Here at (((o))) we took a shine to “NAMES”, the latest album from (another) Chicago instrumental band An Aesthetic Anaesthetic. We sent Gilbert off in search of answers to to questions and found William Covert, their drummer, who gave us the sort of answers we like – detailed and interesting.
(((o))): Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and who’s in the band?
An Aesthetic Anaesthetic came together in Chicago, Illinois, and the band is comprised of Dan Hoefler (guitar), Joshua Corriveau (Guitar, Occasional Vocals), Sam Edgin (bass) and William Covert (drums). Dan and Sam grew up in the Chicago area, while Josh moved to Chicago from Virginia, and had grown up living all over the states, and I (William) am from Michigan originally and moved to Chicago after graduating college and teaching music in Michigan for a couple years.
Craigslist is mainly to thank for us being a band. Dan, though from the Chicago area, went to college out west in Colorado. He moved back to Chicago after graduating college, and met Josh via Craigslist around 2007. They originally were just a three piece band with a different drummer and played as that lineup for about a year together. Then Sam, who’s a show promoter and runs his own booking agency called Phantom Note Productions, booked them a show in Chicago. A few months later they asked Sam if he would come into the studio and record bass for their new EP and after jamming together like once they decided he should stay in the band. They played as that lineup for another year, then in late 2009 their original drummer, Greg, decided to pursue an education in Florida, so they put out another ad on Craigslist looking for a drummer; and that’s how I found the band. If I remember correctly the ad said something like instrumental rock band looking for a drummer and under influences listed Fugazi and Pelican, so it immediately caught my interest. We had one jam/audition session and we hit it off right off the bat. Actually, a few drum parts I played on the spot improvising in that first jam with the band ended up sticking and being the drum parts I played on later recorded version of the songs we jammed, the best example being ‘Fortune Animal Cookie’ off of our last album “Before the Machinery of Other Skeletons”.
We’ve been playing together under this lineup for almost three years now and couldn’t be happier as a band. Even though we met randomly, we are each other’s closest friends. It’s nice to be in a band where everyone is on the same page, and the goal is to just to play music and constantly be working to take the band to the next level. We’ve made a lot of musical progress in the past three years and are exciting about the future.
(((o))): The debate over aesthetics and anaesthetics in documentary photography has existed for almost a century now. Is this the origin of your name and if so how does it apply to you and your music?
That’s an interesting topic and connection to mention. The origin of the band name is not directly related to the aesthetic or anaesthetic debate. Josh came up with the band name because in part because of the play on words with the initials AAA and also just because of the belligerence attitude of the name itself. Much of the MO of the band is to do what we want to do and not go out of the way to make things easy for people, so that leads to things like 16 minute long songs, loud noise sections in shows, and a band name that most people can’t spell, pronounce, or have any idea what it means. I can’t tell you how many shows we’ve played where they spelled our name wrong, and it seems to always be spelled wrong a different way.
I like to think of An Aesthetic Anaesthetic as a good description of our music and sound. In philosophy one definition of aesthetics is to create an increase in awareness, feeling, and aliveness. Anaesthetic by definition is very much the opposite of aesthetic, and anaesthetics create loss of feeling and loss of sensations. I think our music goes betweens those boundaries, and as a primarily instrumental rock band we use moods in our music to kind of guide songs and movements. On “NAMES” for example we have songs that contain very melodic upbeat sections like ‘Arkansenio Hall’ and ‘Garth Brooks’, but we have songs that have non-melodic noise sections and screaming like ‘Randy Quaidludes’. The opening track ‘Billy Rape Cyrus’ starts out with a basically metal riff and is very aggressive and probably sounds how you picture a song with that title would sound like, and by the end of the song it shifts to an almost Battles-like upbeat melodic breakdown and happy musical ending.
I think an important factor in music is the appearance of tension. It’s tension and release that more often than not is what creates the emotional connection to music, and having the proper balance of aesthetically pleasing major key music with anaesthetically numbing noise or minor key heavy drone can be crucial in whether a song sounds really cool and different or if it sounds contrived and not-catchy. With a band name like An Aesthetic Anaesthetic it represents the tension that lies in music and creativity.
(((o))): “Ghost rock”. Tell us more?
The credit for the term “Ghost Rock” goes to Sam. The idea is basically every band today seems to be either an indie band or a post-rock band. It’s to the point that these words don’t really mean anything anymore. It seems a lot of instrumental bands at least in the US are simply branded as either post-rock, post-punk, post-metal, or post something just as a default for instrumental rock-ish music. Not every instrumental band sounds like Explosions in the Sky or Tortoise or bands to that simply fit in the post-rock genre, so we’d rather strike first and label ourselves with a genre name before being called something that maybe isn’t fitting with our music. We also released an EP in early 2011 called “Ghosts in the Red Wilderness” and we have a ghost A!A!A logo, so we kind of have a bit of a ghastly ghoul theme so “Ghost Rock” just seemed like a fitting way to describe us.
And if rock is dead as many have said for years, than the new original rock music coming out today is more of a musical ghost of the former genre, why not call it “Ghost Rock?”
(((o))): How do you create an A!A!A song?
Honestly, we’re kind of all over the place when we write. Sometimes at practice someone will just start playing a riff and we’ll jam on that for a while, then we’ll go back and review the parts that were really cool and start writing from there. Other times someone will have a whole song already written and we’ll each add our own suggestions for the song and kind of do ensemble arranging of the piece. Something that is great about playing with A!A!A is that we all contribute to the song writing. This is a collaborative band in most aspects of how we operate, and our songwriting process is no different. There’s never one person who makes all of the calls, and writes all of the songs. We all contribute something to everything we write, which I think is why our songs end up being longer in length than conventional contemporary Western music, and many songs contain pop / metal / and math elements.
We also road test songs, especially on NAMES and we had performed all the songs on the album live and some before they were totally finished before going into the studio. Sometimes that last step for us to write a song is to play it live and see what gels and what doesn’t. As an instrumental band, everything we write, we write with the intention to play it live.
(((o))): Who comes up with those song names?
Song names are also a collaborative effort. Basically most song titles have come from us randomly saying phrases at shows, parties, or practice on any given day. Sam keeps a list on his phone of tentative song titles, and when we think a song is written or at least has a perceivable mood we’ll pick a song name from the list. For example, we were at a party at my place and I blurted out the name ‘Billy Rape Cyrus’ because we were all making fun of the whole pop country movement, and everyone got a good laugh from that and the name as a joke stuck around and ended up as a song name on the album.
Song names are kind of an afterthought really, which is probably why most of them tend to be satire commentaries on pop culture. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, we are just serious about writing and performing music.
(((o))): There’s a prevailing view that says, in a nutshell, instrumental rock and metal is essentially self-indulgent, offers little to listeners and by implication is not that good. Why do you think it’s viewed this way so widely? Is this reverse snobbery?
I think that view exists for a couple reasons. One main reason is the lack of active listening to music happening today. Instrumental music to a large part requires active listening on the part of the audience, and the music typically is composed and performed to engage the listener on a more serious level and is not just passive background noise. Instrumental music is not in itself ambient music, and I feel that if more people openly gave instrumental rock and metal a chance, they would find that they like it. Look at a band like Explosions in the Sky, who had major placement and once they were exposed to a massively large audience people liked what they heard and they blew up in popularity.
I think another reason for the reverse snobbery is because we live in a throw-a-way culture where many people listen to music with no value of worth attached to it. When you can buy a song for $1 and not have to buy the whole album, the song has no worth to you, so when that song is no longer popular or you are tired with it you can simply delete it from your iPod and move on to the next song. Now it’s even worse with things like Spotify where you can just stream music and not even have to buy anything. That totally diminishes the attention span of many listeners because they have no investment in the music they are listening to, so as an instrumental band if your song is not immediately catchy most people won’t give you the time of day and move on to the next band or song or whatever. We don’t listen to music that way, and we don’t write music to be listened to that way. We are fans of the idea of the album and owning vinyl, and everything that comes with that experience. There is something to be said about investing in a band, not just monetary investment, but with time and sitting down and just listening to music.
We don’t let it bother us, because we make music that we like to play and those we share our music with who enjoy is what makes playing in a band all about.
(((o))): For your latest release “NAMES” you’ve brought out a more energetic and in some ways raw sound. What do you think this record has captured that wasn’t on your previous record “Before the Machinery of Other Skeletons”?
I think “NAMES” as a whole did a better job capturing our live sound. BTMOOS is a good album, but we tracked the whole album, and it never really had the sound or feeling of a live A!A!A show. With “NAMES” we had the idea from the beginning to record the album live in the studio and really try to capture our live sound. I think this our most honest album and this recording is true to the vision of the band. I’d say this album really just captured us in our naturally playing environment.
(((o))): What was producer Sanford Parker able to contribute to the feel of the record? What did you learn from working with him?
A main reason why the album has a more raw sound and is more energetic is because of Sanford Parker. Sanford brought out a heavier and raw sound from us, and one reason we wanted to record with Sanford is because he records a lot of bands live in the studio and he’s just the right guy for that job. I don’t think the album would have such a heavy and raw feel especially on the 2nd half of the album on the song ‘Randy Quaidludes’ if we hadn’t worked with Sanford. I think just working with Sanford in the studio brought out a more heavier music feel from us.
Working with Sanford we learned what it was like to work with a real professional producer. He would hear things in mixes that just seemed inaudible to us or anyone else and he did interesting layering with room mics that picked up ambient noise and mixed in it with the tracks. He has a real ear for music, and it made the recording process easier for us. You could tell after being in the studio with him for 5 minutes that he knew what he was talking about. It was a great learning experience.
(((o))): What do you hope people get – what they feel – from listening to your music?
Hopefully they feel an enjoyable emotional response. If you can make someone’s day better with music that’s a very rewarding feeling. We know are music isn’t for everyone, but no music is. It would be great if someone was inspired by us to be creative themselves. Peter Gabriel once said, “Good music makes you feel, but great music makes you think.” I’ve always liked that sentiment with music, and agree with it.
(((o))): What’s the most memorable gig you’ve had to date?
That would have to be opening as direct support for Battles this past June in Chicago. Everything about that gig was awesome. It was a near sold-out show of 700 people at a venue called Bottom Lounge. We played one of our best sets and got a great response from the packed crowd.
Battles is one of my favorite bands, so getting to meet the band backstage was just unbelievable. I got a compliment on my drums from John Stanier, which pretty much made my year. Battles played a great set too, and it was just a high energy and very fun show.
(((o))): What’s next for A!A!A?
We have a couple shows lined up for early 2013, but our main focus right now has been starting to write new material. We’re not having a timeline of when to have new songs finished by, so it’s been a really free and open process of writing, and we’re really exciting about the new songs starting to form.
We’re planning to hit the road harder in 2013 than in previous years and maybe even tour in some new places like Europe. We’ve been watching our online presence grow in the UK and Europe as well as Japan and Oceania over the past couple years, and we are hoping to cross the Atlantic for some shows in the near future.
Whatever is next we are excited and ready for it.
