1. Growing Up
Neither of my parents had an interest in music. My first instrument was bass when I was 14. I lied to these older kids in a punk band that I had been playing for a year and they let me join and I learned from there.
2. Inspirations
Terry Reily and Steve Reich. Hearing the pieces A Rainbow In Curved Air and Music For 18 Musicians had a profound effect on me. I had never heard music like that at the time. Film is a huge inspiration. Kubrick was ahead of his time in so many ways. RIP.
3. Your Band
Me and Jeremy [Galindo] played in bands together in high school and met Donovan [Jones] and Alex [Bhore] along the way to the lineup we have today. We all have strong, different personalities and opinions that we bring to the table and it magically ends up working. We all know each other so well at this point – it’s like family.
4. The Music You Make
‘Post-rock’ is the most common one I’ve heard tossed around. Doom metal, shoegaze and drone are other genres we’ve been put into. I don’t listen to much post-rock but last time we played with Russian Circles they absolutely slayed (as per usual). We just finished our third record with John Congleton, who just won a Grammy for his work with St. Vincent. He is also Alex’s boss so we are beyond lucky to have access to his studio and to John’s unique input/engineering/producing.
5. Music, Right Here, Right Now
We’re lucky enough to be surrounded by friends in Austin, Texas running a great experimental label called Holodeck Records that are constantly putting out challenging music. It’s a very peculiar and interesting time to be alive, let alone making music/art. The onslaught of hypermedia and technology makes any bit of information immediately available and this has its own pros and cons. Anyone can make a record nowadays and that is both a wonderful and terrible thing. My favourite concert I’ve seen was Steve Reich performing ‘Mallet Quartet’ in a giant chamber Presbyterian church. The acoustics and phasing going on in the room were mind-bending.
This Will Destroy You play Hermann’s Bar on Sunday June 14, and support Sleepmakeswaves at the Metro Theatre on Saturday June 13.
