Low : Alan (guitar), Mimi (drums) & Zak (bass)
October 3rd, 1996
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Low: Alan (A): I guess from the beginning, we've been exploring the possibilities of slow minimal music. Over the last few albums, (we've) been writing songs using that format and with each record, feeling better and better about song writing. Not to say that we've come to a peak or anything but I think we've really come to a pretty good point as far as what we're trying to do. We've tried a few things and there's not a lot of new stuff as far as change of sound as much as there's......
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Low: (A): Yeah, definitely. Kramer, who produced our first album, had this certain sound that was kinda psychedelic and washy. Steve Fisk is a little more interested in more natural sounds and a drier approach. He's just a different person to work with. Mimi (M): I think as a band we were a little more prepared and had a better idea of what we wanted to do. (A): Obviously with each record you learn more and you go into the next record with experience and ideas of what you wanna try for the next. This time we're really happy with how it worked and surprised ourselves on a lot of things.
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Low: (A): We definitely were aware of and pretty big fans of Joy Division, Galaxie 500 and the Velvet Underground. People do compare us to them. When we started, it was very much a sense of let's just throw away everything we were doing before and everything that we know about music and just try to put forth the songs that were in our heads. It just happened that they were little tiny songs that were really slow and not a lot going on. We were not shooting for any specific sound. It just happened that after we'd written a couple songs and kinda just looked back and said that this is really strange stuff but it was really fun to do. We just kept going and didn't really have too many expectations.
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Low: (M): I played drums in high school. (A): Zak and I had been in bands....(Z): and out of bands. (A): Punk bands and art bands and bands and bands....and yeah, we don't hate loud music by all means. It's just that at the point when we started doing this, it was just kind of what fell out.
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Low: (Z): We have an answer for this.....
(A): Do we?...(M): We think that it does but...we don't know how..? (Z): 'cause we're from there. (M): Yeah. (A): That's all we know...(Z): I mean we can't really see that, and like oh yeah, 'cause it's cold all the time. (A): That's why we're slow. (M): We have a lot of stories. (A): And its like, well cripes the cows are from Minnesota too. (M): What does that tell you? (A): Husker Du was from Minnesota.
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Low: (A): It was a long process of one idea leading into another and then by the time we came up with what we ended up with we pretty much had throw away all of our original ideas and mutated into stuff falling on us. The bridge was going from the windy bed thing slow motion to stuff....(Z): falling while we were on a windy bed and then we just got rid of the windy bed all together and got hit with beds. (A): I guess irony would be a good word. It was kind of a strange juxtaposition of crashing violent things with a melancholy and quiet song. It was fun. It was a very, very hot day and we had to wear wool. (Z): It was very dangerous. (A): We're not supposed to say that. (Z): It was the safest video shoot ever...(A): The video director was very worried that he'd get in trouble because it was kind of very dangerous.
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Low: (Z): There was so much stuff falling. (A): You don't see even half of it. (Z): You don't see a third of it, there was so much stuff falling....it ended up being really tame compared to what was actually going on in the shoot. (A): Obviously because its slowed down, it seems tame. Doing shots four times the speed of what you see on the video is how things were done. There were lots of stuff flying around and trying to play and keep a straight face and not flinch. (A): 'Cause you were standing there and we didn't know what was going to happen, if everything was gonna come towards our throats or what. (Z): It was lessons in physics and sometimes we didn't learn.
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Low: (A): Its kind of like an ugly beauty and tense calm. To me that's always seemed natural. Some of my favorite "art" in the creative realm has that irony of surface beauty and the underneath that is rough and unnerving. (M): Kind of like those bands, Brass Kitten, Led Zeppelin (Z): Iron Maiden. (A): The opposing hard-soft thing. (Z): AC, DC? (A): Well one could really damage the other. (M): That's not right. (A): There's something wrong with that.
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Low: (A): We had already been playing it live. Somehow it just kinda fell out one day, I knew the words and we all knew how to play it. We played it once at a radio show. It went well and every once in a while we'd play it and the guy who put together the Joy Division tribute record saw us play the song in New York and called us later on and asked if we could record it. For most tribute records someone will go, "Ok, I wanna do a Judas Priest Tribute record" and they'll pick out some bands and call them and say "Hey do you wanna be on my tribute record" and they'll pick a song and they'll record it. In our case, we'd already been playing that song and it happened that someone wanted to do the tribute. It was a great honor for us do to it.
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Low: (M): Well, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. (A): Yes, it's kind of a gamble, we've been probably a little irresponsible on that part just because sometimes we're a little over zealous about touring and we think "Oh well, it'll be ok, we'll play with this band there'll be new people seeing us. Sometimes it kind of falls back on us. Soul Coughing was kind of tough. We really got along with those guys and it was really, really fun touring with them but we'd get on stage and it would suck. It was really tough because most of the crowd was not there to listen to us and not wanting to listen to us means they talked.
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Low: (A): We're pretty (much) into the vocals. It's not the stand out most important thing. We place just as much importance on the music and ideally they kind of work together supporting each other. We spend a lot of time trying to get what we're saying and doing vocally right. It's not just a second hand thing. (M): Sometimes we have some lyrics before the music too. (M): I'd say it's pretty haphazard. Songs come together in such different ways. Some just take a little time and some take weeks.
Interviewer: Patrick Kinney
Camera: Lee Evans
Photos & Transcription: Rodwin Pabello
Editor: Catherine Lee
© 1999, 2000 Evans Media Group, Inc.
Other Low Links:
The Official Low Web Site
A Low Fan's Site