and it became like the soundtrack to my life for many years, while I was a teenager and into my twenties. It was in the background on dates and all of my sensitive experiences. I really felt like that sort of melancholy, distant, sort of hopeful kind of person, like the singer on the record, that the character of the singer conveys. So, at the time, I didn’t pick it apart at all. I was still trying to hear like what was special about the drum sound of the snare drum. That used to really mystify me in high school. I would listen to Beatles records and be like, ‘What is it about the snare drum that’s different about modern snare drums?’ Because I didn’t know about reverb and all the fancy stuff they were using in the ‘80s on snare drums. All I knew was that the snare drums sounded great. And what is it? I kind of picked apart that it had more treble, maybe it was a little more distant in the mix. I didn’t know. I was obsessing over things like that in high school, as far as the production goes. I couldn’t quite hear the full arrangement, even though I was into doing arrangements. I mean, Brian Wilson’s arrangements are miles beyond something like The Beatles. Not to say that The Beatles aren’t just as good or better. But just in terms of his arrangements, the complexity and density of the instrumentation and stuff. It’s like nothing else. I still can’t pick it apart. I still can’t listen to something like ‘Pet Sounds’ and really pick apart the instrumentation. Except I can pick out obvious things, like there are three instruments all playing the same instrumental line and they mix together together to sound like a new sound. And then I can copy that. And in the last few years, I’ve been able to sort of get the kinds of chord changes he was doing on the piano, these dense changes. And, the new record, even though it sounds nothing like ‘Pet Sounds,’ the chord changes on the piano, if you heard them on their own, kind of sound like ‘Pet Sounds.’ [Laughs] So yeah, it’s a little hard to pick apart for me. I’ve always gone about it hearing a few primary sounds in the music and then sort of like filling in with my own sort of shoddy details in the production. PCC: RS: My music sounds so imperfect to me. There’s so much more that I want to do and that I wanted to do on every record. PCC: RS: I love sci-fi, but I especially love futurism and the futuristic mythology. And comic books kind of portray that. That’s actually one reason for the new record being the way that it is. There was a theme on Apples records, even going back to our earliest EPs and stuff, I’d say something like 25 percent of Apples songs are about UFOs or outer space or physics and stuff like that. There was sort of a science-fiction-y theme. So I had always had the ambition to make a record that was sci-fi sort of themed. It wasn’t necessarily a time capsule concept. That was more recent. But I have always had the ambition of making a UFO kind of pop record. I didn’t know what that meant. I just had that ambition to make one that was based on a sci-fi or outer space kind of concept. I had a series of experiences, for instance, going to Tomorrowland, at Disney World, with my family a couple of years ago, and things like that. I had few sort of sci-fi experiences that clinched in my mind that this was the time, this was going to be the album, this was going to be our sci-fi album. But definitely I have always had that interest. I study mathematics and physics and stuff, too. And I’m a math major at university right now, on the side from touring and stuff. PCC: RS: PCC: RS: But like, I’m interested in taking mathematical structures and applying them to music somehow. And like it’s not my main interest. But I have the knowledge base to sort of experiment with that. It’s if you want the world to be futuristic in the future, then you try to be futuristic now. So I’m interested in trying new structures and notations and ideas and stuff like that, even though it’s not necessarily my number one thing. My number one thing is just beauty and trying to do things that are beautiful. But my number two thing is trying to do things that are futuristic and different. So yes, I’m working on it. PCC: RS: Then about a year later, my brother-in-law, that I record with, I have a band called Thee American Revolution with him, actually, he told me he would help me. He had figured out to use MIDI to do stuff like that. And he helped me use a tone generator to make the scale so I could play it on the keyboard. And so that was right around when Apples were making the ‘Magnetic Wonder,’ so it made its way onto that album. And we recorded a bunch of compositions for the new album, too, with the scale. But, like, when we put them in the sequence of the record at the end, even though this record was so different from the last record, it was like we were literally trying, at every turn, to not do the thing we did on the last record. Like, if we were going to put an instrument on here that was on the last record, we wouldn’t use it, but would instead use something else. It was part of our manifest for making this record, to replace the old sounds with new sounds. So, in the end, we ended up throwing out a lot of the compositions, even though they’re really cool. I’m going to put out a whole album of them at some point. But there is one song, ‘C.P.U.,’ on the new record, that was sort of an experiment in writing a pop song in the regular chromatic scale and then having it sort of be fused with instrumental sections that are in the logarithmic scale. On the one hand, I had a good song that had only two chords, so it was possible to do that. On the other hand, I was interested to see, can you play a kind of primitive song with a rock band and then put this new scale over it. Will it work or will they clash? We were careful about doing it, so I think it worked out okay. So, that’s probably an example of me trying to be a little futuristic. At the same time, I had the idea, and I’m an artist and a musician and a composer and I am interested in using various things for arts or whatever. Like, as a producer, I love using found sounds and sound effects and various kinds of objects as instruments and stuff like that. So I guess I am interested in finding different sounds to use in making music. So, the scale, as soon as it came to me, it was obvious that’s a new way that I could make music. I got all excited about it. Recently, I modified a toy called the Mattel Mindflex, to make it so that you can operate a synthesizer with your mind, as well. And that was another thing where it was like, I had the idea, my family bought me the Mindflex and I immediately thought, you could control a synthesizer with it. So at that point, it was like, ‘Well, what would the music sound like? There’s a burning urge that I have to do it.’ So I kind of like pushed it through and learned how to do it and made the thing work. I found the wires that enabled you to do that are inside the toy and I plugged it into my synthesizer and it worked. It was such a great feeling. And then I made a composition for it and we had a performance. And now I feel kind of satisfied. You can make music like that with your brain. And other people have done it, too. It’s not like I’m the first person to do it. If there’s a futuristic toy, maybe you can make futuristic music with it. PCC: RS: My focus has been on finishing The Apples album and then touring and stuff like that. And already I’m looking towards other new projects. And that’s an ongoing project. It exists and it’s at a very highly developed stage right now. But it’ll have to be once the touring has wrapped and we’ve wound down a little bit for our record before I can really dive back into it. PCC: RS: PCC: RS: So I would say, if you have a cool idea, you put a little bit of work into it, you don’t have to finish it or master it, then that’s art. You’re doing art. And then like, you take it as far as you want to and you’re like satisfied and then it’s over. And that’s art. And so, I guess I am kind of interested in that, but I guess I’m not conscious of it... but I really like that you said that. Thank you. It makes me feel good. Because you worry about that sometimes. I’m 39 now, when I was younger, I always used to worry that, I always assumed, when I was in my twenties, that I would run out of songs by the time I was 39. But like, I’ve written more songs in my last few years than I wrote in all of my twenties put together. And I’ve put out more records. And I’m happier with the songs. In fact, I think that they’re much better. I’m not sure that the productions and everything about the music is better, because you change over time. Like my goals were different then. But I feel that my songwriting is better. And I write more songs. So, I don’t know. I’m sure that time will still come. But that’s when I’ll have a lot of half-written songs left over that I can... I mean, like I said, the song needs to impose itself on me. So you never know. I guess, if songs are no longer imposing themselves on me, I’d be happy not to write them. PCC: RS: Even when I was recording with fuzz guitars and four-tracks and stuff like that, we were to make this sort of interconnected little baroque kind of piece of noise. And I would say that’s kind of still my goal. In addition, it’s become more my goal, as I’ve gotten older, to write songs that mean something to other people. I mean, I always wanted to write meaningful songs, but when I was younger, I was also so involved with trying to figure out the production, the drum sounds and stuff like that, the arrangements and how to make the arrangements work, different elements of orchestration and things like that, that was all mixed in together. It’s not like I’ve mastered it now. But as I gotten better at that, it became more important to me - like I said, I had that crisis some years ago - and it became more important to me to really try to write true songs that are great. You can’t say that your own songs are great. But you can write songs that really, really feel like something when you’re singing them. And if you write a song that really feels like something while you’re singing it, it feels like somebody else wrote it, like you can’t even believe that you wrote it. And maybe you didn’t. Maybe you ripped it off. You keep asking your friends if this sounds like something else to them. Like those are the kinds of songs that I feel I want to write now. When I was younger, I was sometimes like, ‘Oh, I want to write a song like The Jackson Five’ or ‘I want to try to write a song like Pavement’ or whatever. Now I feel more like I’m just trying to write songs and maybe in the production, I’ll try to pour in some of the elements from other bands that I love. PCC: RS: THE APPLES IN STEREO ON TOUR:
Oct 26 Seattle Crocodile Cafe Oct 27 Portland Mississippi Studios Oct 30 San Francisco The Independent Oct 31 Sacramento Blank Club Nov 1 Los Angeles Echoplex Nov 2 San Diego Casbah Nov 3 Tucson, AZ Plush Nov 5 Austin Fun Fun Fun Festival Nov 7 Houston Walter’s on Washington Nov 8 Dallas Granada Theater Dec 9 London, United Kingdom King's College London Students Union |
