File this under Tracks We Like Outta’ the Blue: “My Holding Hand is Empty”—a sweet, soft, sad, folksy tune from LA-based singer-songwriter, Patrick Park.

Park’s fourth full-length album—Love Like Swords—will be out April 22. In the meantime, listen to and download the track above. You can catch him live this spring as he plays music halls, clubs, cafes, and coffee houses across the US. Photo by Mia Kirby.

4/8: Dallas, TX @ Three Links
4/9: Austin, TX @ Lamberts
4/10: Houston, TX @ Rudyard’s
4/12: Birmingham, AL @ The Bottle Tree
4/14: Decatur, GA @ Eddie’s Attic
4/15: Athens, GA @ The Melting Point
4/16: Nashville, TN @ The Rutledge
4/18: Charlotte, NC @ The Evening Muse
4/19: Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
4/22: Vienna, VA @ Jammin Java
4/23: Philadephila, PA @ World Café Live
4/24: New York, NY @ Rockwood Music Hall
4/26: Burlington, VT @ Nectar’s
4/27: Portland, ME @ Empire Dine And Dance
4/30: Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Café
5/2: Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
5/3: Chicago, IL @ Schubas
5/4: Madison, WI @ The Frequency
5/5: Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry
5/6: Kansas City, MO, Czar Bar
5/8: Denver, CO @ The Walnut Room
5/10: Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court

Three or so years ago, we were lucky enough to be invited to a showcase set up by Barsuk Records at Mercury Lounge. The show was essentially a warm-up set before the excellent Mates of State set out on a gigantic tour, and the Mates were, of course, superb. To be expected.

Unexpectedly, though, then-recent label-mates, Yellow Ostrich also really impressed us at the time. Two albums and years later, they continue to do so today. With a new album—Cosmos—just out, a slew of just-played SXSW shows now behind them, and a US tour underway, we thought we’d catch up with frontman, Alex Schaaf (above, second from left), to talk about the band origins, how growing from a two- to a four-piece has changed their sound, and muuuuuuuuuuurder.

raven + crow: Alright, Alex, first off, thanks for taking the time to answer some questions. We’ve been fans ever since we randomly caught you opening for Mates of State at that Mercury Lounge Barsuk showcase a while back. 2011, maybe? Can you tell us how the band started—I read that you and Michael met when you opened as a solo act for his old band, Bishop Allen? We totally loved those guys.

Alex Schaaf: Bishop Allen came to my school (in WI) to play a show, and I convinced the booking committee (of which i was a member) to let me open the show as Yellow Ostrich—it was the first YO show i ever played. It was just me and a floor tom and looping pedals. I think i played “WHALE” and four other songs. I met Michael there, and then I moved to NY a few months later and got in touch with him again.

Some of my favorite bands back in the nineties were guitar-drum two-pieces—The Spinanes, Kicking Giant…. Did you all make a conscious decision to grow the band beyond a two-piece at any point or was it more natural?

We played for a couple of months as a two piece, but it was a relatively quick decision to expand to three people — it was just way too much work to do everything we wanted to do with two people. A two-piece is great if the music you want to make fits two people, but the music we wanted to make was much bigger, so we needed more people to make it happen.

And we hear Jon (bass, horns) has moved on and you now play as a four-piece, correct?

Yes we have two new guys, Jared and Zach, who joined over a year ago, before we started working on Cosmos.

How has that changed your live show, besides making it…louder?

It feels much bigger and looser—with four people it’s easier to expand the sound and create different things than you can with three. And with four people we don’t need to loop things as much, so we’re barely looping at all now, which is pretty exciting. It’s more rewarding right now to just play the songs and react to each other live, rather than laying down a loop that’s rigid and unchanging, which you have to try and stay on top of throughout the song. It’s really fun now to be able to play everything without having to loop it, just a natural progression.

Yeah, I totally think that every time I see someone doing the looping live thing—it must be so constrictive some times. So, as with the veering away from looping, how else do you see the band and song-writing growing or evolving with the new album?

With this one it was a very collaborative process, and with four people there’s always going to be different ideas and influences swirling around, so it’s exciting to see what comes out in the end. I feel like the band is taking steps towards a sound that’s more intuitive and pulsing, something you feel in your chest instead of hear in your head.

That’s really exciting. And totally something I think you can track and hear in the work chronologically. Now, you all have a history of odd, slightly creepy, photo-based album art. Can you break down the cover for Cosmos for us? Is that a pre-existing photo or something that was made for the album?

It’s a still from a video by Bas Jan Ader, a Dutch artist from the 60s-70s. He did a series of short films where he claimed his artistic medium was ‘gravity’—they are all just people falling down, but not in a Jackass way, in a way that makes the act of falling seem profound somehow. So the cover art is a still from one of those videos, captured mid-fall obviously.

Oh, that’s cool. We’ll totally have to look into his work. Speaking of videos, I think the first one I saw of your’s was for “WHALE”—one of my favorites from The Mistress. Was that you jumping from the cliff or was that a stunt double?

Oh that’s me. I had to overcome several phobias to do that shoot—a fear of heights and a fear of swimming. And we had to do 7-8 takes of that, each of which was progressively more terrifying somehow.

Good god. Well the final product seems worth it…though I can say that since it wasn’t me being terrified. Where was that? Looked like Saugerties or thereabouts….

Yeah, it was somewhere in upstate NY.

True or made-up Wikipedia thing—Michael won Beard of the Year Award from MTV two years running?

Made-up Wikipedia thing!

I fuckin’ knew it! Speaking of Michael, every time we’ve seen you guys live, he’s had so much going on. He’s not your everyday rock drummer with a standard trap set. I assume he’s keeping that musical eccentricity up?

He’s really found his own sound and style with the kit. At this point, it seems so natural that I don’t even think about it being ‘different’ or eccentric, it’s just a different way of approaching the drums. It’s definitely very impressive how he can play both regular kit (which he does with the other bands he’s played with), and this set-up, without blinking an eye.

Totally agree. It lends a great, unique sound to an already unique-sounding band—we love the fact that you all aren’t content with just being your standard catchy indie band. But how does your song-writing work? Most songs seem like yours, so to speak, and I’m assuming they get built out in practice. Is that way off?

I tend to write the main framework of the songs, like the chords and melodies, and then I send them to the other guys and they get fleshed out in terms of arrangements and textures. Like, I’ll start out with a simple beat on a demo, and by the time Michael’s done with it, it’s much more expansive and nuanced.

That’s awesome. I bet there are a lot of bands out there that’s like a ‘mail order’ system kinda like that. “Dude, make this song I wrote even more awesome, thank you.”

You’ve been at this a while now—what would you say makes for compelling performances, musical or otherwise?

I think a compelling live performance happens when you feel like the artist is really taking a risk and putting themselves out there. In terms of performance, I like when the band feels right on the brink of “total genius” and “this could fall apart at any minute”. Sometimes when things are too polished and practiced it can feel a little stale.

One hundred percent. The inevitable influences question—who would you say feeds into your work creatively?

We all have such different tastes and influences that it’s hard to name one or two artists. Somewhere near the crossing point of Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Cohen.

That’s oddly fitting. Favorite thing about Brooklyn?

The fact that right now I could be at 6 different record stores within a 5-minute walk from my house.

I assume you live in Williamsburg then. And LA? Favorite thing?

The ocean.

Band you can’t stop listening to of late?

Lately I’ve been non-stop listening to Kendrick Lamar. Also Jai Paul.

No shit! Man, we wrote Jai Paul up in 2010 because that dude’s song “BTSTU” blew us away so much. His music is nuts.

Okay, finally, if you’d be so kind as to indulge us—tell us one crazy thing about you or the band that you always wish would come up in an interview but never does. Totally having you do my job for me….

Michael once killed a man. But he wasn’t caught, so that’s why we don’t talk about it in interviews. Oh……shit….where’s the delete button….does ‘send’ mean delete?….lemme try that…..

Aaaaaaaand scene.

You can buy Yellow Ostrich’s excellent new full-length, Cosmos, online and at fine record stores everywhere—walk to your nearest one now and pick it up; you’ll be glad you did. LA—hopefully you caught the band at the Echo last night; the rest of the country can see them live with (the also excellent) Pattern is Movement as they make their way back to New York for a homecoming show at the Bowery April 4. Full list of tour dates on the band’s site.

KCRW’s got a full album stream going on The War on Drugs‘ new full-length, Lost in the Dream—in stores and available for purchase online tomorrow.

We were big fans of their sophomore record, Slave Ambient, and critics are already calling this follow-up one of the best albums of the year so far. An aural locomotive train that undulates between straight-forward, foot-tapping, rock-yelp-filled songs and slow, chugging, emotional ones, the album showcases frontman Adam Granduciel’s song-writing and strikes us being suffused with the energy of a live show.

You can hear the lead single form the album, “Red Eyes”, below. You’ll like it, so follow up with a click-through to KCRW’s stream and start the album off with its proper opener—the nine-minute-long “Under The Pressure”.

The War on Drugs’ shows in NYC, LA, SF, and their home town of Philly are all sold out, but the rest of you still have a shot.

Photo by Graham Tolbert.

One day, in 1995, my good friend and inevitable band-mate, Meredith, stopped me in the college dining hall, handed me his headphones, and told me I needed to listen to something immediately.

That something was Illinois band Hum’s song “Stars” and, being the obliging emo kid I was—Sunny Day, Braid, Split Lip early 90s emo; not Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance aughts mall emo—I stood in the corner of the dining hall and gently rocked to the awesomeness that was that song, clutching my backpack straps all the while.

Listening to current day Philadelphia band Nothing, I’m immediately transported back to that dining hall in all its fuzzy, distorted, shoe-gazey glory. Nothing’s not 100% derivative of 90s noise pop, but it’s clearly taking its cues from that era, and I unabashedly love it, original or not.

Turns out, the band and its sound is a sort of catharsis for its founder, Domenic Palermo, who formed Nothing after a particularly violent part of his life that ended in him stabbing another man and serving a two-year sentence in jail. “Saying I wrote a lot in there would be a huge understatement,” Palermo told the Deli magazine. ” I have always felt like I was covered by a wet blanket of isolation, but prison really heightened that for me. It’s the kind of thing that stays with you throughout life I think. The alone in a crowd type of thing, drifting thoughts during other people’s meaningless conversations. It’s a sad place. It comes through in the songwriting.”

Listen to Nothing’s…aptly named debut full-length, Guilty of Everything, below. You can buy it in physical form from their label, long-time metal outfit, Relapse, and digitally via iTunes. If you like to support stabbers!!!

I kid. Nothing plays Beerland this afternoon and the Fader Fort tomorrow.

And since we opted out of giving you a pick yesterday, today’s a twofer!

Taking a sudden, sharp, sunny corner musically, we’re also calling out a long-time favorite of ours, pop singer-songwriter, Madi Diaz.

Though the sound’s a world away, Diaz does share with Nothing roots in Philly, where she attended the Paul Green School of Rock, which actually resulted in being featured in the popular documentary, Rock School. Having survived that, Diaz went on to attend the slightly more conventional Berklee College of Music before moving to Nashville and, eventually, settling here in Los Angeles recently.

She currently lists her interests as “writing music that even our friends might like (ie not just our immidiate families), ponies, shiny objects” on her Facebook page and her influences as “pine trees. mountains. you.” Aw.

See if you can hear the pine trees below. If you like these tracks, we highly recommend purchasing her 2012 full-length, Plastic Moon.

For the thriftier individuals out there, head over to NoiseTrade, where you can download a three-song sampler of the album for whatever amount of money you see fit. At the very least, make sure you download the track “Let’s Go”—it’s seriously one of my favorite songs ever.

It looks like Madi’s done with official SXSW showcases—she “killed it” at Buffalo Billiards Tuesday, accordingly—so keep an eye on her Facebook page for coming shows to support her sophomore full-length, due out this year.

Our hearts are with you in Austin today.

Just that.

Next on our SXSW dance card, Syracuse band Perfect Pussy.

First off, insider’s tip—if you happen to write for a Web site that covers music and plan to write about the band, I advise that you search “perfect pussy band” when looking for photos and/or information. Just an FYI.

So, the name.

For the many that immediately recoil, there’s an explanation. According to Katie Presley at NPR—”Singer Meredith Graves describes it as a projection of self-esteem; a sort of heading off at the gate for potential detractors. Even the harshest, most personal critiques aimed at Graves, her body, her story or the band have to include an aggressively pro-female signifier.”

Who can’t get behind that?

A lot of people, I’m sure, but I’m into. For me, Perfect Pussy harkens back to my love of bands like Huggy Bear + Bikini Kill, both in sound and in principle. They’re not fucking around, and that’s apparent in the name of the band and in the impact of the songs. If you want to listen to Perfect Pussy, if you want to be in the audience—virtually or physically—you have to say the name; you have to listen to the lyrics that are being thrown into your face. Perfect Pussy doesn’t do background music.

Check out their live performance of “III” below + check out their brand new track, “Driver”, to see what I’m talking about. If it’s your thing, you can buy their EP, I Have Lost All Desire for Feeling, via their Bandcamp page. Better yet, NPR’s got a First Listen of their full-length, Say Yes To Love. And it’s excellent.

The kinda crazy/awesome box set of the album—pictured to the right—is sold out already…as is, the first pressing, which had Graves’ actual blood mixed in with the vinyl; but you can order the standard, bloodless edition CD or LP (out next week) via Captured Tracks.

LA—PP’s playing the Bootleg next Wednesday. Get tickets while they’re still available.

I feel like this should end with a dick joke, but I’ve got nothing. Listen/watch below + enjoy.

Now that the South by Southwest Music Festival has officially started—no, seriously, it just started today…it’s getting to be like Christmas; next thing you know, we’ll start seeing “pre-SXSW” shows in January. Anyway, now that it’s officially started, we thought we’d begin sharing our picks for bands that, were we there this year, we’d want to see.

We’ll skip the long-time favorites playing the fest, like Magic Man, Wild Cub, or Oberhofer (AKA Broberhofer), who have perhaps graced these pages often as is and go straight to our new obsessions of late.

First up—NYC’s Big Ups, a band that, if you’re anything like me, will suddenly make want to relive your early high school moshing days. Check out their video for “Goes Black” below to see what I mean. You’ll also find an album stream for their debut full-length, Eighteen Hours of Static, down there.

Big Ups play Hotel Vegas Friday.

Also, what the fuck, South by? Coldplay? 50 Cent? Seriously?

We’ll keep up the SXSW posting for the rest of the week. Stay tuned!

Band photo: Dylan Johnson

Australian band Glass Towers very recently caught our ear in the studio and, with their very first shows stateside coming up later this week in LA, we thought it proper to take some time to talk with frontman, Ben Hannam, about his song-writing inspirations, Jack Kerouac, and his stage presence, which is not drug-induced.

“Basically I was around sixteen at the time and I had been writing some songs in my bedroom and I got a bit bored of just being a bedroom musician, I guess,” says the now 22 Hannam. So he looked where any logically minded high-schooler would to build out a band—music class. Thus, in 2008, Glass Towers was born.

In the years since, the band has slowly gained notoriety on its home shores—playing Australia’s  Splendour In The Grass festival and getting picked up early on by the Triple J radio program, Unearthed, which features unsigned local musicians. Last year, the band released its debut full-length album, Halcyon Days, supporting the release with a sold-out tour down under.

With Australia firmly conquered, the band’s now moving the act stateside, playing its first ever American shows this weekend at LA’s Bootleg.

“It’s our first time in America, so it’s really exciting—can’t wait,” Hannam told us. “It’s funny, you grow up in Australia watching so many movies and pretty much every single movie’s made in America and so I think people get, like, pre-ordained viewpoints of what America’s like, but I’m kind of more excited to just explore it.” He went on to explain the origin of his fascination with exploring the US—”I mean, one of my favorite authors is Jack Kerouac and, I won’t have much time off because I’ll be playing too many shows, but I’d just love to do as much exploring as I can. I’d love to go back to America after this tour and kind of see the real America, you know what I mean, like outside of being a band, like kind of really exploring it properly? I’d love to do that.”

So far, Ben’s plans once he gets to LA are pretty humble though, with a visit to Amoeba Music and getting over the jet lag high on the priority list. “I’m really bad at sleeping on planes—I’ve been plying on planes my whole and I’ve never gotten any better at it.”

Of Halcyon Days, the band’s debut full-length, Hannam says it gives voice to his pining for days not-so-long-past. “Basically, when I was growing up—when I was 18 or 17—I was really nostalgic…or I was kind of nostalgic before I should have been nostalgic. It was kind of like present tense nostalgia. I used to call myself a nostalgia-holic. I’d kind of go to house parties and do that kind of stuff and I’d get kind of, like…not melancholy, not sad, but I’d kind of always be looking back…like, a party I went to a week ago, I would look back on it with kind of like a fondness and a kind of nostalgic outlook.”

He continues, bringing his literary influence back into mix—”Basically I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac when I was 16 and I kind of really dug his writing style, his kind of spontaneous prose, I guess. And that kind of influenced me to come home from parties and just, like, scroll down every kind of detail, every character at a party, every kind of conversation I had. And so I kind of built up these diaries of ideas and just crazy characters and events that happened in my life. And that’s where I drew the inspiration for the record. So, yeah, in a way it’s kind of a semi-concept record of growing up and finding your place and…being a teenager, really.”

And, though it’s new to most of us, the band’s already excited to move on to new material. “The new stuff I’m writing now, it’s really different. It’s just really exciting to write towards the second record. It’s kind of hard to keep the same energy when you’ve been playing the same songs for, like, a good five years, over and over again.”

Regardless of whether it’s new to us or new to them, we’re excited to see them play, especially given Hannam’s description of their live sets.

“Live, compared to our studio record and our EP, the songs are a lot more raw; there’s more energy in it; we kind of get…when you see us live, you’ll understand. We get really kind of wrapped up in the music and we kind of feel it. We’ve got some kind of crazed reviews before, like people think I’m high or I have some sort of weird problem with me.”

Quite the bar to set for your very first US shows, but we’ve got every confidence they’ll live up to the hype. See for yourself—Glass Towers plays the Bootleg Bar Saturday night, opening for Dub FX, and then Sunday as part of the 6th annual Aussie BBQ—a day-long musical extravaganza at BootlegHiFi, presenting Australia’s best + brightest before they head off to SXSW in Austin.

Heading to SXSW? They’ll be at Bungalow Bar, 3.12; The Brew Exchange, 3.14; Maggie Mae’s, 3.15; and, if past years are any indication, one thousand other showcases in between. New York—catch them at Piano’s March 18 + at Rough Trade March 19. A full listing of tour dates including other cities along the way can be found on the band’s Facebook page.

You can listen to “Griffon”, the lead song from the debut EP, above. Get the EP, Collarbone Jungle, via iTunes or from the band on the road. Their full-length, Halcyon Days, is set for a stateside release later this summer.

Band Photo: Wilk 

German trio, Aloa Input, is said to be from New Weird Bavaria, a place that, from the sound of things, is not only full of oddly fantastic flaura + fauna, but also strangely enticing music that spans genres and pulls them together in new and fascinating ways.

As Morr Music, the band’s label, puts it:
“Always on point when it comes to picking the best bits and pieces of so much input, Anysome, the band’s debut full-length, essentially resembles a huge map that covers most of the musical worlds and sonic landscapes we know. Make no mistake: Borges might claim a map of that size is useless, it’s nevertheless a hell of a ride.”

We took a few minutes to sit down with the band to talk about fighting the forces of monotony in popular music, the concept of bricolage, and how three guys decided to start one of the most quirkily enjoyable bands we’ve heard in quite a while. Read our interview, listen to a track from their debut album, and check out their spell-binding video for their song “Someday Morning” below.

raven + crow : So, your write-up on Morr’s site reads that you all “are on a musical mission to fight the ever-advancing forces of entropy and monotony”. You do have a unique sound. Is it something that developed naturally/organically?

Aloa Input: Before we even started to record, we talked about music over a couple of months. We were really convinced about what we didn’t want to do. But in retrospect, we really didn’t have any idea that it would end up sounding like this. So I guess, it’s pretty much a mixture. Maybe something like natorganically??

Nice. We support any such coining of new words. Speaking of though, do you have any super powers to help fight those ever-advancing forces?

Since we all have different musical backrounds, we kind of learned to put these influences together. The French ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss came up with the term of “bricolage”. In certain cultural studies, this term was adopted to descripe the technique to put certain things—items or whatever—in a new context. So, if you like, you can call “bircolage” one of our so called “powers” to avoid entropy and monotony in pop-music.

I like it. Can you talk a little about how the band first formed? Were you all in bands previously?

We’ve all played in different bands in Munich before and still do. Munich is not that  big of a city. So when you do certain music, it’s pretty obvious and you get to know each other quickly. But the point where we decided to form what is now called Aloa Input was at a festival in Munich, where all of our former bands performed. The three of us where standing next to the stage and we were talking a little bit about music and what bands we dig. Right at that moment it was pretty clear that we had to do music together.

Do you all have any strong influences or bands that you think feed into your music creatively? I feel like Stereolab + American Analog Set came to mind a little for me…but more glitched out with awesome electronics + rhythms.

When we first came together we were all really into Animal Collective. We still really like the band a lot, but it’s not and has never been that big of a influence at all. I think we all really appriciate older music like Can, NEU!, The Beatles, Moondog Jr, and Calypso sounds. And there have been really great new bands as well. I think we’re all just really into music and open to interesting stuff.

I always feel the need to ask non-native-English-speaking bands why they chose to sing in English. I mean, I’m glad you do—it’s great to be able to understand a song, after all—but is it in hopes of just being more accessible to more people?

I think it’s more about what music you grow up with. We all had the most contact with music written in English. There is no doubt that there are great lyricists in German music, but for us, it seems more natural to sing in English. We actually haven’t even really thought about it, writing the lyrics in German.

Wow, that’s really surprising but, yeah, it makes sense. So, I feel like Bavaria is an area that has continued to identify itself separate or distinct from Germany…but I feel like I personally don’t really know much about the region beyond your food. What makes you proud to be Bavarians, not just Germans? What do you like about it there?

Puhhh…that’s a tough one. I know what you mean, but that’s not how we see it. Of course there are lot of livable aspects in Bavaria, like the landscape with the mountains and lakes and all, but there are also a lot of things which we don’t support. The city we live in raises its rents to unaffordable levels, the politcal majority hasn’t changed for ages, and the executive can be a pain in the ass a lot of times.

Yeah, sounds like most large American cities, actually. Slightly off-topis, can you explain what “New Weird Bavaria” is?

It’s pretty much just a joke. We see ourselves akin to bands which are labled as “New Weird America”. So we thought we’d come up with somthing ironically new. It’s better than being labeled as just another Indie/Electro/Psychedelic/Experimantal-Pop Band.

That’s true. Any recommendations for anyone who visits Germany? I mean, besides seeing you guys play a show.

There are beautiful cities like Regensburg which didn’t get destroyed in the 2nd world war. If you want to experience how Germany would look like if there hadnt been this terrible mess, you should most definitely check those few cities out.

Will do. Speaking of shows, any plans to play any stateside? I know it’s ridiculously expensive for foreign artists to play the US these days, but we’d love to see you nonetheless.

Of course, that would be a great thing for us. Travelling around with your own music is one of the best parts of doing it. But only a few German bands have had the chance so far to go overseas for a tour. We have to wait and see what happens.

Well we’re rooting for you. We have to ask though—what’s with the name? Does it mean anything?

We thought about it as “hello input” without being to close to the hawaiian phrase. It’s a matter of how it sounds, since it’s a beautiful word. But also we think of it as not having any barriers around certain forms of music. 

Ah, well that’s nice. And the name of the album, Anysome?

It’s a neologism. We’re all in a certain stage of our lifes where we can’t really tell where it will all lead us. A lot of the lyrics on the album concentrate on that. We have all these possibilities and chances—through the internet the world is just a nutshell to a lot of people from our generation. And I think, you can also hear it in the music. There are a lot of different styles combined into one. Bricolage, if you want.

Bricolage! Can you talk a little about the video you did with Bryn Chainey for your track, “Someday Morning”? It’s so fucking cool. Is it real? Like, are those people really sleepwalking?

Bryn came up with the idea of a mockumentary. So it’s all fake! He’s a great director with highly creative ideas, which left us all stunned. We like that he starts his work with very innocent ideas, which kind of blow your mind if you think a little bit about it. We really hope to work with Bryn again.

Ah, well cool video. I seriously couldn’t tell if it was real or fake, so job well-done. Can you break down a line or lyric you like a lot off the album in terms of meaning and/or origin?

There are two lines of two different songs which say, maybe, a lot about the album: “A steady mind is always on the run” and “I had this thought, the best one that I ever forgot”. 

Nice. Then, I ask totally in a professional curiosity sense as someone who designs Web sites, but I notice you guys don’t have a non-bandcamp, non-Facebook, non-label site—do you feel like it’s kinda unnecessary with so many other outlets online these days?

Well, we’re actually planning on constructing a web-site. But until then, FB and BC are fine.

Totally. Finally, and most importantly, favorite bizarre corner of the internet you’d like to share with our readers?

The bizarre thing is, this song was our neverending earworm 2013. One of us even has it as his ring tone on his cell phone:

Whoa. That guy’s talented.

If you’re in Germany any time soon, try to catch Aloa Input live. In the meantime, you can import their CD + LP via Morr Music or get it digitally via iTunes.

Top photo by Ela Grieshaber

Computer Magic is Brooklyn’s Danielle “Danz” Johnson—producer, DJ, and creator of superb electro-pop. We were immediately hooked by her keyboard-driven sound and wryly deadpan singing when we first heard Johnson’s songs through Oh My Rockness a few years back. With countless EPs and digitally released singles under her belt, she’s now hard at work on a debut full-length which we’re sure will prove wildly successful.

We got a chance to catch up Danz to talk about her musical career, making it in NYC, and being big in Japan. Give it a read and listen to her most recent release, Extra Stuff EP, below.  We’re fans of “Time to Decide” + “Summer Vacation” especially.

raven + crow: First off, are you at all affiliated with Computer Magic Training in San Jose, California?

Danielle “Danz” Johnson: Unfortunately, I’m not!

Fuck. Guess I have to trash all my questions then.

Can you tell us about your name? We’re always interested in that kinda thing, being in the branding business. Were you just like ‘It’s boring to go by Danielle Johnson and I like computers and this sounds cool”?

The name comes from a quote in Spinal Tap from Viv Savage: “Quite exciting this computer magic!”.

See, I need to re-watch that movie. So rich with quotable material.

I think I first heard you through Claire + Patrick over at Oh My Rockness way back in 2010, at which point you just had a few songs floating around the interwebs. I think the conventional thinking back then was still ‘get heard, play shows, record a full-length’, but in the years since, full-lengths seem to be less and less important. Do you feel like putting out an LP is a necessary or expected step in a musician’s evolution still?

I definitely think it’s still necessary to put out full-length albums. I think what happened is, music just became easier to put out for unsigned artists. A full length is a delicate thing, it takes time to perfect, it usually takes money, one song you just upload.

Well-said. In addition to the, what, 23 EPs you’ve put out, I read that you put out a couple full-lengths in Japan. Any plans for a full-length stateside?

In Japan I’ve been fortunate enough to have a label that supports putting out the music I’ve already made available online, press it onto CDs, promote it, etc. 

Over here it’s a bit different, I’ve been releasing everything basically by myself. Over the next few months though, I plan to go into the studio with Claudius Mittendorfer (Neon Indian, Bloc Party, Interpol) and make my first full length record. I wanted to wait until I had the funds to work with a proper producer and record in a proper studio, wanted to wait until things were just right to start recording my debut full length.

So you’re totally big in Japan. 

There is a big audience for Computer Magic in Japan, the music has really caught on over there, it’s amazing. It helps that I’m in love the culture. Definitely one of my favorite places to be and tour for sure.

I’ve always wanted to visit. The language-based + cultural barriers seem so scarily insurmountable, but I’ll have to do it one day. Seems like a shame not to.

So, with the exception of a few EPs, most everything you’ve put out has been free of charge. Do you feel like that’s the best way to get your music out to the most people or do you just think it’s not possible anymore to make money off of song sales? Or are you just getting us all hooked on your mad beatz and before raising your prices dramatically, thus triggering the coming Computer Magic Crack Epidemic of 2014?

I don’t think any artist can avoid getting torrented and I’d rather have direct traffic to my site rather than thepiratebay, so I put up my stuff for free, at least for a little while. It’s a tough subject because I obviously want to get paid for the work I do, but on the other hand, free stuff is just so cool for fans. The more people that have your music and enjoy it the better, in my opinion.

That totally makes sense. It just must be so hard to survive—literally—as a musical artist these days.

I know you started making your own music after moving away from New York and spending some time in Tampa. We just moved from Brooklyn to LA ourselves. Did you feel like you just needed a break from the non-stop-ness of NYC for a while or what brought on the move?

I went through a period where I would literally never see sunlight. I dropped out of college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I was DJing full time which was fun, but needed something different so I moved to Florida to get away. I feel like that was the best thing that could’ve happened because I discovered something new about myself (i.e. music making). Good things come out of change, when things are stagnant you can’t move forward or realize where you’re at.

Amen to that, sister. What’s you take on NYC today? It’s changed so much over the past 10 or so years.

I love New York. It’s my favorite city. It breaks you down and builds you back up. The rent is too expensive, everybody complains, the subways are dirty. But as a true New Yorker would say “ey, whaddya gonna do?” As for it changing, it always has been, but I can see how it’s sped up in the last decade. 

True. Did you read that piece David Byrne put out a while back about the 1% killing New York’s creative community?

Yeah. It’s hard for creatives to live in New York. It’s just too expensive. 

Do you feel like you’d ever move away from New York?

I’ve thought about Amsterdam. If I knew more Japanese maybe I’d consider Tokyo. Sometimes I think about moving to the middle of the country into total seclusion, but then I worry that I’d drive myself crazy. I don’t have an allegiance to New York. My dad lives here (upstate) so I’d always come visit. I guess overall a complete different country really interests me, of course first I’d need the money.

Which brings us back to making money off music. How’d you originally get hooked up with White Iris Records?

Daron Hollowell found this article “Band To Watch” on Stereogum about Compute Magic. He emailed me and we hit it off and I flew to LA to make the Electronic Fences EP. Those guys are great.

Totally. Started by some ex-Duke-Dogs (our college mascot). Now that we’re Southern Californians—any plans to play LA soon?

Yes. I’d say more but I don’t know the details yet.

Fair, fair. Was it awesome to walk around NYC in a spacesuit for your 2011 video for “The End of Time”?

It was weird but I felt awesome and invincible. Also, if you watch the people’s reactions in the video, no one even notices. 

So New York. We like your recent Sun Ra cover—any other fun covers planned in the near future?

I sort of just decide to cover songs on a whim. It’s a mixture of being both obsessed with a specific song and bored. I plan to make more in the future. Recently I’ve been listening to Nine Inch Nails’ Wish on repeat, so who knows.

Oh, a cover from Wish would rule. I feel like ‘Happiness in Slavery’ would be an oddly good fit.

Lightening round—Dream show line-up you’d like to play?

Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Pavement, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Nine Inch Nails, Nas, Frank Zappa (because this is a dream line-up), Beck, Serge Gainsbourg, The Who (with Kieth Moon) and William Shatner as host and covering “Rocket Man”. 

It could happen. Predicted winner of the coming World Cup?

Brazil.

You come off as quite the synth buff—favorite/dream snyth?

I have the Moog Voyager which I love, although I really want a polyphonic synth, so I’d say maybe the MemoryMoog, PolyMoog, or the colorful, amazing looking EMS PolySynthi (pictured right).

Whoa, that looks like it was designed for a Sesame Street character. Go with that one. Favorite Downton character?

I’ve only seen the first few episodes, but I remember I liked the guy with the cane.

Daredevil? Best video game ever?

Super Mario 64, Wave Race, Banjo-Kazooie, Rayman. (Galaga, if we’re at a bar). 

Band you’ve been extra-keen on of late?

I haven’t been listening to anything new recently, just a lot of Gary Numan’s Replicas album and Pavement.

I heard Numan do a live set for KCRW last year. He still holds up live. Most amazing animated GIF?

The one of Andrew WK’s interview on Fox.

Related—do you fall in the ‘jiff’ GIF camp or the hard G GIF camp?

G camp. I only think of peanut butter otherwise.

THANK YOU. Finally, and most importantly, if you were a mythical beast, you’d be…?

A dragon?

Well-chosen.

LA-based label Kill/Hurt will be pressing limited edition 180 gram vinyl (500) + colored cassettes (250) of the Extra Stuff EP April 2. You can order both via Danz’ site. If you can’t wait until then, buy it via iTunes. And keep an eye on Computer Magic’s tour page for coming 2014 dates.