Constants Interview

by John on September 14th, 2009

Our unofficial series of interviews with Mylene Sheath artists continues with two of Constants’ three members. The hardworking band has drawn attention for their split with popular post-rock act Caspian, their DIY ethic, and their environmentally-savvy tour bus that runs on vegetable oil. Perhaps their crowning achievement, however, comes in the form of their new album The Foundation, The Machine, The Ascension, available now at fine record stores everywhere. Rob and Will were kind enough to grant us an interview where we talked about all of these things and more. As always, thanks to the guys for talking with us, and thank you to Joel and Lindsay at Mylene Sheath.

First of all, let’s get the formalities out of the way. Could you please state your name and role in the band?

Rob Motes: I’m Rob and I play the drums.

Will Benoit: Will. I play guitar and sing in the band.

How did the departure of your old drummer influence the songwriting for the latest album? I’m assuming he wasn’t still around for that. It feels like the new album is rhythmically “mathy”, for lack of a better word.

WB: Duncan, our original drummer, was actually around for about about half of the writing process. I think mathy is a fairly accurate term when referring to our earlier material, and we’ve always kept that type of writing in mind. It’s kind of interesting, because the math aspect of our music is rarely brought up and no one ever seems to consider it! When I started writing demos for what became Constants, Duncan and I set out to write music that was mathematically challenging but could sort of flow and feel natural to the average listener – to basically capture the attention of people like us, but also to allow those less musically inclined an access to the melodies, songwriting, etc. When we came around to write this record, we had been touring a lot; literally ten months straight when the writing took a front seat to touring. So we saw how people reacted to certain songs and time signatures. To us it was always about flow and unfortunately, you can only develop so many ideas that ‘flow’ in 9/8 or 7/8 or 23/32 before you start repeating yourself so I purposefully started working in a direction that focused more on melody and structure. There is, and always will be, some element of the “math” there for those that are interested, but I don’t want to end up in a category with King Crimson or Tool, where the purpose of the music is math and the intention and emotion becomes secondary.

Why did you become a trio, and how has that worked out so far? In terms or performing, writing, and recording, is it easier or more difficult?

WB: Constants was born as a trio in 2004 and has yet to write a record as anything else. We did the split with Caspian as a four-piece, but I wrote all the guitar parts and we have had a fourth person on board a couple of times (originally Mike [Repasch-Nieves] from Junius was playing second guitar for us on a couple of early tours), but we have never really written as anything but a three-piece. The biggest difference was that a good amount of material on The Foundation, The Machine, The Ascension was written with the intention of Jon Hassell (who had become a “member”) adding vocal harmonies and more guitar layers but ultimately, we were left to our devices as a three-piece.

Speaking of The Foundation…, your newest album, you just released it a few months and you’re already writing and demoing again. Do you normally start doing this immediately after a release?

WB: How do you know we’ve already been demoing!?

RM:  All I can say is that we’re feeling creative. We have a ton of new ideas floating around. Plus, we have the opportunity to have Justin Broadrick of Jesu and Godflesh in the production chair next time around. Why wait?

WB: This is the first time I finally feel like we have a really solid lineup, probably for the first time since our first record. The three of us are totally in the same place, and musically things sometimes just happen. We’ve already written four songs that I just demoed vocals for this week. Having Justin on board has added a new goal to the songwriting, and just sort of made us sit down and work harder. It’s crazy, because for the first time ever, I feel literally no pressure to write “good” music or songs; I just feel really confident that, well, if I send Justin ten songs and he likes half of them, then we must be doing something right. Obviously, it’s a little early to speculate like that, but for me, we just passed our sophomore slump, and I really like The Foundation and the next thing is just going to be that much stronger now that we are on solid ground as a band.

Have you sold your massive veggie-bus yet?

RM: No. Would you like to buy it?

WB: I don’t think I can get rid of that thing. We had a band give us a pretty decent offer on it, but it was like “no way – you guys have no idea what you’re doing so we aren’t selling it to you”. Sometimes you have to put something on eBay to realize how much you actually love it.

You guys did a split with Caspian in 2007. Do you feel like doing a split with a popular band like them helped you guys at all?

WB: First off, I love Caspian and we are great friends with those guys. I actually played guitar for them on their first European tour last year, and Constants has toured with them in the US several times. I always think it is sort of funny when people outside of our group sees, or rather interprets, popularity and how it might affect record sales. Of course, Caspian has garnered some great press and have some of the most hardcore, legitimate fans I’ve seen – and I’ve gotten to see it all first hand. But we’ve been doing this since 2005, so we have a sort of DIY recognition that doesn’t come with good press – it comes with touring your ass off for years.  It’s a different sort of buzz – the buzz we have is that every DIY kid that has been to house shows in the past four years has probably seen us live and maybe picked up a record.  The truth is Caspian, Constants, we all have day jobs still so it’s not about “popularity” or “hype” or “buzz” because there is no longer a big record-selling machine that makes money for bands – it’s about doing what you love with people you care about. If you saw us (or Caspian for that matter) doing a split with some flavor of the week band, I would hope that you wouldn’t buy it, and that is what this whole movement is about.

You’ve been doing a lot of touring lately. In June, you hit up Europe, you have a tour this month, and have another coming up in October. Who will you be playing with on your upcoming dates?

WB: For us, we’ve actually been touring a lot less than normal. For the first time in my touring life, we’re being treated as outsiders no matter where we go. We have been trying to book our typical DIY shows and we get the whole “oh, you guys have your album out in Europe and Japan so you’re not DIY enough”. It’s really unbelievable how many people think that by putting out an album abroad, suddenly we are making money and have forgotten our roots. But we can’t, and don’t, want to book shows in LiveNation type venues…it sucks, to be honest. Luckily, we’ve been able to dig in and find some good, honest DIY venues, and we have been lucky to hook up with Andrew [Neufeld] (the singer from Comeback Kid) and he has been helping us out in the midwest and Canada. He has a new band called Sights & Sounds that we should be touring with this spring. Also, we are doing a handful of dates with The Yage Letters throughout Quebec that should be really good.

How is Radar Recordings coming along? Any new releases you’re especially excited about?

WB: I run the label along with Mike from Junius and while we are working on a doing a couple of releases this year, unfortunately I can’t really announce anything currently. Without saying anything official, I can say that you should check out Tides From Nebula from Poland (on tour with Caspian) and can also say that there will be new Adai music (recorded by Matt Talbott of Hum and mixed by Kurt Ballou of Converge) surfacing soon.  Come to think of it, I think Adai is my current #1 band…go listen to them!

Radar Recordings, according to the website, is “not a label in the typical sense, mainly due to the fact that it is entirely run and funded by the artists themselves”. Is it difficult to be involved in a label this way? How does a label like this function?

WB: Well, the trick is that we don’t aim to make any money on the whole endeavor. No matter how much work we put in. [ed. - Commies!] The upside is that we only work with bands that we truly love, and the people that we can call our best friends.  So it’s definitely tricky, and we get to walk a fine line. But I love it, and for me it is a project of love that I plan to carry with me for a long time to come. It continues to function because other people in our group care as much as I do. Rob (from Constants), for example, handles most of the mail order at this point. Everyone who is around throws in an hour or two and there is that one guy who never gets any sleep. Basically, I am tired a lot.

You said once in an interview that you were influenced by The Cancer Conspiracy. What’s it like to be working with them through Radar?

WB: For me, personally, it was the ultimate validation. When I was working for Hydra Head back when they were in Boston, I would go out to these shows, and stand up front in total awe. I’ve actually become good friends with Daryl [Rabidoux], their guitar player, who works as a producer at Strangeways Recordings in Providence, RI. He just did the last Irepress record, and his first official record as producer was our first release, Nostalgia for the Future. I guess I don’t think about this type of thing very often now, because it does fall under the “we only work with our friends” clause, but if I look back, it is pretty cool. I could live and die by some of the material that The Cancer Conspiracy has released, and it is simply amazing that our label has tied in with that.

Some of your songs were recently remixed by Justin Broadrick and Phil Jamieson (of Caspian fame). Which songs were they? What are your plans for their release and what are your thoughts on the remixes that the two of them did?

RM: Justin remixed ‘Those Who Came Before, Part 1′ and Phil took on ‘The Timeless’. They’ve actually already been released exclusively as bonus tracks for the Japanese release of The Foundation on Stiffslack Records. I think they’re brilliant. Caspian are brothers to us. We’ve seen and hung out with Phil more than most people in the past two years, so it’s natural that we would choose him to do a remix. His remix is really noisy and washed out; total “stare at your wall and think about your life” kind of music. It’s great. Justin is someone we’ve all looked up to for years now, so it was definitely pretty crazy to hear his own interpretation of our music. The guy was in Godflesh, for Christ’s sake.

WB: Stiffslack has handled some of our favorite records by Shiner, The Mercury Program and The Life & Times, plus releases from our good friends Look Mexico, so it is an honor for us to even be considered in the same breath as those bands. As far as the remixes go…well, the Justin Broadrick one is simply ridiculous. The man changed the key of the song and kept it all in tune and musical. As I mentioned earlier, he will be producing our next album, and we played with his friend’s band in the UK – Iroha, which is Andy from Final and Diarmuid from Jesu. I really can’t think of a single higher compliment than for someone who I’ve been stealing guitar chords from since I was 16 to say “yes, I will take a crack at your music” and the next step up saying “I’d like to produce your next record”. Really, no pressure. As far as Phil’s remix goes, I remember saying to him “pick whatever song you want and take it wherever you want to take it”. I think he did an amazing job and absolutely brought that song down into the saddest place he could find. I’ve listened to it several times, and especially to the way he changes chords around the vocal pattern. It turns the inflection of the vocals in to the saddest thing. I really love it.

When we’ve interviewed your labelmates, Caspian and Actors & Actresses, we asked this question of them as well, and their answers were so interesting that we’d love to hear your perspective. Your new album, like all new Mylene Sheath albums, are available for free stream and download on Gimme Sound. What are your feelings on the Gimme Sound business model, and on music downloading in general?

WB: The argument of CD vs. vinyl vs. download is not really an argument at this point. Anyone who doesn’t regularly download music is never going to read this, and therefore doesn’t have their pulse on contemporary music and how it is distributed. But at the same time, music lovers will always buy vinyl. I think that medium has managed to prove itself as valid, while laserdiscs and and minidiscs disappeared. CD’s, on the other hand, are a relic of the 90s and are hard to let go. I still drive around listening to them, and on the occasion that an album really pulls me in (this means production + songwriting + mastering = the whole deal) I want it on CD. An mp3 sounds okay, if I’m not really paying attention; and to be honest, I rarely have the time to listen to an LP. I’m currently without a place to live, so my record player is buried somewhere at my parents’ house.

RM: Why the hell would anyone want to pay for an mp3? I guess only time will tell if Gimme Sound will actually be able to support itself and the artists as it does now, but it’s a genius idea. Gimme Sound is definitely an exciting opportunity for bands that don’t have previously existing
multi-million dollar major label careers to take a stab at surviving in a digital market and to potentially make money. With that said, you should still go out and buy the vinyl.

WB: I think the business model of Gimme Sound is great, but I am yet to see how it is different than downloading a record you want to hear from a blog. Not to say it doesn’t work, but if Twitter, Myspace and Facebook aren’t making any money, it’s difficult to see how a fringe download company would. To me, it’s cool to see how many people have downloaded our record legally, but it’s also fun to Google our record and see how many blogs host it for free. Before our album came out, I saw a post somewhere that I think was related to this interview about how they thought the drums didn’t sound so good, but it was probably because the “rip” of the album was so bad. My point is: buy what you love and the rest will fall to the middle. Regardless of format – be it song or album, good music will live on.

If you could reunite one band, either broken up or on hiatus, who would it be and why?

WB: Reunite them in their original form/condition? Black Sabbath, 1970. Any band who could actually still pull it off? Probably Seneca – but not the metal band, the one that was from Boston that I am friends with.

What new music has impressed you lately, if any? What old records have you found yourself spinning? Anything upcoming that you’re anticipating?

WB: I exclusively listen to R. Kelly, Type O Negative, Jimmy Eat World and Akon. The new Mastodon is sick though, and I’ve been waiting for the new Mercury Program record for what, 3 years now? I think I’ve already namedropped enough for bands I know. City Of Ships, did I mention them yet?

RM: The only record that’s come out recently that’s caught my attention is the new Mew. It’s fucking brilliant. Aside from that, I’m still stuck in the nineties: Quicksand, Giant’s Chair, Jawbreaker, etc. Definitely looking forward to the Thorns of Life record to come out, if it ever gets released…

WB: Ya, the new Mew is definitely growing on me.

In keeping with Sun On The Sand tradition, we’ll close out the interview with a random question: if you were a fruit, what kind of fruit would you be and why?

WB: A tomato, because they are delicious. Put some salt on me first and eat me like an apple.

RM: Kiwi. No further comment.

Interview conducted by John Spencer and Chris Visser