LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC
The loft where Teletextile practices is sparse on one side (the living room side, where a metal futon and burnished yellow velour couch share the space with a small wooden keyboard and an asymmetrical painting), and rather lovingly cluttered on the other side (the practice space side, where stringed instruments surround a small harp, a Wurlitzer, and a stand of bells). These are – some of – the tools of Teletextile’s trade: what they use to draw out their lushly textured and layered songs. Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Pamela started using the name Teletextile years ago; the lineup has morphed into what it is now, with bassist Caitlin Gray and drummer Luke Schneiders. On a cold but bike-able Sunday night, the threesome sat down with some strong home-brewed coffee (Luke works at a coffee shop) and talked a little musical shop, starting with how they went from being a five-piece to being a three-piece in the new year. Teletextile plays Jezebel Music’s Feature Show on Thursday.
JM.com: You lost two members of your band recently. What happened?
Pamela: We’d been working on an album for two or three months and it wasn’t going at the pace I wanted. We were working with a new engineer who I really liked and we had some great conversations with him. So we got together and started talking about how we were going to make this work. The main factor was that two of our band members are just very busy people. Brian who played keys for us tours with Cymbals Eat Guitars and they’re out of the country or on the road three weeks out of the month sometimes. And our guitarist just started a Ph.D. program in September. It’s kind of been a holding pattern waiting around for them, and we realized that it’s not realistic to keep doing that, so we asked them to leave. We love them and they’re amazing musicians, and we miss them. And we’re scared as fuck to do this!
JM.com: What instruments do you all play? I know there are several, especially for you, Pamela.
Pamela: I write the songs, and I’m the lead vocalist. I also mostly play Wurlitzer in the band, as well as harp, violin and guitar.
Cate: I was just playing bass, but now I’m playing guitar, and singing and banging on pieces of metal.
Luke: I’m the drummer, but now I’m forced to also try to sing. I’d like to say it’s coming along. Pamela’s been writing some new material that’s maybe a little smaller-sounding, so maybe I’ll be playing guitar or other instruments. I looked at a cajón today; I’m pretty excited about that.
Pamela: It’s just a wooden box you sit on, and you pound and it sounds awesome.
JM.com: And how has it been re-outfitting as a trio?
Pamela: It’s really just doing more. We have to be doing double the work in a song, per unit. For instance, we have one song where Caitlin always just played bass, but now she starts off playing bass, loops it, and then picks up the guitar. I used to only sing during that song, because over the past six months or so, I got to move away from being bound to the keyboard and just either sing or play tambourine or bells. But now I’m back to singing and playing the keyboard at the same time. A lot of the arranging that we do with our music is about layering and texturing, so we can build those layers with loops or samples of what we’re doing. But I like the complexity of sound, so it’s a challenge to figure out how we’re going to make it big and dense, but also make it alive and interesting, so that it’s not just us hitting a sampler and letting a track play. We want it to be this amorphous, amoeba-ish type of thing, where it gets big, and then it gets little, and it’s just alive.
Luke: I definitely think it’s moving in an organic direction. We want to be able to play everything live, through a looping pedal, as opposed to through a sampler or laptop. So it’s led to some interesting steps. Like yesterday, we were figuring out how we were going to get what was a four-bar bass loop to sound like a sixteen-bar bass loop, and to sound incredible the first time, in a live performance. We were coming up with some pretty funny solutions for that.
JM.com: Teletextile, the name, can you tell me about it?
Pamela: I’ve been using that for awhile. When I was younger, I was really into sewing, so the word is just a compound word I made up to express the idea of communicating through the things that you surround yourself with. So that’s one idea; that we’re just trying to express ourselves. Part of the way you do that is by waking up and deciding what you’re wearing that day. But the other side of that is this: I love the idea of fabric and fibers. I always played stringed instruments, so I associate fabric with the stringed instruments that I play. A piece of fabric is made up of these tiny little fibers woven together, and I think about music the same way. It’s these little pieces, whether they’re notes or the different colors of an instrument, and they’re woven together to make this one sound, this one piece of fabric.
Luke: We’ve had a couple of fundraisers here, which I think have been some of our more successful shows. In one, we had a bunch of artists donate their work and their time, to help bring more people. We had a textile jeweler make a chandelier out of plied rope, we had a friend projecting a movie he’d made of some dancers; then we had a photographer, and even some poetry as the opening act. So the whole synesthesia of it was great. We were surrounded by different media. That word – Teletextile – kind of means that to me sometimes.
JM.com: Your sound is less about specific instruments than about the sounds they do, or can, make.
Cate: Yeah, we’re using a lot of found instruments too, like sheet metal, the cup that plays a D –
Pamela: Yeah, I play a – what do you call the things you make crème brûlées in?
Cate: A ramekin!
Pamela: I play a ramekin. And hopefully, we’re still going to do this –
Cate: Are you talking about the paper orchestra?
Pamela: Yeah. We want to do a song where I’m on harp, but the percussion will be at least in the beginning, all paper.
Cate: Paper being torn, or folded, with varying degrees of aggression.
JM.com: How has your approach to music – technically or otherwise – changed since you first started playing?
Luke: I started off playing drums, actually guitar, in a rock band, writing original music. And it was only about loving doing it, and being with friends. At a certain point, I decided I wanted to move to New York to try to become a professional, and I went to the New School for Jazz –
Cate: Where we met.
Luke: And there you really are forced into every situation imaginable, and stretched really thin. So for about four or five years, I was making a point of doing things I wasn’t particularly good at, just to stretch myself. Only recently, I’m finally returning to the fact that music is about being an artist and loving what you do, and is itself just a really enjoyable process.
Cate: I started playing classical piano when I was a kid, and when I was 13 or 14, I decided that this isn’t what cool people do. So I didn’t play for a few years. But then my uncle gave me a bass for my birthday one year. I sucked at it, but I decided on a whim to apply to music school. The act of actually showing up the first day and having to play for people was absolutely scarring; it was the experience of getting your ass kicked for four years. But I think I came out the better for it. I’m just getting back to enjoying music again, too.
Pamela: I’m totally OK with being a nerd, and having really been into music my entire life. My music teacher turned out to be awesome, because it was low-pressure, and we were doing this for fun. She also taught me guitar, cello and violin; I would end up going to her house and staying a little longer, and anytime I had an interest in an instrument, she would happen to have one around and I would end up playing it.
JM.com: It seems like were Teletextile to make a list of influences, it’d be a pretty varied one. I’d think visuals would come into play, in addition to musicians in a certain vein. What are your influences, musically or not?
Pamela: We had a discussion today about Salvador Dalí. Also, Jim Henson is awesome. He blows me away with how he made up these fucking whatever-the-hell-they-ares. And I do really like fashion: I like folk costumes, and things that are kind of shredded. And all kinds of nostalgic things. I definitely listen to other music and tend to dissect it. But a lot of that music is recorded music, in which case I feel like I’m paying more attention to the producer, and to what choices have been made. Live, maybe lyrically I’ll be impressed, or arrangements-wise I’ll be impressed. But a lot of times, I’m blown away by a recording, and that comes back to the fact that I’m listening to sounds.
Luke: Pamela brings most of the raw information to a rehearsal when we first hear a song, and after that it’s about drawing on all our resources to add to that. In that context, my biggest influences are other musicians, other drummers, other rhythm sections. The more I listen to those, the more information I have to bring to Pamela’s process.
JM.com: Who is your favorite drummer?
Luke: For other styles I’d give different answers, but definitely Matt Chamberlain in this context. Everything he’s ever recorded, to me, is amazing. It’s so consistent and supportive.
Cate: The relationship between bass and drum can make or break something for me, and Luke is one of the best drummers I’ve ever played with. So I’d say I get really inspired by the dynamic of playing with a solid rhythm section, and then having something really tasteful [gestures toward Pamela] on top of that.
Pamela: But musically, I really love Radiohead, I love Broadcast, I love the Flaming Lips. I’ve been listening to the School of Seven Bells lately. I love Grizzly Bear. I’ve been playing some shows with a band called Fanfarlo. They’re friends of mine, so they’re both musical and personal inspirations, and they’ve changed the way I function as a musician. Also things like Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dirty Three, Low, moody, long-form stuff. M83 I love, but also Nick Drake, and I mean, I was listening to Linda Ronstadt today.
JM.com: What’s up next for Teletextile? You’re working on an album, Teletextile’s second.
Cate: Yeah, though it’s our first record in this form, even at all, because the last record [Care Package] was just Pamela and Brian. We’re working on an EP right now that may or may not be released before we release the full-length, but we want to get songs out there as soon as we can that are more representative of where we are now.
Luke: We’ll definitely be releasing something soon, and be as active as possible playing.
Pamela: Generally speaking, we’ve spent the last year in preparation mode, and what I’ve learned from that is, fuck preparation. We’re going to try and make these things happen. We have to keep ourselves busy with this, and that will become the identity of who we are. I want Teletextile to be what I’m doing right now.
Cate: We said before that we decided to let Passion Pit have 2009. Then we get 2010.
interview by Jane Kim
photos by Jeremy Sachs-Michaels www.jeremysachsmichaels.com
