Interview w/Aerial Love Feed

The first time I saw Aerial Love Feed at Don Hill's, I was not just impressed by their music?a trippy-aggressive wave of sound that crashes over your brainpan and spins around your extremities, leaving behind a surprisingly infectious dance groove (picture "Reverence" by the Jesus and Mary Chain by way of latter-day Primal Scream or Radiohead). I was also wowed by the atmospheric, seizure-inducing smoke and light show. Granted, I was four drinks in the bag, but after reviewing their demo in sobriety, I had no regrets.

Months later I found myself in the Brooklyn apartment of singer/songwriter Wade Settle and guitarist John Kapp, atmospheric in its own way: light green paint, numerous houseplants, Sinatra on the stereo and a tabby cat named Gorgeous eyeing me warily. Drummer Tracy Thompkins staked out the couch with a huge container of Chinese soup while we waited for the final member, bassist Gerry Rustic, to join us for some Q&A. Surprisingly, though they've got a draw at their gigs, they're still fairly obscure in the scene. "We're kind of like Fight Club," Settle jokes. "No one ever speaks our name."

What are you using for electronics?

Wade Settle: I have an old Dr. Sample. I get hiphop beats and chop 'em up or get some kind of lead off them. I use an 8-track and pretty much make loops. Or I'll just write on a guitar with chords, but some of the newer songs have come off the loops.

First time I saw you guys I thought, "There's a Bunnymen quality here."

Gerry Rustic: There's a lot of Bunnymen.

Especially because you turned all the lights out.

WS: He's one of my favorite singers, I mean, they have that edge but also the crooner kind of thing.

John Kapp: That's how we practice, too, with the lights out. It helps.

GR: You have to have the right atmosphere.

Did you guys start out with the strobe lights and stuff?

WS: No, we had a fog machine that was pretty much it. I think after I went to see Prodigy over [one] summer, I was like, "We have to have some kind of setup." We just found some big model helicopters and put strobes in 'em...

Tracy Thompkins: Strobocopters.

WS: It's hard when you have 40 minutes [at a club] to make it your own intimate setting.

Does it cost you a fortune?

GR: We found the helicopters on the street, Radio Shack strobe lights which we gut...

WS: Have you ever seen us at Don Hill's? The [old] in-house lighting guy did that setup. Not that the guy who's there now is bad, but that guy was awesome. He looked forward to us, because he was like, "I get to play with the lights."

What do you think of New York and music scenes getting merchandised, and, you know, New York magazine?

WS: If you want the real answers, let's drink some more. We don't exist in the New York scene.

Are you jealous of your peers' success?

WS: They're not like peers...they're just, adversaries.

JK: Oh, crap! Oh no!

WS: It comes out in the writing. They don't know it, but we're talking about them.

TT: We never came here to become part of the New York scene, we're just here to be a band and be good.

JK: You can't always blame the bands, though. I mean, it happens. Athens, Seattle, Minneapolis, it runs a cycle and the bands aren't to blame. A&R people are instructed what to do.

In the 90s, William Gibson wrote subcultures are now so immediately merchandised that there's no time for a real "bohemia" to develop.

WS: Absolutely.

JK: Stuff passes before it's...

'Cause someone jumps on it. Either you're invisible or you're overexposed.

TT: Under the radar?

JK: Aerial Love Feed, the band with stealth technology.

Speaking of which, you guys use a lot of military imagery in your graphics and lyrics. How about that? I'll get sociopolitical in a second...

WS: In connection with your question about our peers, it is frustrating being here five years and you see [them] jump above you, and you don't think much of them. I like the style hiphop artists use when they talk [their rivals] down, and it's not really obvious in some of our songs but there are connotations. So, I think the war thing came about because it is kind of like a war against all the shit going on.

GR: The music is aggressive.

WS: We used to be a lot more Lush, so we wanted to give a new look as well as the new sound.

Do you have any interest with politics, as far as?

JK: Ah, the sociopolitical.

We're living in a time where there's war fever.

WS: We were driving up to Boston to play a show and there's war going on, and it seemed so minute the fact that we're traveling.

JK: I think we're getting jaded. War's either constantly coming or it's there, and then when you see it, y'know, it looks like videogames. [The CIA] killed six guys with, basically, a videogame.

WS: I hope people come to the shows, and because of everything that's going on, things they're seeing on the news, they'll also feel like they're right in everything. "I can feel the music right now because I'm pissed off too."

GR: The sample we use for the song "Lock n' Load" is a war statement. "There's nothing left to fight with and there's no one left to fight, no air to breathe..." This is shit from 40 years ago in the movies and, like, did people not figure this out then? How can you not get angry now? We were on the congressional website [researching] people we were gonna vote for. Reading why she voted against the Iraqi force resolution, [Nydia] Velasquez, her opinion, was, "Is this guy bad? Yeah! But war should be a last resort." [People's] voices get lost.

Along those lines, your lyrical focus?are you working politics in? Do you plan to print lyrics?

WS: Yeah, I'll print lyrics. "Lock n' Load," that sample is from The Time Machine. [I saw it] in college, and it just had some strange effect on me. It just came about that was one of the last things we put in, but the song was about girlfriend trouble. "On the hottest day of the year, we'll break."

JK: Ha ha, going back to classic themes.

WS: It works. "War Between the East and West" could be you and your mate. I really like the obscure, y'know, people make their own ideas of lyrics. "Meltdown," that was a 9/11 song, definitely. Well, it became a 9/11 song.

It was originally something else?

WS: I gave them a rough demo of the song, I didn't really have lyrics to it. It was just kind of a groove song. It just came together, and then the lyrics [fell] into place. A lot of it isn't planned.

GR: The groove alienates the rock people, and the rock alienates the groove people. We've been doing that, though, even [as] a shoegaze band four years ago. Something about having a groove?people remember stuff...yeah, I'll say it...people remember stuff they shake their ass to.

WS: A lot of early 60s rock 'n' roll looked to black soul music. One of my favorite bands in New York is Apollo Heights. Beat-wise, and how tight they are, and they write pop songs.

Do you think rock 'n' roll is played out? Or are people just uncreative?

JK: Rock isn't played out, it'll always exist in its pure form.

GR: Part of adding other [influences] in is that it's not as easy. Basic formulas can break down and you have to start reinventing things.

JK: If there's one thing you're after?"I'm gonna be influenced by garage bands, I'm gonna play garage, I know the three chords I'll rearrange and give 'em new lyrics," that's easy.

Are you afraid of being lumped under "80s revival"? There's obviously a Manchester or Jesus and Mary Chain influence to your stuff.

JK: It's there, we can't deny that.

GR: There are a bunch of labels that you can put on it, and it's accurate, but not 100 percent. You could say it's an "early-90s revival" or a "mid-90s electronic revival." What are you gonna do?

JK: One thing with the whole New York buzz is that it's not very narrow. Whereas, like, early 90s Seattle?grunge band. Here there's diversity.

There's not a "New York sound" or a "New York look"?

GR: I heard someone say they were gonna make a t-shirt, "Your band's as corporate as your tie."

I had to interview you because none of you wear ties onstage. The last two bands I interviewed wear suits.

GR: To the interview?

Well, people use it different ways. One of them was World/Inferno, who are into formalwear but they're just insane.

JK: I can't say enough good things about that band. There are three kinds of bands?bad bands, good bands and bands so good you wanna stop playing.

WS: The Electroclash scene is so hot right now, and the stuff we've been doing is mixing electronics and the beats, I feel like people haven't caught on that our band's doing sort of dancy stuff. We slept in Peaches' bed, you can write that.

Was she there?

WS: No.

TT: She gave us the keys to her apartment.

In New York?

TT: Toronto.

GR: Before she was huge. That's the funny thing, we've played with so many people who are now...

TT: Guided by Voices...

GR: Interpol, y'know, Peaches, she was playing downstairs at the El Macambo, an s&m fetish party...

TT: Spreading tacos on herself.

GR: Canadian tacos. I mean, we haven't come out of nowhere. We've definitely spent some time doing this stuff and making it into what it is. It's not that way by accident. Might have been easier to do something a different way, but this is what we believe in.

WS: One thing we are enjoying is, doing it this way we can do whatever the fuck we want.

'Cause you're invisible.

WS: Yeah [laughter].