Bearing the Smear of Madness: An Interview with Autodrone

Popshifter: What are your likes and dislikes in terms of writing, playing live, and recording? Do any of these stand out as your preference?

Autodrone

Jeremy: For me, I like all of it, but I guess if I had to pick one, it wouldn’t be recording.

Angel: (laughs) Me too!

Jeremy: Even though the last two records we did, we recorded at an amazing studio with amazing people and it made the whole process way more bearable. We worked with Eric Spring who is, at this point, like family to us. Live shows can be the best thing ever or the worst thing, you know?

Angel: I like playing live best because it’s like the culmination of all those other efforts and I think it’s the most fun.

Popshifter: What are the audiences like? It seems like in Toronto sometimes people just stand around like, “Uhhhh” and I can’t imagine how the bands must feel. Like, “Are we boring? Are we that bad?” Although I wouldn’t imagine that anyone at your shows would act like that.

Jeremy: Usually I’m just happy to be doing it in the first place. If people want to move around then, I love it, of course.

Angel: People seem a little confused as to how to act, sometimes. I’ve seen one or two people that look like maybe they’ll dance, but then they don’t. (laughs) I think that the thing that goes on at most of our shows is that people are standing far away because we’re so loud! There’s a big crowd, but a gap of ten feet and no one’s standing close because they’ll get hurt. (laughs)

Jeremy: Maybe we are like MBV in that way, because they play at pretty crushing volumes. It never seems all that loud to me! It’s certainly never our intention to hurt people. We saw Dinosaur, Jr. recently and it was so loud.

Angel: It was shocking! I mean, I’d seen them play four or five times before. But this one time, it was so loud! I think he was in a bad mood and trying to hurt people! We didn’t know what to do. I think we went outside, but in reality, we might have been so stupid that we just stood there!

Popshifter: You have a MySpace page and your music is available for download, which is obviously a newer technology surrounded by a lot of controversy. Recently Elvis Costello announced that he’s not going to release CDs anymore: just vinyl and MP3s. And now there’s Record Store Day, which was on Saturday April 19. It’s a push to promote local record stores, which presumably includes vinyl, since that’s gone up in production. What do you think about these recent changes? Would you ever want to put anything out on vinyl?

Jeremy: Oh, absolutely. I DJ and vinyl is a huge part of that, especially if you play in clubs. I would love to do a vinyl record.

Angel: I agree. Our album that is out right now. . . we haven’t pressed a lot of CDs yet—just a small run—and a lot of people are asking, “Where can I get your CD?” And maybe it’s just stupid of me, but I don’t really care if we release an actual CD. We can just have MP3s.

Jeremy: I mean, most people will just listen to MP3s on their iPods, anyway.

Angel: Yeah! And people ask me about cover art, but I don’t really care about CDs. I haven’t bought a CD in probably three years.

Jeremy: I would love to be in a situation where someone wants to do some big, gatefold vinyl thing for us. That would be phenomenal.

Popshifter: Speaking of you being a DJ, have you seen It’s All Gone Pete Tong?

Jeremy: Oh my god! That movie made me cringe! It was amazing! Angel actually showed me that movie.

Paul Kaye as fictional DJ Frankie Wilde
in It’s All Gone Pete Tong

Popshifter: I actually thought it was real for the first half hour!

Angel: Me too! (laughs)

Popshifter: And then at the end, I wanted it to be real.

Jeremy: It is truly an inspirational story, but the idea of a DJ going deaf is just horrifying to me, of course! That actor did a phenomenal job and I thought they did an excellent job re-creating the Ibiza scene. That’s how I always imagined it. After I saw it, I was like, “I have to start DJ-ing in Ibiza.” It’s warm and nice and very pleasant.

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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