By Keith Walsh
For their brand new album Living Waters, Boston noise rock legends E brought producer Andy Hong onboard, as well as newcomer drummer/vocalist Ernie Kim, who brings a range of musical and lyrical skills to the project. Guitarists/vocalists Jason Sanford and Thalia Zedek have worked together for 11 years and their intuitive collaborations reach a spectacular high point with Living Waters, which was mixed and mastered in Prague, by Ondřej Ježek, who is known as ‘the Steve Albini of The Czech Republic.’ On a Zoom call with Sanford, Zedek and Kim, we get info about the new album, their sound, and their processes. (My review of “Living Waters” is at Punkrockbeat.com)
(Jason joins the Zoom chat first, we introduce ourselves and talk about our time zones.)
Popular Culture Beat: There’s a lot going on the album. (While we wait for Thalia and Ernie) Maybe we should talk a little bit about your guitar sound. What amp are you using?
Jason Sydney Sanford: I’m using the Roland JC 120 now.
Popular Culture Beat: Jazz Chorus. That’s been popular since the 80s.
Jason Sydney Sanford: Yeah. Yeah. I switched, I’ve used a lot of different things over the years but I my setup is so weird. I decided it would be a good idea if I started using a really standard amp because we tour in Europe with some frequency. I’m in in the Rocky Mountains and Thalia and Ernie are back in Boston, so it’s really easy to find kind of the same — I can fly there. I don’t have to bring an amp.
Popular Culture Beat: Yeah, that’s a popular amp. Are you driving the amp? First of all, what guitar is it, and are you using humbucker, single coil etcetera? What’s your chain?
Jason Sydney Sanford: So I’ve got two humbuckers and they run in parallel to both channels of the Jazz Chorus, so I’ve got two outputs on the guitar. So I’m running one that’s sort of a clean sound and one that’s through the pedal chain. It’s very dirty and it’s got some homemade fuzz in there.
(Thalia Zedek and Ernie Kim enter the chat.)
Popular Culture Beat: So Jason was just explaining his guitar sound. I was going to ask him about his pedals. Did you say what you wanted to or is there more about that sound you get?
Jason Sydney Sanford: We jumped right into the technical stuff. Yeah. I’m using a couple homemade electronics — the guitar that I play is also homemade. It’s all it’s all made from steel. So there’s no wooden parts.
Popular Culture Beat: That reminds me that Thalia has a hybrid bass guitar combo. First of all, congratulations. It’s nice to meet you all. The album is very unique and it just has this interesting sound. The sound itself is pushing back against all the stresses and stuff and then the lyrics too — but congratulations to you.
Jason Sydney Sanford: Thank you. It’s very nice.
Thalia Zedek: Thank you.
Ernie Kim: Thank you.
Popular Culture Beat: How does it feel to have accomplished this — and I’ll just shoot these out. I won’t address them to anyone. You can kind of jump in. I hope that doesn’t make it too complicated. How does it feel have album like this, that’s so unique?
Jason Sydney Sanford: Ernie, how does it feel?
Ernie Kim: It’s really different from other music I’ve made and bands I’ve been in and I guess because of that I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never had this many responses from people I don’t know. I’m pretty small-time in my music ventures compared to these guys. I mean, I’ve been in bands forever, but they’ve just been playing in town.
“The discussion is not about the melody so much I think. There’s a lot of discussion about composition and we spend a lot of time putting things together, and taking them apart and trying them in different permutations with any given song to get it right.”
Jason Sydney Sanford Of E
Popular Culture Beat: Thalia, I’ve been finding out about Live Skull, going back and getting this information. So you’ve been doing the noise rock for a while, so-called noise rock, but to me, it’s only the appropriate sound for the message you’re putting out. How does that add up for you?
Thalia Zedek: I would describe us as a noise rock. I mean, we definitely have a noise element in our music and I think that’s accurate. You know, we we’re still pretty melodic but you know, I’d say, we’re noise rock as opposed to maybe experimental because I feel like our stuff is not, in the songs that experimental, but it’s rearranging all the pieces of different types of rock in kind of a new way.
Popular Culture Beat: You know, like I want to know what strategy do you have in the studio and composing together? There’s a minimalism there. You’re not just blasting with guitars. You’re doing very precise melodies and it’s all strategy, right, to create a unique sound. What discussions are you having, especially between Jason and Thalia right now about the melody choices?
Jason Sydney Sanford: Well, sometimes Thalia tells me I’m playing the wrong thing or playing too much, but mostly it’s intuitive. We just jump in there. The discussion is not about the melody so much I think. There’s a lot of discussion about composition and we spend a lot of time putting things together, and taking them apart and trying them in different permutations with any given song to get it right.
Popular Culture Beat: Are these woodshedded out live first, or is it more in the studio kind of thing?
Thalia Zedek: No, it’s definitely in rehearsals. We don’t have our own studio. So we are usually going into some place. That’s where we’re having to pay for time. So we try to get everything worked out before we go in. I think we recorded this record in two and a half days. So we knew exactly what we wanted to do. And by the time we went in there, we try to figure that stuff out.
Popular Culture Beat: Cool. Living Waters was produced by Andy Hong? That’s a unique choice. I’ve known about Tape Op for a couple decades now. He had a unique imprint because the sound is just so pristine I want to say, the way it came out.
Thalia Zedek: He’s amazing and he’s someone that I’ve known for a really long time just from being in Boston. He’s no longer in Boston, but he was for many years and he had a label called Kimchee Records that I put an EP out on with a with my solo thing, like 20 years ago or something, and then he always kind of recorded bands. His first recording job was he was Yo-Yo Ma’s live sound person.
Popular Culture Beat: I hear that precision — the purity of classical music, for example on Ernie’s drums, the sound, they occupy their own space. Ernie, can you tell me about that experience?
Ernie Kim: I used the studio kit. Brian Charles, at Rare Signals, he’s put together drum kits, it’s the house drums basically. He basically set it up for me because he knows the room and he knows those drums. And the room is was awesome. It’s a beautiful, big enough live room with a high ceiling and the brick wall behind. I think the actual space had a big thing to do with it.
Popular Culture Beat: I hear some really intricate stuff that you’re doing that’s very precise, so what’s your background, your influences?
Ernie Kim: With this band, I’m trying to be as musical as possible. My drumming background is jumbly math rock mostly, lots of you know imprecision, like speeding up, slowing down, pushing and pulling against the other, but here I’m trying to hold it down in a way that I never really had to before so all the other stuff is happening — it’s consistent playing off of these guys. It’s not necessarily just keeping rhythm but ‘let’s listen to them’ and filling in the spaces or playing along with the patterns.
Popular Culture Beat: The patterns are unique that they do with their guitars.
Popular Culture Beat: Thalia, is it your concept, Living Waters? I want to say first of all that’s a theme connected with purity. So is it not an ironic message? Although Jason made the artwork for the album. So who came up with the theme — who would like to explain the title?
Thalia Zedek: Ernie came up with that title — and it was a title for the song originally and then when we were searching for an album title, we decided that that we liked it for the whole thing.
Popular Culture Beat: Is there a connection to Christianity?
Thalia Zedek: Ernie, you have to answer that.
Ernie Kim: I used to go to church, so I kind of understand that. It’s kind of mistaken is some ways. I was trying to think of this Ben Katchor cartoon, where it was talking about ‘the drink of life.’ (We were jamming on the song “Clarion”) and it had this kind of flowing, moving feeling to it. There was something about it, waters flowing underground. And the “Living Waters” song came after that. It just kind of came back to that. We kind of dissolved into that, and so it made me think of water, but I don’t think of it as necessarily religious.
Popular Culture Beat: Who’s responsible for most of the lyrics?
Thalia Zedek: We all sing. Who ever is singing is the one who writes the lyrics so…
Popular Culture Beat: I love the voices. Let me tell you what I hear in the album and you can explain. All the stress, the chronic stress that comes at us, all the demands that are made on us and like sometimes the only sane response is just to make art, you know and make something. The urgency is there, and the passion. So for example, the first song addresses propaganda, bad science, censorship…now was that a pandemic response or what else?
Jason Sydney Sanford: Definitely. Yeah, that’s that’s me writing most of those lyrics on “(Fully) Remote.
Popular Culture Beat: Yeah. What about the sound of the music and the message is a response to chronic stress and shocks of society. Am I right? I guess it’s obvious right?
Jason Sydney Sanford: I’ll take that interpretation. I like it. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s good. There’s a lot of crazy stuff in the news, but I’m feeling more and more like the craziest stuff that I’m worried about is not even in the news, which is even more worrying to me.
Popular Culture Beat: Okay, so maybe what goes on behind the scenes?
Jason Sydney Sanford: Yeah.Yeah.
Popular Culture Beat: We elect the best people we can, maybe — who knows — you can get into Slavoj Žižek territory with that stuff. But can I ask you what philosophies are underlying? What are you are reading?
Jason Sydney Sanford: What am I reading? Well, the book that I just finished reading is a biomedical thriller from 1976 called Coma.
Popular Culture Beat: All right — the movie movie freaks me out. Even just the trailers…
Popular Culture Beat: Okay, so, okay. So yeah, maybe that’s a little lighter than what’s actually going on. So who’s singing on “Jumprope?” That’s like a love song. It’s beautiful — you’re appreciating somebody there.
Ernie Kim: Thank you very much. That’s me. A family member died and I was just thinking about it. I was just kind of thinking about it.
Popular Culture Beat: It’s so honest.
Ernie Kim: It’s kind of almost everything that had to do with that and just thinking about…people they look fine. And then…
Popular Culture Beat: But you know, it’s so honest just you strip down your emotions. You’re just very honest and transparent. Ok, let me see some other songs here. “Gain Of Function,” that’s pretty clear about the recent virus.
Jason Sydney Sanford: Yeah, that’s me again. Having concerns about science and technology on a global scale.
Popular Culture Beat: I wish I could tell who sang what. So I could tell what songs are yours ?
Thalia Zedek: I didn’t sing quite as many lead vocals on this record though. I did some choruses and, I do the choruses, I do write those but um, I did the countdown on “Null.” That was my lyric. And actually I first I wanted to just leave it with just the countdown, but then Jason was like no. I really I really think it needs more lyrics so he wrote he wrote some lyrics in there and then I wrote the lyrics to “Living Waters,” the title track. And that’s me and Ernie both singing together on that.
Popular Culture Beat: Now there’s something about “Null” the kick drum sound that occurs sounds electronic – there’s like a deep bass. Thalia, it might just be the bass, your guitar.
Thalia Zedek: It could be something Jason’s doing…
Jason Sydney Sanford: In the break, I’m playing the keyboard.
Popular Culture Beat: “Deep Swerve,” Jason, are you doing all the electronics?
Jason Sydney Sanford: There’s some electronics there and then also its Thalia playing with her slide bass. Yeah. She’s playing octaves shifted bass, but playing it with slide. So there’s this interesting thing that’s happening where that the pedal can’t track it, we’ll because she’s playing slide.
Part 2 Of “‘Permutations: Noise Rock Masters ‘E'”(Q&A) Coming Soon.
(Featured image by Barreteau Lapasin. ‘Living Waters’ Cover art by Jason Sanford)
A Band Called E Dot Com
E On Instagram
E On Facebook
E On Bandcamp
Silver Rocket Records
Rare Signals Studio
Tape Op Magazine
E ‘Living Waters’ Review At Punkrockbeat.com
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