Our Christmas record was significant. John Peel flipped out and played it on daytime BBC and that was a huge thing for us. This one feels like we took a bigger chance and some people might not like it. That to me is satisfying.
Our Christmas record was significant. John Peel flipped out and played it on daytime BBC and that was a huge thing for us. This one feels like we took a bigger chance and some people might not like it. That to me is satisfying.
Incendiary speak to Alan Sparhawk of Low
Zoe Gottehrer of Incendiary Magazine recently met with Alan Sparhawk of Low for discussions and giggles over the new album Guns and Drums, making electronic music, African gas station sound systems, parenting future rock stars and comics.
IN: Venues tend to me more intimate, more personal here. Even small bands play big venues in NYC.
AS: There’s a better attitude here about the music, it is strange and interesting. We get taken way more seriously here in Europe then in America. It almost gets more polarized every year. I like it here; I’d even like to come live here.
IN: It has been two years since your last visit to Amsterdam. I watched the live broadcast of the last time you played at the Paradiso. There was an interesting monologue in the middle of the show where you are talking about how the Belgians were warning you about the Dutch audiences and how loud they are at concerts. Literally, as soon as you were done with your speech you could hear a plastic cup drop…
AS: (Laughs) Yeah… that was funny. It’s always gone really well here. We’ve been pretty lucky.
IN: What do you classify the genre for your music? I came up with a new one, while listening to the new stuff; I call it Atmospheric Glitter.
AS: Oh wow (laughs). That’s good.
IN: The head of Subpop, Jonathan Poneman, called your new album the most important album of the year. How does that make you feel?
AS: We were surprised. I’ve known Jonathan for a number of years. He’d come see us when we played Seattle even before we signed to Subpop. I knew he liked us and I respect Jon’s ear for music. To hear someone like that say something like that, it’s great, it’s also scary… ahhhh! You don’t say that! (Throws his hands up in his face, with excited embarrassment). Because people will want to prove it wrong. It’s a lot of pressure. You can’t say that and then leek the record 4 months before it is set to release! (Laughs) That’s all right, it happens these days.
IN: Do you feel that the new LP is your most important work thus far with LOW?
AS: I don’t know. In some ways, yes. There has been a few times where I felt we’ve taken large steps into new territory and actually still found ourselves there. Yeah, it’s hard to say. I don’t know what makes an important record. It’s important to me now, as important as any other record I’ve done. I’ve never looked back and said, ‘ohhh we were so wrong there’, but there is stuff that sticks with me better.
Our Christmas record was significant. John Peel flipped out and played it on daytime BBC and that was a huge thing for us. This one feels like we took a bigger chance and some people might not like it. That to me is satisfying. I don’t think I could stand doing another record with just guitar, bass and drums. I mean, we already know what it’s going to sound like if we do that again. This time we had to push ourselves.
(He apologizes for mumbling. I assure him that the iTalk mic will pick up nearly everything and is actually quite sensitive… we start making jokes about iPod, iMac, etc)
IN: Yeah, the Me, Me, Me Mac generation. iTalk, no I am Talking!
AS: it’s MIIIII-NNNNN-EEEEEEE. This is minnnneeeeee-talking thing! MY POD! (Cue more laughter)
IN: The new album, released March 20th, Guns and Drums experiments more with electronic music. But it still feels very organic. How was that?
AS: Yeah, I am glad you hear that. It sort of had a lot to do with the fact that we didn’t know a lot about that technology and making music that way, especially because of the way we’ve been… the touring instrumentation band. I think the way we approached it was different, on certain elements we were ignorant and we forced ourselves to use other instruments or tools to make this music that we already knew. In a way we were making traditional electronic music, this loops here, do that loop twice, but what we were doing was still tactile. The drum machine is here and you’ve actually manipulating it in time and distorting things.
Mimi would play the drums and the same time we’d be running it through the delay and manipulating it on the fly and the same with the samples. I think it is unfortunate sometimes, electronic music goes together with the computer world which forces you to approach it a certain way. Seeing the music in linear layers, is quite different than when you actually touch the thing that’s making the sound. We weren’t intellectualizing it. Those first few days we were completely in the dark, not knowing what we didn’t want to do. Luckily, early on there was some light at the end of the tunnel… you know ‘ohhhh this works’. Therefore we saw what we needed to do. It (the recording process) really was the most we have challenged ourselves since we started the band.
When you look at electronic music – the goal of it and what drives it – it’s… wow, through electronic music anything is possible and you have any tool in your reach. I think we create better music under limitations, if you are only given a couple of things and you have create what you want to create with just these things, well then that’s when we come up with something really interesting. I think a lot of electronic music loses that element. For me I was happy that you still hear… (Pauses)
IN: The flesh and bones… it wasn’t just made by robots…
AS: NOTHING AGAINST ROBOTS! (Laughs)
IN: I Love Robots! Hey, what’s the single? Hatchet or Breaker?
AS: Breaker is the single. It was one of the first times I’ve been happy with my guitar.
IN: You worked again with Dave Friedman?
AS: Yeah, it was good. A few months before we recorded, I would call Dave regularly and talk about whatever I was thinking. I don’t remember ever being like, ‘ok, I know what we are going to do with this record and here’s what it’s going to sounds like’, but we’d talk about recording and how things happen and different sounds.
I was in Africa last year and musically the thing that blew me away was going to the gas station. (Laughs) The gas station had these speakers outside blaring reggae, dancehall, like Damian Marley, Busta Rhymes… just slamming out of these speakers, all distorted and crazy. It’s funny because it was so distorted that it became something else. I remember talking to Dave about that and when went to do the record I realized that he had been listening to what I was saying and that he had cleared the way for us to just spill it all out. It was really good. I am glad we worked with him. He is a good mixer; he just got a Grammy for the Flaming Lips record. We did the whole record near Buffalo, NY at his studios in the woods.
IN: When you were in Africa you were building a school, correct?
AS: I have this friend who had been going to Africa to record music and stay in a particular community. We’d hear about suffering, struggle and droughts, so we did these charity shows and gave the money to Hans to see what he could do in this community. We thought it was going to be something small and simple but apparently for just a few thousand dollars he could build a school building. There was already a school there, meeting in makeshift buildings and under trees. I mean its super 3rd world. So I went over to see it, the Masai community was 60-70 miles out in the bush.
IN: I think it is really incredible that you and Mimi have known each other for so long and have worked together. Was Low your first music project together?
AS: We were both into music. That was one of the reasons we first became friends in junior high. She came from a musical family, every once in a while we’d make songs, but she was not at all interested in being in a band. When we were younger I was in a rock band; that was more bravado a sort of take your shirts off, loud thing… (Laughs) I had done that for a couple of years, ok, that was a little wrong. When we started making songs, it was the first band she was in and probably the only band she would ever be in or want to be in.
IN: You did a Christmas album, but have you even thought of making a children’s album? Do you ever make music with your kids?
AS: That’s been a thought. Eventually we’ll do something like that. We have about 5 or 6 kid’s songs we’ve written over the years. Maybe a lullaby record. (Laughs). However, the world’s too scary sometimes to calm down enough to sing to your kids, it’s too bad.
IN: Have either of them shown musical interest? How old are they?
AS: Yeah… 7 and almost 3. They come down to the basement and bang on some drums. The 7 year old, Hollis, is a good singer; she improvises a lot, making up songs on the spot. Usually by that age, someone else has already told you that music is this and a song is something that someone else wrote. She’s bold with coming up with her own songs. The three year old is just a typical boy, he likes to beat on things.
IN: My boyfriend and I joke that we’re going to have 3 kids, so we can have a band. I want to breed rock stars… but I know that sometimes it is just not for them. I hope they like music.
AS: The best rock stars came from places that were probably oppressive creatively! That’s the weird thing about parenting… asking how much do you give them and when is it pushing them, when does it become the thing that they want to rebel against later.
IN: And comics? I heard you are a big fan of comics.
AS: Zach, who used to play bass with us is an artist and used to draw comics. Through him over the years I became familiar with comics and graphic novels. Chester Brown is one of my favorites, the Canadian artist. There’s a Dutch guy that does really minimal stuff… who is fantastic, simple line drawings. Maybe he is Belgium. Maybe he is Danish. Our daughter draws great comic too. (Smiles)
Words: Zoe E. Gottehrer