JS: "So you guys have been on hiatus for awhile."
BS: "I wouldn't call it that."
JS: "What would you call it?"
BS: "I would just call it a temporary lapse in perceivable linear time perception. If it's easier for, let's say, your regular human's layman mind to understand that as a band hiatus, then that's absolutely fine with me."
JS: "What's it like being back after so long (in our space-time continuum)?"
BS: "It's exactly like fucking your high school girlfriend. It's like some mad scientist coming up to you and saying, 'Hey. How'd you like to fuck your high school girlfriend?' And you're like, 'Yeah, I bet she's aged well. She was fit in school. Nice face. Nice bone structure. Cool girl. Didn't have an annoying voice. Into cool, arty stuff. Yeah! Let's see how she turned out.'
And then the scientist says, 'No! Stop there! Wait! She has not aged any. She's been in cryogenic storage the whole time. She's still 16. But you're now (in Earth years) a 40-something-year old.'
So that's illegal...but also it's kinda exciting."
What does this cryogenically frozen minor look like, you ask?
If Phillip K. Dick loved Dick Dale and had a theatrical bent, he might start a band like MoAM. It's the best kind of kitsch. The band has managed to strike a balance between whimsy and badassosity that eclipses any criticisms of gimmickry or obnoxious irony.
They've been honing this balance since the early 90s when they had to contend with an explosion of commercial rock music.
BS: "When we started the band it was around the time that 'EdgeFM', modern rock radio was coming. There were a lot of bands that just had this entitlement, self-importance. And it was at a time in the music industry where you could kinda be charmed and become one of those bands like Live or Pearl Jam, this very idolized rock. There were also a lot of people who were masquerading as underground or as a counterculture that they really weren't. In a way, we were more influenced by what we hated than what we liked. We were like 'We hate that shit. What's different from that? Let's not use our real names. Let's be from outer space."
The choice of sci-fi as the lens for this interplay between what's real and what's affectation came more from a glut of source material than the obsessions of an Asimov fanboi.
"I think the imagery you get with science fiction and space is about as voluminous and endless as any genre or form of imagery you could steal from," Birdstuff explained. "Subliminally, we just kept finding good ideas for fliers. We were the kind of band that would make stickers before we were even a band, and I think it worked so many times [...] the ease of it made it work. It was like, 'Oh there's another fucking cool vintage NASA poster we can steal for our flier for the house party show this Friday.' [The band] got designed that way over time."
Whatever the reason for their spacey antics, the band's doom-laden surf rock and high-energy live show drew a sizable crowd for their Monday night show. Despite 2 broken guitar strings, 2 drum set collapses, and a guitarist hitting her head on a strobe light, the show's energy never lagged, and many spectators lingered, hoping for an encore. That would have been impossible, though: the show finished with a strange, sci-fi-inspired bricolage where Birdstuff punctured his snare skin on the tip of a high hat stand and stacked up his disassembled kit into what looked (to me) like a phallic intergalactic transmitter.
Impressive...most impressive.
Man or Astroman's new album, Defcon 5...4...3...2...1..., is available on Chunklet (http://chunklet.com/).
Article by Justin Scherer