| Most Wanted: an interview with BRIAN OBLIVION of CULTS. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Monday, 20 June 2011 08:02 |
 Girl meets boy in their hometown of San Diego while he is tour-managing her brother's band. Boy - a.k.a. BRIAN OBLIVION, formerly of a Slayer tribute band followed by hip-hop experimentation - revives the ancient art of chivalry by offering to drive his newfound friend on a return trip to San Francisco to retrieve her personal effects. Brian and the girl known as MADELINE FOLLIN - who was once offered a three-record deal at the age of eight after a label heard her singing on the same album as Dee Dee Ramone - share their iPods on the road-trip and bond over their mutual appreciation for Lesley Gore, Jay-Z, and Justin Timberlake. As fate would have it, Brian and Madeline both happened to be moving to New York to study film and thus moved into an East Village apartment together, continuing their real-life 'Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist' fairytale. You know the rest of the story... out of weekend boredom, Madeline and Brian formed two-piece band CULTS around three demos that they uploaded to Bandcamp for their friends and family - Follin is the step-daughter of Thunderdome Studios owner Paul Kostabi (who is also a founding member of the bands Youth Gone Mad, White Zombie, and Psychotica) and the daughter of Heidi Follin who was Dee Dee Ramone's art-dealer. The couple's metal-loving friends laughed, but Cults attracted the attention of music blogs Internet-wide who championed 'Go Outside' from the three-track 'Cults 7"' EP, and were fascinated by the band's anonymity. All of this, while the band were yet to perform live. So to avoid being prematurely judged, Cults played some of their very first shows under pseudonyms such as The Cults UK, Lady MJ, and the Highwater Bong Boys. After being courted by "ten or so" different record labels, the band were flown to London by Lily Allen's newly-formed In The Name Of, and were the very first signing on Allen's Columbia Records imprint. Barely a year later, Cults are on a headlining tour of North America in support of the release of their self-titled debut album which was recorded with Vampire Weekend and Sleigh Bells engineer, Shane Stoneback. While in North Hampton, Massachusetts, Brian Oblivion whose birth-name is Ryan Mattos, leaves his bandmates - which includes three additional touring members - watching movies in Cults' tour-van to give Coup De Main a call... COUP DE MAIN: Your debut album was just released in New Zealand! Please come and play a show for us? CULTS - BRIAN OBLIVION: I would love to! It's such a surreal thing. I can't even imagine the fact that our record is out in New Zealand. That's really bizarre! I wasn't sure it would... I actually just thought it would only come out on like the coast of the U.S.A. and that's all I was hoping for. But, oh my god! A New Zealand show would be so amazing, wouldn't it? We're coming out to Australia in December and I'm really hoping that we can stop by in New Zealand around that time. CDM: One of my favourite things about the album is how inspirationally nostalgic it sounds. It's definitely an album I wish I'd had to listen to when I was a teenager... BRIAN: That was kind of the goal! We wanted to write songs [and] to make an album for misfit kids - for kids like us who grew up being too weird to fit in. I think that people should always judge their art by thinking about what their fifteen-year-old self would think of it, because that's kind of when you're the truest - when you have the most opinions and enlightened perspectives. So we always try to keep that in mind. Plus, we were like twenty-years-old when we wrote those songs, so I think that was our natural attitude as well. CDM: On track seven 'Oh My God', Madeline sings that: "All I wanted to know was to know that I have never wasted my time." Is that sort of your life philosophy? BRIAN: There's a lot of those kinds of things [in the lyrics] because around the time that we were writing those songs, we were going to art school and working really horrible internships and just sitting around, just waiting to enter the daunting real world and the idea wasn't very enticing - to go and work behind a desk and just have a salary and suburban house. I don't think we ever wanted to live like that. We both wanted our lives to be a little bit more extreme. So, there's a lot of fear of mediocrity, but it's definitely the way that we try to live - and the way everyone should try to - but it's hard sometimes. CDM: Are you more of a dreamer or a do-er? BRIAN: I feel like we do a lot these days! <laughs> For both of us for a long time, we had both always dreamed of playing music - but we were too nervous of what people would think and we were too lazy to actually make the effort - but now I guess that a lot of the process has been us changing from dreamers to do-ers. Now I do so much that I konk out as soon as I hit my bed every night. CDM: As you grow older, how are you handling juggling adult responsibility versus wanting to live your life unaccountable to the outside world? BRIAN: I think that we're totally just trying to avoid them at every possible junction. Right now it's not so bad. We have a manager and a tour manager and a lawyer and lots of people to shield us from the scary outside world that we don't ever really want to be involved in.  CDM: What inspired you to quote Charles Manson, Jim Jones and Patty Hearst, in your music? BRIAN: I think a lot of it has to do with a kind of fascination on one-hand - I've always been really, Madeline too, we've always been really enticed by that kind of idea of totally extreme-life, of giving up everything that everybody's ever told you to do to go run off and live your own bizarre existence. It's the ultimate. It's like the worst thing that you could do as a suburban kid, is to run off and join a cult. It's worse than joining a gang or getting a heroin addiction. So because it's so bad it's enticing, but at the same time the idea is kind of romantic and I've been wanting to have all these characters who represented the bad side of what can go wrong when you decide to take your life into your own hands. There could be mis-steps and there could be ways that could be bad as well. It's also a bit to do with doing whatever you want, but at the same time saying that you could go too far with it, I guess. CDM: Aside from the three EP songs, did you get much of a chance to road-test the songs on the album? Or was it more of a straight-to write then record operation? BRIAN: At the time that we wrote the three songs for the EP, we had written seven songs. And then as soon as those came out - they were just the first three that were finished - and then we just went straight into writing as many songs as possible. So at the end of the whole process, I think that we'd written twenty-three songs to pick eleven from, so we were writing over the whole last year, [writing] just bunches and bunches of songs. CDM: What is the Cults songwriting process like? BRIAN: To start things off we usually start with a drumbeat first and then a bass-line, then we'll put together a chord progression, and then once we have the start of a song in place we'll get the feeling of it and start digging around for samples to be inspired by - a lot of the songs were built up around the tone and the idea of the samples on the record. And then Madeline will listen to it and put together a melody and lyrics. It's always really organic because we live together, so I'll be working on songs in one room and she'll be hearing it in the other room, and by the time I hand it off to her she's usually ninety percent done with her idea for the song. So, it can be really quick when it's right. CDM: Do you ever argue when writing songs together with Madeline? BRIAN: Yeah, big-time arguing. We had some... just like any other band, but we're a couple so we don't feel bad about screaming at each other <laughs> when we're less productive, but it's not just out of tiredness or spite. CDM: What was the recording process for the album like? BRIAN: It was really insular. It was just me and Madeline and our engineer, a guy named Shane Stoneback. So, we were pretty much just sitting the three of us in the studio locked up for three months not letting any of our friends in, not letting anyone from our label in, just writing a ton of songs and trying out every weird idea that we had. We usually started working at eight at night and then we'd work until nine in the morning and then go home and sleep all day. <laughs> Which was a nice way of working because you never feel bad about drinking when it's dark out, even if you just woke up. CDM: How would you describe what Cults sound like to someone who has never heard any of your music before? BRIAN: That's always a hard one... I don't really know. I guess that we're influenced a lot by sixties pop music - people like Lesley Gore and The Shangri-Las. But also a lot of British shoegaze ambient electronic music and then a lot of the rhythmic parts of hip-hop. So somewhere between those three things I think you kind of get an idea. CDM: I love yours and Madeline's back-and-forth vocals in track ten on the album, 'Bumper'. Are girl/boy vocals something you're trying to bring back? BRIAN: Some people are doing it, but... Madeline and I like a lot of stuff that a lot of people might consider really cheesy - like songs with really obvious narrative and songs that tell a story and have a conclusion and are really direct. I think that not a lot of people have the courage to put that out there, because you risk people thinking they know immediately what it is [about] and getting over it. But I've always really liked that stuff, so I guess we are trying to bring it back. CDM: If Cults were a novel, what sort would it be? BRIAN: Oh man... it's probably one of those rise-up and crash-and-burn novels, where someone wins the lottery and then they get really bad luck and then their whole family dies and their house burns down. <laughs> That's probably what our novel would be like!  CDM: Being signed to Lily Allen's In The Name Of record label, how much involvement does she have with Cults? BRIAN: We've met her a couple times. She runs the imprint of our label in the UK, so she technically has more say than big[-wig] guys do, but she's like any label-owner - she's very busy with this and other things - so she's mostly just there as a resource. When we're having a problem we'll call up people that work at that imprint and they will fight for our cause which is really nice. CDM: What were the most important things that you learnt while being pursued by various record labels to sign? BRIAN: Just to trust yourself always. All the decisions that were supposed to be put up for committee, we always insisted on making ourselves, even if we had to fight for them. And all the decisions that we've made ourselves and all the art we've made ourselves, has always been the most successful. So I guess, just do it all yourself. It takes a lot of energy but it's worth it. CDM: Do you think record companies pressure modern bands to present themselves as 'brands'? BRIAN: I'm kind of confused [about it]. We tried when we wrote our record to write a bunch of different kinds of songs - songs that are happy, songs that are sad, songs that are dark, songs that are jubilant, songs that are fast, songs that are slow - just to keep people from putting their finger on us. I'm not sure if it's just laziness or if it's fear, when bands just write the same song over and over again hoping that if people don't like one they'll like the other. I don't think that ever works. People just get really sick of it fast. People definitely try and carve out their little niche, but I think we're trying to be harder to 'put your finger on'. CDM: Is it important, or un-important, for pop music to be meaningful? BRIAN: I think it's definitely important. The meaning in a pop song could be very shallow and direct, or it could be very deep. I don't think it really matters either way. I think that the one thing that kind of defines pop music is that it's music that you can use - music that has a purpose. If it's dance-music it's a song that is made for dancing, like [The] Jackson 5 is made to initiate some dancing and to make people feel a certain way, it's to get a reaction that's immediate. Pop music is about that immediacy. Even Joy Division is pop music and [has] a lot of immediacy to make you introspective and sad. I think a lot of songs can be judged on how well they accomplish that goal. When I hear a Katy Perry song today I don't think anything about it - I don't feel like dancing, I don't feel happy - it's just boring. It's always songs with a unique approach that really gives people a special feeling, which makes it a good song. CDM: Before the band took off, you had been planning on filming a documentary about cults and if they had their own folk songs and mythology. Do you find it at all ironic that you're now in a band that blogs and the media have built so much mythology around? BRIAN: It is kind of ironic on one-hand, but it's also just an extension of that, and that interest. It's something that has always had a mythical kind of quality for us. I do hope I get to do that [documentary] one day, but the legwork on it is something that I can't really afford right now. CDM: If Cults the band were an actual cult, what would be the main rules for people wanting to join? BRIAN: That's the thing! We're really bad, I don't think there'd be any rules. <laughs> We're not very good with restrictions or authority. Our cult wouldn't really be a cult at all. CDM: Why did you decide to borrow your name from the 1983 film 'Videodrome'? BRIAN: It started off as a joke because we had all these songs out on the Internet and people were experiencing our band, but there was no personality, no face behind it, and there was also no live band. There was no reality. The character of Brian Oblivion from 'Videodrome' is a guy who lives purely on television screens and he's actually dead - like his physical body doesn't exist - but he lives on through these series of video-tapes. So it was just kind of a joke because we weren't real people or a real band, but we had this Internet effect. Then I just started thinking about all the reasons that I don't really want people to be calling out my name, and it feels right to stay with it. ...and with that, it's time for Brian Oblivion's next interview. His parting words are: "Thank you so much. New Zealand man, what a trip!" |
