News / Bands

Jerome Reuter (Rome)

SPB: You're playing some anniversary shows this year and visiting some interesting places - How did you decide which countries to play in? 

Jerome: I have to admit that there is a certain amount of randomness to some of it, but we are trying to play most of the European capitals and we want to include as many exotic places as we can. I am also throwing in some solo dates here and there to really fill up the schedule.

We just played Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Athens is next and then we're on to Bucharest. Other confirmed shows include Stockholm, Gothenburg, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Madrid, Rome, Bologna, Milano, Lisbon, Berlin, London, Cologne, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Luxembourg, Saigon...and we are working on many more. I'll be living out of the suitcase more than usual this year, which I don't mind at all. I am very glad that there seems to be a lot of interest for what we do out there at this moment. I presume we'll keep on adding a lot of dates as we go along.

Parks (All Them Witches)

SPB: What is your favorite book about music?

Parks: The way I feel about books on music is the same way I have always felt about music classes, and that is that they have no place in my life. That being said, I do remember the first time I fell in love with the way an author intertwined music into their work. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'engle has a way of putting music and cadence into each scene without explicitly saying so. Soon after, I began to immerse myself in Shakespeare's works where the iambic pentameter hums close to the human heartbeat and uses the full capacity of the lungs, breathing at punctuation to create music without notes.

Dorian Williamson (Northumbria)

SPB: You recorded your first album in a church - what was it about the space that appealed to you and what kind of spaces would you like to utilise in the future? 

Dorian: The main reason we chose to record in a church was because we wanted to track at a very high volume level, beyond what would have been possible in a studio environment. The reactivity of the sound changes so much at very high levels. The amps and guitars come alive, and we just act as kind of a conduit. You can feel it breathe and change shape and almost go out of control. We also knew we wanted to do everything live with no overdubs, so using an acoustically vibrant space with a combination of distant and close mics gave us more flexibility later in the mixdown.

Because our records are very much documents of a live event, we'd love to use different spaces for future recordings. Both Jim and I want to do something in giant abandoned industrial space sometime. We've also toyed with the idea of doing something extremely loud outside, far out in nature, where we can use the landscape as a musical element: like in a valley or a fjord. This music very much feeds back on itself and becomes an entity of its own, so anywhere we choose to record and play will have a big effect on the final outcome.

L. Freeman (Benny the Jet Rodriguez - vocals/guitar)

SPB: Do you wear earplugs when you play? Why/why not?

L. Freeman: I do wear ear plugs. For a long time I used to wear construction headphones at practice and on stage. Once I saved up enough I bought custom noise canceling earplugs that helped level out noise for me. I've had hearing issues since I was a kid and from playing music for this long its only gotten worse. It got to the point where I can't hear myself sing at all through a PA system unless I wear them. I recommend every full-time musician get a pair of earplugs--this company Hearos make an affordable pair that fit comfortably.