Interviews

Interview: Innerpartysystem

Infusing a history of hardcore with electronica, dance and rock music, Innerpartysystem are here to make us shimmy our little backsides off. Although they deal in guitars and keyboards, electronic beats and deft programming touches, a quick visit to their website reveals a dark, strange and even sadistic side that comes across in their music. Intrigued we caught up with them and fired a few questions in their direction.

Much is made of your hometown in Philadelphia as being an “industrial wasteland” with the environment supposedly “stark and mechanical” and full of “rusted factories”. Is it really that bleak?

We want to be really clear about this, “Philadelphia” is the quick and easy answer to where we’re from, because it’s the biggest city people outside of Pennsylvania recognize. We’re really nearest to Reading Pennsylvania, which is about an hour and a half drive west of Philadelphia. If you want to get REALLY specific, we all live in a house where we’ve built a small, very modest studio in Mohnton, Pennsylvania. Google it - it’s your basic small American town.

There’s a sandwich shop, gas station, a few churches, and that’s it really. It’s home for us. We were all born and raised there, and we think it’s a very typical American working-class area that a lot of people identify with. The reason people probably make such a big deal out of it is because it’s not where you’d typically think an electronic dance band would be based. The only real scene here are a few scattered clubs that have garage bands, and VFW Hall shows. In fact, when labels first started scouting us we made them travel out to Reading for a show, just so they could get the full scope of where we’re from.

As for Reading being that bleak? We all grew up in the suburbs/small towns surrounding Reading, which, having travelled America quite a bit now, we think are very typical. There’s malls with the same Target/Wal-Mart shops as every other American town, the same chain Olive Garden/Red Lobster-style restaurants, same stuff as everywhere else really. Reading itself has always had a slightly bleak cast to it.

Reading originally boomed as a railroad town (like monopoly) to transport coal from the Pittsburgh coal regions, but the Railroad’s long closed, and Reading’s biggest claim to fame is that it had the first outlet mall in the US. It’s a great place to buy socks and underwear. Reading is also abnormally violent. The only real scenes here, that we all grew up around, are hardcore and metal. For a long time growing up Reading had the highest murder rate per capita in the US. It’s been bumped from the #1 slot, but it’s still up there. It’s something that I think we just don’t really notice, but that really struck a nerve with our label, the press, etc.

How is the environment conducive to writing music?

Honestly I don’t know how we could have made this band work anywhere else. The band’s supported all of us for the past 6 months now. When we started we just worked part time joe-jobs and did nothing else but work, write, and record Innerpartysystem tracks. Living in a small town has allowed us to afford to just get a house, move in together, build a studio, and make records the way we’ve always wanted. When you walk into the house it’s just bunks and gear scattered everywhere. It’s cramped, uncomfortable, and most definitely a shithole/band-house cliche. But this was how we always wanted to make this first album.

The small town themes are also very apparent on the album. Just growing up you see your parents work their whole life just to make ends meet. Kids just drinking themselves to death just to pass the day. You see your friends finish high school, marry their sweetheart, get a typical job and just never leave this area. You can’t help but wonder what else is out there. In a lot of ways the four of us came together because we’re all looking for a way to see what’s outside this town, and this was the only way we really new to do it.

Tell us about your band name. Was it important to include the word “party” in it?

NO. No no no no no. We’ll get that every now and then where someone will be like “What’s up InnerPAARRRTYYYYYYYYYsystem!!!” and that couldn’t be further from our intentions with the name. We think most people get that it’s a little deeper than that. The band was originally called Takeover, just because we started it as a small MySpace project and didn’t really dwell on the name. When we signed there were a zillion takeovers, and the search to find a new great name can really be a bitch these days. Innerpartysystem came from ‘1984′. Orwell defined the “innerparty” as the bourgeois elite, and the “outerparty” as the working class. We liked the idea of creating something that was this really over the top, eccentric scene that we specifically created to invite everyone into. The 5 bars logo loosely ties into that concept as well. We don’t really expect people to get it on that level, but, that’s where the name came from. “Party” is conceived as a political party, movement, or class system…not a fucking frat party.

What are the main programs used to create your loops, beats, bleeps and squeaks?

The backbone of our programming is Ableton. The bleeps and squeaks are just a large variety synths, a ton of plug ins, a ot of circuit bent keyboards, theramins, etc. Really it’s anything we can manage to get our hands on. We’re all sort of studio rats in that respect.

You just got back from the massive SXSW tour. How did it go and why do you think it’s such a special event?

SXSW was awesome. This was the first time any of us have been there, and to add that was our first real tour. Newsflash: people fucking PARTY at Southby - HOLY SHIT. By the third day we were all pretty thrashed. Patrick passed out in a park in Austin one night, we actually had to track him down. Not exactly our prettiest hour. Any time you get that many people who are out of their minds in a city that’s a little off the beaten path you’re asking for an event. People complain about it getting watered down, but for us it was awesome.

Did you get to see many of the acts there and, if so, which was your favourite?

We toured our way in, and were either playing shows or playing shows outside of Austin, so we didn’t get to spend as much time seeing other bands as we would have liked.

You’re playing at the 2008 Camden Crawl soon. If you get this before you go, which band are you most looking forward to seeing? If you get this after you played, what did you think of the event and your set?

I have to be honest with you, we’re on the road right now, and I broke my finger at the show last night. We only have tomorrow to figure out how to pack our gear and get it through the airlines, and none of us have really travelled much outside the US before so we all have that excitement/travel/what the fuck is going to happen anxiety. We can’t wait. I’m sure once we get to the UK we’ll think about trying to catch other bands at Camden Crawl. I did see that M83 are playing, we’re fans. Hopefully we’ll get to catch them.

Your music has been compared to bands ranging from Autechre and Chemical Brothers to Ministry and The Killers. How would you describe your sound?

All we’re really trying to do is combine songwriting with creative programming. Take some of the best aspects of all the bands we love. Isn’t that what any band’s trying to do really? That gets us compared to everything from Daft Punk, to Depeche Mode, to Nine Inch Nails, and the people that like the band are really diverse in what they’re into. We’re just all happy to be in a band where we love what we’re creating with the albums, live shows, and video. We really can’t imagine doing anything else.

What influences your music and do these ideas come just from other bands or are there other art movements that inspire you?

We pull influence from a lot of different places, but living in Mohnton our resources are pretty limited. God bless the fucking internet. Most of the music, art, film that’s had heavy influence on us, I have no idea how we would have ever had access to pre-net. We do take a lot of influence from film, a lot from other producers, especially hip hop, and I don’t know, life in general I guess.

Can you describe what happens at your video-shoots and do you enjoy the process?

Video shoots are particularly different for us because our manager, Penta, is also a video director. He also grew up around Reading and has been friends with us since we were kids. Our manager and soundman, Andy, are really extended family. To this point our videos have all been pretty much no-budget. The performance for ‘Don’t Stop’ was filmed in our practice space, and the white vocal performance setups were shot in our kitchen up against a white wall. The news anchor setup was shot at the local Berks County News Station (BCTV) with our two friends Troy and Abby as cast, and Andy (our soundman/light director) built the news anchor desk out of $50 raw wood from Home Depot. We weren’t there for the majority of the shoot. The edit took almost a month straight because of all the animation and re-feeding the footage to VHS. We actually saw an early first clip and were panicked because it didn’t look right, but once we saw the end product we loved it. Having good people that work hard, that actually care about your art is amazing. We’re really fortunate in that respect.

Penta also creates all our online content. It’s really random when he actually shoots it. We may be in a hotel room in Minnesota and he’ll be like “I need you to vomit in the tub.” It’s akward at times, but he always makes cool stuff out of it. I’m sure the process will change as we do bigger budget videos, but it’s very DIY right now, and we really enjoy doing things that way.

What inspired you to cover Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’ and how did you go about impressing your own style on it?

‘Transmission’ came about in an odd way. Right after we released ‘The Download EP’ in the US, Stolen Transmission wanted to do a homage album to Factory Records, with all the bands on the label covering Factory Records bands. To be totally honest, we have a ton of respect for Joy Division, but we aren’t that band that knows every note the band’s ever produced like you might expect. When we were thinking about the project we were listening a lot to all the Factory tracks trying to pick a cover. ‘Transmission’ stuck out because it has that amazing “DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE TO THE RADIO!” breakdown at the end, and we felt like it was asking to be a cool dance breakdown.

The beat was something entirely different we were working on while in LA recording with Mark Needham. It was just a cool breakbeat that we didn’t know what to do with. The idea came up to layer ‘Transmission’ over it, and really create more of a homage then a straight cover. No one needs to hear us play ‘Transmission’ straight, we’d fuck it up, so we tried to create something totally different. We apologize in advance to all the Joy Division purists. A lot of our younger US fans don’t even recognize it as a cover, they just think it’s a weird track on the MySpace, so hopefully it turns some of them onto Joy Division and people take it as a respectful homage.

How do you approach each gig? Do you have any pre-show rituals?

Um…No.

What sort of music do you listen to when you’re not touring or recording?

It’s across the board. Hip Hop, to punk, to singer-songwriter, more low key stuff, some avant experimental. People always say we don’t listen to what they’d expect us to listen to. We hear so much pounding dance music that when we’re not at clubs or shows we usually want to hear something else. Motown or something, I don’t know. It varies.

The new album comes out sometime in the summer. What can we expect from it?

Making this album over the past year has been a ride. We went from recording everything, and most of the original tracks in our house in Mohnton, to getting to travel to LA and the UK and work with producers and mixers that we only ever really daydreamed about working with like Stuart Price, Alan Moulder, and Mark “Spike” Stent. We’re really happy with the way it came out, can’t WAIT to get it in stores and hit the road, and just really hope that people enjoy it.

Thanks to Sarah @ Division for helping set this interview up.

Band link = Innerpartysystem

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