TV On The Radio
Tuning In
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Weary, but thankful and reflective on his young band's rise to acclaim, the group's Tunde Adebimpe talked to two of NATN's braintrust within a fortnight's time. The results, for your perusal:
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OCT. 6, questions by Tyson Wheatley
NATN: How are you today?
Tunde Adebimpe: I'm fine; a little bit jetlaggy. We've been touring pretty much since last October. We just got back from Europe, and we're about to go out for another six weeks, touring with the Faint. It's a lot of traveling.
NATN: What should we expect this tour?
TA: The same songs; we've just tailored them more for a live setting. I'm not really into hearing an exact recreation of what I have at home. It's amazing to me ... as an adult, I don't go to as many shows as I'd like to anymore. But I remember the reason I started going to shows was because of the rock-show energy and lack of self-consciousness; the energy that sort of erased the wall between the performer and the audience.
NATN: How do you write your songs?
TA: In a variety of different ways. Some of it is done on four-track, then we build off of that in the studio. Like "Staring At The Sun." I had done it on four-track, then brought it to Dave for instrumentation, to fill it out. "Dreams" is kinda that way too. A large portion of Desperate Youth was written from the roots of our four-hour-long improvisations that we would do every day in this house that Dave had his home studio in New Jersey. Then we would go back and take whatever recordings of that jam session, and listen through for sounds and start to extract what could be roots for songs. And maybe a conversation that we had during the day would end up being part of the lyrics. Like Kyp wrote the lyrics for "The Wrong Way," which came directly out of one groove of a four-hour improvisation and then a conversation we had later that night about race and politics in America. So looking back, we kinda made a decision to write like that. The only plan was to not really have a plan. To just come in the studio with whatever was on our minds and hash it out gradually from there. I feel like its the most accurate way to document the time that you're going through... to not really plan it out, but more to just blurt it out and carve it up afterwards.
NATN: The term "art rock" seems to be a dominant term to describe your band. What do you think it means?
TA: I don't even know. I remember that someone described Sonic Youth to me as art rock. And the Velvet Underground as art rock. And someone links Sun-Ra to art rock. But what it means? I don't really know exactly. Maybe it's a quality of assigning something that's not using conventional methods. Art rock implies a certain amount of pretension. But I don't know why that is either.
NATN: Are you worried that expectations are getting too high for the group?
TA: You sometimes get that feeling. We've all been in a van, or a bus for about a year now. And the only notification that things are going well, are people are coming to the shows and knowing us. and saying "oh, I read about you in this magazine. It's going great!" And we don't really know about (the press). We just gonna keep making what were making. I remember when the EP got even a little bit of attention. It was weird. It goes from your friends being like "good job, good job, I'm glad you finally made something after talking about it for years." And then people your don't know start saying they've heard your CD. And then people you really, really don't know start e-mailing you and being like "this is really amazing and I'm in Russia and listening to this." And that's before we made the LP. For me, it was the first time that I'd even thought about the fact that something I was making could reach someone who I didn't know on the other side of the world like that immediately. It was kind of a really good feeling and a weird feeling. I feel like the kind of band that we are, we shouldn't even be a band. When we do come together to make stuff, the purpose is to see exactly what we can come up with and how we can communicate with each other and turn it into something that we can listen back to. We can't do anything but make a record, and whether people like it or not is completely out of our hands.
NATN: What about the hype surrounding the New York scene?
TA: It's always weird to think about that. Because, especially the area we're in -- Williamsburg (Brooklyn) -- it's incredibly supportive in the creative community and it's getting a lot harder to live there, like price-wise and everything. But it's still got a lot of people doing really good work. Musically, it was just weird. Whenever you read about it, you realize that when lots of bands from one area start to get press, it's really easy to just label it one thing rather than go into how varied the things that are going on are. Even though they might be related. They're really not. So what we worry about is hearing the New York scene as a sound associated with that sequence of words. Like the sound that I heard when see the words "New York scene" is really not specific at all. And I worry that printing that up makes it seem like it's a very specific thing is going on. Which it probably turns into after people read that. That's probably how it does happen... like five years after the fact. In New York there's always the sense of excitement: that everything is really changing rapidly and there's the sense that it could all be over in less than 10 seconds. So you shouldn't just hanker down. You should make what your gonna make and say what your gonna say.
NATN: Is there a political message in the music?
TA: It's hard to be here in America. We were thinking about the war during the recording process. It's very easy to think about violence committed against someone else, it's a distance thing 'cause your watching it on a monitor or reading about it. But if you stop for a second and think "that's actually a human being -- that's someone kin no matter who it is. That's someone's kid killing someone else's kid, that's someone parent killing someone else's parent." That's the kind of thing that gives me the most pause. Maybe that's a very naive way to look at it, but that's where I get to when I think about it: "Where do we go from here?" That's one of the themes on the record. How did we as human beings get to a point were the most advanced model of conflict revolution in 2004 is still picking up a rock and crushing someone's skull?
NATN: Tell me about "New Health Rock."
TA: I think it's the direction that a lot of the next album will take. Live shows you want to be more energetic -- more of a sense of danger. I think that song definitely came out of that. The next album probably won't be as much of a downer. We are definitely at a point were we need to stop touring and start writing again. I'm real anxious to be back getting stuff in the studio. I love playing live, but it's a lot of energy exerted.
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OCT. 22, questions by Troy Carpenter:
NATN: Hi there. Is this a good time to chat?
TA: Yeah, absolutely. We're on our way to Miami, driving.
NATN: How's the tour going?
TA: Pretty well. We were in Jacksonville last night. We've been out for about 14 months now, so we're pretty tired. And glad to be winding down.
NATN: What's left for you?
TA: Right now, there's about 20 left.
NATN: Could you give me a bit of background on how the band formed?
TA: Sure. We started in about 2001, when James Sitek and I moved into this loft together. His brother lived there, and I didn't really know his brother. We just started hanging out and became friends, and we actually started off by painting and stuff together. Then I played him stuff that I had made on the four-track, and he played me some stuff that he had made for other bands -- some electronic music that he was making -- and we just decided to start working together on music. We pretty much did improv shows at this club called the Stinger Bar, and we tried to fill an hour and a half with the stuff we made for a month.
At the same time, we started writing songs that sounded more like songs, and that led to the Young Liars EP. Shortly after that, we added Kyp to the band. Then we recorded the new EP, and now we have five members. Jaleel Bunton on drums and Gerald Smith on bass, so our live band has five guys.
NATN: Is that five-piece setup just for the live shows or do you intend to record with everyone as well?
TA: Oh yeah, everybody's in the band now for the duration. We're working as a five-piece now.
NATN: How did you end up on Touch and Go?
TA: Dave Sitek met Cory Rusk, the head of the label. At the time he was roadie-ing for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs during their first tour, and he met Cory and played him some of the rough stuff that would end up on the EP. And they just kind of struck up a friendship, and when he got back from the tour Cory asked if we had anything else to send to them, just to hear it. We really didn't know that he was gonna end up wanting to put it out. I remember when Dave told me that, I actually didn't believe him. I was working some job and he said "Oh yeah, Touch and Go wants to put out our record." And I said "That's not really true. And that not a funny joke." But it turned out to be true, and they've been just really really incredibly supportive of what we're doing, and really hands-off -- more interested in what we're going to make than like telling us what to do.
NATN: Have you been contacted by other labels due to the media exposure and everything?
TA: Oh yeah, definitely. There have been some people calling and asking "What are your plans? what are your plans?" And we don't really have any significant plans to do anything with another label. At all. But yeah, even besides other labels, all manner of poeple start to show up once you make something. But it's out of our hands. I mean, we make records. But some dude called me up and was like "I make stickers in L.A. I make stickers for records. And I was really wondering if you guys would like a billion stickers for your records." And I was like "How do you have my phone number?"
NATN: Do you have a sense of the level of fame TV On The Radio has risen to?
TA: Well, we've been on tour for like a year and a half. So I keep hearing things about it, and my mom called and said "I saw you in Spin magazine" and I thought "Why is my mom reading Spin magazine?" So maybe that's a sign that we've reached a larger audience. But honestly, we've been on tour so long that I don't know if that's true.
NATN: What kind of music inspires you? What did you listen to when you were growing up?
TA: Growing up, I listened to whatever was on, whatever my parents were listening to. There was a lot of Nigerian music, Nigerian pop music. I guess Fela is the most recognizable name. A lot of Indian music, again Indian pop music, or Indian soul music. Jazz. My Dad, especially, has a very musical ear. And the first time I ever heard music that made me want to make music was when I was a teenager and I started hearing stuff like Bad Brains and Minor Threat, and later stuff on K Records. Where I was like "Oh, you can just find someone to record yourself, and you can pretty much make your own stuff." And not just wait around for someone to write a song that doesn't really affect you in any way. As far as vocalists, Nina Simone is probably one of hugest influences on me. I don't know if its a direct influence, so much as like ... it's weird the way the band works; like, when we're writing, influence just pops up subconsciously, and later you might hear it. That's the way I think about influences. They're all in there -- even if it might not come out in what you're making, the spirit of it is there.
NATN: Can you describe your songwriting process?
TA: There's a couple ways it'll happen as a band. If I have an idea, I'll put it down on a four-track with maybe like minimal guitar or just my voice making a sketch of it, and then I'll bring it to the band and we'll see if we can turn it into something. Kyp works that way as well. For most of the Desperate Youth sessions, a lot of those songs were improv sessions. We were living in this house in New Jersey where Dave's studio was, and we'd improvise for like three or four hours and record the whole thing on like two minidiscs. And then go back and listen to it and maybe cut it with the ProTools and chop like two minutes out of two hours of improvisation that sound like the roots of a song. And then we'd take those two minutes and then try to write over that and see if we can actually turn it into a song. So it's just whatever seems to start getting it done the fastest, that's what we use.
NATN: Have you been able to get anything written on tour?
TA: I've been able to get a lot of sketches for things down, but for me, I usually prefer to have a life to write about. And it's something that's making you want to sit down and write. On tour we get a lot of ideas for sounds and song structures, but as far as like content goes, I don't ever want to write a song about being on tour, ever in my life. I just think it'd be the worst possible thing to do. But yeah, there are a lot of sound sketches now. We recorded two things that are on this EP which were kind of refreshing to do.
NATN: Did you record "New Health Rock" with the five-piece lineup?
TA: Yeah.
NATN: And how was that different from the Desperate Youth sessions?
TA: Well, I think that song is like a result of how we decided to do the live show, which is a little more stripped-down and high-energy than the CDs are. So I think that song is kind of a natural extension of that. It's fun. It's just fun to play that way. I feel like sometimes, for lack of a better term, you just want to rock. The setup we have now really lends itself to that well.
NATN: Was it hard to translate some of the earlier TV On The Radio stuff to the live setting?
TA: It wasn't, really. It was probably after four practices that we realized it was possible. We tried almost every song at least two different ways before we decide which elements we like. But it's like making something on a four-track by yourself to having the rest of the band flesh it out. Those songs go through so many changes that it's fun to kind of break it down to like the basic elements of two guitars, drums and vocals and see what the structure does with that setup.
NATN: What is OK Calculator?
TA: Oh, it's a disc of 22 or 24 songs, depending on what copy you got, that Dave and I put out when we first started working together. Pretty much the four-track and eight-track stuff that we played for each other, then I think four songs that we worked on together. We made about 500 copies of it initially and made covers and just handed them out at shows, and left them in like bookstores, cafes, subway stations. So, it was officially the first TV On The Radio recording. We're gonna re-release it in a nicer form. Probably with a lot of animation that'll be with it.
NATN: What kind of animation?
TA: Oh, I make animated videos and I would like to make a few things to go along with that. Either like an enhanced CD or an entirely separate DVD to go with it. And I've got a lot of friends who are animators who I would like to do some videos for those songs. Cuz they're mostly kind of weird, lo-fi songs, And I'd love to give someone an assignment, like "here, here's a weird song about absolutely nothing. Make something to go with it."
NATN: Have you done any visual accompaniments for any of the other TV On The Radio stuff?
TA: Actually for this band, no. When we were working on Desperate Youth there wasn't really any time to do it. And we had friends who came up and said well 'I have an idea for this, can I give it a try?' And we were more than willing to let them do that. That kind of worked out, but for the next album I definitely want to be more involved with that stuff.
NATN: Are any of the songs on OK Calculator genesis for tracks on later records?
TA: I'm not sure, but I think there might be an early version of "King Eternal" on there. I think that that's about it though.
NATN: I guess that thing has spread largely via the Internet. How would you say the Internet -- downloading as well as promotionally -- has affected your career?
TA: I think word spreads a lot quicker, and I'm glad that it's there. As someone who's trying to make a living off of record sales, and who's trying to eat a meal based on record sales, I can't say I approve of downloading in that respect. But on the other side of it, I'm divided. I know that if I wasn't trying to do this for a living, I would, to the best of my abilities, try to go out and buy a record by someone whose music I appreciated, especially if they were on a smaller label and I knew they would actually see the benefits of that money. And they're not part of some big faceless conglomerate that already has more money than it knows what to do with. I don't know...I'm not gonna stop it myself. But I would ask people to be more selective. It's the kind of thing where, if it's a band, and you have someone doing PR for you, chances are, at least for a while, you're still gonna sell some records in the stores. But there's smaller bands who are just putting out a CD and it's getting around by word-of-mouth, and then you realize that your biggest mistake was putting a copy of it on the Internet, because now nobody is buying your record, and you can't really afford to make another one. If you're a smaller band, you know. And all your favorite bands start out as smaller bands. So I would just ask people to be more considerate about it.
NATN: How did you decide to include "Staring At The Sun" on the full-length?
TA: It was re-edited I think, the official reason was for time purposes. We wanted to include it because we were listening to Desperate Youth and it seemed to just fit in there. You know, "Dreams" and "Staring At The Sun" were written about the same time, and it just seemed to fit at the beginning, rhythmically. And it was also something where we were talking with people at Touch And Go, and we knew there would be more behind the LP, like it would be going to more places, and someone suggested "well, why don't you put something from the EP on it, because not many people know about the EP and maybe if they hear that they'd want to hear more." And at first I thought that was weird, but then I remembered that every Pixies album I got, I had almost every song from the album on an EP before I heard the actual album. So that was pretty much it. It just fit sort of thematically and seemed a good way to get people to...I guess if I'm like 16 or 18 or whatever and I hear this song and someone goes "yeah, well, this is on the EP" and I would go "what is an EP?" And suddenly a whole other world of smaller records opens up.
NATN: Well tell me about opening up for the Pixies?
TA: I feel really flattered to have been asked, but I'm really terrified to play, pretty much.
NATN: Did they ask you, or how did that come about?
TA: I never really know how that kind of stuff happens. Something happened after Lollapalooza got canceled, and I think that everyone was just trying to find a tour to jump on, and I think in the course of all of that, somebody from the Pixies called our agent and asked if we'd be available for one of the New York nights.
NATN: No clue if they've heard your cover of "Mr. Grieves"?
TA: Oh yeah, they have. Chris Sharp from 4AD told us that Kim Deal and Joey Santiago had heard it and that they liked it a whole lot. That is really cool, that's one of the highest compliments I could ever hope to recieve from anybody in my life, and actually I can die fairly happy now. But yeah, they totally apparently liked it, so I'm glad. I don't know if Frank Black likes it, but I'm not going to ask.
NATN: Can you think of anything else that's been like that, in just something that's happened to you as a result of being in the band?
TA: Yeah, there's a lot of things like that, just people that we've met. At a festival, we met ?uestlove from the Roots and he nominated us for a Shortlist award, which is just really nice...to meet someone whose music and writing about music you respect, saying they like your band. And there's been a few other instances. It's all been really really encouraging.
NATN: What's up next?
TA: Well, we're still in the van. And we've got two shows in December with the Pixies, and then allegedly we're gonna be playing with Funkadelic in Brooklyn, which is gonna pretty amazing if it happens. In February I think. Other than that, we're gonna take a lot of time off and do some writing. And stop being in boxes with wheels that move around all over the place.
NATN: Plans for the next record?
TA: We're gonna be recording in March, so I'm guessing the album will be out in May.
NATN: Where's that Funkadelic thing gonna be happening?
TA: It's sposed to be at the BAM, which would be really incredible.
NATN: In what way does New York play into your music?
TA: Well, as a creative person in New York, you're surrounded by more creative people, and that's more of an asset to being able to do it and being able to keep doing it. Psychologically I think having that kind of support makes you want to make more stuff, because you know you have people to share it with. And also it's just a really fucked-up city that makes you want to document your experience and the stories of the people you meet there. Even when it's just super cold and it's this potentially gelled-over right-wing hell-hole, it's still fascinating to see how people are reacting to that.
NATN: So just better fodder for songwriting than being on tour.
TA: Yeah, exactly. I could definitly write a bunch of songs sitting in a cabin by a lake, but they would just be about plants and plant names and phylums and genuses. New York helps you and kicks you to do things.
NATN: Finally, is there any sort of long-term vision for the band?
TA: We're just gonna keep going. There's no set plan, I think. Maybe someone else has a set plan. I think we're just gonna keep going the way we're going now. I really want us to focus on bringing the visual element of everything that we're doing up to speed with the audio side. I just feel like we can, so we should. But other than that, just keep making stuff, generally.
NATN: Thanks a bunch.
TA: Absolutely.
TYSON WHEATLEY |