domingo, 22 de novembro de 2009

finalmente, a entrevista a Peaking Lights




pá, demorou, mas aqui está. Os Peaking Lights demoraram um tempito a responder, por questões pessoais... e eu não quero esperar mais tempo ao fazer uma 2a volta de perguntas. por isso, aí está. E sim, virão à Europa tocar.

esperrem um bocadinho, e depois aparece um mp3 ou algo do género.

So, how come did peaking lights form and become a Band?
Aaron: We moved to Wisconsin right at the onslaught of winter. We got asked to play south by southwest by craig stewart from emperor jones in one of our other projects called RAHDUNES but needed something to tour with, because indra and I were in Wisconsin and Nate (our Rahdunes band mate) was in sf… We wrote Clearvoiant right before we left and it was a complete disaster trying to play it live on the way down, but really fun to essentially fail miserably every night!

Indra: Like Aaron said, we were in Rahdunes together in San Francisco, and when we moved to Wisconsin we left our other band mate, so we needed a new project! It was the middle of the winter of ’08, with a record amount of snow on the ground outside, and nothing to do but create music inside! I had been playing drums mostly in other bands, and was excited to try playing melodies on the keyboard… And with Aaron’s homemade synths and guitar things came together!
 
The NNF site says you live out there in the bush, completely apart from street buzz and city fevers. Was it related to your musical search? 
Aaron: I grew up in the cuts/woods/country and then moved to big cities and lived in them for a long time… and always wanted to get back, when we moved to Wisconsin it was our first thought to get isolated. For music for sure, but also I think just for personal sanity, wind down, smell the air, hear the birds in the morning, see the stars at night and look for ufo’s in the pitch black starry skies or just see the moon huge and silver…I guess just to get back to it all for whatever reason was a huge inspiration, we essentially removed ourselves from social activities and maybe in a selfish, or spiritual way just got in touch with some of those inner voices that you can’t hear with traffic rumbling by.

Indra: We move to the woods in the spring, and wrote “Imaginary Falcons” during a summer of lush green beauty and swimming in the rivers for our inspiration! We didn’t even have internet that whole summer! Nature is the best environment for tuning in, and clearing your mind to focus. It’s great to get away from the distractions of the modern world.

In an age when even science has become redemptive, do you see music ( and / or your music ) as an opener of spiritual pathways?
Aaron: I can’t really attach one exact way as how it is I see music. Music has been been the one thing that’s kept me from going overboard, I know I can kind of be an intense person, so it really is a force that keeps me grounded. I believe in telepathic power and every human has it. I believe that human kind has been on earth much longer than the western world wants us to believe, I believe in ufo’s and unexplained things, and I also believe that I don’t know what I will believe tomorrow. It’s like we’re at this time in the world when it seems that everything has been done before, but it’s not the case there’s always gonna be infinite possibilities it’s kinda like being spiritual instead of religious…

Indra: I really do see music as opening pathways - spiritual, or mental, or emotional. For myself, I feel I get the best ideas when I try to open that psychic door. Sometimes things flow from a collective higher consciousness and other times my own higher consciousness, I think. But music is very intuitive, and the less you think about what you’re doing, the easier it becomes to tap into ideas.


Some of your stuff is long, smooth, and almost gives the sense of its self-developing. Do you approach this jam-wise or is it thoughtful composition?
Aaron: Both-wise. A little jammy jam here and a little composition there. I’d go fucking nuts if there wasn’t some freedom in what we play.

Indra: We like to jam on certain ideas, so songs aren’t always played exactly the same. But we do write songs and parts, and some of our songs have a beginning middle and end, while others get lost in the moment.
 

Other stuff lives strongly by its haiku mood and mode. Could you pinpoint some impacts in your musical education?
Aaron: For the most part I’m completely self taught. From a young age at some point; In my early 20’s I got some recording stuff. Smoking weed and recording blew my little mind to shreds! I started experimenting, with all the aspects of recording, panning shit, e.q.ing’ the fuck out of things! Running different delays and then building contraptions for mic’s - then about a year later I started trippin’ on tape loops and started pre recording stuff and cutting loops out of them, doing these crazy tape music thingys, which eventually led to circuit bending stuff… I had no reference point to this though, it’s not like I was tapped into all this amazing stuff that was going on at that time, at least not until later sometime in my mid 20’s... It took a bit for me to find a supportive community. Not that it wasn’t out there, but I just had no grasp of it. No interweb, it was still the days of zines and mailorder… I also grew up on the west coast surfing everyday, cutting school and going surfing, and surfing in my dreams. I got really lucky to have a laidback life as a kid, living by the ocean and in the country. I have no doubt that this has had the most effect in making me feel free enough to start doing whatever it is that has become what is now…

Indra: I’ve been in bands for years, but I started out with some formal music education – I learned classical piano growing up. Then as a teen I got into punk and I took up drums – I think I had one lesson from a friend and then just taught myself. Once I got down the basic coordination I realized I could play however I wanted! It was a freeing experience after the rigid classical piano training…So I was in a couple punk bands and then played in Numbers and Dynasty – and that’s when I became I lot more focused on playing and singing. When I met Aaron I was just wrapping stuff up with Numbers and starting jamming with him and Nate Archer in Rahdunes. That was a huge step in my education because everything was improvised and that can be totally challenging but also totally rewarding when it all clicks and you get lost in the moment of sonic bliss! It really opened me up to the idea of what songs can be. I was so used to writing very structured songs in Numbers, and learning to improvise songs was a huge step for me. PL is a balance between the two – our love of pop songs with our love of tone jamming.

Books, film, painting, high and low brow art. Does it get to you and affect your views towards your music?
Aaron: I love to paint and draw and make films so this all plays deep into that spider web of my mind and heart… they definitely play into each other and inspire each other as well in infinite area. I guess it could be like: looking at such and such a painting makes my eyeballs sing…and so forth.
 
Indra: Sure! I think all art forms bounce off each other.

I was told that your live sound emulates precisely the textures of your recordings. why do you feel this is important?
Aaorn: Half the challenge is trying to pull this stuff live. If we do pre recorded tracks, just because certain issues with the tape machines, we have to play them live before hand, live for 15 minutes. It’s hard as balls to keep your focus for that long on playing one repetitive thing, but we’re not down with using loop pedals as a personal choice, and because if we play live we can make more structured rhythms and more harmonies and melodies.
 
Indra: We play all the song parts ourselves but because there’s just the two of us we have to pre-record the drums and other sounds.. Then we can focus on the live parts and sing live but still have it sound full.

Any plans on future releases?
Aaron: A split 7” with Wet Hair on Not Not Fun should be out soon, also working on a split with Social Junk on Ecstatic Peace and we’ve almost got enough new material for a new full length…and are hoping to have new stuff out by the time we head across the Atlantic in March!