AN INTERVIEW WITH DEE DEE PENNY

http://dontpaniconline.de/p/posts/music/an-interview-with-dee-dee-penny

AN INTERVIEW WITH DEE DEE PENNY

California’s sisters in black, Dum Dum Girls, blend bubblegum harmonies and Phil Spector-inflected sixties sounds with reverbed garage fuzz.

We had a chat with the leader of the pack, Dee Dee, prior to their set at Festsaal Kreuzberg.


There are always great artists coming out of California, from Best Coast and Nite Jewel, to Zappa, Beefheart, The Beach Boys and beyond… what is it about The Golden State that makes for such great music?

I think it’s the nature aspect. It’s beautiful and the landscape has always been very inspiring to me – the desert, the sandy beaches and the mountains. But other than that I don’t know, I think it’s like a vibe. I just moved to New York and it feels completely inspirational in a different way, it is literally the city that never sleeps and California is the opposite; so mellow.

On your first album there’s a song called ‘Oh Mein M’, when did you learn Deutsch? 

I was really obsessed with German Literature, so much so that I wanted to learn the language. I studied it for two years in college and then I went to school in Germany for a year. It’s been a long time since I was here, so I’m rusty but I try and use it as much as I can. I don’t remember exactly why I wrote the song in German, other than I wanted to write a song about love at first sight which is such a cliché topic and it sounded too simplistic in English, so I did it in German instead. At least to my ears it sounded more intelligent (laughs).

Are there any German writers you enjoy in particular?

I was really obsessed with Hermann Hesse when I was about 16.

And what do you make of Berlin?

I love it. When I went to school in a small town in the middle of Germany, I used to come here a lot on the weekends. It’s maybe my favourite city after New York. Although Berlin is big and so much is going on, it seems very under-populated, so it’s comfortable; you can breathe and it’s really cheap, which is amazing.

You’re signed to the prestigious Sub Pop label, which is synonymous with grunge bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney. Are those are sounds that have inspired you in anyway?

I was a huge Nirvana fan when I was 12, so I think to a degree, yes. I was a massive Hole fan as well, maybe that explains my inability to make music without heavily distorted guitars. There are elements of that noisiness in our music, but it was a pretty macho scene. It is definitely a huge honour to be on the label.

What are you currently listening to in your van?

I’m a massive fan of Dirty Beaches, but I’m obviously biased because he’s a good friend and my label puts him out, but I think he’s a huge talent. Other than that, I’m listening to Kurt Vile, the last John Maus record and Deerhunter; I think he’s probably the coolest guy around right now. I guess I sound like Pitchfork (laughs).

Your new album seems a lot more polished in comparison to your fuzz-heavy debut, are you moving away from lo-fi?

In my head, it doesn’t seem like a ton has changed, but I recently was writing the setlist for our last US tour and I listened to all our songs in an order and it was shocking to hear the difference between a song from an early EP and a song on Only in Dreams, because the fidelity is so much higher now. A lot of it has to do with being in the mood for that kind of sound. When the EP came out I was listening to a lot of Black Tambourine, Primitives and Jesus and Mary Chain; so that sound is what felt right to me. Also, since it was the first time I’d written any songs and recorded, I had no idea what I was doing and I literally did a bad job recording. Now the fidelity is better because we’re in a studio with a sound engineer. The songs on this album are so driven by the lyrics and the melodies that it just seemed appropriate that they should be on top, not buried.

So what did you all do before you were the Dum Dum girls?

When I was in college I wanted to be a writer, which is an equally if not more lofty goal.

What did you write?

I wrote a lot of short stories and poetry. I started a lot of novels and abandoned them. I knew early on that I wanted to try to do music, so I never bothered going to graduate school or trying to get a career of some kind, so I’ve just taken jobs in vintage shops, record shops, libraries and offices. Our bass player Bambi worked for the government in Texas doing non-profit work like social service, Jules is an innovator of furniture and Sandy is a graphic designer and has played in bands for years.

When did you pick up a guitar then?

I picked up a guitar when I was 12 and the first songs I tried to learn were 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins, The Man Who Sold the World by Bowie and probably a Greenday song. I was awful; I tried for years to play it.

What was different the second time round?

I had played the drums since then, which I loved, but it wasn’t conducive to writing songs. I really wanted to play guitar so I could write songs and sing in a rock ‘n’ roll band, so I finally got off my high horse of hating being bad at things and just sucked for a while. It’s all about muscle memory.

You’re known to be quite partial to a cover, the most recent being a Smiths song – how do you go about choosing?

I think at least once a day I’m like ‘we should cover this song’. It started out when I was starting to write songs and learning how to record. Being familiar with how songs are written and structured is helpful in writing your own, so I would play tons of covers and I recorded a lot of them. The Smiths cover was a random last minute thing. I think the next recording I put out will have a Strawberry Switchblade cover on it.

Which Strawberry Switchblade song?

Trees and Flowers. We were over here on tour with MGMT a couple of years ago and Andrew, the singer, was like ‘ you should cover Strawberry Switchblade’. I love the song but I’d never thought to cover them.

What are you reading right now?

I’ve just started ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’, by Carson McCullers.

TOP PSYCHEDELIC TRACKS

THE BYRDS | Eight Miles High (1966)

‘66 was the year that psychedelic music really started to come into its own; The Beatles unleashed their backmasked Revolver on an unprepared world, the Beach Boys offered up Good Vibrations and The Byrds introduced their transitional album The Fifth Dimension. Side two, track one was the spectacular ‘Eight Miles High’; with its blatant drug references and warm, ethereal harmonies, this eerie and highly experimental track was crucial in opening the doors for psychedelic music and developing the distinctive West Coast style.

JULY | Dandelion Seeds (1968)

This little-known, retrospectively-celebrated Ealing-based band produced one of the finest and most underrated records in the history of psychedelic music. Dandelion Seeds, an off tilt and dark track is as trippy as its album cover art suggests; the band’s name bleeds from the nose of a reptile-covered hippopotamus. Built on a killer zoom bass groove, Dandelion Seeds is a pop, R&B and world music hybrid with a touch of distorted blues thrown in for good measure. Fuzz guitar fades in and out, ghostly vocals linger, tempo increases and decreases, conga drums roll; it's too much good to handle.

13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS | Levitation (1967)

Levitation is a whirling and swirling, spooky and sinister piece of glorious, golden psychedelia. Tanked up on LSD and peyote, short-lived Texan quintet the 13^th Floor Elevators produced some jaw-droppingly dope music that’s still as exciting today as it was upon its conception, even despite its crackly lo-fi production. This track sounds so overheated; the gnarling, snarling, bluesy guitar, the reverb, Roky Erikson’s deep-southern screeches and Tommy Hall’s electric jug work up something so exceptional, it's on the verge of bursting into flames. Probably the most legal trip you could have.

SYD BARRETT | Love You (1970)

Anything from Barrett’s debut solo album The Madcap Laughs is worthy of a place on this list for showcasing his unique brand of psychedelic folk, but Love You stands out by a mile. This love song is a burst of sunshine, a glimmer of joy on an otherwise downbeat album that gives a powerful insight into the crazy diamond’s shambolic state of mind. Probably made on one of the better days of his LSD-induced post-Floyd meltdown, this track sounds like a very spaced-out Syd got his hands on an ice-cream van and took it on a colourful and chaotic ride through London; rambling and jaunty, his nonsensical Cambridgeshire drawl erratically overlays a distinctively chirpy music hall piano. Dischordant and totally haphazard, but this is where its brilliance lies.

 

SILVER APPLES | Program (1968)

New York based Silver Apples were way, way, ahead of their time, zooming off into the cosmos at break neck speed with their otherworldly sounds. The duo’s avant-garde blend of psychedelic and electronic sounds was groundbreaking, and Program is a great example of their unparalleled style, featuring synthesizers and heavy sampling, of which they were pioneers. Program’s pulsing, monotone drum machine beat predicted the dance music revolution over a decade before it actually happened. 

STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK | Incense and Peppermints (1969)

The quintessential psych song, and a popular one at that; reaching number one in the U.S. charts in November ’67. With Incense and Peppermints, L.A.’s Strawberry Alarm Clock had produced a classic track that was stereotypically flower power in its subject matter and style; mentions of ‘beatniks’, ‘lunatics’ and ‘the colour of time’ met with sweet vocal harmonies and a melange of wonderfully psychedelic sounds made with harpsichord, flute and organ.

LOVE | Singing Cowboy (1969) 

Love didn’t end with Forever Changes, as many claim. And this track is the reason why. After the dissolution of the classic line-up, Arthur Lee reformed Love and produced the underrated album Four Sail, which features the epic Singing Cowboy. This fuzz-heavy, rolling ballad in all its marching drum and maraca-filled glory showcases a neo-Love sound that is much more psychedelic and electric in composition. Lee’s ferocious vocals are well suited to this new sound, and lyrically, Singing Cowboy has great autobiographical importance; with lines like ‘When you say goodbye, don’t you cry’ it’s difficult to tell if Lee is lamenting or renouncing his lost Love.

CAN | Yoo Doo Right (1969)

Yoo Doo Right, a gripping twenty minute tour de force, is the product of what happened when elaborately-structured psychedelic sounds collided with the antithetic and minimalistic burgeoning genre of Krautrock. Taken from Can’s debut album ‘Monster Movie’, this tribal-tinged track marries the simplicity of repetitive, hypnotic drums and bass with progressive jamming-style psychedelic influences (it was edited down from 6 hours of improvisation) and extended guitar solos.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND | Venus in Furs (1967)

Whilst most other psychedelic bands were doing the colourful, flowery, Haight-Ashbury thing, somewhere along the East Coast the visionary Velvets were on to something completely unprecedented, offering up a darker, alternative psychedelic programme which explored the recesses of the human mind. Venus in Furs, a five minute ode to the eponymous sadomasochistic novel, is an Indian raga-infused wall of noise produced with detuned guitars and viola and overlaid with a haunting funeral procession style drumbeat.

FUNKADELIC | Free your mind and your ass will follow (1970)

George Clinton takes you on one whacked out trip through space with this track from the eponymous LP which, according to Clinton, was made with the intention of finding out ‘if we can cut a whole album while we're all tripping on acid’. This mind-blowing ten minute masterpiece is laden with religious subversion and offers up some blinding Hendrix-esque guitar freak outs and feedback control courtesy of Eddie Hazel. You can hear the funk being born.

MOON DUO

http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/10441/1/rise-moon-duo

RISE: MOON DUO

A project of Wooden Ships frontman, Ripley Johnson and his partner Sanae Yamada, the duo cast a spell with their minimalist, electronic, drone-infused sound.

Moon Duo’s mesmeric, minimalist, California-drenched sound has been garnering them many followers; the San Franciscan twosome, comprised of Wooden Shjips frontman, Erik ‘Ripley’ Johnson and his girlfriend, keyboardist Sanae Yamada, produce synapse-firing sounds with a stripped down set-up of synthesizer, guitar and drum machine.

With undertones of Neu!, electronic duos Silver Apples and Suicide and rock outfits Spacemen 3 and the Stooges, their sound blends Kraut and electronic and throws in the occasional psychedelic guitar freak-out for good measure. Repetition is dominant, and propulsive, motorik beats, repeated keys patterns and two chord riffs roll like waves. The chosen title for their current album ‘Mazes’ seems apt, as like their driving, droning sound, it evokes journeys and progression. We caught up with Moon Duo in London last week, on the final leg of their UK tour…

Dazed Digital: As a couple in life and now in art, have the dynamics of your relationship changed? 
Moon Duo: Surprisingly the dynamics haven't really changed. It's different now that we're working together every day but if anything it has made communication better.

DD: Sanae, is Moon Duo a musical debut for you?
Moon Duo: Yes, this is Sanae's first band.

DD: Where has been your favourite tour stop so far?
Moon Duo: There have been a few highlights. Two legendary clubs: Vera in Groningen and Loppen in Christiania. And Berlin is always amazing.

DD: Do you have similar music tastes?
Moon Duo: We have very similar tastes. But we both like all kinds of music so there's a lot of room for overlap. We record shop together, so we're usually in sync, turning each other onto things.

DD: What is your recent album Mazes all about, thematically speaking?
Moon Duo: Generally it's about finding one's way in life, making decisions and where those decisions lead. We were about to move from San Francisco to the mountains of Colorado at the time of recording, so that was heavily on our minds

DD: What have you been listening to at the moment?
Moon Duo: We listen to a lot of Zamrock. The new Kurt Vile is a recent favourite. Just picked up some Demdike Stare. And Cave is always a favourite in the van.

DD: What’s behind your name?
Moon Duo: It's funny because I find the choosing of a band name to be such a small decision at the time, but you end up living with it for so long. The moon is something that every person and every culture has some relationship with, and we're a duo, so that part is obvious. There's a lot of symbolism attached to the moon and lunar cycles, so it can mean so many things. We like the ambiguity of that.

DD: Erik, there are inevitable aesthetic similarities between Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips, but how do you envisage both bands developing? Will they remain alongside one another or diverge?
Moon Duo: Whenever I envision some sort of plan or development, the reality ends up being completely different, so it's hard to say. I feel like they have already diverged quite a bit, but it's better to not impose any restrictions on things. I'm curious myself about where it will all lead. We have a new Wooden Shjips album coming out on Thrill Jockey in August/September, so perhaps it will be clearer then.