Interview de Christopher Hrasky (batterie). 14.01.2006. Questions posées par les membres du forum fin novembre.

English version

What did you think about your uk/european tour ? (by bebo)

Christopher Hrasky : The tour was pretty great. Most of the shows were with Four Tet, who is someone we’ve admired as a musician and as a person for a long time. It was a much more relaxing tour than normal, as there were no grueling drives and it was only three weeks long. Our last major tour of Europe lasted four months straight, which was a bit much. We all started going crazy by the end of that one.

What do you think about the word « catharsis » we can read in most of the reviews about your performances ? (by rag doll)

- We always hope that playing live will be a catharsis for us and, hopefully, for the audience. We try to put everything we have into playing live and, when it goes well, its a pretty amazing feeling. We just want people to be able to just get lost in the music for an hour
or so.

What took you to go to Bressuire 2 years ago ? Why do you never play in the south of France ? (by daguiseb)

- In the past, all our European tours have been set up by a booking agent, so we just sort of went to the cities they planned out. In the future, I think we’ll have more say in where we go and where we play. We will try our hardest to make our way to the south of France.

Why do you have the confederate flag on stage ? Are you proud to be Texan ? (by daguiseb)

- That is not the Confederate flag. It is the Texas flag. There is a big difference. Munaf puts the Texas flag on his amp sort of as a
reminder of home. We’re fully aware that there are a lot of bad associations with Texas (George Bush, the death penalty, etc) but, at the same time, our friends and lovers and pets live in Texas. It is our home and there are a lot of great things about it. So the flag is
just there to honor the good stuff.

What are those stickers and pictures of on Munaf’s guitar ? (by pianofire)

- Munaf has a bunch of different picture on his guitar. He switches them every once in awhile. Some of them are pictures of friends, or just pictures he saw somewhere that moved him.

What kind of cymbals does Christopher use? What make and model ? (by bebo)

- I use Zildjiam Sweete Rides. I think they’re both 21 inches. But I’m not sure.

Who killed kennedy ? (by yellow)

- I’m not sure. I don’t think it was Lee Harvey Oswald, though.

Underpants or boxer shorts ? (by eric)

- Boxer shorts, all the way.

Have you ever scratch your underpants when you play on stage ? I love you. (by eric)

- No, I don’t think I’ve ever scratched my underpants. I’m not sure what that means, actually. I am sort of scared by that questions.

What are you listening to at the moment ? (by bebo)

- All sorts of stuff. Animal Collective, Wolf Parade, Eluvium,
Destroyer, Brian McBride, lots of hip-hop, Colleen, Lichens, the list
could go on and on.

Are you going to add new instruments to the new album ? Faint Vocals perhaps ? (by pianofire)

There will definitely be piano. Maybe some other things, but we have three songs so far and two of them have piano.

What’s the band -or something else- that decides you to make music
? (by rag doll)

– Its hard to say. There are so many bands that have excited me in the past. Dinosaur Jr, maybe?

Why post-rock ? I mean, come on, don’t be stupid – if it’s young
pussy you’re after, post-rock ain’t gonna get you nowhere. (by simmo)

- Well, simmo, you’d be surprised.

Are you open to the electronic music ? (by lu)

- We love a lot of electronic music. Four Tet, Boards of Canada, World’s End Girlfriend, Aphex Twin, etc. I’m not sure if we’ll ever incorporate much electronic music into our songs (we did a little bit on the Rescue), but you never know.

You have to get a job to earn money, between two tours, but with the success coming, would you like to become full-time musicians with the only concern to produce albums, or do you think that keeping basic needs brings something more or different in your musical compositions ? (by rag doll)

- Actually, we’ve been very lucky. None of us have had to work jobs for a couple years now. The albums have done well and we do well on the tours and working on Friday NIght Lights helped us out financially. So, at this point, we are full time musicians, which is great. But its also kind of weird. We all used to work forty hours a week and then we would go practice every night for several hours. Now that we have more free time we find ourselves not working as hard on the music as we should. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we were sort of tired out from doing this non-stop for five years and last year (2005) we were able to take a lot of time off and not worry so much about the band or touring or any of that kind of thing. This year, however, we’re really trying to get back into the swing of working hard on music. We want to write as much music as possible in the coming months, as we hope to release a new album sometime in early 2007. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.

Do you have any others projects (except musical ones) ? (by rag doll)

- Not so much lately. I used to write quite a bit, but the band has kind of overshadowed all of that. I would like to get back into it.

Any last words ? (by bebo)

- Well, thanks for caring and thanks for listening. We truly appreciate it.

merci à john christopher simson pour son aide à la traduction.