From New York State comes FROGVILLE, a psychedelic pop home recording project, that to my ears sounds heavily influenced by THE FLAMING LIPS. Not a bad thing, if you want my opinion..."... basically I'm a guy that makes music in his bedroom apartment."
Q: Where exactly are you from?
A: I'm from New York, now living in Yorktown Heights, NY completely isolated from any real music scene. Except for work I'm pretty much a hermit.
Q: Do you want your real name mentioned? If so: What is your real name?
A: My name is Jason Raspa.
Q: How recorded?
A: Bug-Eyed Swamp was recorded mostly on a Tascam 388, Studio 8, reel to reel. It's a really cool piece of equipment. It works and looks like a 4 track cassette recorder except with 1/4 inch tape. And it's fecking huge. I recorded all the major instruments analog. I heard it said that if you record (minimum) the vocals and drums analog then it'll trick the ear into thinking it's all analog. I believe this is mostly true. Fortunately, I had room for eight. I transferred the analog tracks to digital with my digirack 02 interface and recorded the rest in Sonar and used Izotope 4.0 and Har-Bal to master. There's so much stuff going on in the songs I needed more tracks and didn't want to give up control of the individual components by bouncing down analog.
Q: When recorded?
A: This was recorded summer last year. I've done pretty much nothing to promote it and I don't have a band to play live with. I've recently decided to get off my ass so hopefully more people can hear it. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it probably has my CDs growing on it's branches. Which isn't good.
Q: Who involved? Who played what?
A: My friend Dave Kohen played drums. My brother Justin performed rhythm guitar on "Face" and bass on the "The Light You Give". John my luthier performed bass on "Turns to Gold" a very nice Beatle-esque one I might and bass on "Speed of A Crawl". Also ebow guitar on "Speed of a Crawl" and lead guitar on "Speed of Disillusionment". My buddy Mark did the lead guitar on "I Believe In You" and performed the bass line which I wrote. The rest I did myself including keys, all vocals, lead guitar, rythm guitar and bass. Mixing and mastering was scary but I'm very proud about the way it came out. Very high-fi, lo-fi.
Q: Since when does this band/project exist/are you into music?
A: I've been making music since '04. Ruined an album in '06 by drenching it in too much reverb. (Hmmm - can there be such a thing as 'too much reverb'? m-f) I didn't know what I was doing and printed the effects. I printed spring reverb on everything killed it. So muddy. At the time I told one of my only fans that my girlfriend got pissed and lit the master tapes on fire. I was too embarrassed to admit my amateur blunder. I was so crushed by the whole experience I gave up the ambition of having my own album for two years.
Q: How'd you "label" your music? (I know ... nobody wants to get labeled ... bla bla bla...)
A: I'd say my music is alternative, psychedelic, pop?
Q: Influences?
A: Not too hard to see my influences. Heavy Flaming Lips circa Soft Bulletin and all albums prior. My music isn't contrived in the slightest but I had been bombarding myself with the Lips for years and it had saturated my subconscious until I had all these songs coming out of me. They're still coming out but now though I'm moving in other directions. Luckily, I think when all was said and done the songs came out influenced but also very original and organic. Other notable influences, the Beach Boys, Beatles, Mercury Rev, Small Faces, Big Star, Magoo (not the rapper), Galaxie 500, Sparklehorse. Less notably, a lot of shit.
Q: Any more releases?
A: I have a new album almost done called MK-Ultraphonic. I release my CDs through my fake record company called Area 3 Records and free MP3 albums online with Quixodelic Records. It's really a collective of like minded people. Some great bands on there, most notably, The Loaded Whispers. Excellent band from Dublin. It's not Irish music. Everything on this label is psychedelic to some degree. And it's 100% free.
Q: Anything interesting to say to the readers?
A: Yes, eat your vegetables and brush daily!
(Pretty good advise, I'd say! m-f)
Favourite tracks: A Bug-Eyed Swamp, Mexico
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment