melting hearts and moving dance floors

Explode Into Colors is a Portland Oregon trio comprised of three brilliantly shining woman that sew brilliantly shining swells of dance floor push.  I recently stood stage-side center for an EIC Holocene show in Portland.  Mid-set I looked back to see a room completely packed with boys and girls in love, in motion catching the holy ghost–many with face full of smile.  Claudia Meza and Lisa Schoenberg (baritone guitar/vocals and drummer for EIC) graciously took the time to answer a few questions.

Explode Into Colors – Sharpen The Knife

Where did you grow up?

Claudia: Los Angeles

Lisa:  Staten Island, NYC

How did Explode Into Colors come together as a band?  Was there a lot of stylistic intent behind the initial union/concept?

Lisa: Explode into Colors came about almost two years ago in Portland. All three of us met in Oly (Olympia WA) years ago, and all moved to Portland around the same time. Claudia and I had been playing music together for years; we had a band called Thunder!Thunder!Thunder! back in Oly that put out an EP and toured a bit; that band was more mathy and Claudia played a regular guitar rather than the baritone. After T!T!T! disbanded Claudy and i jammed around in different formations in Oly together, but never had a solid band again until EIC. When we moved to PDX we immediately began playing music together, this time less mathy, and more rhythmic; Claudia heard overtones in my beats that inspired her to write additional percussion and sing, but she eventually picked up the baritone, and Heather joined to take over the percussion, sing, and add sweet melodic hooks on the melodica and keys.

Our stylistic intent has been to make music that gets us stoked and will get people moving.   My stylistic approach on the drums has been to create a less complicated overarching structure throughout a song, as in, get something good, and stick with it – then add to it carefully. Claudia has such a good ear when it comes to arranging things in this manner, and building up energy in a song, and has taught me a lot about how to arrange for dance music. This Coco Chanel quote comes to mind, and I’ve been trying to apply it to my beats as well as to leaving behind that extra belt/sweater/legwarmer: “When accessorizing, always take off the last thing you put on.”

Claudia: The initial concept had a lot to do with us wanting to unite all of our hobbies and not making it just a rock band. Stylistically, the fact that I had just learned how to play drums and didn’t really want to pick up the guitar again shifted the main focus to beats as opposed to melody in the songwriting process. I set up a percussion set and a lot of the early songs were just drums, effects and vocals. Lisa talked me into picking up the guitar again, and I had a baritone that I never really used so I thought I would try that to keep things simple and driving. My main concern was that it sound heavy, percussive and spooky. I really wanted to hear the drums and not trample it with “riffs”.  I think things have opened up a lot since we first started and there are some more melodic songs that we are coming up with, especially since the inclusion of Heather.

It looks like Gilberto Gil and Sister Nancy are among your influences…what else?  Can you give some particular albums or songs that any of you draw from for this project?  Are there any contemporary bands that are interpreting similar influences?

Lisa:  My particular influences run the gamut from the stuff my dad played for me growing up – Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, the Beatles, Zeppelin – to hair bands like Poison that I obsessed over through middle school, eastern european music, nirvana, the breeders, Selda, Os Mutantes, animal sounds, and also some contemporary stuff like Animal Collective. What has influenced me most in recent years are my friends’ bands that I’ve played shows with or collaborated with-  Clara Clara, adrian orange, old time relijun, the Good Good, LAKE, Sedan, Liarbird, Mt.Gigantic, The Intima, Tunnels. At the present moment I am sort of obsessed with Nurses, Tune-yards, humpback whale songs, and a cassette recording of cricket noises that my friend Gabby sent me.

My drumming in this project has been directly influenced by CAN – i love the fills that drummer uses. And the other day I totally ripped off an Erase Errata beat and suggested it for a new song.

I’m not sure who else is interpreting what I’m interpreting, because other than totally stealing that Erase Errata beat the other day, I’m not sure how these things that I’ve heard over the course of my life are all sorted out in my subconscious to create my beats, really.

Claudia: We do have lots of influences but I don’t think there is a specific album that I could point to that would explain it all. I grew up listening to the oldies station, hip hop, punk rock, no wave, corporate alternative rock and latin music of all kinds, especially cumbia. As I got older I discovered John Cage, dub, tropicalia, krautrock and minimalism. I most recently got into West African guitar, like Sir Victor Uweifo. People tend to say we sound a lot like ESG but the truth is that neither Lisa nor Heather had ever even heard of them. I actually had to sit them down and play it for them because it kept coming up in press clippings, and they were always asking, “What the hell is ESG?”.  I think that people are just going to say you sound like whatever they know of, and it seems that indie kids only seem to know of one other band that is beat driven and bass fronted. Oh well, I hope that changes.

I like a lot of contemporary bands but I can’t think of anybody that is doing anything similar. And I’m sure we share many similar influences with other bands. I do think Portland’s AS/SS may be an angry brother version of our music.  I like what they are doing a bunch. Check them out: http://www.myspace.com/asss84

Are you three recording yourselves or is somebody helping to produce your recordings?  If you’re doing it primarily yourselves can you share some of the equipment and processes involved?

Lisa: Our very first recordings we recorded by ourselves on our little Califone tape recorder with its internal mic. We placed it in the room strategically to pick up everything at the right levels.

For our seven inches we recorded each one with a different engineer. Christina Files recorded one; Robert from Hornet Leg another, and Bob Schwenkler did the KRS 7 inch. Bob Weston mastered these releases.

If you could have any gear you wanted for this project what would it be?

Claudia: I don’t know what else I would need. More drums.

Lisa: I’m pretty set with my drums. My bass drum is basically the most amazing bass drum I’ve ever heard. It has the most brilliant sustain;  it sounds affected without even being mic’d.  I would not hurt to have a lifetime supply of cymbal felts and sleeves, 7a oak drumsticks, heads, and a new hi hat stand that wont break like my last one did. It would also be fun to mess around once day with some triggers on my drums, or a drum pad. Mike (from Reporter) makes really good use of a drum pad in his kit and I’ve always wanted to try that, one day. Although, really, I prefer to be a straight-up-no-electronics drummer in the end. Actually, what would really rule, as far as gear goes, would be to have someone to carry it. We call my hardware bag Bo’Awkward for a reason, and I’ve got bruises constantly from it.

How many releases do you have, what are they called, who put them out,  are they still available and where?

Lisa:  We self-released an eight song cassette that is still available, through our myspace.

We are putting out three 7 inch records. They each will have 2 songs, and have the same outer packaging but each feature a different favorite artist friend of ours on the insert – Adee from New Bloods, Mark Warren Jacque, and Aidan Koch. Two of the 7 inches are already available – COFFINS b/w SHARPEN THE KNIFE (on M’Lady’s Records) and EYES HANDS MOUTH b/w WOODEN GHOST (on Kill Rock Stars). The third will be coming out soon on Just For the Hell of it Records. An EP that compiles these six songs will follow the 7 inches, and eventually we’ll have a full length, but we have to finish writing that first.

Plans for the future?

Claudia: Yeah, touring, full length album. Hopefully the show we did at the T:BA festival will get shown at other places.

http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/blogs/culturephile-portland-arts/tbanight2/

http://tba.portlandmercury.com/TBA/archives/2009/09/05/janet-pants-and-explode-into-colors

site of project, still under construction

http://eyeshandsmouth.com/

>These are really great!  I especially like I Hear Ringing In My Ears<

Lisa, I hear you teach drums for an all girls music school and have an instructional drum book available–tell me about all that.

I have been teaching at the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls (RNRC4G) in Portland for a year and a half now.  The RNRC4G is an after school and summer camp program for girls ages 8 to 18. The girls form a band on day one, and get  instruction in the instrument of their choice, or vocals. At the end of each session, the girls perform the song they wrote at a big showcase. For reals. No covers. Theyre really brilliant, and they consistently blow my mind with the stuff they come up with.  I teach drums at Rock Camp, and i also band coach. As a band coach, you sit in with a band and help them with anything from configuring their amps so they can hear each other, tuning guitars, and giving advice on lyric ideas, song structure, cues, performing…If you want to learn more about Rock Camp go here: www.girlsrockcamp.org.

I wrote the DIY Guide to Drums on a vacation to Vancouver BC with my friend Ang in about 2001. At that point I sewed the binding on each copy, and it was all photocopied. A version with a letterpressed chipboard cover, and ring binding followed. I distributed this version myself to stores in NYC, Seattle, Bloomington, Philly…and it was featured on the MOBILIVRE-BOOKMOBILE project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilivre). In about 2006 I decided to re-write the whole thing [by hand], and bound this version myself until buyolympia.com printed and published it this year. I wrote it because I had been teaching drums for a while and love teaching and making books. Claudia actually recorded the audio for the cd that comes with the book -  i play all the beats in the book on the cd. The book is available at http://www.buyolympia.com/q/Item=diy-guide-to-drums.