Almost four years after the release of – Drink the Sea – you’re about to unveil your second album – Love Death Immortality.
The transition between these two is quite impressive. Drink the Sea was/is for me an atmospheric, highly melodic album, one you’re listening from track one to track ten in the right order because you’re listening to a unique and beautiful story, one you do not want to fast-forward.
Following « We Can Make The World Stop », Love Death Immortality is more mature, « banger » in a certain way and more live oriented. It’s like you’re giving back all the crazy things you’ve lived/experienced where every track tells a story, rather than the whole album itself.
What was your state of mind on this record?
With LDI we wanted to write and craft a record that was mostly geared for the live stage but also keeping in mind all of the headphone listeners.
For us LDI is just another story to tell with higher peaks and valleys. We explored new territories such as different tempos that we haven’t written in before, a different approach to mixing the songs with a brighter and heavier overtone than Drink The Sea.
We also kept the tool kit a bit more refined which helped keep the sounds from song to song a bit more cohesive. It was merely just another exploration in sound and story telling for the three of us.
After the release of « We Can Make The World Stop », you went to Joshua Tree to begin the work on this new album. I won’t ask you if you got lost or took mushrooms like Ari and the boys of Entourage, but I want to know how beneficial was this experience for you?
This was something we had talked about doing for a while and when the time came to start writing LDI we thought Joshua Tree would be the best place to go and find inspiration and solitude to begin the journey of our second full length album.
Joshua Tree and our time spent out there served as more or less a palette cleanser or a place to plant the seeds of what we wanted to accomplish and to really focus in on what our collective vision was for this record and where we see it going.
So yes, It was extremely beneficial and the perfect way to kick creative energy and ideas into gear!
What is the best story of Joshua Tree besides Herbert, the scorpion named after a Facebook poll?
Some of the best Joshua Tree stories are us wondering around finding random stuff to make sound with and record.
Throughout the entire record we injected tons of recordings from J Tree, everything from old springs and cans rusting in the sun, to throwing glass bottles at old broken down cars, to random box turtles wondering across the desert.
We recorded a bunch of thunderstorms that would roll through and nightly coyotes howling at the moon. It’s an extremely vibrant and magical place.
On March 12th, 2012, Boreta talked about some drafts (skeleton of tracks) you produced in the desert: ‘Cray’, ‘Harley’, ‘Yacht Sex’, ‘Sunshine’ & ‘Ampy Shred’.
Does any of them where being reworked and are in « Love Death Immortality »?
Yes, all of them except for Sunshine made it onto the record. We use working titles for the entire process until we can see the end is nearing and start digging into the actual song titles, but we enjoy the working titles and get a good kick out of them.
Is there a draft you really wanted to include in the album but someway it wasn’t good enough or you just couldn’t get it right?
Yeah there were a couple that didn’t make it on but we are also good at letting songs go when they aren’t making the cut.
Do you plan to release in a near future a project like – Love Death Immortality Part II Mixtape – (like you did with Drink The Sea)?
No plans at this point, but we have talked about it and if we get some time in between touring we’ll probably do some sort of mix again. Hard to say at this point.
On your Reddit AMA, you said « unreleased sketches will see the light of day some time ». Can we expect something this year?
Probably not this year, we are currently focusing on the upcoming tours and making it the best show possible.
We’ll get to other things like mixtapes and older sketches when we have time off of touring but for now it’s all about the live show!
You’ve spent a lot of time to create an album that was perfect in every way for you even if you had to “test it” with 10+ pairs of headphones.
I know you’re working hard on your tour right now, what can we expect with that level of dedication?
We are currently in the process of building all the live show pieces so we can’t really say exactly what it’s going to look like etc but we can say that we give it our all and we have our hands in every element from sound to lighting to visual content to what our instruments look like etc.
It will be our best show yet 🙂
From early listen in iTunes Radio, Deezer and Spotify, to selling new merch in your own online store, you’re using new channels of distribution and are really present online.
Following criticism from some artists about these platforms, how important it is for you to use them and what do you think of these tools, as producers but also as fans?
For us we just want the music to be out there and available to as many people as possible.
Any and all platforms are cool with us. We don’t think any are better or worse, it’s just the way of the current day and we roll with it.
We try to have an outlet for every type of listener from CD and vinyl to lossless HD tracks to an easy iTunes mp3 download, whatever floats your boat!
Thank you very much !