The Dunwells LIVE at UCSB (4/26/2013) – CLICK TO ENLARGE

The quintet, signed to Concord Records and hailing from Leeds, England, made their way out west after a recent stint at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas. Their free UCSB concert was presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures as its annual Student Appreciation Event.

Blending English rock and American roots music – including folk, Celtic and country – The Dunwells sound has been compared to the successful band Mumford & Sons, with whom they have shared the stage with on several occasions.

For more info on The Dunwells, click here.

Brad Fiedel (Copyright Cara Robbins) – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Fiedel joined host Ted Coe for an hour that included tracks from his film and television work plus original songs from the new autobiographical musical, Borrowed Time, a one-man show that premiered as a benefit for a new Renter Scholarship Fund at Santa Barbara’s Center Stage Theater.

With roots in a bohemian New York art school run by his parents, Fiedel came of age during the insurgent 1960s. Interweaving songs written over several decades, Borrowed Time tells the touching story of Fiedel’s journey from radical youth to successful film composer, and of an eventual need to free himself from the Hollywood machine.

Borrowed Time – CLICK TO ENLARGE

An edited podcast of this program is now available for on-demand streaming, or download, below. Thanks to Brad Fiedel for permission to include complete tracks from Borrowed Time.

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays in the spring from 11am-12noon PDT.

Marilyn & Fritz Peterson, Susanne & Mike Kekich – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Part One of this baseball special recounted stories of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych”; free-agency pioneer Curt Flood; pitcher Jim Bouton, whose book Ball Four introduced the “modern sport biography”; and “chemically-adventurous” players like Bill “Spaceman” Lee and Dock Ellis.

“The Freak Power Ticket”‘s second Big Hair and Plastic Grass special (Monday, May 6) picked up with:

• Reflections on the decade’s “one true dynasty,” the colorful “Swingin’ A’s” of Oakland, CA.

Gay MLB Player Glenn Burke

• The story of the stormy and well-traveled manager Billy Martin, especially his days in the New York Yankees’ “Bronx Zoo.”

• Why baseball was a particularly rich environment for the “Free To Be… You and Me” attitudes of the decade.

• The idiosyncratic qualities of Baseball Fandom, and more.

Let it all hang out with an eclectic mix of music and other sounds from (and inspired by) the era, interwoven throughout Epstein’s conversation with producer/host Ted Coe.

The Complete Playlist for the Latest Broadcast is Now Online!

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays in the spring from 11am-12noon PDT.

Scott McCloud x2 – CLICK TO ENLARGE

At the tail-end of his visit, Ted Coe, along with Janessa Lea Puckett and Sean Mabry, hosts of KCSB’s new cultural-arts program “Freak Juice” (Tuesdays 2-4am), sat down with McCloud to reflect on the impact of “sequential art.” On the Monday, April 29 edition of Coe’s “The Freak Power Ticket,” their conversation was mixed with a selection of popular music related to the world of comics.

An edited version of the program is now available here for download.

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays in the Spring from 11am-12noon.

All-Star Pitcher Dock Ellis (Monarch-Corona Printing Company, 2010) www.timothylearyarchives.org- CLICK TO ENLARGE

Big Hair and Plastic Grass focuses on how the clean-cut public image of our “National Pastime” was recreated by the social and cultural forces of the “Me Generation” and the “Now Generation.”

An archival-recording is now available online, below.

During this program (edited for official download), Epstein recounts important, fascinating, and humorous stories about the ways in which America’s sport learned to stop worrying and enjoy the wonderfully funky flavors of the times.

Tune into to learn about:

• The Oakland A’s “Mustache Gang” and the 1972 “Hair Vs. Square” World Series

• The best-selling insider exposés

• Curt Flood and the battle for player rights and autonomy

• Oddball pitchers like the Detroit Tigers’ Mark “The Bird” Fidrych and Red Sox/Expos pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee

• The swagger and inspiration of the pitcher Dock Ellis and the legend of his LSD No-Hitter

• Mod-fashions, Space Age design and the bursts of color made possible by polyester fabrics and carnival hucksters like team-owner Charles Finley

and more…

Let it all hang out as Epstein and producer/host Ted Coe also share music clips and other sounds from (and inspired by) the era, alongside their insightful and entertaining conversation.

The Show’s Complete Playlist is Now Online!

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays in the spring from 11am-12noon PDT.

On Thursday, March 14th, KCSB’s Program Director interviewed Blue Hawaii, an indie electronic duo from Montreal consisting of vocalist Raphaelle Standell-Preston and producer Alexander Cowan. The duo talked about the differences between their recorded and live music, their experimental new LP Untogether, and their upcoming April tour with fellow Canadian electro duo Purity Ring. Read the text below or scroll to the bottom of the page for the audio.

Navid Ebrahimzadeh (KCSB): All right, KCSB here with Blue Hawaii. Can you guys please introduce yourselves, full names? And then we’ll get started.

Raphaelle Standell-Preston: Full names?

KCSB: Yes please, just to make it all official.

Standell-Preston: Okay, I’m Raphaelle Alexandria Standell-Preston.

Alexander Cowan: This is Alexander William Curby Cowan coming at you.

KCSB: Cool, so how did you two meet?

Cowan: It was a long time ago, about three or four years ago. We met at a loft venue that I was running, and immediately we connected and decided that a good thing to do would be to jam electronic music together.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, Alex was working the door at a show that I just happened to stumble upon, and I walked up and he was selling tickets, and he thought I was cute, and I thought he was cute, so then we talked and realized that both of us really liked music and playing music, and decided to go from there. He said that, I guess in a faster way.

KCSB: Well, I think that was a fortuitous meeting.

Standell-Preston: Very nice.

Cowan: Next question please.

KCSB: All right, next one. This one is for you in particular, Raphaelle. How do you see your projects — this and BRAIDS — being different or similar?

Standell-Preston: I guess, with Blue Hawaii, Alex has tried to make it really, really fun for me. Like really uncontrolled, somewhere that I can really do whatever it is that I want, whether it’s involving outfit or makeup, or lyrics or musical style.

KCSB: I saw you guys wearing blue face paint the other night.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, that’s something that we do a lot. And we’ve done it every day since day one, so, yeah, I guess Blue Hawaii is a very like, freeing project. As is BRAIDS, but in a totally different way, ’cause it’s much more controlled. Austin and Taylor are very trained musicians. They’re very much visionaries. So it’s two very different approaches to making music. Agor and I kind of just do things on the fly, usually.

Cowan: You could like, sit down in a theater and watch BRAIDS play, and then after go to the club around the corner.

Standell-Preston: An after party, and then Blue Hawaii would be playing. So yeah, two very different sides of my personality.

KCSB: Thanks a lot.

Standell-Preston: No problem.

KCSB: All right, this next one’s about genres. I don’t know, I think genrefication is a kind of tricky, sticky business. Terms I’ve seen thrown around a lot in describing your music: BRAIDS, I’ve heard being described as art-rock.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, that’s cool.

KCSB: And then Blue Hawaii as like glo-fi and chillwave.

Standell-Preston: What is glo-fi? That’s amazing.

KCSB: It’s basically synonymous with chillwave.

Cowan: Yeah.

KCSB: Just like, electronic dream pop kind of stuff.

Standell-Preston: I hate the word “dream pop,” I’ve never understood it.

Cowan: I like “dream pop” a lot more than “chillwave.”

Standell-Preston: Oh yeah, I hate chillwave. I hate that name! I don’t like when things are described as “chill.” Like, I’d rather it be called “reggaewave.”

Cowan: Okay, ask a question about genres.

KCSB: That’s basically it. Is it really stupid, or does it have a purpose?

Standell-Preston: I think in electronic music it’s very, very important. Wouldn’t you say?

Cowan: That’s an interesting thing with electronic music, that it can be identified in terms of its subgenres just like, based on certain sounds you can pick out and everything like that. I mean, I guess what we just described with the different places in which you can kind of catch the bands, and that maybe would signify their genres. I think like, the kind of music we’re making now is probably less chillwave, maybe more like cold minimal or something like that. I don’t know, but definitely I could see why people would say things like that.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, I don’t know why I get frustrated by genres. ‘Cause I’m just thinking about it, and I’m like, “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would I get upset that someone would call us chillwave?” I don’t know why. Maybe for me, I feel like chillwave has a negative connotation around it, just being like really throw-together music, you know? Like not that much thought. At least that’s the chillwave that I’ve listened to, like really four-on-the-floor, like sidechain to the kick, like some whatever chords, and like singing that is, I don’t know, unidentifiable. I guess when we’re kind of grouped into chillwave or dream pop, it seems like, as not perhaps thoughtful as I think our music is?

Cowan: Well like, Beach House is a really good dream pop band.

Standell-Preston: You’re right, they are a really good dream pop band.

Cowan: But anyways, yeah, I think that’s enough.

KCSB: For me personally, it can be really constraining. It’s like, “Oh you like Blue Hawaii, that chillwave band.” And it’s like, they’re their own group. And it’s very distinct from a lot of the things grouped under the same micro-subgenre. I think it’s fine, I think it’s fine to organize…

(At this point, a loud show starts in Swan Dive, the venue we’re sitting in.)

Cowan: Check out this hard rock band that just started playing.

Standell-Preston: This is like a crazy metal band.

Cowan: At least if it was a chillwave band, we could like, still talk right now.

KCSB: Right? Well, let’s talk a little louder. All right, this one’s “chill.” How have you guys been enjoying SXSW? Tell me about your experience here.

Standell-Preston: Um… Okay, SXSW is really fun, but I don’t like it.

KCSB: Why’s that?

Standell-Preston: For me, it’s really stressful. I don’t like the constant overstimulation, like there’s just too many people, the change-overs are way too fast, the sound checks are too short, just that kind of stuff, you know? I like things that are calm. Is this going to be okay?

KCSB: Yeah, this is like, a pretty high quality recorder so…

Standell-Preston: So it’s like, directional in my mouth.

KCSB: If we all just enunciate well… If you guys wouldn’t mind, actually, we could step outside.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, let’s just step out on the street.

KCSB: There is not a quiet place in this entire city.

Standell-Preston: This is why SXSW is fun, but I just don’t really like it.

Cowan: I’ve had a pretty good time here, I really enjoy like, coming to the hot weather. That feels really good; it’s like -15 in Montreal.

Standell-Preston: That’s really nice.

Cowan: And I really like seeing new things and meeting new people, and that stuff’s all really good.

Standell-Preston: You’re so positive, Agor.

Cowan: Yeah, yeah, I stay really positive. Today I had my first down day about it in a while, but I’m bouncing back. The only thing that gets me down is kind of the like, negative feelings of competition, and stuff like that.

Standell-Preston: The very rat-race feeling of it.

Cowan: The best part of SXSW is coming down here and seeing so many people that you talk to on the internet and everywhere, and everyone’s like “Hey, let’s all get along and have a good time,” but at the same time there’s this like, aspect to it that’s like, competitive and negative. And obviously that exists, but that’s something that can become materialized over the course of the week, something you really understand after a while. And that to me is probably the only negative tinge, but, on the whole, I really like it a lot.

Standell-Preston: I do like getting to see people I haven’t seen in a long time. Like getting to see Baths.

KCSB: I went there last night. That was really fun.

Standell-Preston: And Born Gold, he’s here too. He’s not playing, he just came down to check everything out.

KCSB: Born Gold is, uh…

Standell-Preston: Gobble Gobble. Cecil Frena.

KCSB: Yeah, and uh, Corin Roddick, used to be in there?

Standell-Preston: Yeah, from Purity Ring. He used to drum for them.

KCSB: Cool. Can you guys talk about the differences between your recorded versus live music? Because I was really taken aback, I was at Mohawk on Tuesday, and you guys totally sounded so much different from the recording. You reworked a lot of the tracks, like “Follow,” I feel like the order of the segments was different.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, it was. Good ear.

Cowan: It’s really awesome that you bring that up.

Standell-Preston: That’s something that we’re really excited about, the difference in energy between listening to a recording and then delivering that live. Two very different things.

Cowan: Like when I’m at home, I really enjoy music that is light, you know? Maybe when I’m like, ripping down the highway and I want something banging, that’s good too. But I listen to like, mostly house and techno, and that has intense moments, but there’s a kind of smoothness that is important, that blends into my environment, with environmental music or like textured music or something like that. But when I’m out, it’s less of the textures and more of like, the direct…

Standell-Preston: The energy.

Cowan: Yeah, the energy that I want to feel, and like, that’s as much as we’re trying to communicate. We don’t necessarily have all the time in the world to prepare for our live sets and do lots of touring, so when we do it it’s mostly about the kind of energy we can communicate. And then people can like that energy or not like it or whatever, and that’s fine, but it’s something more direct, like a beat, or singing, so we can take our songs and rearrange them. We do these things where we take really short loops, like one bar loops, of our recorded material, and then just add drums or drum machines on top.

Standell-Preston: And then add different vocal loops. Yeah, it’s very fun. It’s very liberating also to see the songs kind of transform into this whole other thing. It’s amazing how many different pathways you can go down with just single idea.

KCSB: Totally, you guys do a great job. I want to ask some questions about your new album, Untogether, which is an amazing, beautiful album. This is kind of irrelevant, but I think it’s going to be the best album that’s released this year, though it’s early.

Standell-Preston: Aw.

Cowan: That’s so nice.

KCSB: I’ve been listening to it nonstop. It’s really different from Blooming Summer, though, and that’s what I really respected is that you guys went in a totally different direction. But uh… yeah, let me see, aside from ranting, what did I specifically want to ask? So on this new one, it’s very much, like you could call it a “glitched” or “chopped-up” sound.

Standell-Preston & Cowan: Yeah.

KCSB: And there was some of that in your older stuff. Like, I’d say “Lonelyhearts” had that.

Cowan: Totally.

KCSB: But now it’s the main focus. Can you talk about that transition?

Cowan: It’s interesting that you bring up “Lonelyhearts,” ’cause that was the one track on the Blooming Summer EP that was most reworked from its original state.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, I like that one.

Cowan: And almost everything, except for “Try to Be,” on Untogether, is very reworked from its original state. And that’s something that was like almost a suffering kind of process. It was hard, and there’s a lot of things that I learned a lot from that I wouldn’t necessarily want to repeat. And it’s cool that we came out with something that you think is beautiful, and that’s really great. To me, I think that’s a great accomplishment.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, I’m very happy that we actually released it. There were many, many times when we wanted to give up, or when the songs were so chopped, that we were like, “There’s nothing here, where is the essence of this song?” We had to go back and revisit and rework everything over and over again. With Blooming Summer and Untogether, they’re just like two totally different processes. Blooming Summer was very blissful and in love and feelings of, I don’t know, carefree? Untogether is like… we were feeling a little rugged and complacent and stale, like in many areas of our lives, and were questioning a lot of things. So just two moments in life.

KCSB: So, follow-up: the “glitched” sound, to me, makes it sound very, like you said sometimes it’s hard to engage with a track because you’re taking a melody and chopping it up, and that’s the whole point of chopping up vocals, but what do you guys think as far as emotional or thematic significance? Is it purely sonical, like “Oh, this sounds cool when it’s chopped up,” or is there something more?

Standell-Preston: There were actually a lot of interesting combinations of lyrics that came up with chopping up the vocals. Like in “Daisy,” for instance — I really love that track, that’s definitely one of my favorites on the record — I was listening to it ’cause I was trying to write lyrics for it, and I just heard like, the craziest lyrics. When I was recording that song, I was pretending that I was having a conversation with some kind of god, and it sounded like I was, when I listened really deeply to the lyrics that I had cut up, like it sounded like this really questioning conversation that was trying to understand what it is we’re living for, yadda yadda yadda. So I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of beauty held in that, and sometimes the most beautiful melody can be found when you reverse a melody that was forward at the beginning. Just looking at it in that different way can be really beautiful.

Cowan: And in a very direct sense, chopping up the vocals was something that was made necessary by the fact that we didn’t record this thing together, we didn’t write it together, we were separated and so one of the ways to actually move forward with the album was to be like “Well, in order to make this song happen, I need to take that vocal take, and put it on top of these chords, and in order to make it fit musically with rhythms and stuff, I need to chop it up.” So it was this thing that was necessitated in the first place by the things that ended up becoming the theme of the album itself.

KCSB: Speaking of the theme of the album: I can’t help, while listening to it, to think it’s kind of characterized by paradoxes in a lot of ways. I mean, Untogether, the name itself, is like a paradox. It’s interesting with your music, it’s like, you’re expressing these emotions, while at the same time — correct me if I’m wrong — suppressing them. Because you’re singing these lyrics, but it’s all cut up and reverbed out.

Standell-Preston: That’s true. Do you want to go for it? I don’t know exactly how to answer that one.

KCSB: I know it’s a really abstract question, I apologize.

Standell-Preston: No, it’s interesting.

Cowan: It’s more like a response than a question. There’s one thing that we’re really addressing when we’re talking about it in interviews, and that’s the way that both in its form the album is chopped up and never meant to be, like the songs were recorded and edited to a point where they eventually became songs, and called an album. And in that sense, it’s Untogether, because they were never meant to be and we brought them together. But also, socially, in our community we felt like things were breaking apart and coming back together in different ways, and like, not to get in to that right now, but that was going on, and then in our relationship, there were certain things that were breaking apart and coming together, also not to get into that really, but there were all of these things piling on top of each other that were paradoxes but also connected through their form of being a paradox, or something like that. Which is really an abstract way of looking at life that you can extend to almost anything. This metaphor is really funny, and comes up a lot, and friends joke about it. It’s such a general thing in a sense, but it’s just what we were feeling at the time.

KCSB: Cool, thank you so much. Could you guys talk about the music scene in Montreal? A lot of my favorite artists are from Canada: there’s you guys, Purity Ring, Crystal Castles, Trust, various really good indie electronic groups.

Standell-Preston: I think of the community as like, Claire (Boucher), Grimes playing loft parties, and Magical Clouds.

Cowan: Everyone’s connected in a certain way, and that’s what makes it beautiful. That’s one nice thing about being here at SXSW, seeing all these different connections come together. Like Cecil from Born Gold. Just the ways that Grimes, and Purity Ring, and Arbutus (Records), and us are connected through like that guy, and Sean Nicholas Savage. And the Edmonton music scene, and the Canadian music scene, is just like a spiderweb of people, and each intersection is a different person or band. It’s all connected, it’s not limited to Montreal, but like, depending on focused in you wanted to get, you could talk about it.

Standell-Preston: Focusing on the Montreal music scene, it’s a very gifted group of people who all found each other all at once and challenged each other and live down the street from one another. It’s very interesting, very crazy that it fell in like that.

KCSB: Thank you. How did you guys end up opening for Purity Ring? Can you guys just talk about that upcoming tour (which I’m really excited for)?

Standell-Preston: Well, Corin is a very good friend of mine. Oh, what is this? I thought it was a firework.

KCSB: It’s a motorcycle.

Standell-Preston: But yeah, Corin, good friend. He was in Gobble Gobble. 

KCSB: He does the synths for Purity Ring, just for our listeners’ sake. Corin Roddick.

Standell-Preston: I go way back with Corin, and went on tour with him in BRAIDS and have known him for four years. He’s helped a lot of people, and is now taking us on tour, which is absolutely amazing.

Cowan: Yeah, we’re going to have a good time.

KCSB: So it was set up through your friendship with him, right?

Cowan: Like he texted Raph one day and was like, “You wanna come on tour?” I didn’t even know it was happening until the next day, when she was like, “We’re going to go on this month-long tour with Purity Ring.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s great.” I was really excited. But of course, I get along with them really well too and everything.

Standell-Preston: They’re both really, really nice people.

KCSB: I personally have been waiting to see Purity Ring for a long time, I haven’t seen them for months and months, and was desperately checking their website and then when I saw you were supporting, I was like, “That is the greatest setup. That is such a good lineup.”

Standell-Preston: I think it’s really fitting.

KCSB: I think especially your new album, fans of Purity Ring, if they haven’t heard of you guys, will be like “Wow, this is really awesome.”

Standell-Preston: I hope so.

Cowan: It’s similar.

Standell-Preston: We’re very excited.

KCSB: I’m actually going to be at the LA show, and the SF show.

Cowan: Sweet! Come say hi to us.

KCSB: I will. Okay, I think I just have one more question. This is kind of a really specific question. Can you talk about the song titles, “Lammicken” from BRAIDS, and “Flammarion” from Blue Hawaii?

Standell-Preston: “Flammarion” is an interesting one.

Cowan: The only reason that came to be was that we had this working title, “Plane My,” because the way we cut up the vocals made it sound like she was saying “plane my.” And it became “Flammarion,” because that’s a really interesting concept. It was a painting from the thirteenth century, or something like that. It’s an image on a woodcut, and it’s like this man and he’s like reaching through this barrier into the celestial heavens, but he’s crawling at the same time, so it’s kind of like the human mind and soul and psyche breaking through a barrier to like, see the infinite, or whatever, which is something that we’re constantly trying to see. So it’s like this weird struggle where half his body is breaking through to the celestial world, and that was a cool concept to go for.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, we just liked that.

Cowan: We could talk a long time about how the songs could relate to that, but actually that’s just a nice woodcut and I think you should check it out.

KCSB: Oh, I for sure will now. That’s a really, like esoteric but awesome reference that I wouldn’t have got if I didn’t ask you.

Standell-Preston: And then “Lammicken” is from a novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy. The word “Lammicken” in old English means “weakness of a lamb.” And the lyrics are “I can’t stop it,” over and over again, so it’s like feeling as weak as a little lamb.

Cowan: That song is one of my favorite of all time.

KCSB: Yeah, that’s my very favorite BRAIDS song. I’m like, really, really in love with it.

Standell-Preston: Thank you, that’s great.

KCSB: If you could ever play that live, that would be great.

Cowan: You guys probably could play it live.

KCSB: Do it! Okay I think that’s all I have for you guys.

Cowan: We should peace out anyway.

Standell-Preston: Yeah, we have to go make sure the band’s all good.

KCSB: All right this has been Blue Hawaii, KCSB interviewing in Austin, Texas, at SXSW, Pi Day, March 14th, 2013.

Standell-Preston: Is it Pi Day? Oh, it is!

KCSB: Thanks again guys.

Standell-Preston: You’re very welcome.

Cowan: Thank you.

Untogether was released on March 5th on Arbutus Records. The duo’s first full-length LP blends a refreshing mixture of house, ambient, chop-and-screw alongside Standell-Preston’s delicate, angelic vocals. 

On Thursday, March 14th, KCSB’s Program Director sat down for an interview in Austin, TX with Julian Hamilton and Kimberly Moyes, better known as The Presets. The Sydney, Australia techno/electropop/dance duo talked about their creative process, the differences between their three albums, the importance of singing about handjobs, among other things. Read the interview below or scroll to the bottom of the page for the audio. Be sure to stay tuned for more SXSW interviews to be posted soon!

Navid Ebrahimzadeh (KCSB): I figured we’d start off with general questions and can get more specific later. We’re here with Julian and Kim from The Presets. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves and talk about your musical backgrounds to start?

Kimberly Moyes: We met each other in 1995, have been musicians for most of our lives, and have been in The Presets since about 2002.

Julian Hamilton: Yeah, about 10 years now. So it’s a uh, going concern.

KCSB: So your first album Beams came out in 2005, and then you had Apocalypso in 2008 and Pacifica last year in 2012.

Moyes: How’s the research?

Hamilton: Yeah, that’s good.

KCSB: I actually didn’t have to do that research; I’m a huge fan.

Moyes: I knew I could find it somewhere.

KCSB: I don’t like getting specific about genre names—I don’t know about you guys—but I always like to ask, how would you describe the music you make yourselves?

Moyes: I guess like electropop, really. We always started out trying to fuse dance music and pop music with a bit of a rock edge. We always managed to get like, 80s electropop as well. But yeah, it’s just always been pop music made on synthesizers and keyboards and computers.

Hamilton: Yeah.

KCSB: So you’ve got a lot of techno elements, and some synthpop and 80s synth, and then your vocals are a little more like rock sounding in some ways, compared to typical electronica.

Hamilton: Yeah, I think especially in the earlier records, we really liked the energy and power of rock music, but the groove of techno. We tried to marry the two a little bit. And, I dunno, maybe my voice is getting a bit softer and mellow as I reach middle age, but there are still moments of intensity in there, sure.

Moyes: Well, especially with Pacifica I think we um, made a conscious effort with not only just the vocals but also the music to kind of round off the harsher elements of previous albums or songs, y’know? And get it a bit smoother in general.

KCSB: Yeah, Pacifica is so much more smoother and less noisy sounding than Apocalypso and even Beams as well. Can you talk about that transition?

Moyes: I think for the longest time, when we made music, a starting point was always a big noisy mono-synth bass line which kind of took up all the room and was always like really fun, but I guess we would always face problems where we were trying to fit more elements into the song than we could sonically. Not only just that, but also after 2008 and 2009, how big electro got with all the noisy electro acts, I think we were just trying to find another angle that was less dominated by noise and more by groove, as opposed to, you know, slamming people over the head all the time with noisy synths.

KCSB: Definitely. Would you guys say that Pacifica places more of an emphasis on lyricism at all? ‘Cause I kind of was paying more attention to what you were saying on this record than the past two, not that I wasn’t before.

Hamilton: Sure. I mean hopefully that the songs are getting better and better over time, you try to get a little better as you go along. I guess it’s funny when we first started out, I always thought the words were just things that you kind of just threw on top as a color. You know, that the human voice was just this kind of color, just filling the gaps with words. Certainly as you get older, this sounds ridiculous, but as you get older you find more things to say, find nice little turns of phrase, and better ways to say it, so, yeah, I’m glad you noticed.

KCSB: It also seemed like there was more of an emphasis on political issues in Australia as well, like on “Youth in Trouble” and “A.O.”

Hamilton: Yeah, well there’s always been a little of that sort of in our music, but yeah I guess maybe this time I tried to get a little more direct about it. In the past, lyrically especially, I’d sort of say things but then try and hide it.

Moyes: Vague.

Hamilton: Yeah, vague it out, try to use hidden messages and all the rest of that. I’m getting a bit more confident to come out and say things directly.

Moyes: Totally, that again is another idea within the album—was to try to be as exposed as possible and as honest as possible, and yeah, as direct as possible, like Julian was saying.

KCSB: I noticed those elements beforehand, so like, “My People” comes to mind as being political, but I think it was more direct and kind of teased out a little more.

Hamilton: More kind of like, corked down to its essentials. The music and lyrics are trying to get as close to us as we can make it, you know? Whether it be the singing voice or the production or our thoughts and lyrics, it’s trying to get down to the nitty gritty of what we really are about.

KCSB: Can you guys talk to me about how a Presets song gets formed? What’s your creative process as far as collaborating in the very beginning?

Moyes: There’s many different ways. It can just start off with Julian having a whole song’s verse-chorus thing sort of sketched out, a vocal guide painted over the top, then sort of give it to me to kind of mess around with and add beats or production ideas or whatever. Or it can be that sort of situation as well, but instead I might just cut out one section that I like, then sort of try to make other sections, or we just get together and jam until we find something that we like. There’s not really one method.

Hamilton: Not really. I mean we always end up, you know, just riding the initial sketches and the ideas and getting a bunch of ideas together, there’s usually a bit of swapping bits back and forth, as Kim said. But by the time we’re getting towards the end, we spend a good three months or so in the room together producing and actually making the track, in the same way that people in a rock band might work and swap ideas on their own but at some point they get in the studio and record the record.

Moyes: And even in that last period, we may completely turn something on its head, something that we may be working on for months and months that we feel like is hitting a brick wall. Like a song idea where we know something good is there, but it’s like, is it really working? Then we completely rip it apart and build something new underneath it and find a good balance.

KCSB: Out of curiosity, is there a track that you guys are particularly fond of? A favorite Presets song?

Hamilton: It’s probably one of the first records where I really do like all of it. In the past, certainly, there’s been favorites and there’s other songs I wouldn’t make again if we had the chance. Now, it’s a really solid record. We had the luxury of time this time; we had a couple of years to work on this record properly and a bunch of different ideas and could throw stuff away. And we’d never really been in a position before to throw stuff away. You can’t really pick a favorite.

Moyes: And by the time you’ve finished making it and have played it live, it all starts to wear off, the magic, a little bit.

KCSB: I’ve actually always been curious about people who are touring, I feel like it’s hard not to get sick of your own stuff if you’re playing it every night.

Moyes: Yeah, I don’t think you get sick of it, I think you just become immune to it, or the powers of it. The fun thing we’ve done recently is put this show together that’s a techno show with laptops. We’ve got to remix some old songs and spice them up and bring them more into the realm that we’re working on now. Now we sort of have new favorites of old songs as remix versions. If we ever get that bored, we can just continue to remix every song.

Hamilton: It’s funny, you do play the same thing every night. But by the time you get home and hear your song on the radio or whatever, you know, you still like it. It’s just always good.

KCSB: I have some questions about specific songs. One of my favorites is “Buzz Factory,” which is not a typical Presets song at all. And I played it for my friend, who actually introduced me to you guys a few years back, and he was like “What is this song? I don’t have this song.” And I realized it was only on the UK release of Apocalypso.

Moyes: I think it was just on a deluxe edition or something like that.

KCSB: Can you guys talk about that song and that decision?

Moyes: “Buzz Factory” was like the only song that we finished that didn’t make it on the album Apocalypso. And it was just a groove idea that was floating around and it wasn’t even fully finished when we took it into the studio, and I think Julian wrote lyrics for it and recorded lyrics for it the night we mixed it.

Hamilton: That’s right. Probably on the day we were mixing it.

Moyes: I think in terms of how it stacked up compared to the way Apocalypso was shaping it just wasn’t fitting in. It was quite dreamy and not verse-chorus kind of song structure, more like through-composed or whatever.

Hamilton: I totally forgot about that song.

Moyes: It’s really cool, I’ve listened to it recently as well. It’s super fast.

KCSB: I personally like songs where the vocals come in really late. You’re listening to it and think “Oh cool, this is an instrumental song,” and then they come in I think 3 minutes in in that song, and it’s such a nice surprise and I feel so rewarded for waiting. It’s cool too that it seems thrown together not so deliberately.

Moyes: It was just something that we liked and we didn’t sweat about it. It’s got a sort of effortlessness about it.

Hamilton: We should write a whole album full of B-sides. That’d be a nice listen.

KCSB: I’m curious too about the line “We hate you ‘cause we hate your freedom,” which stood out to me from that album as being haunting.

Hamilton: Oh, it can be interpreted so many different ways. That was one of George Bush Jr’s famous lines, you know: the terrorists hate us ‘cause they hate our freedom. It was ridiculous. So there was that, but also like, you know, looking at young kids and the freedoms they have. Also, as an artist when you go out on a limb and choose to make art as a living, it’s very spooky, and I think you have to be brave to do it. And if you can find any kind of success, that’s wonderful. But, when you see rock stars kind of partying too hard and causing scandals.

Moyes: ‘Cause we can do it.

Hamilton: It’s not easy, y’know. It’s a hard life—we have a lot of musician friends who are flat broke and working really hard. When you commit to making art as a living, it can be a, y’know…

KCSB: A strain.

Hamilton: Yeah, a strain. It’s a bit spooky to try and make a life out of it. But you know, we enjoy it.

KCSB: That’s I guess what matters most at the end of the day.

Hamilton: Yeah, absolutely.

KCSB: I think there’s a romanticized notion of what being a musician’s all about. It’s definitely a challenging existence to be creating and traveling.

Hamilton: You know, god, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But it’s definitely a commitment.

KCSB: “This Boy’s in Love,” one of my favorites—I’m probably getting way too specific on this, but…

Hamilton: That’s all right, it’s interesting!

KCSB: I’m an English major so I tear apart songs and analyze the shit out of them. So I was listening to this song and listening to the lyrics and I came up with this schema where the city lights represent social judgment of some kind, or just caring about other people’s perspectives, ‘cause you’re saying “this boy’s in love,” and it’s all melodic and very like dreamy, but then all of a sudden it’s like “under city lights.”

Hamilton: And it’s a bit more heavy. Yeah absolutely. Totally. And that’s kind of what it should be. But also, just to put it bluntly, it’s sort of putting it in a place. We live in a city and people who live in cities can relate to things a bit easier. I didn’t want to write “in this jungle.” It wouldn’t make sense or be honest. That album in particular, we were real city kids at that time. We didn’t have kids at that time and we were out partying under the bright lights. And it was, you know, our generation, and the life that we knew. Which was the “city lights” life.

KCSB: That was illuminating.

Moyes: (chuckling) Nice.

KCSB: Another song specific question. “Yippiyo-ay.” That’s a very sexual song, obviously.

Hamilton: Yeah.

KCSB: I’m pretty sure that’s about a hand job, or something similar.

Moyes: Ah-ha! You’re the only person who’s ever gotten that.

Hamilton: It is. How can I put this delicately? It’s one of those things where you can be really really really in love with a person, and really want to do the darkest things with them. And I think that, you know, traditionally in love songs, they don’t go there, you know what I mean? They can be hugging and kissing and holding hands and there’s never any talking about hand jobs, you know? But that’s a really important part of lovemaking. We’re getting told to wrap up because we’re talking about handjobs.

Moyes: (laughing) The darkest of the sexual acts.

Hamilton: I wasn’t sort of talking about, you know, eating each other’s shit or anything like that. Maybe I didn’t go too far, but you know what I mean.

Moyes: I’m glad you didn’t.

KCSB: I think you went just far enough. Really quickly ‘cause we’re wrapping up, I want to talk about Australia’s music scene. ‘Cause I think, from an American perspective, there’s a lot of great electronic music coming out of there. I mean there’s you guys, Bag Raiders, Midnight Juggernauts, Flume, um… who else, Cut Copy.

Hamilton: Oh, that’s plenty.

Moyes: I was hoping you wouldn’t get through that list without mentioning Cut Copy.

KCSB: Those are really great acts, and every time I’m researching a band it’s like “Oh they’re from Sydney, from Melbourne.” Can you talk about the music scene there briefly?

Moyes: I mean, it’s really great. There’s always been great music coming out of Australia. And not just electronic as well. I dunno, I mean, it’s just like everywhere. There’s great music coming out of every city and every country. I think, in terms of the good bands that are coming out and the size of the population, there’s probably more good bands than there are people in Australia. You know what I mean? Compared to other countries.

Hamilton: I don’t think there’s anything particularly in the water.

Moyes: It’s just a lifestyle. People like to have a good time. It only takes about three good bands for people’s imaginations to run wild and think, “Oh wow, what’s going down in Australia?” But now there’s more than three bands, so who knows.

KCSB: Yeah I was just curious. I’ve never been so I don’t know about the scene there, but I’m pretty consistently finding stuff that I like.

Moyes: You sound like an Aus-ophile, if that’s a thing.

KCSB: I’m getting there. I don’t want to keep you guys, so I’ll just ask two more questions. Can you talk about the LED visuals you have during your live shows? I think they’re really impressive, if you could shed any light on that.

Moyes: Yeah. Nice, again. I think we just have gotten to a size where we’re playing festivals and also larger crowds, especially in Australia, where it’s important to have a really good visual presence. And also I guess, in a way, there’s just two of us on stage, I’m playing drums and Julian’s playing synths and singing. In order for it to really hit hard you need to have a really impressive light show, and we’ve always had lighting directors along the way. When we supported Daft Punk back in 2007 across Australia, we were lucky enough to be approached by their lighting designer Martin Phillips, and he sort of has been an important part of our live shows ever since then. It’s not like we’re a rock band where we just get up there and wear like leather jacks and have cool guitars. It’s a bit more of a show. Hopefully that answers your question.

KCSB: That definitely does. I saw you guys in L.A. last October, and it was my twenty-first birthday, and I was really really stoked, and thought, “Oh they’re here in America,” and was taken away by the entire thing, but the visuals especially, because they were really specialized to your music. Like during “A.O.” it flashed, you know, A.O.

Moyes: We had a lot of specific videos made for the show.

KCSB: I go to a lot of electronic shows, and there’s always the issue of—‘cause you’re right, it’s not a rock band, so it’s harder to see. I mean, I can see you drumming and you playing the keyboards, but I think the lighting is really crucial to that genre in particular and that yours was really solid.

Moyes: We’re just overcompensating.

KCSB: Final question and I’ll let you guys go. Where are you heading to after SXSW? I think you’re heading Mexico or South America?

Moyes: I think Monterey tomorrow.

KCSB: And it’s just a mini-tour, like a week?

Hamilton: I think it’s like five or six dates across Latin America. Yeah that’ll be fun, then we’ll go home, and we may even see you later again this year.

KCSB: Sweet. Well thank you so much for taking the time for this interview. I really appreciate it and think our listeners will.

Moyes: Yeah, no worries man. Thanks for the interview.

Hamilton: Our pleasure. No worries, we better run off to our next one. Nice to talk to you, thank you.

Pacifica came out last September on Modular Recordings in Australia and Casablanca in the U.S. The third Presets album peaked at #3 on the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association), the main music sale chart in Australia. 

Musical Charis + Ted Coe at UCSB’s Storke Tower – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Producer/host Ted Coe welcomed back Musical Charis’ core duo Blake Abbey and Jessie Brune, along with Colin Vieira, Sam Barlow, and Eli Display, for the entire hour. A podcast of this appearance is now available for streaming or download (see below).

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays during UCSB’s Winter Quarter from 11am-12noon.

Dante Elephante Studio Portrait (Ruben Zarate Upper Right) – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Rising stars Dante Elephante, coming off of a recent headlining Muddy Waters gig, look ahead to opening for L.A. “daytime disco” duo, Poolside, this coming Thursday night, February 7, at UCSB’s UCen Hub, a show presented by KCSB-FM, with the help of Associated Students Program Board at UC Santa Barbara.

An edited version of Monday’s broadcast can be accessed below.

Dante Elephante at MUDDFEST 2012

Featuring interviews with thinkers and activists like Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hedges, Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, and many Occupy organizers, Occupy the Movie had its world premiere last weekend at the SBIFF.

Recounting the story of one the most stirring social-justice campaigns in decades, Occupy the Movie is one of ten films in competition for the Fund for Santa Barbara’s Social Justice Award for Documentary Film.

Featuring brothers Tim Eymann (vocals, bass, keys, & more) and Josh Eymann (vocals & drums), plus a horn section, the band’s core duo are known for their time in the math-rock group Springtime Is Wartime, as well as for operating the important Goleta indie-rock venue, The Hard to Find Showspace.

Join in on KCSB-FM for all of the fun: a live performance, conversation, & guest DJ set.

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays in the Winter from 11am-12noon.

A complete podcast of this yearly special is now online here for playback or download. (See below.)

The preview includes a range of interviews with the Festival’s major organizers and programmers, a number of directors, particularly from the local area, and a general rundown of the major events taking place as well as the personalities coming to town to collect their awards.

This year’s honorees include Ben Affleck, Daniel Day-Lewis, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence. This year’s Festival boasts a rich selection of foreign films. The Fund For Santa Barbara, which sponsors a SBIFF Social Justice Award for Documentary Film, is also hosting a slate of provocative documentaries.

Seth was joined on mic by Robert and Michael, friends from Arc of Ventura County, plus another in-studio guest, Karen, an Arc coworker.

Tune into the podcast here to hear Pettersen’s California psych, surf, post-punk, and pop-rock creativity, with complete tracks played during the show (excluding King Tuff’s).

“The Freak Power Ticket” airs on Mondays from 11am-12noon in the fall on KCSB-FM.

Right Side Up came together after members took UCSB Professor Kip Fulbeck’s spoken word class. Quarter after quarter, students pack the aisles of UCSB theaters and often have to be turned away because there are simply not enough seats for the enthusiastic response to Fulbeck’s talented pupils and their array of witty, passionate, and inspiring performances.

Tonight, they’re taking their show on the road – to SOhO in downtown Santa Barbara.

On Monday’s edition of “The Freak Power Ticket,” producer/host Ted Coe invited four members of the RSU collective – Demi Anter, Mel Rosenberg, Alison Green, and Ryan Yamamoto – into the KCSB studios to perform four original pieces and to discuss the craft and inspiration of spoken-word performance in our community. You can hear an edited podcast of that program by clicking below.

The Accumulation of Freedom (AK Press) – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Professor Deric Shannon (San Jose State U).

A podcast of this “Anarchist Freakonomics” segment, featuring samples of three radical songs by Crass, Chumbawamba, and The Coup, is now available online here.