#exsage

Meet ExSage – Dark Side of the Desert

I’ve only been to the desert once and when I wasn’t looking around terrified of snakes I was guzzling water to contain what seemed like a unquenchable thirst. Maybe I’m not desert folk, but when I hear the musical tag “desert rock” I’m usually all in. LA’s ExSage draw all kinds of inspiration from the desert on their debut EP – “Out of the Blue” – the heaviness of the heat, the bleakness but…

http://www.popgunpresents.com/artist-features/interview-exsage/

2.21.17

Kate Clover and Tim Foley once performed music as Cobalt Cranes, a Lolipop Records band highly visible in the LA underground scene. The project dissolved upon their romantic break-up. Within months, however, they ran into each other in the California desert, and decided to give it another go. And so they’ve returned as ExSage, a sludgy, lo-fi rock project that crosses a “Nick Cave ominousness” as Noisey put it with a coolness reminiscent of The Kills. They put out their debut EP, Out Of The Blue, back in the fall, and play Sunnyvale on Thursday with Desert Sharks and LOVER. Here the two answered a few questions about reuniting, recording the new EP, and the cosmic effect all of this has had on their sound.

How do you perceive the ExSage project as different than the Cobalt Cranes project?

Kate: Spiritually and sonically it’s a complete departure. In order to mark a change sometimes you need to tear it up and start again, and we did.

What was it like to work with Alain Johannes to produce the new EP? Having worked with such distinctive artists as PJ Harvey and Queens of the Stone Age, did anything in particular rub off on your sound?

Kate: Alain is in touch with the cosmos, he operates creatively on another level than anyone I’ve ever met. He really helped me disarm myself of my own judgments and to focus on capturing a great performance. It was therapeutic in a way I’ve never felt recording. I was drained by the end of it, I really put myself into every second of that EP.