Guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/singer Dean Allen Spunt, the minds behind the experimental noise rock duo No Age, are dumbfounded that they’ve managed to attract such a large, loyal fanbase and rack up favorable reviews from the get-go with music that, at times, may be too out there even for Sonic Youth fans.
Music journalist and former Village Voice editor Robert Christgau explained the appeal in a piece he wrote shortly after No Age’s 2007 dissonant punk debut Weirdo Rippers: “These two senior skateboarders’ distended guitars and obtrusive trap drums are the sound of realized misery, which is so much better than some egomaniac screaming because adulthood is scary.”
Randall and Spunt don’t spend much time trying to figure out the secret to their success, but they definitely don’t take it for granted.
“[Our music] was odd from the beginning so I don’t know what we do or what people hit on,” Randall says. “We have been fortunate that people kind of dug what we were doing out of the gate.”
No Age’s 2010 record Everything in Between – the L.A. outfit’s third full-length release – is probably their most popular to date, scoring phenomenally across the board with critics. Pitchfork ranked the album number 13 on its Top 50 Albums of 2010.
In just a few days, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, the duo is readying to release its follow-up to Everything in Between, An Object. Randall feels it’s the band’s most outside-the-box work yet and maybe its best crafted, which is saying something.
“An Object is weird, even for us,” he says. “There are rhythms and layers of sound on there that are very different for us but they’re fun. There’s a lot of experimentation on this record, not in the sense that we’re trying to be an experimental band but in the scientific sense. We would create a hypothesis where we’d ask, ‘What would that sound like with this?’ without really knowing what the outcome was. There was a lot of trial and error.”
The magnetic psych-punk “Running From A-Go-Go” emanates an unremitting fuzz tone hum interwoven with computer-like chirping sounds. It’s strangely hypnotic, like being the passenger in a car on a long road trip, which makes sense since the first line of the tune is, “Long drive.”
Initially the song didn’t have that mesmerizing quality. That happened late one night in the studio while Randall was tinkering around with all the gadgets after everyone had already called it a day. He took the guitar line from another tune on the record, “An Impression,” and recorded it into a small device called a kaleidoloop, which is best described as an analog recorder looper that allows you to reverse things and slow them down. Randall played the line backwards at a slower speed, then ran it through a harmonizing effect, creating an entirely fresh soundscape that became the song’s heartbeat.
“I presented it to Dean the next morning and he just laughed but it stuck,” he says. “It was also too late to do anything about it.”
Randall often revisits the group’s earlier work as a reminder of how much their music has evolved from record to record. While An Object still has No Age’s atonal and rebel-rocker stamp on it, conventional musicianship is more apparent even when it gets weird as hell. On the aforementioned “An Impression,” they incorporate a syncopated shuffle beat similar to the one M.I.A. samples in “Paper Planes.” You won’t find anything like that in their previous material.
Meanwhile, the machine-gun bassline on “I Won’t Be Your Generator” carries the weight of a noisy shoegaze ballad that peaks somewhere in between the decibel level of Ride and My Bloody Valentine.
“I think we try to create something that sounds personal and that sound changes just like a person changes over time,” Randall says. “It’s nice to check back in over time and say, ‘I still like that,’ though I probably wouldn’t write that today. But I’m glad I wrote it four years ago.”
Randall and Spunt are their toughest critics and they usually sit with new tunes awhile before they consider including them on an album.
“If there’s any question about a song, we ditch it,” Randall says. “We really have to like it for it to end up on a record.”
But both Randall and Spunt agree that No Age’s music is best realized live, which is convenient since they spend most of their time touring.
They play Fernwood Saturday. The openers are Sunfoot, an experimental psych rock trio out of New York City, and Devin, Gary and Ross, another trio featuring cartoon animators, a photographer and sign painter and former art director for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, who play crunchy acid rock akin to early Velvet Underground.
In other words, one reliably intense experience. “I’m proud of what we’ve put out on record but I think the live shows are really something to experience,” Randall says. “I want people to have their minds blown and their ears blown.
“I’ve had people come up to me and tell me they met their wife or had some other life-changing experience happen at our show.”
NO AGE, SUNFOOT, DEVIN, GARY AND ROSS perform at 9pm Saturday, Aug. 17, at Fernwood, 47200 Highway 1, Big Sur. $20 advance; $22 door. 667-2422.
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