IF THOUSANDS

Can you give me a bit of background to the band? When did you two begin working together? What were your intentions when you began? Has this changed over time? We were both bored with what we’d been doing musically. Aaron was playing punk music and I (Christian) was doing classical and folk. Aaron put an ad in the local paper looking for studio space, and as it turned out, Christian had a beat up space in the West end of town. We were both kind of floundering musically until we decided one day to try to play music together. if thousands literally began the day that Aaron and I sat down and started making sounds. It’s really that simple. That very first day, I told Aaron these were the sounds I was trying to make for about the last 10 years. There was a definite “feel” we were trying to achieve even from the beginning. What’s even more odd is the fact that we’re very different people from very different backgrounds. Someone once said we’re polar opposites. In any other band, we’d probably strangle each other. For whatever reason, we find an extremely common ground in if thousands. I guess that’s one of the beauties of music. It’s actually quite weird when I think about it too much, so I try not to. If you analyze if thousands further, nothing we do should work, but it does. In a very general way, I feel if thousands is exactly what Aaron and I are suppose to be doing at this time in our lives. In that respect, we feel pretty fortunate to able to do what we do and have people actually buy our albums and come to shows.
The name "if thousands" was made up after a long, long search for a band name. After a couple months and a lot of head scratching, Aaron and I were listening to Sonic Youth’s A Thousand Leaves album and he said he liked the word “thousand,” so we wrote it on a piece of paper and stuck it to the wall. Around it we wrote all the “small” words we could think of: and, or, but, if, the, etc. “if thousands” just sounded right. As soon as we saw it, we felt it described what we did perfectly. It’s such an odd assemblage of words. It sounds like something, but not when you look closer, it’s an incomplete sentence. It’s unfinished. It makes absolutely no sense, yet it’s easy to remember and it rolls off your tongue. It fits us perfectly.

What attracts you to working with drones? The idea of the drone is a very simple idea that works as a foundation for what we do. Drones occur everywhere in the natural world; be it the wind, the rushing of water, street noise or the hum of electricity - there are miilions of examples. In the beginning, Christian bought an old Hammond organ and had no experience playing a keyboard instrument (and still doesn't for the most part). In part, the idea of the drone came out of the fact that Christian couldn't move his fingers very fast on the keys and his only other keyboard at the time was an antique Moog synthesizer he found discarded in a snow bank out in the middle of a woods seven years prior (and also had no idea how to play properly). It was partially a happy accident. Right away we were drawn to them. It fit the concept of what we were trying to accomplish musically with if thousands.

Your music seems to change with each successive album. How would you characterize If Thousands? I'm reluctant to say we're a concept band, but in part that's what we are. There's a definite feel to each album that we try to strive for. We're always trying to push the musical envelope further without becoming unlistenable. It's difficult to characterize us because what we do is so "out there" compared to most music. Because of our musical backgrounds and the nature of what we do, if thousands isn't one sided - there are many facts. Just when someone thinks were a only drone band, we'll record a banjo tune. We've been called atmospheric, ambient, drone, noise, found sound, experimental and many others. It's hard to put your finger exactly on the top of if thousands and we're comfortable with being uncategorizable. One of our personal favorites was published in New York's Village Voice that stated we were "The Gothic drone lords of Duluth." We got quite a kick out of that one.

Much of your music is incredibly warm and peaceful; great swells of often quite dense sound. How do you approach it compositionally? Do you think in terms of mood, movements, or textures? Or is there something else that governs how you construct or think about your tunes?We never write anything down. What we try to do is just let the music come out of us. It's hard to explain, because in one respect, if thousands is such an odd band compositionally. We have a improvisational jazz ideal, yet we make music with most instruments and techniques that you'd be shot for in a jazz band. Plus, we make music that's nowhere near jazz. We work mainly with moods, concepts and themes as the basis of our music. When peforming live, we'll usually use the space we're in as partial inspiration for what we're about to perform. What we do has no walls and very few restrictions (such as making music with computers). As a musician, I can't think of anything better. To be able to continuously create again and again with no one telling you, "You can't do that," gives you an incredible sense of freedom to create. Actually, in the beginning, a lot of people told us we couldn't do what we did, so we just kept breaking the rules. We still keep breaking the rules. Music shouldn't be about parameters or sounding like someone famous, it should be about freedom to express oneself though a musical medium regardless if anyone likes it or not. First and foremost, we make music that we're happy with. Fortunately (and surprisingly) there are other people in the world that really appreciate and support what we do as well. That's an unforeseen bonus. In the beginning, we were certain everyone would hate us.

To what extent is your music improvised? What parameters (if any) do you set before you play? Most of what we do is improvised. Over the years, we've found that planning too much beforehand creates a stale, rigid sound to our music. Mostly, we come up with a concept, environment or theme and work toward the "feel" more than the "structure". For example, "Paint the Night" off candice recorder is about a friend of mine who was murdered when I was in high school. The entire yellowstone album was based around the grandiosity of Yellowstone National Park. i have nothing was based around the area in which we live.

You seem attracted to recording a record in a basement in just one night without overdubs. Do you feel your music benefits from the spontaneity of a live performance as opposed to labouring over each piece in the studio? Yes. It's in the nature of what we do. If we spent countess days or months on an album, it would sound to preplanned, overproduced or forced. The short time we spend in a studio is on purpose. As a bonus, we've found that it also adds to our more organic sound as opposed to some of the other ambient bands out there. Rough edges are a good thing.

You wrote in the cover to lullaby ‘please listen to this recording at as low a volume as possible to induce and aid in slumber.’ Do you still see this as an important role or use of your music? Our initial concept for if thousands was to try to do something different that wasn't being done. When we first started, Aaron was used to playing punk rock and Christian had a definite angst edge in the music he was doing, We looked around and noticed that everyone seemed to be doing angry music, including ourselves. At a risk, we decided to do exactly the opposite. We said, "Hey, let's play music that will relax people to a state of drooling. If they fall asleep during a performance, it'll be a compliment." Since then, audiences have had a variety of reactions; from sleeping, to meditation, inner revelations and even crying. We try to create music that comes straight out of us. With improv, you have about a second or two to plan as the music rolls along - so most times you just don't bother and instead just let what's in you come out. In this way, we've found it to be a very emotional experience for both ourselves and the audience.

From what I’ve heard of your previous work I believe on Greystone on Sea is possibly closer to noise music than ever before much denser, with tracks like 25 below feeling more static, less like its coming in waves or swells than before. Is there a link with what you do and noise music? Is it something that you think about with If Thousands? Yes. We got a little noisy on greystone on sea. We were looking for a definite "lo-fi" sound when we were recording. Sometimes that happens. I think it was our mood at the time. Noise music is usually something we try to shy away from, since it has a way of alienating some listeners and audiences and giving the wrong impresion of what we do. However, it's a factor that we always try to keep on an even keel with the more melodic, atmospheric nature of our music. For example, on "atrocious) (from candice recorder) or "radio is fine" (from yellowstone) or "providence" (from i have nothing) we were looking for a gritty, intense sound that would make listeners feel slightly uneasy, like something is wrong or awry. But that's not the entirety of the album. Noise is only a part of what we do when we need to do it. It's not all were about.

To what extent does melody or repetition play a part in If Thousands? It plays a huge part. Repetition of a theme or phrase occurs in all that we do - it's part of the drone and meditative aspect of the music. Christian is very big on melody, probably from his classical and folk past. Aaron is big on making sure the music isn’t overly structured, probably from his punk past.

Can you fill me in on the background to Greystone on sea? What was your intention with this work? A while back, we were asked by Dreamland Recordings to record some lo-fi music. After tossing around various recording ideas, we decided to ask a friend, Jake Larson, to record us in Christian's makeshift studio in his basement. As with many of the recordings we've made in the past, we didn't exactly know what we were going to do beforehand. As we began recording, we decided to use shortwave signals and static transmissions of communications as the central core. One of the ideas was to build around the concept of the millions of stray communications signals that are being transmitted from earth, but are scattered and emitted throughout outer space. Christian has heard that there's a theory that old radio broadcasts from the 1920s can now be heard as far away as Jupiter via shortwave. This concept added to the noise aspect of the recording.

How did you become involved with Alan Sparhawk? What did he bring to Yellowstone or to If Thousands? Quite a while back, Christian worked in a local music store with Alan, many years before Low. Alan worked behind the counter and Christian was a music teacher & they quickly became friends. Over the years, they lost touch with each other (due in part to Low's heavy touring schedule). The whole process of working with Alan started with an enormous show in Duluth back in 2001 or 2002 called "Elegy". A close friend of Alan's, Michael Lentz, had been murdered and he and other friends decided to host a 25 hour drone concert in the honor of the deceased. The concert being obviously right up our alley, we were asked to begin, end and participate in the concert to which we honorably agreed. About 300 or so musicians showed up form around the world, one even from Australia. It was an unbelievable concert. This was also the beginning of our relationship with Travis Wilkerson, a brilliant independent film director from Los Angeles, who was in town to film the concert. Later, and somewhat out of the blue, we were asked by Alan to play a big show in Minneapolis, MN with Low. He commented that he really enjoyed the music we were creating. Not long thereafter, and again somewhat out of the blue, he asked us if we'd like to be on his label, Chairkickers' Union Music. Since then we've worked quite a bit together on many different projects. Christian now runs the production side of the Chairkickers' label along with a fellow musician from New York, Marc Gartman. if thousands has always amazed both of us. What began as simply two guys making a lot of noise and weird sounds in a broken down studio has grown into something we had no idea would go this far. We used to dream about making albums, doing soundtracks and working with musicians we respected, and since then, all our dreams have come to reality. We both feel pretty fortunate.