Describe the Girl Detective sound–your press kit defines you as an experimental, cerebral…listening to tracks like “Life’s A Movie”, it would be easy to associate GD with the as-of- then defined “Post-Modern” sound, that later got shoehorned into “Alternative”. But what are YOU thinking?

Rani: Boy, for me that’s a super tough one. I listen to tons of music, but have never been very good with labels or genre tags. I’m going to leave that to Jay to elaborate on any specific titles. People who have heard our music have used those labels you mention, and that is where we got those from. I saw it and thought… yeah, that sounds like us. I can say more of where we come from, though, as far as our influences.

When I first heard Jay’s music, I had been working with someone else to write songs and was having difficulty trying to create melodies and vocals. I was using this other musician’s songs, and they were more electronic and I felt like I needed a solid guitar sound in there to give me a background to come up with vocals.

I did a Craigslist search through musician postings and found Jay on there and linked to his page. I had been looking for someone with a Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) – type guitar sound, and when I heard Jay’s samples online, I was totally blown away. His music was really dark, and made me think of Depeche Mode as well, which is one of my all-time favorite bands, and I was really impressed with his guitar playing and just the overall sound. I contacted him and we did a little with that other project, but I said I’d also like to see if I could try writing some vocals over his music, as I thought it was just so cool! A bit more about what I’m into… I listened to those other bands I mentioned, but also to Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Smiths—just so many of those fantastic 80s bands.

They have been in my bloodstream, you could say, since they were part of my teen years and I’ve never been impacted by music in the same way since–that is the language I speak. In the creation of a vocal sound, I don’t try to go for anything. I’m just singing, but I think what I love does come out someone in there. I think Morrissey, Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), Peter Murphy and Sinead O’Connor are all mixed in there somehow, as those are the people I most sing
to/with.

I can say more about what I’m going for as a person coming from a visual arts background. I have a background professionally in motion graphics and some audiovisual art direction and I have an interest in creating/crafting rich environments like Bill Viola has done with some of his sound/video installations and like Laurie Anderson was doing with her performance art that also integrated A/V and kinetics. I sort of live in this rich dreamscape in my mind and it’s multi-level.

Jay’s songs are a rich soundscape and they already have that going on. For me, as a vocalist, I want to tell stories and go to some other place with what I’m doing. So, when I come up with vocals (which are usually completely improv) I am kind of accessing that state to make them at all. And, I think that the music is actually being received that way, as that is some of the feedback we’ve been receiving—that sense of otherworldliness or something. It’s astounding, as I have that in my head, but would have no way of knowing how to put that out musically. But I think it’s just happening. What would you call that genre?? Again, that’s a tough one!

Jay: If music was a drink and you wanted to order a Girl Detective you would mix The Cure, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Cocteau Twins, Depeche Mode, Joy Division/New Order, The Church, Dead Can Dance with maybe a touch of The Beatles and Pink Floyd.

Girl Detective is a duo, so there’s obviously a bit of a challenge re-creating the lush sounds of your studio work on stage. What do you and bandmate Jason Oppman do to keep the music as multi-layered as what you’re doing in the recording studio? Or have you stripped the sound down to a more basic approach for the live gigs?

Rani: Yes—that is a challenge. Our sound is a really rich tapestry and we want people to experience the depth of it at a live show. I know when I go to see music, I really want to be taken out of my day-to-day thoughts. Just like with movies. I want to live in that world for a while. And, we want to do that with our live shows—to envelop the audience within a blanket of sound. So, we wouldn’t want to strip the songs back any. Actually, kind of the opposite is true. Vocally, I’ve been pleased with my voice just given some house reverb, although we are working within our own arsenal of tools (Jay has tons of expensive gear!) to create a more fine-tuned solution for the live sets.

Jay: As Girl Detective is in the early stages, we are using our backing tracks of drums/bass/piano/synth from our studio recordings and doing all guitars and vocals live. As we evolve we may play bass and piano live, too. I would imagine for certain shows we may possibly go with a stripped down version of a few songs depending on what type of venue and event we are playing, but at this point we want listeners to first hear the songs with the lush sound before taking any layers away as we want them to become familiar with our sound/style.

On stage it can be tough for a duo to feel like a “full band”. Some groups rely on additional fill instruments–keyboards, percussion, etc–to provide a larger sound and stage presence. How does Girl Detective cope with that issue? Is the band comfortable in its current form? Seeking a third member? Or do you find it’s not even an issue, with audiences being much more accepting of sequences, loops, etc than probably any other time in the last 40 years….

Rani: We’ve kicked this one around a bunch and keep coming back to the same conclusion—that we’re kind of a lean, mean, band machine. We’ve both had experiences with other bands and know it can be really cumbersome adding additional members. So much more is on the table—personalities, schedules, musical preferences and styles, joint decisions, etc. We’ve looked at bands we love—Cocteau Twins, others—and also a bunch of contemporary solo and duo acts—and keep saying… hey, if it’s working, let’s just go with it!

We met almost two years ago and started sending tracks back and forth and the odd thing is that neither one of us really has anything to say about what the other is doing. It’s a really fluid collaboration in that way…oddly enough, we haven’t needed to lean on other people to get things done. Our expenses are low, we can write collaboratively (while in separate places), and our weekly practices are possible because it’s just two people who are balancing music with their separate lives outside of the band, as opposed to a bunch of folks doing it. I’m still a bit freaked out about how easy this process has been.

Oh, and I’ll also mention that my interest in creating installation art, video, and the like means that we’ll have a bit more going on onstage during most of our shows than just two musicians to pay attention to. I’m very excited about that aspect as well. And, I dabble with the guitar and drums, so perhaps at some point you’ll see me stepping up in those areas, too.

Jay: I think with the energy that Rani brings to the live stage and the fact that our vocals and guitars are played live, we do feel like a full band on stage. Rani created a light box that was placed on stage for our first show where a drummer would go, which made me feel like we had the stage presence of a full band and with having the backing tracks of drums/bass/piano/synth playing on my Mac we do create the soundscape of a live band as well. Until the first show I had no idea how the songs would sound being pumped out of the system at Reggie’s Music Joint, but during our sound check I realized that as a duo we sound just fine. Adding another member is a possibility in the future, but for now things flow so well from a songwriting and collaboration standpoint that we don’t really want to mess with what we have together.

Girl Detective **seems** to be part of a small cult of independent artists fascinated by, well, girl detective imagery. There’s a San Antonio synth pop duo called Hyperbubble, for example, that has on occasion name-dropped Nancy Drew, put that sort of influence into some of their visuals, etc…and there’s even a Death Metal band located in Michigan called Nancy Drew. What is it about this bit of cultural ephemera? Should the name of the band not be considered a jumping off point for further exploration of a theme, or is there a developing idea there hinted at by the name?

Rani: I think there is kind of a theme hinted at, but not too heavily. It comes from my own background. I read Nancy Drew as a kid and really loved her and felt that I was her in many ways. And recently I ran across my diary from the fifth grade. I read an entry about how I had just started a detective club. I was very much into that sort of thing. I also played the drums in the fifth grade. I was sort of a tomboy, but still girly.

And as I’ve grown up, I’ve been really disappointed by the lack of role models for this type of girl/woman. When we started the band originally, we called ourselves Dream Theory. I thought that was cool, but eventually Jay found a band with the same name out there and we had to regroup and find a new name. I was out walking and Nancy Drew was on my mind—I had been researching her and thinking about what she represented. I considered using that name as our band name and ran it by Jay. We both thought it was too concrete, and then I thought of Girl Detective. I really love the name. It’s kind of a label for me.

And Jay thought of a funny joke… that I’m a girl detective, and he’s a guy detecting girls, like a detective who is on the lookout for clues about girls… something like that. And sometimes he signs his emails to me as “Guy Detective.” We get a kick out of it. Also, I love the illustrations, both cover art and internal art, that were used in those books, and will likely do some of our band art in a similar style. We’ll lean a bit on the name and its associations. One of our songs is called “Dress and Smoking Jacket” and paints a picture very much in keeping with that aesthetic. And I’ve always been interested in noir fashion and the idea of sneaking about and “gathering intelligence.”

That’s sort of my way. I’m a Scorpio (born on Halloween) and my personality profile says I should have been a detective. I definitely research anything I’m interested in to the nth degree. I like to get to the bottom of things. And, like I said, there are few female role models like Nancy Drew. I’d like to revive her image as the type of girl/woman that those of us who are female can look to as a role model.

Jay: As Rani is the Girl Detective, I believe she can answer this question with much more intelligence and awareness of the trend than myself as I’m not a Girl or a Detective.

There are hints of a Girl Detective vinyl LP. Care to elaborate?

Rani: Oh, we would love to put out vinyl!!! We’re both super into older technologies (even though vinyl is new again!) as well as considering the packaging of music to be just as important as the music itself. And, I know through having co-founded Transistor that people love vinyl. There’s a collectability factor with vinyl and an element of art that is just so fantastic. First will be our EP, which will be out by summer. We also have enough material for a full-length, and are shooting for the fall for that. How I wish I could just do this full-time and we could get these out there sooner (‘course, Jay would have to quit his job, too, as he’s our engineer)! So, yeah—vinyl is on the radar!

Jay: Yes, we plan on having a limited release of our EP on vinyl, with LP’s making a very welcome comeback in my mind. It will allow Rani to put her artistic touches to a retro medium that allows you to approach a release differently than a cd or digital release.

Where is Girl Detective going from here? You’re gigging, recording… any tour plans? What’s next for you and Jason Oppman?

Rani: We are looking to do more gigs, but our main focus now is in releasing the songs. But we’d love to do some festivals, especially with so much going on here in Chicago. Once we have a solid release out, we’d love to tour. And then, more and more writing. Jay has roughly 700 songs on various disks, even floppy disks! It’s nuts. He’s been writing and recording for 16 years, so there’s an endless stream of material.

And everything I’ve heard to date (maybe 50 of those, if that) has been fantastic. So, I’m like a kid in a candy store. I like to take one of his songs, bring it into GarageBand, throw on a headset mic, and hit record. Sometimes I have lyrics that are thought out and somewhere that I can read them, or in most cases, I have a bunch of books I’m reading that are open all around me. Having never heard whatever the song is before (it’s just kind of being revealed to me on the timeline), I hit the record button and sing whatever pops into my head or whatever words fly out at me from the various texts.

I do that a few times and then listen to the tracks and cut stuff out of each layer and mix the levels high and low and just see what comes out of it. That’s how the vocals for the demos that are currently online where all recorded. So, it’s a lot of fun to write in that manner, and I can’t wait to start working on more songs! With all that material, we’re hoping to be putting together music for a long time! We’re both super serious about this.

Jay: We plan on finishing up our first EP and then touring locally to promote it to keep the momentum going. As the EP will probably be about 3-4 songs we will want to follow up our first release with a full length album that includes the other songs we are playing live that are not being included on the EP. Additionally, we have a huge library of songs I’ve written over the years and I continue to write about 20-30 songs every year, so we’ve got new material that we can bring into our live set. Rani and I have a large list of cover songs we want to learn, and we’ve toyed with the idea of playing a show of only cover songs—not that we want to be a cover band, but to pay tribute to those who influenced the sound that is Girl Detective.

See Girl Detective on stage Monday, April 30, 2012 at 8PM at Martyrs, 3855 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. You can hear Girl Detective at ReverbNation or visit the official Girl Detective site.

The AM & Shawn Lee collaboration has a lot of  analog synth texture to it, which always sounds great on vinyl, but there’s also a heavy singer/songwriter vibe–Nilsson meets Gary Numan Uptown?

The Numan reference is probably too doomy for this album until you get to tracks like Dark Into Light, which is a bit heavy handed on the rhyming, but arguably one of the best cuts for lovers of heavy, low end synth.

Turntabling interviewed AM & Shawn Lee by e-mail just before they started their new tour (details at the end of the interview).

First-a bit of background. Tell us a bit about AM & Shawn Lee, how things got started and what’s going on now.

Shawn Lee: Well, according to legend, AM emailed me after hearing my music on the radio in LA. This is true! I emailed him back.  We stayed in touch with cyber exchanges. I played on one of his tracks. When he came to London we hung out at my studio and I went to his gig. We hit it off… I later came to LA to play some live shows. I invited AM to sit in with my band on a couple of tunes. He did! We hung out more. We listened to records. We bonded…I said “We should make a record together”! He said “yes”! We did!!

This may sound obvious given the state of the music biz at the moment, but how did you decided to start releasing things on vinyl as opposed to the easier, more cost effective route of digital-only sales?

Shawn Lee: Well we were releasing in the obvious digital formats anyway. We are both fans of vinyl and it was clear to us that this album would have to be on wax. It smells lovely!!!! Nothing sexier than 12 inches of round platter, baby!

Do you find that the vinyl format serves some of your music better? Thinking of the Gary Numan-esque synth tones on tracks like Dark Into Light where the analog format would definitely favor those textures…

Shawn Lee: You can’t beat the sound fidelity of new properly cut vinyl. It ain’t a record til it’s a record- you know what I mean?! Not to mention it’s a great visual package as well.

Technically speaking, what was your major challenge of putting out digital and vinyl formats?

AM: Well the most obvious thing to do is have it remastered for vinyl…which we did. This is very important. We also re-did the artwork layout wise. We did a gatefold vinyl so we had more space to work with. Andy Votel (Finders Keepers) was kind enough to do all the artwork which is amazing. George Horn mastered the album for vinyl.

What is it about turntable culture that keeps it alive after all these years, in your opinion–sound quality aside, what attracts you to vinyl as a format not only for releasing music but also collecting?

AM: I think the main reason is that it is so tangible. It’s big and requires you to really put attention into artwork and layout. The 60s and 70s were such a magical time for that because so much went into the photograhpy, artwork, layout and liner notes. There was a certain pride in it.

I think that is coming back because many of us look back on those types of records and want to give our record the same love and sense of pride and detail. Oh wait, you asked about sound! Ha ha. Well, vinyl just is. Nothing sounds like it. The highs have a certain crispiness about them and the lows are so warm and full. But I personally think the resurgence has more to do with aesthetics than sound.

Any plans to stick with vinyl for future releases? Or is this more an experiment for you? What’s your experience been with vinyl as a format for the new album, and how do you like how it’s doing so far?

Shawn Lee: Yes we plan on releasing future records on vinyl . The CD as a format is dying out but vinyl continues to live on. As far as physical formats go, Records are the real deal. Vinyl is final….

Give us some dirt on working closely with Thievery Corporation and how do you like the ESL family?

Shawn Lee: Thievery are like a rock and roll circus! Long hair, spliffs, Jack Daniels, yoga! It’s an interesting mix. I’ve known Rob Garza for many years now and he is one cool dude. Everybody in their band was super nice and it was a great experience all round.

AM: Touring with Thievery Corporation was pretty classically rock n’ roll and they were super cool. They watched our show every night. That says a lot. After our last show with them in Oakland they had an after party at a club down the street. We walked in and Rob Garza was upstairs in a private area surrounded by different folks.

He asked if I wanted a drink and I noticed he had  a Corona. I was like “sure, I’ll have a Corona.” He made a motion to someone and 10 min. later an entire tub of Corona showed up along with a couple bottles of tequila. I was like “oh yeah.”

AM & Shawn Lee are currently on the Dark Into Light Tour which ranges from New York, Chicago, Ohio and elsewhere in the US, all the way to Quebec. Get tour dates and info at AMSounds.com

If you’re into Paisley Babylon, the Turntabling.net band/turntablism project, don’t miss the Paisley Babylon interview segment featured on this week’s edition of Transistor Radio.

Transistor is an amazing Chicago-based shop selling vinyl, art, books and mixed-media art. I covered Transistor recently as part of the Vinyl Road Rage series and this is definitely one of the hippest new Chicago music haunts in the area.

One of the things that makes Transistor so awesome is their involvement beyond the four walls of the shop with things like their regular Transistor Radio show. As it happens, I’m performing at Transistor as Paisley Babylon this Friday (October 15th, 2010 at 8PM) and I was interviewed in anticipation of the show on Transistor Radio.

Host Rani Woolpert asked a lot of great questions about the origins of Paisley Babylon, how I got into turntablism, mashups and the like. Christian Marclay I am not, but he’s definitely the spiritual godfather of what I’m doing these days as Paisley Babylon with the five turntables, five echo boxes and crates of vinyl…

There are two other guests on the Transistor Radio show besides me–Chicago mixed media artist Damon Locks, whose work (what little I’ve seen) looks amazing, and ditto for sustainable architect and furniture designer Eve Fineman. They’re both well worth checking out. Transistor Radio is quickly becoming one of my favorite Sunday night listening pleasures–now I look forward to Sundays for it, along with my all-time favorite Sunday radio experience Word Jazz with Ken Nordine.

Friends of Paisley Babylon (I’ve always felt uncomfortable about saying “fans”) should definitely have a listen to the Transistor Radio interview with me about PB, but please stay tuned for Locks and Fineman after my segment. Good stuff all round.

–Joe Wallace

But that’s the past–the here and now has Boy Eats Drum Machine funkier than ever with a new collection of excellent, danceable tracks–20 in all.

20 Beats is hot off the presses as it were, on Bandcamp, iTunes and elsewhere. Turntabling wanted to know how the vinyl fits in with Boy Eats Drum Machine’s latest and get the skinny on this excellent new BEDM album.

Turntabling: Give us the lowdown on 20 Beats. What’s going on here?

Jon Ragel: This is a collection of 20 brand new instrumentals, all of which started out as breaks grabbed from Bridgetown Breaks 1 and 2. I worked pretty fast, so there’s a raw edge to the parts, as well as more bite in the guitars and synths than anything else I’ve done. Each track has it’s own album cover too.

Turntabling: You list ‘turntablist’ as one of your specialties–how does turntabling factor in on the new record?

I only pull breaks and sounds from vinyl. It’s an aesthetic thing. Also, I like the limitation of working with vinyl. You have to use your hands to make it fit. It always ends up being a tad imperfect. I like that. Most electronic music sounds way too perfect to my ears.

Is 20 Beats coming on vinyl? BEDM has released material on vinyl previously–what are the challenges of recording/mastering/getting an album ready for a vinyl release is like compared to doing it for digital distribution?

It’s just a digital release for now. I’m still trying to recoup on Booomboxxx and Hoop and Wire, both of which came out on vinyl. My desire to make art currently outweighs the money it brings in, so I’m thankful for this whole digital angle on releasing music. It’s cheaper, for sure. This album has been free, basically.

Rainbow Records made the vinyl for both Booomboxxx and Hoop and Wire. They send 5 copies to inspect. In both instances I felt good about the way they sounded. No hassle, really.

I think vinyl naturally sweetens the deficiencies of 16 bit, 44.1k recording, as well as it’s lack of depth. I can’t wait to get something more robust, but I still think the motu 828 is a nice piece of gear, especially considering how inexpensive it is.

What advice do you have for someone contemplating putting music on vinyl who has only done digital releases prior to vinyl?

Oddly enough, I’m not much of an audiophile, so my knowledge on this topic could use a little spit-shine. I tend to listen to music at the day job or during long drives. I love my vinyl LPs more as a historian.

That said, I really appreciate sweet lows and dynamic range, so my gut instinct is that recordings with those two qualities are going to sound best on vinyl. Basically, with an mp3 you’re trying to make it really damn loud.

You don’t have to do that with vinyl because audiophiles like dynamic range and have systems designed to sound musical, rather than simply “bassy” or “loud”. So I’d say leave more dynamic range in a vinyl master than you would a digital master.

20 Beats—available on CD? What’s the future of the shiny disc? Some say it’s dead already and doesn’t know when to lie down, but some bands I know insist that you still need a disc to be taken seriously at shows and by reviewers. What’s your take from a musician standpoint?

I’ll do a boutique run of cd’s. I’ve never loved CDs mind you, but if you tour CDs are a no-brainer. People give you money for them. Money is good. Also, it seems to me a lot of radio/press peeps still have stacks of cd’s on their desks. We want them to hear our music, so we should give them music the way they like it. I’m talking mailing out 550 CDs.

That’s expensive. That’s inefficient. That’s…sounding like the music industry. Of course, I won’t be doing that with 20 Beats. 20 Beats is an experiment. Also, I’m too broke to do that again this year.

I really like digital. I wish more people would catch onto buying lossless files. The technology is there. The technology is exciting. The technology is simply way ahead of people’s ability to take in information.

You can send someone an email but you can’t give them the time to read it, along with the other 99 emails they get that day. It’s impossible. So technology isn’t the issue, but rather a simple industry-wide changing of the guards over the next 10-20 years. Watch a teenager text their friends while eating a sandwich and following So You Think You Can Dance and you’ll know what I mean.

Also, I think the internet is misunderstood as a tool. People need actual human contact. People want to feel cultural. People want to feel…well…human. There’s only so much nibbling around on the internet someone can do before they need to go out, hear some music, bump asses with a few people, and get a good buzz.

So long as we musicians are out there being a part of that we’ll be culturally relevant. We might even make a few bucks in the process.

You can find 20 Beats by Boy Eats Drum Machine at Bandcamp. Check out the two free tracks Silverskate Gateway and the current Turntabling favorite, Josh Skins, which is funky as all hell.

King Britt is naturally a source of interest for budding DJs all over the globe, so I thought I drop Part One and Part Two of my chat with KB, and throw in a little YouTube love with the man besides. I didn’t have anything to do with the clip below, it wash shot at the Novara Jazz Fest in Italy earlier in ’08.