Friday, September 9, 2011

Talking with BRAIDS

BRAIDS, brings a great combination of dreamy sound mass electronic sound, propelling beats, and swelling melodic switch ups that were made to hypnotize the listener. The Montreal based band, having garnered comparisons to Arcade Fire, and Broken Social Scene, is a band you should get to know… that is if you don’t already have their album Native Speaker on repeat!!!! That is why we here at Stic jumped at the chance to speak with BRAIDS drummer, Austin, on the band’s drive through Delaware, as part of their ongoing tour with Pepper Rabbit. Braids Photo Credit

Stic: So how has the tour been so far?

Austin: It’s been good! I mean we have on been on tour for about a couple days … we started in New York and went down to Philadelphia… and uh, we were with Pepper Rabbit last night, and they’re really great… So it was nice.

Stic: Pepper Rabbit is great- really like them. Love their new album! I read you guys started out because of a conversation over a blueberry muffin- True or False? Please elaborate on the bands beginnings…

Austin: We did go to school together, and I think one day in high school we all decided…” I know Taylor, and you know Katie, and we should get together and make some music”. It wasn’t necessarily well thought out over a muffin, I mean I think it’s just something that people pick up on…. not an essential part of the formula.

Stic: Right, right, haha it’s just kind of funny, I mean it IS a blueberry muffin. Is that even your favorite muffin?

Austin: You know, you know, I honestly don’t even like blueberry muffins very much. I prefer a bran and cranberry.

Stic: A much more interesting choice, I think… for sure.

Austin: A little healthier as well.

Stic: Yes, definitely. So describe to me the growth of the band, the album (Native Speaker) ‘s cultivation/ its birth?

Austin: Most of the songs were written during a period when we were in Calgary for a summer, and were moving to Montreal. And the period of time we were writing was a really special time because, it was a time to really focus while the others in the band were waiting for me to graduate high school. They graduated a year earlier from me and were like “Yeah let’s keep the band going!” So they took a year off, and we rehearsed around 36 hours a week in Taylor’s garage and his parents were SO incredibly supportive. They would cook dinner for us every night, and do all our dishes, and just tell us “keep rehearsing”. We covered a lot of musical ground in that year, and all of that rehearsing and practicing resulted into us really coming into our own style of writing and creating. It was very collaborative, very collective, and I think that’s really what shaped the sound of the band, is we have our own composition process…. Then we moved to Montreal, and all of a sudden we had to live on our own and we really had to grow up a lot. We learned so much about life. And I think a lot of our music came from having each other there during that time. We were all starting university and kind of terrified. It was nice to have the four of us, always looking out for each other… it served as a creative outlet. Definitely a lot of the vibe is that collectivity and support we have for each other.

Stic: So with a lot of your music having been created through collaboration of your separate ideas, weaving your ideas in and out to create this sound mass type music… Does that idea have anything to do with the name of the band, BRAIDS? Or am I totally off?

Austin: Actually, that is exactly what it is. It is also the interweaving of our friendships… and you know a braid just seems like on of the strongest forms your can have. But yeah, it definitely has a lot to do with the sound of our music.

Stic: One more quick question! If you could collaborate with any artist dead or alive who would it be?

Austin: There are definitely a lot of current electronic artists I would love to collaborate with… But I also think it would be a really incredible thing to collaborate with Steve Reich.

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BRAIDS will be at the Empty Bottle on September, 13th.

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