The Selmanaires are the new Atlas Sound
October 13th, 2009 by Chad Radford in Listening Stack, Music news
Clockwise from top: Tommy Chung, Mario Schambon, Jason and Herb Harris (Photo by Carl La Pan)
Atlas Sound fires up the tour machine once again, this time Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox has enlisted the Selmanaires to serve as his backing band for this show of ghostly pop. Stereolab-esque post-rock Brits Broadcast play in support of their latest release, Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate. The Selmanaires pull double duty as they open the show Thursday night, Oct. 14. $15. 8:30 p.m. The Earl. 404-522-3950.
Chad Radford: So what’s up with the Atlas Sound tour; the Selmanaires are the Atlas Sound band for the tour with Broadcast and you’re opening the shows as well?
Tommy Chung: Yes. Bradford has been collaborating with Broadcast for a little while and we were always jealous because Broadcast has been one of our favorite bands pretty much since they became a band. Bradford asked Herb if we wanted to go too, and it was like, ‘let me think about it… Um yeah!’ A week later Bradford said he was sick of being a one-man sampler show and asked how we felt about being the backing band too. It sounded cool so we did one practice with him before a Dirty Projectors show and within the first ten minutes he asked us to play that show. We learned four songs, stretched them out and did like a 10-minute cover of “What Goes On” by the Velvet Underground.
We’ve always had a connection with Deerhunter. Our very first show out was in 2003 with Deerhunter at MJQ before the Drunken Unicorn even existed. It was Deerhunter, Tabitha and we were the openers — back when we were still stand up bass, Wurlitzer and acoustic guitar. After that we pretty much played with Deerhunter every month at Lenny’s. It feels like things have come full-circle now that we’re playing with Atlas Sound.
The Selmanaires “Resonance Alright” mp3
Are you playing all stuff from Logos on this tour?
Jason Harris: Mostly from Logos, but there are a few songs that aren’t on there as well. Some of the stuff is even newer than Logos.
Is it difficult to switch from playing in Selmanaires mode to playing in Atlas Sound mode? Stylistically speaking both acts are very different.
JH: It’s actually really enjoyable. The Selmanaires, which is our band and what we do. But playing with someone else gives us the chance to relax a little bit.
TC: I feel the same way when I play shows with Adron, I feel like ‘okay, these are her songs, they’re dope, and I just need to play something cool to accentuate it and stay out of the way.’
JH: Bradford really carries his music and we just help him carry it along. You can sit back and serve the song and not worry about expressing yourself, or thinking of it in those terms.
TC: With Adron and with Atlas Sound the attention is on the frontperson. They are the main attraction, so it’s easier on the rest of the players because the attention is focused away from them.
And when you’re playing as the Selmanaires you’re showcasing songs from the new record, Tempo Temporal, which takes you guys in a bit of a different direction from The Air Salesmen.
TC: I think the main difference between this record and the last one comes with the drum machine. It’s less of a traditional rock band set up — we used to be bass, drums and guitar pretty much. Now the more electro parts that Jason plays are in the forefront. He’s not playing drums as much now that he’s programming beats, and we have Mario Schambon to accentuate everything with the percussion.
There is a Kraftwerk vibe with the new record in that there’s a certain airiness to the songs that is pleasing to the brain in a way that I associate with Kraftwerk, probably because of the instrumentation.
JH: I think it has a lot to do with the instrumentation which frees us up. We’re also getting different tones than we were before.
TC: These songs aren’t really as guitar-driven as our songs have been in the past.
JH: It has really widened our palette to work with the electronics. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I think if we were going to continue playing rock music… We were more in an apprentice stage, trying to find our voices. And by changing it up we’ve created something that isn’t as standardized.
Is rock music a dirty word for you guys these days?
JH: Not really. It’s just something that we don’t want to do right now.
TC: When we did our first record a lot of people said ‘you sound like Devo mixed with the Kinks — which is actually very accurate. We listened to a lot of Devo and the Kinks, and I think it taught us how to arrange songs and compose them in a certain way, but we’ve moved on. I probably listen to more rock music than Herb, Jason or Mario. But we’re all into Kraftwerk, Italian disco, ’60s psychedelic Cambodian music. Os Mutantes is one of our favorite bands.
I digested your first album for a good long while and got used to it. The Air Salesmen was a vast departure from that, and I never quite accepted it.
TC: It’s kind of a schizophrenic record and we realized that people might be confused by it when we were making it because every song is so different from the next.
What you’re doing now reminds of the first record, or at least it executes your new ideas in a way that feels logical to me, moreso than what I got with your second record.
JH: We feel like we’re progressing as a band and we’re starting to follow through on a lot of the ideas that we had when we started the band, but didn’t know how to pull off. We didn’t have the experience, and it feels almost like we took a rock detour, which was how we got our schooling. Now we’re getting back to a lot of those original ideas.
TC: The second record was really rushed as well. We did the entire thing: tracking, mixing and mastering all in the span of 8 days — rushing to get it out in time for the Black Lips tour… And it still wasn’t ready in time for the Black Lips tour.
Did you put Tempo Temporal out yourselves?
TC: Yes.
Do you have your own label, or did you even go there?
TC: No… I think it’s funny that it reminds you of the first record because I thought that too, and I think it’s because a lot of the freshness that you got with the first record comes back with this one. It was the first batch of songs that we had written together. But that’s good because last year we all felt kind of burned-out.
You once told me, sometime after the Black Lips tour, that you weren’t sure if you were going to keep the band going.
TC: Yeah, that was the first time that we ever doubted ourselves, or asked ourselves, ’should we keep doing this?’ The Air Salesmen represents a dark time for us.
JH: It was rough times.
But it’s good that you had that kind of learning experience, right?
JH: Yeah but sometimes it’s unfortunate that these things had to be recorded.
Yeah but a lot of artists have those kinds of moments, especially a lot of timeless ones, like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen or Joni Mitchell. You can listen to their records and see the stumbles they made along the way while establishing their voice, and it’s kind of an endearing process to see played out over the course of their records, don’t you think?
TC: Right. It puts it into context too, like if Bob Dylan hadn’t made John Wessley Harding — which actually is a pretty good album — people wouldn’t have liked Blood on the Tracks as much.
Tell me about the song called “Resonance Alright.”
JH: That’s pretty much all of our favorite song on the album.
TC: Most of the songs on the album have electronic beats. “Vacant Land” and “Spun From Witch’s Daughter” both have real drums. “Vacant Land” is probably my favorite song on the album. It’s kind of droney. Jeff Clark thinks it sounds like the Velvet Underground, but I don’t know. I guess we would be lying if we said the Velvet Underground weren’t a huge influence on us.
Would you describe the song as sounding dirty like the Velvet Underground?
TC: I don’t know… It has an “All Tomorrows Parties” kind of thing going on. It’s very different from everything else on the record.
…and back to “Resonance Alright?”
TC: That one is like the prototypical new Selmanaires song in a way. It has most of the elements of how our newer stuff sounds. More airy, hypnotic.
And what about “White Chrysanthemum?”
TC: I think we debuted that one when we opened for Wire, right?
JH: Right. It was the first thing that we did with Mario.
Is Mathis Hunter still playing drums with you?
TC: Not really. I don’t think he’s played with us in about a year now which was an accident. Around the time when we weren’t sure if we wanted to be a band anymore and we weren’t very excited about music Noot d’ Noot started doing well. We were on hiatus for a few months after SXSW last year, and that’s about the time when Mathis really got the ball rolling with Noot d’ Noot and was gigging like crazy. We asked him to come practice with us but he was too busy. After the third or fourth month of practice without him we asked the percussionist from Adron’s band to play with us. I had been playing with Adron, and Herb and Jason really liked watching him play.
JH: The first time I saw him play with Adron I thought he was one of the coolest percussionists I had ever seen.
TC: So he started playing with us and it has worked out really well. Sometimes when I watch him play some of the crazy shit he does I say to myself, ‘how does he play that, and how does he play it so fast?’
Is there a songwriter in the Selmanaires?
JH: For most of the songs we write the music together, and then me and Herb write lyrics. Sometimes one of us will come to practice with a part of a song and it builds from there.
TC: We have always hesitated to say that we have a frontman because we switch things up a lot.
It’s a different dynamic when you’re in a band with twins, huh?
JH: Right you can’t have one of the twins be the frontman because if one of them is the star the other one would be jealous all the time! [laughs]
TC: I noticed that when I first started playing with Herb and Jason that they didn’t really have to communicate verbally to communicate. Now it’s been 10 years since I started playing with them and now I don’t have to communicate verbally to communicate with them.
JH: We all pretty much know what we’re going to do before we do it.
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