REAX: You guys just had a tour in Europe, when did you get back?
Shiraz of Maps and Atlases: Well, actually some of us are still there. I got back on Monday, Dave got back Sunday, Erin is coming back today, and Chris is coming back Tuesday, the day we leave for tour (laughs).
REAX: What are the other guys still doing over there?
M&A: Erin wanted to go to Ireland. We he had never been there and he wanted to spend his birthday in Dublin, so he pretty much stayed another week in Dublin. I spent one extra day there but I wanted to come home. And, Chris is…I don’t know what he’s doing. He’s driving around with his girlfriend, around France and I don’t know where.
REAX: Well, that sounds like a blast!
M&A: Hah, yeah, sounds like good times but it’s definitely going to be pretty tiring because we started out our next tour on Tuesday so…
REAX: Tell us about some of the highlights the tour.
M&A: There was a lot of really awesome stuff. Going to Holland for the first time. Amsterdam is such a beautiful city, definitely overwhelming because there is so much crazy stuff going on. The crowds were really good in pretty much every city. We didn’t really have any bad shows, it’s was kind of a surprise, everywhere was awesome. Saw a lot of really cool stuff. Got pulled over by the toll police in Germany and that was pretty funny. There was like 15 cops standing around (the van), that happened a couple of times. They were just standing around asking lots of questions and stuff. It almost seems like your taking a step back to when the wall was still up. It was a good time, a really, really good time. There was lots of cool stuff.
REAX: Why were they always stopping you?
M&A: Well, first of all we were in a van. Second of all we had English plates, so I think they just take the opportunity to pull of foreigners whenever they can. I think they’re usually trying to get you to declare items that you’ve purchased. But we didn’t really have anything. They were like, “Do you have cigarettes? Do you have alcohol?” and we didn’t really have anything on us. It’s interesting.
REAX: I was going to ask what tour preparation is like for you guys, but you won’t have any preparation for the states’ tour coming up. What is it usually?
M&A: Generally we’ll figure out what songs we’re gonna want to do for the majority of the tour. We’ll try to switch up the set a little bit but usually we stick to a core amount of songs, you know? Like, we’ve been playing a lot of songs off of the new record on the last couple of tours just because it just came out. It’s been heavy on practicing those songs and just getting those ready because playing them live is kind of different from how they were recorded. So we get that ready and try to figure out what the best amount of songs to play is, just getting ready as far as music is concerned. Then obviously there’s other stuff like getting the van ready and packing. That’s pretty much it.
REAX: Is it kind of unnerving that this time you guys are just going to jump right in it when everyone gets back to the states?
M&A: You know, we’re kind of used to it at this point. It can be a little unnerving. Usually before it starts you look at your schedule of dates, like before we left for Europe we had more touring stuff to do. I was looking at all of it and I was like, woa, we’re gonna play like 60 shows in the next three months! It was pretty crazy then. But, now that we’ve already gotten in the flow and have knocked out so many shows and had a lot of really interesting experiences and fun times, now that it’s almost over for the year…you know. It should be a good homestretch.
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REAX: Like most bands you started out supporting yourselves, have you obtained that dream of living off your career as musicians?
M&A: Well we’re definitely getting by, I’d say. We’re not living luxuriously or anything, but as of right now I don’t think any of us have other jobs. I mean, we all pretty much quit the jobs we had earlier this year and we’ve been on tour non-stop, so we’ve been trying to live our lives as modestly as possible while we’ve bee home. We don’t have a lot of money but we’re doing okay. I think we’re just making rent right now.
REAX: We’ll still, that’s pretty good.
M&A: Definitely, definitely, I’m grateful for it.
REAX: You guys met at Columbia in Chicago, what were your respective majors?
M&A: Chris and Aaron did film. Chris’ concentration was in cinematography, Aaron’s was directing and lighting. Dave did cultural studies and I did sound engineering and recording.
REAX: Are any of you guys formally trained in your instruments? Did you go to school for any of that?
M&A: No, actually we kind of took lessons here and there. Dave and Aaron took guitar lessons for a while I think. Chris and Aaron were both in marching band in high school. I did some upright classical bass in high school and a little bit of electric jazz bass in college…my first semester, maybe. Honestly, I’m pretty much self-taught. I know some theory and stuff now, but for the most part I’m self-taught. It’s not like we did music degrees or anything.
REAX: I was wondering given the type of music you guys play, it’s pretty intricate.
M&A: Thanks, yeah, I think we just kind of experimented a lot. We kind of came upon some stuff. Often, sounds seem harder than it actually is. That’s definitely the case for me; I can’t speak for Dave and Aaron as much. And Chris, he’s a beast, there’s no question. He’s really, really, good. I don’t think he realizes it but he’s definitely really good. For me it’s mostly just stumbling upon stuff or just messing around and figuring stuff out.
REAX: Since you guys are balancing complex math-rock with a straightforward indie-sensibility, when you’re putting a song together do you ever write something and say, “No, we can’t do that. It’s took complicated” or, “We need to beef this up and make it more complicated”?
M&A: I can’t really remember a time when were we practicing when we were like, let’s make this super complicated. Usually that’s just the way we think when we’re just jamming. I really like syncopation a lot. Most of the stuff we play isn’t really in weird time signatures so much as it is just weirdly syncopated. We’ll just be jamming on stuff and since we’ve been doing it for so long…I think that to an outsider it may be like, “Woa, that’s really complicated” but to us it’s just song stuff we came up with on the spot. So, I don’t know, it’s not like we’re trying to make it too difficult, it’s just making it intricate and interesting in the process rather than, “Let’s stop for a minute and try to really mess this up for people” (laughs). I don’t think we’ve ever tried to make difficult music on purpose or anything.
REAX: But you never find yourselves restraining from doing that to be more accessible, does that makes sense?
M&A: Absolutely. I think there has definitely been points where, like I said, when we’re in the jamming process we’ll do something really crazy and then maybe stop and be like, “Is that working for the song?” or “is that serving the song over all”, you know what I mean? There have been experiences like that, moments like that where we might have omitted certain parts because it’s not helping the song for any reason. I can’t think of any specifics right now but there have definitely been times like that, not the other way around though.
REAX: As far as the progression of the music over the course of all your release, at the beginning you guys were a little more aggressive, as you’ve retained that element of your music but it’s been tone down to a degree. Do you think that was a consciously decision or was that just the way the band matured?
M&A: Yeah, we’ve been doing this a long time, and I think this is true of anyone doing pretty much anything, at first you might be drawing from influences or just figuring out what things you do well together. Usually, when you’re younger, you’re doing this more aggressive music, you know, being more like frenetic or something. And you haven’t really figured out what you strengths are, and what your weaknesses are. But, then you start to figure each other out and you start to make songs that, I don’t know, work a whole lot better (laughs) as you grow together. Your influences sort of fall in line as you listen to music of the same type rather than being strangers to one another and bringing your own sets of likes and dislikes to the band. Where as when you’re a band for 5 years you’re likes and dislikes pretty much fall in line. I think that now we’re starting to make the records that…like, the old stuff is really fun and I was really excited and glad that people liked it and that we have that in our catalog but now I think we’re starting to do more mature stuff. Actually, like writing songs that are self-serving songs rather than like…I don’t know, I guess mature is a good word for that. Who knows what will be next, it could be something frenetic, it could be something mellow, who knows. For now, we’re definitely doing what we want to do. So, I think that’s good.
REAX: When you guys started the band, what kind of expectations, if any, did you set for yourselves?
M&A: That’s a funny question. We’ve definitely talked about this before. It’s funny because we didn’t have any expectations or goals really. We did have like one or two goals and we did accomplish them really, really early on in the band. Like, within the first six months we passed those goals really fast and were like, “Okay, we did that”. So, we don’t really have any expectations now, its just keep doing this and see what happens. Our early goal was to play the 150 capacity room in Chicago called The Bottom Lounge. It’s since been torn down and turned into a giant 700 capacity place. But, at the time it was just a small dingy club we were like hopefully one day we can play there, and the 5 or 6 months of being a band we played there and that was one major goal that kind of got knocked out fast. After that we didn’t have any expectations, we were just going with the flow and seeing what happens.
REAX: You mentioned that there were two goals. What was the other one?
M&A: That was like the main one, really. So after that were like, “maybe we can go on tour, that’d be cool. During spring break lets try to go on tour” because we were all in college at the time, and we did! We went on tour and we’ve a lot of tours since then. There really aren’t any more goals or expectations, I think we all as a band would love to go to Japan or something. But throughout the history of this band we didn’t really have too many expectations or goals and I think that is what has continued to make it fun and not disappointing in any way.
REAX: So you’re about to leave for this tour, and after that your done with your run, right?
M&A: Yeah, we’re done for the rest of the year I think.
REAX: Well, then what’s in the near future for you guys? Do you have anything planned out?
M&A: I think we’re just gonna take it easy for a month, maybe start jamming on some stuff for a new release, and start talking about that sort of stuff. And we’re gonna get ready to go back out to Europe again next year. We haven’t really set it in stone yet but I think we’d like to go back out there and hopefully do some more touring in the U.S. I’m keeping my fingers crossed but I’m hoping for the day when we get to go to Japan or Australia.
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