Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Los Angeles duo HOW??? have been winning over the hearts and ears of critics and fans alike since the 26 April release of their self-titled album. Today, TGEFM is pleased to chat with the band’s Alex Tebeleff in our latest Roll Of The Dice interview to discuss their sound, influences and futures.
What can you tell me about HOW???, the new LP and what you want to represent to your listeners?
How??? is a project born in the studio that is now coming to life live and on record. We spent a few years taking songs and transforming them using the studio as an instrument. The result is our debut album, plus another to come soon as well. Most of these songs started as more Americana and Folk-style songs on acoustic guitar, or as riffs with simple but effective vocal melodies. Using sampling, re-sampling, synths, the DAW, guitars, basses, drums and drum machines, we turned the songs into something completely different than anything we had done before.
Figuring it out live was a challenge, but we’re really happy with how it’s ended up after our recent west coast tour. It’s really fun to do it as a two piece with all the electronics, no computers allowed. Feels very visceral with a lot of room to grow and change as we explore new ideas and continue to just get better at breaking down these songs in a live context. Room for intuition and free improvisation even when there’s tracks thanks to our Octatrack sampler too plus the other hardware, that’s really important to me for any live music! It’s the opposite of how we’ve worked in previous bands going from the studio first to figuring it out live, so it’s been a really exciting approach.
The music itself most importantly is about growth and accepting change, if not outright embracing it. So much happened to both of us the last 5 years, there was plenty to write about fortunately and unfortunately, but I think we took even the dark times and made something that will give people some light.
What album or band or significant singles made you go “Yeah, this is what I want to do” Not just an influence but who or what was the catalyst?
A couple that stick out are Scott Walker’s songs on The Walker Brother‘s Night Flights albums, as well as from the same time period, David Bowie with his Berlin Trilogy. Incredibly powerful usage of whatever came to mind, be it acoustic, electric, electronic, and so unafraid to explore unusual themes in the music. Interesting that Bowie was so influenced by Walker, and yet also Walker was influenced to make those particular songs after hearing Bowie’s “Low” as well! Two other related projects from that same late 70’s/early 80’s time period that used the studio as an instrument and that we certainly kept going back to as well were Talking Head’s Remain In Light and Roxy Music Avalon.
Yet it was music from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark that influenced a lot of the initial writing. At the same time we were listening to a ton of Boards of Canada, Portishead, and Bjork, and in many ways it’s those two seemingly disparate lenses into making music that allowed the music to turn out the way it did. Freedom in song and production!
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?
A few that stick out from Atlanta, one of our favorite music cities, is CDSM and Omni. Killer bands live that take familiar sounds but do it really well in their own original way. Natural Velvet from Baltimore has consistently kicked ass for years, we certainly have a mutual love of Sonic Youth that immediately brought me in. The North Country from DC is making awesome music that just makes you feel good even when they’re exploring socially critical themes. And in our home city of LA, I’ll mention Dildox and Photo Ops for totally different reasons. Photo Ops is making secretly classic folk-pop music that sounds like Nick Drake and Lindsay Buckingham went to Nashville and made a record together. Dildox is doing industrial and EBM influenced electronic music that is just ferocious and powerful with awesome sonic choices. Always happy to see those two live in town.
What’s next for the members of HOW??? ?
Next up is figuring out our future touring plans and finishing the next album to come out next year. We’re almost done, just a bit more recording and mixing and we’ll have something new to share. We’ve got ideas already for a new approach for LP3 for the year after that as well. Matt also has his Swoll project, and I perform live on my modular synthesizer as Gold.fix, so I’m sure we’ll be going hard to get back to those projects moving forward too this year.
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
We love music, and we hope our music gives you some kind of peace of mind like the music we love does for us. There’s a clarity beyond normal societal binary boundaries, language, and ideas that art can give us, I know making this music certainly made us settle a bit more into ourselves and the world with open eyes. We hope we can keep contributing to that unconscious conversation.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
