Next week, on Thursday, April 12th, CVLT Nation will be hosting our very first show in honor of our 1st Anniversary! This epic event will be taking place at BIP in L.A., and will feature sets from Age of Collapse, Low Places, Creatures, NASA Space Universe, Doctorshopper, Wreck & Reference and Skinfather. Doors are at 7pm and space is severely limited, so get there early and show DIY respect for BIP!! Big ups to Vince from Low Places for co-curating the event! To kick off the next week of celebration leading up to the show, we are giving you Artist to Artist Interviews with Doctorshopper and Wreck & Reference. First up, Doctorshopper Vs. Wreck & Reference after the jump…
The “Black Cassette” LP and Wreck and Reference have been linked to a lot of different sub-genres and vague descriptors like experimental or avant-garde. How do you approach your evolving sound? Is it through exploring new soundscapes as individuals or primarily working together to craft a shared vision?
F – Genre labels are for the critics and the clerks, we are neither. As you can imagine, our lack of a comfortable cubby for others to put us in is both frustrating and liberating. I can only hope someone on the internet invents a catchy, hashtagged label for us and we can witness the accelerated rise and fall of yet another micro-genre.
As far as writing, we have an improbably symmetric sense of taste. That makes song writing very easy. In general we come to each other with lyrics and a sketch, spend some time independently fleshing out the drumming and instrumentals, and then play the song a million times a million different ways until we reach a conclusion we actually enjoy listening to.
As far as defining our sound, and I think this is relevant to both preceding points, we try to uphold the maxim, “There are no fucking rules”. Then we throw on a long list of nonsensical self-made rules and somehow the contradiction works for us.
How does Wreck and Reference go about practicing and writing having one member living in Sacramento and another in Los Angeles?
F – The physical separation is a recent one. We both have practice spaces to keep up with writing and playing the material, until we can get together, then we practice with a vengeance.
Does this distance take the pressure off having commitments that impede other aspects of your life, or lead to a separation anxiety with the music and camaraderie of playing together?
F – Technology allows us to get by, but we’d like to be able to play together every day.
What can we expect from the next release? Is there one in the works or perhaps a focus on spreading the “Black Cassette” material to newer audiences first?
F – The next release is a lot denser, richer, and more complex than the Black Cassette, not that that was a particularly difficult feat. The album is written, recorded, and done. We were lucky enough to get Colin Marston on board to handle the mixing and mastering and he did an amazing job with the clusterfuck of tracks we sent him. We hope to make an announcement about the release shortly.
As a fellow synth lover, without giving up your secrets, how do you go about developing an aggressive and heavy sound without bass or guitar? Did developing the Wreck and Reference sound affect how you viewed the use of analog or digital synths and effects?
F – All our instrumentals are created and processed digitally using samples or softsynths from my computer which is then run into an unnecessarily large pile of amplifiers. The range of sounds I can pull up is practically endless, and this is something we exploit a lot more on the new record. However, if you’re looking to just get something heavy from your computer, pirating a real nasty softsynth, playing in a low octave, and ramming it through a half-stack will get you pretty far.
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