Brasstronaut

Melissa chats with Edo, vocalist and keyboardist in Brasstronaut–

Hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, 6-piece band Brasstronaut are making a name for themselves across the country with their incredibly unique sound. The band consists of:
Bryan Davies on the trumpet, flugelhorn and glock, Edo Van Breemen on vocals and keyboards, John Walsh on bass and guitar, Brennan Saul on percussion, Tariq Hussain on lap steel, guitar and Sam Davidson on the EWI as well as the clarinet. Brasstronaut is probably one of the only bands that I know of to have such a wide array of instruments, but it’s part of what makes them truly stand out in the music business today.

A few weeks ago I had the chance to talk with Edo over the phone about his band. We got to talking about many different things, from their recently released album to their very original band name and where it came from.

CONFRONT: How are you doing?

Edo: I’m doing pretty well; we had a great show here last night in Montreal!

CONFRONT: Awesome! How’s the tour going so far?

Edo: It’s going quite well, it’s been long and we’re definitely getting a little bit home sick but most of the shows have been great

CONFRONT: Well that’s good. Have you guys had any crazy experiences yet?

Edo: Hmmm… I don’t know! *talking to another one of his band mates:* Have we had any crazy experiences yet? *Back into the phone* Well, we drove into the ghetto in Rochester, New York. We literally drove into this big ghetto street where we had to lock the doors.

CONFRONT: Oh, lovely!

Edo: It was kind of a rude return to the North because we were down in Austin, Texas for the week. We got home and we were really tired and we ran into that situation!

CONFRONT: Good times!

Edo: Yeah *laughs*

CONFRONT: So just going back in time a little bit, how did the band meet and get together?

Edo: Initially it was Brian- the trumpet player- and I who met through a mutual friend and we started jamming instrumentally. At that point it was just piano and trumpet. Over the next three years it evolved and we added a bassist and a drummer… and then we started making songs with lyrics… and then only in the last year we added the last two members; the clarinet/EWI player and the guitar/lap steel player.

CONFRONT: That’s awesome. You guys have a lot of really unique instruments for a band. What made you decide to add all of those in?

Edo: it wasn’t a deliberate decision, we just have a lot of good friends and we’re all really good friends… and we would play a show and be like ‘hey, maybe you can play guitar with us tonight’, it sort of went well so we just kept rolling with it. I think the instrumentation is somewhat unique for indie/rock bands but I feel like a lot of bands are using weird stuff these days so it almost seems like it’s par for the course.

CONFRONT: Yeah, definitely. So who would you say are your musical influences?

Edo: They come from all over really. I listen to a lot of techno and pop music. It comes from a retro pop background. But we listen to Peter Gabriel and Air and Radiohead, stuff like that. Then there is Why?, Modest Mouse… All these things play in and then some of our members have backgrounds in jazz and classical music so there would be influences like Dave Douglas. As a singer I’m really interested in the attention to lyrical content as well. Our influences are really varied though.

CONFRONT: Yeah, that’s awesome though. When you guys are writing music, where do you pull your inspiration from?

Edo: I think that it comes from all those groups that I just mentioned but also just jamming. We’ll just get together in a room and just mess around and jam. Or I’ll be sitting around at the piano and I’ll write an idea that I bring back to the group and we kind of work it out. There’s not really one specific way in which we work but we do work quite collaboratively once we have an idea that we do feel is good. I think that because of the way the band started, it was never like ‘let’s write this kind of song’ it was more like ‘let’s see where this idea goes if we develop it more fully’.

CONFRONT: That’s really cool. Do you have a favorite city or place to play in?

Edo: I think Montreal is so awesome to play in. We have a lot of friends here too, but it’s also a cool city. In the States we play a little town called Jamestown, New York and people are really nice to us there. We always have good crowds there.

CONFRONT: Awesome. So you guys just released your first full length album, right?

Edo: Yeah

CONFRONT: How was the process of putting that together for you guys?

Edo: It was a long one. We spent about 8 months work on that album not including the time that we spent arranging. So about 8 months. It was a real evaluative process. We started some bed tracks recordings. We were happy with some of the stuff that we did at that point but not all of it. So we ended up taking the mixes back to Vancouver and finishing things in our home studios. Also, we had a producer that was working for us that did 2 of our tracks and he was living in New York. We were asking for a lot of feedback and input of various people that were working with us at the time, so it really became something more than just a recording of how we were playing the songs when we started going into that process. Now we’re trying to replicate in a live performance what we’ve done on the album, which has been challenging but also very satisfying.

CONFRONT: Yeah, for sure. How would you say that your new album differs from your EP?

Edo: I think it’s much more deliberately composed and also there’s a lot more production that went into it, or atleast a lot more thought that went into the production. Also a lot more time and technology, really. We really built up the songs and we stripped away the layers that we weren’t comfortable or happy with. Also, the thing is that it was really written as a 4 piece, and then a 6 piece whereas the EP was only written by Brian and I, and we actually hired these guys who became members of the band who played drums and bass on those 4 songs. Pretty much an entirely different process.

CONFRONT: Yeah, definitely. You just mentioned before and just now again that you guys are a pretty big band with 6 people. How do you figure out who does what, like who does the writing and who puts the whole song together?

Edo: Well, I think we’re sort of understanding our roles a little bit more clearly as we play together . We haven’t fully decided how we’re going to go forward from this point because the album was written as a 4 piece and the other two guys who are now part of the band sort of came into play to fill in the holes, holes where we felt that something was missing. But we gave them a lot of creative freedom to do whatever they wanted with those gaps and the way that they compensated for what we felt was missing was really beneficial to the overall music. Now, I’m curious to see who’s going to bring ideas to the table and to see how we’re going to deal with that. But you know, we’re all good friends and we don’t have big egos so that really helps in terms of telling somebody  ‘okay, you shouldn’t play here’ kind of thing.

CONFRONT: So you guys really get each others’ ideas

Edo: Yeah, we’re definitely becoming more comfortable working on each other’s ideas and just listening to what everybody has to offer

CONFRONT: Where does the album artwork come from?

Edo: I commissioned it from my ex-girlfriend Sally. She actually named the band, too. So I thought it was befitting that I asked her to do the artwork. I’d seen her work before and she actually has a website… she just has that similar style of drawing and it’s beautiful and I thought that the intricate nature of what she’s doing was perfect for this album.

CONFRONT: That’s awesome. You just said that she named your band, how did that name come about, where is it from?

Edo: Actually, we needed a name for this band and we were originally named something else that I wasn’t very happy with. I was going through hell trying to come up with a name because it’s a really frustrating process, for me. I asked her if she had any suggestions, she thought about it for a while and… well, actually my friends play in this band called Japandroids and she was inspired by the compound nature of that band name. So she was like ‘how about Brasstronaut, because that’s what it looks like to me when you’re playing’. We thought, okay, that’s kind of funny, not too serious, and we just went with it for better or worse. I still think it’s a funny name, it’s not trying to be something super cool. If it captures somebody’s attention and it seems to work, then it works for me!

CONFRONT: Yeah, it’s really cool though. It’s the first thing that I noticed, the name, because it’s so different but original too. It’s very captivating

Edo: Yeah well I think it’s been working for us overall!

CONFRONT: So far so good! I have one more question for you. You guys have already been through quite a bit recently, but where do you see yourself in the band in 5 or 10 years from now?

Edo: We were actually talking about this over breakfast this morning. I’d like to see us developing in the same way that a band like the Ex or Radiohead has developed. A way where we are continually challenging ourselves to write music that uses the full spectrum of our capabilities and our instrumentations. It might not necessarily be pop in the future all the time, I’d say that this album was fairly experimentally poppy, but making a 10 minute house-track, something you could play in a club or something… working with electronics and then doing remixes. We’re just going to work with the music that we’ve created and sort of push it and pull it in new different ways. I think that’ll keep it interesting for us, playing new songs over and over and over again. And then for sure we want to be playing all kinds shows, I mean, for sure we want to be playing summer-long tours of festivals outside because it’s the most pleasurable way for me to play. I mean, I don’t mind playing in bars but I certainly prefer to play outdoor stages.

CONFRONT: Yeah, they’re definitely pretty awesome shows!

Edo: Yeah!

CONFRONT: Well thank you very much for giving me a call, I appreciate it

Edo: Thank you!

To learn more about Brasstronaut, visit them at:

www.myspace.com/brasstronaut

www.brasstronaut.com

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