The
Minders, Urban Legends, Mothball
Medicine Hat
1834 NE
Alberta St., 778-7700
10 pm Friday,
Oct. 13
Cover
Down in Fall
was released by Spin Art records on Oct.
3.
.Oh God, [Heino]
used to scare the shit out of me. He was this albino who
would be on commercials and would sing AWWWW. Oh, the Bavarians
loved him.
--Martyn Leaper
There's no rest for the wicked--especially the wickedly
hip. Just back from a tour with the iconic Elliott Smith,
the Minders must now rev themselves up for the release of
their new EP Down in Fall, a winsome, '60s-inspired
five-song collection of warbly piano- and guitar-pop nuggets.
Like other members of the Elephant 6 collective (such as
Apples in Stereo and Olivia Tremor Control), the Minders
perpetuate the love of neo-psychedelia that's enraptured
many thrift-store-scoring indie kids of late. Shaving off
the indulgent excess of modern musical trends, they've exposed
a soft, melodic core resonant of happier days--or at least
the sun-dappled, Summer of Love nostalgia many connect with
the Beatles and Beach Boys.
Having moved here from Colorado in recent years, Brit-born
Martyn Leaper and his longtime accomplice/drummer Rebecca
Cole allowed me a quick peek into their home and studio
life. Their recording studio/house reveals both the ordered
minds of Leaper and Cole and their approach to music: It's
a space-maximizing setup with movable sound walls, sparse
decoration, pyramidally stacked bottles and cans, and two
dirty spoons placed methodically in the sink. After the
tour of their humble abode, we sat as Leaper put some Kenyan
music on.
Willamette Week: So you're part of a collective
known as the Elephant 6. How did that come about?
Martyn Leaper: I'll tell you what. I'll give you a quick
interpretation of Elephant 6 and our experience of working
with them. It started as a small core of people from western
Louisiana. They all had more or less the same interest in
pop music. That kind of music, and sensibility for that
music style, was definitely rare for people from rustic
Louisiana.
So do you see your music as sort of a reincarnation
of that ['60s psychedelic-pop] music or as...
A regurgitation?
Yeah.
You know what I think it is, I grew up listening to many
different styles of music. My mother had listened to African
and pop music a lot. Plus my parents had me when they were
very young--when they were 20--and by the time they were
30 they continued to buy new music because they wanted to
stay young. But to get to it, when you listen to a lot of
pop and melodic music, it gets ingrained in you. And especially
if you love it, you want to play it, and if you can't play
it, you want to collect it. And so, yeah, do what you know.
I been playing since I was 10....
I read that you used to play "modern" music.
Yeah, New Wave. I really like Echo and the Bunnymen and
Madness. I recently just started going back to that stuff.
Most of the time a lot of musicians are struggling to find
the music to play, the music that puts them in rhythm, whatever
allows them to use music as a vehicle, even its cold steel
things.
That brings to mind the samples you've incorporated
in songs on past albums, and on the new one, the song "Time
Machines," where there's a man preaching about time as money...
Oh, the voice. Yeah, that's actually a great story. I found
that particular tape, and a bunch of others, at an American
Retired Citizens thrift store. It was a tape on time management,
and it had actually imprinted itself on its other side from
poor care. It was double-sided, and on one [side] was the
voice and on the other was it speaking backwards. It's a
classic sound--it could even be Spock.... I was like, 'Wow,
"Philosophy of Time Management,"' so I kept looking for
more. Found some old German radio and pop music from the
'60s, some girl bands, and then there was one of this German
singer, Heino. Have you ever heard of him?
Never.
Oh God, he used to scare the shit out of me. He was this
albino who would be on commercials and would sing AWWWW
[deep operatic voice resounds from Martyn]. Oh, the Bavarians
loved him. One eye was sharp white, and he would wear these
small dark glasses.
Do you foresee the band using more samples?
No, not really, it just seemed to fit.... Last time we
went to Athens [Georgia], we saw people being obscure just
for the sake of being obscure. It turned into a--
Catastrophe.
No, it was just something that I didn't really want to
hear. The name of the game is to be different, and you don't
want to sound like everybody else.
|
