[indiessance]
One of the strengths I hear in The Heaven Seventies is the range of styles in your music. My favorite track is "Devotion", while "Shawty Is a 10 (Remix)" sounds like a track that R&B fans could get hooked on. With that in mind, I can't decide which track might be considered the proverbial A-side, because there are a few strong tracks.
[loren]
We aren't album artists; albums are no longer the way people experience pop music, for the most part. We release songs a single at a time. When we write, every song is written as an A-side; there are no "B-sides" for us right now.
[indiessance]
When you work on a song, are you targeting various styles in order to widen commercial appeal? Wouldn't it be cool to see one track climb one chart, while another track climbs another? I think the band could engineer a couple of crossover hits.
[loren]
Our music covers a large range of styles because we're interested in a wide variety of music. When I had a rock band, I was always coming up with ideas in all the genres of music I was listening to at the time (soul, modern r&b, uk garage, chart pop, rap, experimental, etc.) and had to set those ideas aside because they didn't work in the context of the unified sound that the band was trying to achieve.
The Heaven Seventies was based on the idea that a group of musicians could be successful without having to tie itself to a specific genre of music. In this case, we're making music for the pop charts, so as long as we're expressing something people identify with and putting a catchy hook in their heads, it doesn't matter whether all of our songs fit on the same chart. I find the idea that we could be on several different charts at once rather exciting.
[nilay]
It's not that we target styles to widen commercial appeal, it's that we consciously try to make each track an "A-side." Since we're trying to write the best pop music we can, it's only natural that we look to crossover influences like hip-hop and R&B, since those artists have proven that today's audiences want a little ass-shakin' with their guitar playing.
[will]
I think it's entirely possible to have two Heaven Seventies songs on two different genre specific charts at the same time. Pop artists today are less and less restrained by genre or musical style, and audiences are responding positively. You could argue that genre boundaries are becoming less clear as well, but the boundaries that do remain are being violated more and more frequently. Crossing genre boundaries is a goal of the band, and something that we want to do more and more.
[indiessance]
The Heaven Seventies is an indie rock band fully loaded with talent. I count two lyricists, two vocalists, three keyboard players, four guitarists, etc. This concentration of talent is obviously another strength of the band.
[loren]
The Heaven Seventies are a trio in the studio right now, and there are 5 of us (or 6, perhaps) when we play live. There's sort of an "extended family", people who are members in the back of my mind even though we may not be working with them actively right now. The lineup has changed and it'll keep changing. This isn't the easiest band in the world to be in---we work incredibly hard.
I tend to like people who can "hold their own" in the studio. Of the four people who've worked on our studio output thus far, we all play guitar and keyboards, two of us have played drums for touring bands, and two of us have produced records for other artists, so we have a lot of performing and recording experience. I take the majority of the vocal duties, although occasionally you'll hear somebody else on a track. (My younger sister is a great singer, so we're trying to feature her a bit more.)
[indiessance]
During the songwriting process, can there be a barrage of ideas sparking off a few members at the same time?
[will]
Our songwriting process has been very collaborative. Often the kernel of a great idea will come from one member, and often that kernel will need to incubate with that one member for some time. As a band I think we're very good at nurturing and embellishing the creative kernels that individual members bring forward.
[nilay]
Songwriting is fundamentally a lonely process -- although we've done it in groups, sometimes the only way to get inspired is to whack away at a guitar alone for a while. Our collaborative strength is really production -- once we seize upon a core idea, we work well together in bringing new textures and layers into the mix. Will once told me he figured we use about 80% of what we come up with together as we work up a song's final mix, which is astounding to me, especially since the three of us all have very different (but overlapping) musical influences and backgrounds.
[loren]
Our songwriting and production process is a well-documented thing; we have written guidelines that we follow when we sit down to write a song. Ideas come from everywhere, and we make improvements and refinements until we have something that feels right and works on as many levels as possible. No idea is considered sacred and anything is fair game for improvement, so most of the time, the final product is unrecognizable from the original idea. The time it takes to make each song varies, but we always spend a lot of energy on the chorus.
I was stockpiling ideas for this band for years before we started it, and every time we sit down to write songs we come up with a bunch more. We have literally hundreds of song ideas sitting around waiting to be used. Some of them are really good, and I think the hope that they'll be heard helps drive us forward.
[indiessance]
Something interesting that is offered on the band's Web site are downloadable multitrack bundles of a few songs. Which could be used by fans to create mashups. Is The Heaven Seventies the first band to offer such bundles? Beyond predictable YouTube hosted mashups, what other trends do you think these bundles could lead to? Do you think the multitrack bundles could become a way for various bands to "collaborate" in the future?
[nilay]
I think we're already seeing this -- if Radiohead can make a mint selling "naked" tracks on iTunes, the future is basically here. We might be the first band to think of the bundles as being an integral part of the release, however -- traditionally consumers would get one version of the single and DJs would get another with acapellas and instrumentals. That's all changed now, though -- everyone's a DJ! People don't simply watch or listen to media anymore, they want to use it and interact in all kinds of ways, and there's no reason a band should sit back and pretend that they "own" their music -- as soon as you ask one person to listen to it and make an emotional connection to it, you owe just as much to them as they do it you.
[loren]
The only other band I can think of who've started giving out multitrack bundles of their music are Nine Inch Nails. I had the idea years ago before it was possible to actually do it, but it's not that original of an idea; any musician who falls in love with a track wishes they could get a hold of the original multitrack tapes and play with them. NIN have amassed quite a large community of online remixers around their multitrack bundles, and I believe they recently put at least one of the "unofficial remixes" on an actual album of theirs. I'm proud of them, because they're one of the very few artists to publically embrace the art form of unauthorized remixing. (Negativland are another, and the rap/r&b "mixtape" community is arguably another, although the arrest of DJ Cannon and DJ Drama is something I find quite unsettling to say the least.)
- myspace: the heaven seventies
- youtube: the coldest day of the year @ abbey pub chicago (2008)
- h70s: the coldest day of the year
