AN INTERVIEW WITH DWELLINGVILLE
On the grounds of an abandoned insane asylum, MELTED chats with Baltimore based band Dwellingville, composed of Jay Jennings (vocals/samples), Walsh Kunkel (guitar/vocals), Pierce Glassman (bass/effects), and Alex Lori (drum machine/guitar/vocals). While in a decrepit, satanic graffiti ridden church, we discuss the importance of analog technology, their debut album Goonie Tunes, and nostalgic love for Tears for Fears…..
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Tell us about the birth of Dwellingville!
Pierce: It was just me and Alex and we had a live drummer and he eventually left.
Alex: That’s when we started to get into really good music. I don’t even know what kind of music we were writing when we started. It was jam, it was really weird. When we lost the drummer we bought a drum machine and used a sample loop for everything. It’s been a good time.
Walsh: We just enjoyed hanging out, eventually we wanted a better place to practice. These guys moved into a house and I moved like down the street, so we had a spot to play and to record and practice. That kind of like grew into this thing that eventually collapsed upon itself. With the leaving of the drummer and that’s where we moved into an electronic realm. But actually pretty recently, this past summer, Alex wasn’t even here. Two months ago, this whole summer it was just us three, me him and him, and we just did kind of like a trio, like experimental, it was really a lot lighter, it wasn’t as dense and chaotic and psychedelic. It had more song flow and the set blended a lot better in my opinion. So we got really strong in that core and then when Alex came back it was really easy to add one element, as oppose to getting four elements together at the same time. Alex came back with a drum machine.
Jay: We don’t stop in between songs. The energy level for me, if i stop it, it ruins the whole thing for me.
Alex: Were not good at like stopping the song and being like “hey this song is that name…
Jay: A lot of people that come out too, they like want us to keep playing. They don’t want us to fucking stop.
Alex: We just want to be the grateful dead.
Walsh: I never really thought about playing in a group without drums as a main thing. I grew up playing rock music. So having that dude drop out and us not deciding to get something else opened up electronics for us. Jay got me into electronic hardware: gadgets, synthesizers, and stuff. The computer can be like too perfect, ya know? With the analog equipment you have this kind of human sense to it. It’s not always perfect.
Yeah that’s why I like shooting on film better than digital!
Alex: I can’t even read a digital clock. All analog bro.
Do you record fully analog?
Alex: We don’t record full analog, we have to use computers.
Jay: I wish we had tape. We don’t go into the studio and make songs, we play them live before we go and record it. We have loops but we are mainly triggering them all live, so it gives it more of an organic feel.
Walsh: None of these things are lined up either, you have to hit them all on the spot or the whole thing just crashes. Which it has done before.
Walsh: Timing is essential.
Jay: Even though Al can’t read a digital clock.
Walsh: So we record everything as it is live in a digital system, so it’s like kind of like you took your photos and you put em online. You can manipulate it slightly afterwards, but it’s not like we’re going online and punching in beats and stuff and making the songs that way. It’s all audio stream, which is an interesting way to work.
Since your music is so experimental in that sense, do you feel you have to be in a certain state of mind to create?
Peirce: Sometimes we make better music when we are all pissed at each other.
Alex: I was writing a song yesterday and I was too stoned to even write a song.
Jay: Show wise, me personally, I’m feeding off that energy of the crowd and the type of room. Like if we played in a big room, I’m going to try to fit more vast sound or if it was more full with people. Like feeding off of energy of people.
Walsh: Yeah there is a show we played the other day, where we didn’t even know if everyone was going to show up.
Jay: Nah, you didn’t know if I was going to show up
Walsh: Alright, Alright, throw him under the bus. We didn’t know if Jay was going to show up because we all got so upset at each other the night before.
Alex: We have like a best friend relationship, that like we just can not stand each other. We are all just too close. And like around each other all the time. Like were still in high school or something.
Walsh: Yeah and it reflects with the music too. Like when i was saying, the other night, when we weren’t sure if jay was going to show up, the set was killer. Like the set was crazy. Because like everyone got out there anger. Sometimes when everyone’s really happy, the set is just not as powerful because you’re not feeling some kind of way. We were all so angry at each other, and then afterwards we are all just like, you know what it’s cool, that shit was fun.
Is there a certain past decade that has most inspired your music?
Alex: I grew up loving 60s music and 70s music and even 90s music, and i always hated the 80s. I always hated the 80s. And now, all I can do is bust out 80s music. I’m just like god this is sick cause I held out on it for so long.
Walsh: Yeah we’ve been really focusing a lot on drum machine beats and synthesizer. That’s been kind of like the meat and potatoes of what we’re doing and we just sample that. So like everything gets us that 80s sound at times
An artist, song, or album that makes you feel a heavy dose of nostalgia?
Alex: Tears for fears.
Walsh: What!?
Alex: I’m just saying
Peirce: That’s amazing
Jay: We went to Sandy Hook to kill a forty in his car at like 9:00. And he was like dude we gotta listen to this shit and we just got fucking plastered and listened to Tears for Fears.
Walsh: Most grateful dead records bring immense nostalgia to me. That’s for sure. Like we don’t necessarily go for the bright jammy feel but the improvisation and the transitions and kind of the queues of the group are similar. We don’t play a song the same way, like we don’t get upset at each other if we play songs differently, the songs are pretty lucid, they generally have a key, a sample, or a bass, or a back beat that goes to it. Then we kind of improvise around that.
Is Goonie Tunes your debut album?
Walsh: Yeah!
Alex: Goonie Tunes is a funny name, like I was just playing around on my drum machine and I was making these weird sounds, and it sounded like some of the noises from The Goonies. And we just started talking about Goonie Tunes and were like dude let’s just make a cartoon record, it’s just supposed to be like really character oriented, colorful synths.
Walsh: Well we called it Goonie Tunes because we were just looking at ourselves and we were like we are a bunch of goons. Then we had a song already, Goonie Tunes, and we were like let’s make it the album title. We have an EP coming out, Six Eyes. There’s 4 songs on that. It sounds great, so we’re hoping to have that out by the end of the month because we are doing a little mini tour in Virginia. Then over the summer, were trying to produce another full length.
Do you think an online presence is necessary to get your music out there?
Alex: It sucks, but it’s a reality. We have to be popular on the internet, that’s just like what life is now. That’s what everything has ascended to. We live a meme culture in our brain.
Walsh: That’s why we try to get real weird and abstract to help that.
Alex: We even put memes in our music. Like the china meme. China, china, china…
Jay: Yeah if you come to our show on inauguration day, every transition is going to be donald trump talking.
Alex: It’s going to be a lot of wrongs. “Wrong. Wrong.”
Jay: “I got a small loan of a million dollars.”
Walsh: You sampled that?
Jay: I sampled a lot of shit.
Walsh: Yeah, we’re pretty much crazy, that’s what it comes down to. Like collectively crazy.
LISTEN TO DWELLINGVILLE HERE
interview by AL SMITH
photos by JEYLAN ULUSAN
@suppoze
