Category Archives: Interview

Interview

On Lead Into Gold’s ‘Knife the Ally,’ Paul Barker Urges Musicians to ‘Challenge Yourself’

Lead Into Gold Paul Barker Press Photo by Mahsa Zargaran
(Photo: Mahsa Zargaran)

“I really don’t want to listen to any of the music that I listened in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I just don’t. I know that music so well, I don’t want to hear it anymore,” says Paul Barker. “It’s like listening to the Beatles. I love the Beatles, but I never listen to the Beatles because it’s part of our consciousness. You just grow up with it.”

Barker’s urge to lean into less familiar musical terrain extends to his own work. Active since the early 1980s, he played in Seattle post-punk band The Blackouts before going on to spend close to 20 years in Ministry. He released his first album as Lead Into Gold in 1990 and the most recent one this year. Knife the Ally is the name of the latest Lead Into Gold full-length, which was released via Artoffact Records in June. “The ally is industrial music,” he says and the album is, in a way, a call to arms, to do something musically different.

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Interview

On Birds of Paradise, SAADI Reflects on Human Nature and Digital Lives

Press photo of Boshra AlSaadi as SAADI by Laura Moreau
(Photo: Laura Moreau)

The urgency in “Cowboy in a Ghost Town” is potent. A galloping beat drives the song and the whip-slap sound of the snare comes in as SAADI sings, “You are a cowboy in a ghost town/You leave a dark legacy.” When I first heard the song, from the L.A.-based singer/multi-instrumentalist’s recently released sophomore album, Birds of Paradise, I thought it was about social media. There are references to shadowbans and people living in an “alternate reality.” 

“It’s about Gaza, actually,” Boshra AlSaadi says when meet up for a video call.  AlSaadi has written a number of songs about Gaza, but “Cowboy in a Ghost Town,” she says, is her most overt. Listening to it again, I’m struck by the poignancy of it, from the mix of anger and helplessness that’s in AlSaadi’s voice to the protest-like chorus that rises near the song’s end to the clear references to social media. AlSaadi captures not just the horror of watching a genocide unfold on your phone, but the frustration of knowing that you can’t stay silent, even when you’re posting into a void. 

“Seeing it unfold on your phone is horrific,” she says. “It’s unprecedented also.” 

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Interview

Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra Captures Our Fractured Reality on Have an Existential Crisis

Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra press photo by Becky DiGiglio
SPO-20 (the robot) and Professor B. Miller (the human) of Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra (Photo: Becky DiGiglio)

The first time I dropped the needle on my vinyl copy of Have an Existential Crisis, guest vocalist Spencer Moody kicked off the Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra album with “Pick ‘Em Up.” 

“I’m picking up the pieces/Of my belief system,” he sang in a voice that’s instantly recognizable if you ever listened to Murder City Devils. 

On my second listen, the same song played. This time though, Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra’s usual lead singer lamented the loss of core beliefs. 

“It’s crumbling apart,” the robotic SPO-20 declares, “Fact/By fact/By fact”

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Interview

Nuovo Testamento Continues Their Dance Pop Experiments on Trouble

Nuovo Testamento press photo by Kristopher Kirk
Nuovo Testamento (Photo: Kristopher Kirk)

Good things take time and Nuovo Testamento is a band that’s keenly aware of that. About a year after releasing their 2023 full-length, Love Lines, the L.A.-based trio returned to the studio and, just last month, they released the result, a five-song EP called Trouble. In the context of recorded music’s history, two-and-a-half years isn’t much of a gap between releases. Still, singer Chelsey Crowley says, during the in-between time, the band heard, “you guys haven’t put out music in so long.”

It’s an extension of the art vs. content debate. How often should bands be releasing music? Should you pump out the jams to satiate the platforms or wait until the songs you want to make are ready? Crowley offers a definitive answer. “We prefer to have songs that we like,” she says. “We’ll let them marinate for a second.”

It’s an attitude that’s reflective of the band’s roots too. While Nuovo Testamento’s music is steeped in late 20th century pop influences, they’re still punk to the core. They tend to tour extensively and are proponents of physical media. “It’s not just about this digital space,” says Crowley. 

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Interview

Rain Parade Reintroduces Listeners to Crashing Dream with New Deluxe Edition

Rain Parade press photo by Billy Douglas
Rain Parade (photo: Billy Douglas)

If you already have the new, deluxe reissue of Crashing Dream, the 1985 sophomore album from Rain Parade, jump ahead to “Gone West.” Tap your foot to the steady beat and tune into the guitar jangle and spectral voices. Listen closely and you might hear an L.A. band that is steeped in ‘60s psychedelia, yet foreshadows the sounds that would emanate from the U.K. by the end of the decade, from The Stone Roses to Primal Scream to Ride to Teenage Fanclub.

“We’ve always been hermits. We didn’t really know this until we started playing again in about 2012, but, at that time, we started running into these people, like Mani from the Stone Roses,” says Rain Parade co-founder Matt Piucci. “He contacted me on social media  and was like we love you guys and we wanted to be you guys.” Piucci heard something similar Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love. And, several years ago, he attended a Ride show and heard a Rain Parade album playing before the show. 

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Interview

The Uplifting Soul of Annie and the Caldwells

Annie and the Caldwells (Photo: Annie Forrest)
Annie and the Caldwells (Photo: Annie Forrest)

As soon as Annie and the Caldwells took to the stage at Zebulon, I felt a sense of levity. It was early June and the mood in Los Angeles was heavy. ICE raids had triggered protests, which led to an overreaction that landed downtown, where I live, under an 8 p.m. curfew. Meanwhile, in nearby neighborhoods, like Frogtown, where Zebulon is located, it was business as usual. At least, that’s how it looked inside the club. The room was full and completely alive. As Deborah Caldwell Moore belted out the heartfelt lyrics of “Wrong,” we caught the groove and kept it going throughout the set. The tempo ebbed and flowed as they played, but the energy remained high. Hands were thrown in the air during “I Made It.” It wasn’t just a good show, but an uplifting one. 

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Interview

As Ships in the Night, Alethea Leventhal Casts Protections Spells

Ships in the Night Alethea Leventhal press photo Protection Spells
Protection Spells by Ships in the Night is out now on Metropolis Records (photo courtesy of Ships in the Night)

Last May, Alethea Leventhal released her third full-length album as Ships in the Night , Protection Spells, with two Black Lodge Balls in Virginia. The David Lynch-themed events were planned before the director’s death and were a “labor of love” for the singer and her team. “Emphasis on labor,” says Leventhal on a recent phone call. There were costumes and cover songs. Leventhal herself performed “I’m Deranged,” the David Bowie song that appeared in Lost Highway. The show’s lighting designer projected a Black Lodge floor. “I wish I could have seen the show,” she says on a recent phone call. “I was on stage so I couldn’t see it in quite the same way.”

In case it weren’t already clear, Leventhal is a David Lynch fan. In particular, the soundtracks from his work has been an inspiration for Ships in the Night. So has David Bowie, Kate Bush, Motown and Depeche Mode, whose 1990 hit, “Enjoy the Silence” she covers on Protection Spells. Leventhal recalls hearing the song for the first time, via a mix CD, when she was 13. “I heard that song and remember thinking what is this? How do they do that? What are those sounds?” she recalls. 

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Interview

N8NOFACE and Chico Mann Update a Classic Alternative Sound on As of Right Now

N8NOFACE promo photo by Sela Shiloni
N8NOFACE (photo: Sela Shiloni)

“Waiting to Wait For You” has been running on a loop through my brain. The lead single from As of Right Now, the latest EP from N8NOFACE and his debut with venerable L.A. label Stones Throw, is a sticky mix of indie jangle and new wave bounce with the Long Beach-based singer repeating, “I can’t wait, wait to wait for you” against a riff that sounds as if it could have come from Johnny Marr. 

N8 credits producer Chico Mann, aka Marcos Garcia, the guitarist best known for his work with Antibalas and Here Lies Man, for the EP’s sound. “He was a huge Johnny Marr fan as a kid,” says N8 on a recent video call. The two connected a few years back to collaborate on producing another song. “We would talk about what direction I would want to go in and I always mention to him things that I just can’t do musically and he’s like, well this is a sound I always wanted to produce, let me write some music with your voice in mind,” N8 recalls. Garcia came back with about a dozen instrumentals. N8 tackled the lyrics in about a year and seven of the songs landed on As of Right Now. 

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Interview, Movies

Director Christopher Bickel on Pater Noster and the Mission of Light

Pater Noster and the Mission of Light directed by Christopher Bickel movie still
Pater Noster and the Mission of Light (2024) directed by Christopher Bickel

Earlier this year, while scrolling through Night Flight (the only streamer worth a paid subscription), I stumbled across a movie called Pater Noster and the Mission of Light. A horror movie about the hunt for a possibly cursed record made by a cult in the ‘70s, it was full of vinyl nerd in-jokes, references to the Source Family, the Merry Pranksters and Whipped Cream and Other Delights. I was smitten with it. 

Directed by Christopher Bickel, Pater Noster is a wild ride through dusty record bins and into the strange, terrifying world of a fictional psychedelic cult. The film, made with a budget of just $21,000, is also an exercise in resourcefulness. “We do these movies on such a low budget, so when I go to write it, I have to write to things that I have access to,” says Bickel on a recent video call, “things that I think would elevate the production value, to make it look like we spent money on this thing or that thing.”

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Interview

Former Members of The Mae Shi Reconvene at HLLLYH For New Album URUBURU

Photo of HLLLYH by Ezra Buchla
HLLLYH (Photo by Ezra Buchla)

Tim Byron wanted to get The Mae Shi back together. It had been about 20 years since the synthpunk band formed in Los Angeles and a decade since the original members reunited for a one-off show at Pehrspace. “It was the cliche of we’re getting the band back together,” he says on a recent video call. And, despite the fact that three of the members— Byron, as well as his brother Jeff Byron and Ezra Buchla— now live in the Bay Area while Brad Breeck and Corey Fogel are in L.A., he was able to do that. They recorded what was intended to be a new album from their old band. “But, at the end of the day,” Byron says, “it was different enough where we decided to give it a different name and have a separate identity from The Mae Shi.” The band morphed into HLLLYH and includes new members Dan Chao, James Baker and Burt Hashiguchi. Debut album  Uruburuis out on June 27. 

HLLLYH played their first show, opening for Brainiac at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, last January. Throughout this past spring, they’ve released three singles, “Dead Clade,” “Uru Buru” and “Flex It, Tagger,” with a cover song B-side included with each release. Byron is right, the music is different enough from what they did in the ‘00s to warrant a different band name. But, the energy of The Mae Shi is still there. 

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