Bearing the Smear of Madness: An Interview with Autodrone

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

Although it’s amusing to poke fun at MySpace (and if you’re The Fresh, you can make such mockery especially hilarious) it remains fascinating and fertile ground for discovering new music.

Several months ago, Popshifter was friended on MySpace by New York’s Autodrone, a band which combines some of the best elements of psychedelia, pop, post-punk, darkwave, and Goth while still remaining distinct from all of these influences.

I spoke with Jeremy Alisauskas (guitars, treatments, pianos) and Angel Lorelai (basses, synths, pianos, harmoniums) recently about the band’s origins and history as well as what inspires and influences them to make such arresting and addictive music.

Autodrone
Photo © Tom Lugo

Popshifter: How long has Autodrone been around?

Jeremy: Angel and I started making music together in 2001 with other friends, but it wasn’t very serious at that point. It didn’t actually become serious until we started doing our first shows in late 2002. When we started it was with Susanna Melendez, who I knew from the band Unto Ashes, kind of a Goth band on Projekt Records. They’re still going and they’re doing really well; they’re doing excellent records now. She seemed right so we went with her.

Popshifter: You were really young at that point, were you not?

Jeremy: Yeah, we totally were.

Angel: You were in bands for like, ten years before that! [to Jeremy]

Jeremy: (laughs) Yeah, I’ve been playing in bands since I was about 15 years old, like punk bands playing basement shows, VFW halls, very glamorous.

Popshifter: Those shows are fun; I went to those when I was a kid.

Jeremy: They’re still really awesome; that’s where bands get their start. That’s where they developed their core foundation. A lot of them will tour playing those basement shows even when they’re at a larger level.

When Autodrone started we were pretty much doing club shows in NYC right off the bat. We played parties and stuff like that. We played in Philadelphia fairly early on, at a place with that VFW show kind of vibe.

Angel: That was the Popnoise Festival.

Jeremy: Tommy [Lugo] put together a festival of about 12 bands. At this point, a lot of those bands are doing really well. He made a compilation CD for the festival and I’m thinking that pretty soon people are going to discover it and buy up all those CDs. You never know: you do a compilation and a couple of the bands do well and people buy up all the CDs.

Popshifter: Well, that’s what happened with SubPop.

Jeremy: Oh sure, yeah. And also the Yes New York compilation which had one of Interpol’s first compilation appearances. [The name was a take on the Eno comp from 1978 called No New York.—Ed.] That was sort of like the first wave of New York indie and there are a lot of great bands on there.

Click to read more from Autodrone on. . .

Inspirations and influences
Futurists and filmmakers
Recording versus live shows
The importance of theatrics

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