Echoes Of The Future 25 – Whales

We get hundreds of emails from bands asking for us to listen to their music; being good like that we try and listen to everything and sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s good and just sometimes it makes you stop what you’re doing, put everything down & just LISTEN. Chicago’s Whales fall in to that last category. The two tracks they sent us, especially ‘Seafearing’, excited us so much we just had to grab a few words with drummer Randall to find out more about them.

(((o))): How long has the band been together and how did you all meet?

Whales has been together for a little over three years. I met Allen, our guitarist, at a now defunct DIY-venue in Chicago called Union Rock Yards. He wanted to start a noise-rock band. We’re Hammerhead on ecstasy.

(((o))): Where did you get your name from & what does it mean?

We were originally called Rails. A bartender heard it and mistook it for “Whales.” It just fits. Whales are massive and beautiful creatures, and that’s what we are trying to achieve with our sound: massive and beautiful.

(((o))): Describe your sound for us & who would you say were your biggest musical influences?

I like to describe our sound as Noisy Heaven-Rock. People like to immediately tag us as “shoegaze,” but we rock too fucking hard to go floating off into the ether. Besides, Janas, our bassist, has never even heard a MBV song until this year, and I think Isn’t Anything is the better record. We are faulty shoegazers.

(((o))): And what about non-musical influences?

Non-musical influences are food-oriented. We love to eat. We do it for sushi.

(((o))): Music can be a fickle mistress, what is your biggest high & low as a band so far?

Our highs as a band are ongoing. Being able to play with our favorite bands like Minutes, Nonagon, or The Gary is exciting. Honestly, outside of playing not-well-attended gigs, which is part and parcel of being in a rock band, there haven’t been many lows.

(((o))): What one fact about the band do you most want to share with the world?

Whales’ singer, Maigin Blank, is an incredible solo artist. People should hear her CD titled The Sick Joke.

(((o))): The old model of record demo-do gigs-get signed-make millions is pretty broken these days, what’s your plan to deal with this?

We just like to make music. Whatever fabulous and peripheral things that might happen while we are making and performing music would be very much welcome and appreciated, but I have zero interest in conforming and/or playing-up to current models of anything. We write, we play, and hopefully you listen and enjoy.

(((o))): We journalists like to use easy labels to describe bands, what’s the worst thing you’ve seen yourselves described as?

Radiohead

(((o))): We’re loving what you do but who’s floating your boat right now?

Musically? There is a local band called Nonagon where in a perfect world their latest LP titled ‘People Live Everywhere’ would be stampeding out of speaker systems everywhere. Latest releases by Minutes and The Gary are also well worth your time, and if you’ve never heard The Columbines, I just feel sorry for you.

(((o))): What’s up next for you guys?

We are currently in the process of writing new material for our next full-length which I hope the rest of the band will let me title it “Plate Tectonics.” I ilke the feeling that title evokes. I would also like to do a tour out west this fall. We just completed an east coast tour and had a blast. I wanna do it again, but out west, drunker, and get more action.

Tags: Echoes Of The Future 25, Whales