Interview and Photos by Bruno Postigo
Kalmia Traver and Alex Toth of Rubblebucket sat down in the middle of Electric Forest to talk to iSPY about their new album Omega La La. Their dance party indie sound made them stand out in the festival. We managed to catch their live performance, and experienced the power of their live performances. When Kalmia, and Alex jumped into their crowd with their instruments to dance with naked audience members, their performance transcended to a new level.
How many members do you have?
Kal: We have nine, but eight of them are on stage
Why brass instruments?
Kal: That was my instrument in fifth grade. Alex and I have always been horn players, so we started the band to have horns.
Is this your first time in Michigan?
Kal: No, we’ve been in Grand Rapids, it’s one of my favorites. We also played in Ann Arbor a year or two ago. We want to go back.
When is your album coming out?
Kal: It officially came out the 21st of June, but we have been leaking it for the last couple months.
How was the writing process?
Kal: The writing took a long time, we wrote it over more than a year and a half. We finished writing some of the songs during the recording process, which took about two months. We were pretty kung fu about the whole thing, we were organized and methodical.
How would you describe your sound?
Kal: Dance fun oriented, original indie pop.
Alex: a dance bottom, and a crazy top of psychedelic.
Kal: like a kaleidoscope.
Alex: We’re always working on our sound, we don’t want to fall into something that’s been worn out.
So you get people dancing?
Kal: Yeah, haha. It’s funny, that’s what usually happens.
How did you guys start? You guys were friends in college?
Kal: We went to college together and when we graduated we started this reggae band. We had chunks of time off, and we wanted to keep playing. We were hungry at that point. So Alex had this idea to create a band that’s crowd moving but also solid to play our instruments.
So are you guys really technical?
Kal: We try to keep it playable.
Alex: But we have some complex arrangement. The players we have are great at improvisation, but they also have subtle ways of changing the sound really subtly. They slide distortion on, feedback, they just know how to do subtle sounds instead of flashy thing. We try to do compositional statements.
Kal: We love the spirit of improvisation, but we try to have tight fun arrangements.
Alex: A lot of the band members have jazz backgrounds, but we put it aside to some extent.
Where are you going after this?
Kal: We’re going back home after this festival, and then we’re touring all over again.
Alex: When we hit the fall we’re going to be touring, and we’re currently working on three new music videos. We want to record a new album at the end of 2011.
Kal: I want to get out of everything and dedicate every hour of the day to creativity!
For more Rubblebucket, check out their website at http://www.rubblebucket.com