Marcus Kellis: There’s a video for Lolita, featured on Stereogum and others, it’s got—it’s got some free-association type things. Kind of all over. Sort of like the song, too. What went into making it, why did that come about?
Scott: We were dealing with some friends of ours who do video work, and this was the first music video they’d done in a little while. So it was really fun in that respect, because they came from a background of doing short films. And it shows in the video, I think. We tried to tell a narrative that would be interesting and that wouldn’t make sense immediately. Or maybe it does, but they took an interesting twist on it, and we were happy to not have to be too featured in it. Sometimes music videos can obviously run into cliché territory too easily, so we were happy to not have to perform the song in front of the cameras too much, and let the director and the actors craft something that would be hopefully more interesting to watch.

MK: Throw Me the Statue’s mentioned in the same breath as Scott, a lot of the time, but there were six other guys on the stage with you tonight. There were even more setting up—and there was a lot of setting up to do, with the three keyboards, a couple glockenspiels, several guitars, bassist, three horn players. How much of the album is Scott?
Reitherman: We had some friends play on the record, Aaron played on the record—Aaron and I actually went to high school together in California. And, yeah, on the record it’s mostly me playing a lot of the stuff, overdubbing parts, but live obviously that’s impossible to try and pull off. So for a while now it’s been a band. I think that sort of storyline is maybe easy for people to write about, or talk about, mentioning only my name in the course of writing a paragraph-long blurb about our band. But I hope that starts to become less and less present especially with the next record. It’ll certainly be more of a band after that.

MK: What part of California was that, and when did the band form in relation from when you moved to Seattle?
Reitherman: I grew up in Half Moon Bay, California, which is a little coastal town about a half an hour below San Francisco. I moved to Seattle four years ago to start a record label, and start putting out my music through it with another friend of mine. And the friends I made in Seattle, and the friends I had like Aaron who moved here after I came here, all came together very organically. It’s just a group of friends who all played music, and all have their own songwriting projects in their own right, and we banded together to pull off the ones that I had been making. So the band in its current formation has changed a little bit here and there, but basically started a year and a half ago.

MK: So you did start your own label, and the album came out on it, but that was a homebrew type operation, right? How did that end up getting worked onto Secretly Canadian, the best label in the universe?
Reitherman: We’re super happy to be with those guys. They do a really good thing, and they have a really artist-friendly, transparent operation, which we feel super lucky to have been included in it. So I put out the record on the label I run, Baskerville Hill, and about two or three months after we released Moonbeams in the summer of last year we started talking with them. Then they picked us up, and released it in a slightly modified format—we just scraped a couple of songs off the record—in February of this year. That’s kind of how it went down. It was pretty surprising and awesome to have that shift, and be able to just focus on doing the music, and not going down to the post office every day and mail out copies of your own CD and stuff. Which is also a really fun and gratifying thing to do—mail people records and write messages on the envelopes—but it’s really wonderful to also be able to just be in the band for a little while, and focus on pulling off the music and the live act.

MK: The other band from California who I really hear a lot on the album is Pavement, especially the lo-fi type aesthetic you hear on a song like “Date With Ikea.”
Goldman: I’m pretty sure it’s universal that nobody goes into the studio and decides to rip off their favorite band, it just happens because that’s the way influences work. You listen to something your whole life and that’s what your musical perspective is centered on, more than other bands.
Reitherman: Lo-fi recording, whatever that name means to whoever uses it, is a product of the humble process which you have to go through when you begin. So you record a record at home and you overdub it to completion, and it’s not going to sound like “Wowee Zowee,” it’s going to sound like “Slanted and Enchanted.” But we’ll take the Pavement reference any day of the week.

MK: There’s an organic lo-fi, like Microphones or Sebadoh, but then there’s artificial lo-fi like Iron & Wine, which to me is just bullshit.
Reitherman: That started out, as is my understanding, in a similar sort of way… It’s tricky. Iron & Wine has grown into something so much larger than when he started making his bedroom four-tracks. You don’t want to leave that aesthetic behind, because it defines your artistic berth, sort of, to the people who end up listening to you. It’s kind of a tricky thing to navigate, especially with that guy, because you get on a regular, high-powered record label, and you have a lot more money to record with. And you don’t want to be accused of selling out, or making something that’s sparkly clean and sounds crispy, maybe. So I don’t know. We haven’t made our second record yet, so it’s on our minds, a little bit. But I highly doubt we’re going to run in the opposite direction of lo-fi. Whatever lo-fi means.

MK: The first sound on the album “Moonbeams” is this really great, Casio-style synth, then it goes on and you hear the guitar and everything else kick in. How do you go about realizing the instrumentation? Is there a battle for ground between the different parts?
Reitherman: There’s definitely the pursuit of trying to make this happy, interesting marriage between organic instruments, like acoustic, nylon guitars and drums, with drum machines from old Yamaha and Casio keyboards, the sounds that come with the keyboards—trying to make that all exist together in a way that’s cool. And I don’t know to be honest. It’s the stuff I’ve been interested in doing for a while, so finally making “Moonbeams” happen was a logical progression of what I was interested in, the aesthetics of old keyboards and guitars. I think there’s also—what I hope, I guess, that people might find nice about that is the humble quality of not using a bunch of expensive instruments to make musical ideas play out the way that you hope they would. Obviously if you performed all the parts on our record with high-end equipment, it would’ve sounded markedly different. It wouldn’t necessarily be representative of where it’s coming from, or where I’m coming from, so using those tools at your disposal is just the most natural way to do it. And I tried to make that a deliberate move, also, in using some of the drum machine sounds that you hear on the record, because that’s the way that I write the songs. I play a pop/rock beat on the keyboard, and start playing along with a guitar in my room, so it seemed like the most natural way to record it, and fuse that with other instruments and make it layered. But it starts there, for me.

Beulah: the defunct San Francisco, Elephant 6 project. “If We Can Land on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart” is available at Music is Art, and It’s Hard to Find a Friend’s Summer Mixtape includes “A Good Man Is Easy to Kill.”

Last.fm, the audio statistical thing, was mentioned in my article, as were allmusic (a hypertext music encyclopedia) and KUOI, my radio station.

Bad Dudes: Several MP3s are available for download on the official MySpace profile.

Destroyer: The MySpace profile has “Foam Hands” from Trouble in Dreams, but the Merge Records site has a free download, “Madame Butterflies,” available (look on the sidebar.)

Flight of the Conchords: The official Sub Pop site has MP3s of “Ladies of the World” and “Business Time” for free, along with a video for “Ladies” (also available for streaming on YouTube.)

HEALTH: Several wonderful MP3s are available at Stereogum.

Hot Chip: Ready for the Floor has a video on YouTube

Los Campesinos!: “You! Me! Dancing!,” available on YouTube.

The Magnetic Fields: Heartache with Hard Work has MP3s of “The Nun’s Litany” and “Drive On, Driver,” both from Distortion.

Matmos: The official album website offers “Rainbow Flag” for free download.

Neon Neon: “Raquel” and others can be heard on MySpace.

No Kids: “The Beaches All Closed,” “Old Iron Gate” and “For Halloween” are all wonderful tracks from the album, available for listening on their MySpace profile.

Okmoniks: Four tracks are up at MySpace.

Ratatat: The official MySpace profile has “Mirando,” from the new album, and others.

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down: Album highlight, and album title source, “Swimming Pools” is available for free download at the official Thao website (under “Listen”). I have previously featured a video, too, on this blog.

Throw Me the Statue: Check out “Lolita” here.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS: An interview with musician and KUOI alum Paul Dickow.
By Marcus Kellis.

Strategy’s Future Rock, out earlier this year on Kranky Records, was one of my favorite records of the summer. Performed and assembled by Portland’s Paul Dickow, the album was rated at 7.4/10 by Pitchfork and given four stars by the All Music Guide. Coincidence of coincidences, I emailed Paul only to find he was a former KUOI DJ. Bob Dickow, his father, is a professor of music at the Lionel Hampton School of Music; Paul grew up in Moscow before creating a whole series of excellent albums, and he agreed to an interview

Marcus Kellis: What do you think of your time in Idaho? Do you remember Moscow warmly?

Paul Dickow: I remember certain things warmly. I’m close to my family, I had a few nice friends in high school, and my KUOI days I remember particularly warmly because that was a bit of a haven when I really started to grow up. But that was just the thing, I think I felt surrounded by enough ignorance, religious overzealousness, and sometimes outright racism and sexism (and other xenophobia) to feel like I needed a haven. I remember my last years in Moscow the most warmly because, well, I spent the least amount of time exposing myself to those elements, which felt very small-town to me at the time. I split as fast as I could. Now that I’m older I’m friendlier to Moscow and the Palouse. For one thing, the weather is much, much better there than it is in western Oregon. Culturally and politically I’m struck by the fact that Moscow is now simultaneously more diverse and open and liberal than it used to be, and it also has this religious right-wing element that wasn’t as present when I was growing up. People’s ideas are more broadminded, there’s a huge food co-op, there are enterprising and sustainable businesses experimenting there, there are more people from other cultures there who apparently feel welcome. The city seems to have progressed and become less culturally isolated since my young days, but in the process it’s become much more polarized as well. You see those same extremes in Oregon and Washington, too, but instead of within one community, it’s more like Seattle vs. the central part of the state, or Portland vs. the rest of Oregon.

MK: What are some of your memories of KUOI?

PD: In my own club work I’ve done a lot of thematic DJing, which is what our Community Library Club, the inspiration for my label, was about. One summer while away from college, me and my childhood friend Zachary Pall did a KUOI show together where every show was on a certain theme: all music from Japan, songs about crime and punishment, the seasons, etc. That was very challenging, and a blast. I have a lot of fond memories of music directors turning me on to great music. Digging through the library on my off time and recording tapes in the studio B room late at night. I still have a lot of the music I got into then, this is where I formed my ideas about music. Less fond memories–I remember there was a guy who liked what I played and copied my show. He would play the same songs and same bands and stuff. That was weird.

MK: In Future Rock, it’s often hard to tell exactly what instruments are producing the sounds. Words like “textural” and “landscapes” sometimes appear in these contexts. Was this deliberate?

PD: Well, all music is textural, I just bring that element to the forefront and use that as the narrative rather than something else I think. “Landscape” is not as part of it, that’s something associated with atmospheric or meditative music that I think is sort of a cliché. The vastness is not about space in that sense, outdoor space or vistas, or whatever. I’ve done music about places, but this music is about inner space, for lack of a better word, and music space, genre space, it’s music about music in a way. In that regard, instruments are sometimes being used to mimic other instruments, like using a computer to simulate a Japanese flute, or making a keyboard sound like a bass guitar. There’s a lot of that, and use of non-musical sound to simulate musical sound too. That’s an attempt, I think, to say that you can make something out of materials not normally associated with that and end up with a really similar result, at least similar enough to be persuasive. And maybe dissimilar enough to be odd or challenging. Like making ambient pop music out of snippets of found sound, there is a thing that says, well, we’re responding to the product no matter what the process used to create it was.

MK: The length and mood of the tracks suggest Kraftwerk, Can, and the furniture music/ambient ideals of Erik Satie and Brian Eno.

PD: Can and Eno are direct influences on the album. Eno because he would cross avant-garde sound making and abstraction with pop accessibility, and Can because of their sense of modal melody, cycling or looping way of riffing and improvising. Kraftwerk is a huge influence but more on a cultural level, just that they were so willing to wholly exist within a certain style and theme. But they are so much more minimal and electronic, and my music is obviously more maximal and, a little bit less synthetic timbrally. Satie is something I like to listen to, but too old-fashioned to really be a direct reference point. The ambient elements are only one piece of the music. This is actually very beat-heavy music if you turn up the volume.

MK: What have you been listening to this year that you’ve dug on, old or new?

PD: Anything from the UK label Skull Disco. Everything Kranky’s done this year: phenomenal. Portland bands who release on some big labels, bands like Grouper, Yellow Swans. As far as releases this year I’ve been into Vladislav Delay’s album Whistleblower, Mark Templeton’s Standing on a Hummingbird. Some cool old music I’ve been checking out: Smersh, Kirk Nurock, Dickie Landry, early 4AD bands, and Cocteau Twins, who I wasn’t into at the time but I’m just getting into now.

MK: The last two Strategy albums have been released on Kranky, which is also the home of bands like Stars of the Lid, Deerhunter, and Andrew Pekler. How much contact do you have with your labelmates? What’s the nature of your relationship with that Chicago label, considering you have your own label project in Portland, Community Library

PD: There is some contact between all the bands for sure, especially when people are on tour and so forth. I’ve met many of the bands currently on the roster, but my relationship with them is mostly as a fan. The Portland ones like Valet, White Rainbow, etc. are obviously close. Honey from Valet and I are in Nudge together, for example. The UK-based Kranky artist Chris Herbert is a longtime friend of mine. We have been email pen pals, musical collaborators, tape-trading partners, and have visited each other, as well, for over thirteen years now.

I signed to Kranky before I started my own label, so they are still the primary outlet for most of my album-related music. I work with a number of labels releasing the occasional 12″ single of dance/club music, and I remix for a lot of people on a freelance basis. When I do a really big, thematic album collection I forward it to Kranky. My contract with them is officially done but still open to new work on a per-album, handshake basis, so it’s highly likely I will continue to work with them. My own label is a small and touchy entity, and when it comes down to it, I prefer to release with other labels so I am not my own editor. Separation of church and state kind of thing.

MK: Two things most of the reviews seem to mention about the album are a similarity to My Bloody Valentine’s album Loveless, and the appropriateness of the title. Myself, before reading any reviews, I was struck by the title. Not to ask ‘where did the title come from,’ but–with the nod to the original, French title of the film Fantastic Planet in the last track’s subtitle, that sort of thing –I wonder if it’s something that you set out to do, or something that came afterward.

PD: Some of the reviews seem to think the title is inappropriate, but… it’s inappropriate in a way that’s appropriate and funny, maybe? I knew a lot of the reviews would focus on that, it’s an intentionally provocative conundrum sort of title.

I don’t mind talking about the title, though there’s not really one answer that wins out over any other. I’d had a song entitled Future Rock because I liked the dramatic, declarative, sort of cocky aspect to the title, you know, electronic songs are usually titled “Phonxatrum7″ or “Megalopolis” and stuff like that, so I started to gravitate towards actual narratives and themes. The song incorporated live elements and I thought, OK, this is a machine really finally mimicking how I would write music if I had a band that I could direct. It was convincing as a kind of future “rock.” But then I realized that “rock” doesn’t just refer to rock music, but also to other musical styles- like “rockers” style reggae, “body rock” in the hip-hop or house music sensibility of ‘rocking’ as dancing or responding to the beat, etc. So that was important. Ultimately the title just came to refer to the fact that maybe rock music in the future would come to encompass so many other styles of music under the same idea. I don’t really know. In the end it just sounds funny and asks people to ask themselves, what does rock mean to them? What does it mean in the context of the album? Whatever meaning people attribute to the title is just as good as my many meanings!

Strategy’s website is here. You can hear samples from the album at the official Kranky website. Community Library, Paul’s record label, is here.

01. Animal Collective, “Fireworks” (Strawberry Jam, Domino)
02. Apples in Stereo, “Same Old Drag” (New Magnetic Wonder, Simian/Yep Roc)
03. Beastie Boys, “The Melee” (The Mix-Up, Capitol)
04. Black Moth Super Rainbow, “Forever Heavy” (Dandelion Gum, Graveface)
05. Bright Eyes, “I Must Belong Somewhere” (Cassadaga, Saddle Creek)
06. The Brunettes, “If You Were Alien” (Structure & Cosmetics, Lil’ Chief/Sub Pop)
07. The Budos Band, “Budos Rising” (The Budos Band II, Daptone)
08. Calvin Johnson and the Sons of the Soil, “Love Travels Faster” (Calvin Johnson and the Sons of the Soil, K)
09. The Clientele, “Here Comes the Phantom” (God Save the Clientele, Merge)
10. David Dondero, “When the Heart Breaks Deep” (Simple Love, Team Love)
11. The Deadly Syndrome, “Animals Wearing Clothes” (The Ortolan, Dim Mak)
12. Digitalism, “Pogo” (Idealism, Kitsuné Music/Virgin)
13. Feist, “I Feel It All” (The Reminder, Interscope/Arts & Crafts)
14. The Go! Team, “Keys to the City” (Proof of Youth, Memphis Industries/Sub Pop)
15. Grand Ole Party, “Gypsy March” (Humanimals, DH)
16. Handsome Furs, “Sing! Captain” (Plague Park, Sub Pop)
17. Jarvis Cocker, “Black Magic” (Jarvis, Rough Trade)
18. Jens Lekman, “Kanske Är Jag Kär i Dig” (Night Falls Over Kortedala, Service/Secretly Canadian)
19. Minus Story, “Stitch Me Up” (My Ion Truss, Jagjaguwar)
20. New Buffalo, “City and Sea (Lady Nameless)” (Somewhere, Anywhere, Arts & Crafts)
21. The Octopus Project, “I Saw the Bright Shinies” (Hello, Avalanche, Peek-a-Boo)
22. Rilo Kiley, “Breakin’ Up” (Under the Blacklight, Warner Bros.)
23. Spoon, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Merge)
24. Stereo Total, “Ta Voix au Téléphone” (Paris-Berlin, Kill Rock Stars)
25. Strategy, “Stops Spinning” (Future Rock, Kranky)
26. Wilco, “Impossible Germany” (Sky Blue Sky, Nonesuch)
27. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Down Boy” (Is Is, Interscope)

And three albums to highlight specifically:
Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam
Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala
Strategy, Future Rock

A great year for music. Here’s to 2008, with a new Magnetic Fields, a new Beth Orton, a new Portishead, and who knows what else.

Cats and kittens, I am so excited. For you. Because I am an excellent DJ and I play excellent music. Tonight on the Man Date I am pleased to present music from the United Kingdom. And maybe even small weird islands like the Isle of Man and so forth. A brief primer: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland includes, naturally, what one might presume. Great Britain is that island east of Ireland, and its component nations are Scotland, Wales, and England, which are a kingdom, a principality, and a kingdom, respectively. Northern Ireland is a province, and the Republic of Ireland is a republic and parliamentary democracy; they both lie on Ireland.

Anyway, look forward to happenin’ tracks from Mogwai, Franz Ferdinand, the Kooks, the Kinks, Ed Harcourt, the Aliens, the Futureheads, the Smiths, and many others. I will have a guest co-host with me tonight and maybe he’s going to sing an Oasis song, I don’t know. The Man Date airs Friday evenings between 6:30 and 8:30 P.M. Pacific. Listen online here in iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, or whatever else.