Wednesday, 21 November 2012
My friends are all a drag, they think I'm such a flake
I was so taken with the new Love and Radiation single, Ganymede, that I had to ask the girls if they would partake in one of my now infamous five question interviews. Well, not only are the girls beautiful and intelligent, but also super efficient as well. The answers pinged back across the Atlantic within 24 hours and are now here for your enjoyment. Thank you Lakshmi and Adele for the great answers and can't wait to hear the next single and debut album.
Stephen: How old were you when you got interested in music? What instruments can
you play? Were you in bands when you were younger? What were the first
songs you remember hearing from childhood?
L: I’ve always been drawn to playing music. I play the guitar and keyboard
seriously now, but as a child I played the flute and violin. It was all
very nerdy, since I performed with the school orchestra and band. Thanks
to my Indian parents, I grew up listening to Carnatic (Classical South
Indian) music, which they always played at home. I also trained for ten
years as a Carnatic vocalist. These experiences fundamentally shaped my
approach to sound through instruments and my voice.
A: I took piano lessons as a child, but didn’t start writing songs until
college when I picked up the guitar. I play guitar, keys, and some bass,
and tinker with midi programming. During college and law school, I played
in power pop bands, and Lakshmi and I had an off-kilter punk band called
The Catatonics. The first albums I really loved as a kid were Weezer's
Blue Album and Fiona Apple's “Tidal.”
S: Who writes the songs in the band? How do you decide on the "feel" and
"mood" for each song? How long does it take to complete the recording of a
song? Do you ever disagree over the production/ sound of a song?
A: Our songwriting process is very collaborative. Almost everything on the
new record — the drum programming, keyboards, guitars, vocals and lyrics —
was written collaboratively. We often have disagreements while writing,
mixing and producing our music. Because we’re such close friends, neither
of us hesitates to express strong opinions, and we both have very definite
ideas about what we like and don’t like. However, we have a lot of respect
for each other’s judgment, and working through these disagreements has
played an indispensable role in shaping and refining the sound of the
album.
L: We write all the lyrics together. They predominantly address themes of
darkness, rituals, healing, and nature. Our interest in these themes
shapes the mood of the songs, which tend to balance dark tones with strong
beats, as in “Ganymede.” We can have very different ideas about how a song
should sound and it can take months to record and mix a single tune (our
sound engineer, Jonathan, is very patient). But our disagreements
ultimately produce good music: by bringing such distinct perspectives to
the mixing board, we create songs that neither one of us could write in
isolation.
S: Which artists inspired you to seriously start making music? What bands
do you like at the moment? Do you think of yourselves as
indiepop/synthpop/electronica? What are your thoughts regarding the
current indie/alternative scene? Have you travelled abroad as a band?
A: Cat Power’s album “What Would the Community Think?” inspired me to
start writing and recording my own songs. It’s such an urgent record, yet
it also sounds so insular and isolated. Hearing that record made me think
of writing songs as a powerful tool for self-expression, and it also
helped me get over my fear of not having enough technical prowess as a
guitar player. Love and Radiation’s music blends elements of pop, indie
rock and dance music. Lakshmi has a tendency to write music that is dark
and dissonant, and I gravitate towards a more poppy sound. Our
collaboration is aimed at the middle ground — blending dissonance and dark
themes into music that is fun to listen to and easy to digest. Ultimately,
we hope that people will want to dance to the songs on this record. There
has been a lot of good new music this year: I love the new records by
Cloud Nothings, Bat for Lashes, Purity Ring, and Fiona Apple. And there
are also a lot of great Chicago bands that we’ve been excited to play with
this year, including Videotape, architecture and My Gold Mask.
L: Cat Power, PJ Harvey, Modest Mouse, and Sleater-Kinney inspired me to
learn how to play the guitar and start bands. Female musicians have been
particularly strong motivators: musicians like PJ Harvey and Carrie
Brownstein empowered me to use my voice as a woman amid a sea of male
musicians. Bat for Lashes, Grimes, Purity Ring, and Julia Holter are on
heavy rotation at the moment. But I still frequently listen to music from
the late 90s and early 2000s. Adele and I have never been abroad as a band
but we *have* been abroad as friends, like the time we spent a few weeks
seeing sights and fighting off monkeys in India.
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