Exclusive interview with The Faint
by From the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska, The Faint burst onto the scene with a genre defining album — Sine Sierra — in 1995. Since then they’ve released five more full length recordings (and a couple of remix albums for good measure), including their latest, the beautifully subversive Fasciinatiion, which is out now on Pod through Inertia. We interviewed keyboardist, Jacob Thiele: All I know about Nebraska is the endless farms and ranches. How well does a crunching blend of punk and electro fit into the environment there? ‘Quite nicely I think, mostly by being away from the coasts and ‘real’ cities, it has allowed us to create the kind of music we wanted to hear rather than the kind what might have been in our immediate surroundings. It is also a really cheap place to live, which alleviates some of the financial pressure of being in a band, so we can really put everything we have into the band rather than working all day to pay rent on a rehearsal space’.
Your sound went off in a whole new direction after Media, with heavy guitars replaced by synth and vocoders. Was it a mid-career crisis in the band or a natural progression for you guys?
‘Natural progression, we have never had the talk of “ok guys, how do we make our band cool?”. For most of us, this is our first band, so it took a little while for us to find our voice and to find out what interested and inspired us collectively’.
You self-produced the latest album. Did you feel the personal touch in the final stages was lacking in your previous releases?
‘Not necessarily lacking, but it seemed more appropriate with the material we had to stay on track with our own vision’.
Your sound caters for both the serious pursed-lip head nodders and all-out body gurners. Any signature moves you guys are busting out on stage?
‘Nope. Just letting our bodies do what they do’.
By the sound of it, Todd Fink has quite a preoccupation with the future. Anything coming around the corner that we should know about?
‘Oh, that is the question isn’t it’.
Download The Faint song, The Geeks Were Right.
Tagged: electro-clash, Nebraska
- 4
- 0
Also by FRANCIS ANDREWS
James Mackay’s Even Though I’m Free I Am Not
Award-winning photojournalist James Mackay’s latest project comes at a time when the world’s eyes are fixed on Burma and the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi. By photographing former political prisoners displaying the names of their colleagues and friends who remain behind bars, Even Though I’m Free I Am Not exposes the enduring pain faced by Burma’s opposition movement. Over 2,100 activists, journalists, lawyers and politicians languish in prisons across the country, and on Friday Aung San Suu Kyi will likely join them. Read more
The blind date of the food world has finally arrived, and it’s proving more palatable than the awkwardness of an evening spent in superficial conversation. Secret Supper clubs are springing up in the backstreets of London: what are attics and living rooms by day get converted into makeshift restaurants catering for an evening of surprise tastes and conversations. Read more
Young British designer Adam Farlie takes a leftfield approach to how people experience interaction with objects, often taking everyday items and toying with their potential to harbour deeper meaning and greater usage than first perceived. He transforms a bed into a ‘vessel that captures and contains the audio-memories of past occupiers through sound’, allowing those who lie on the bed to recall past intimcaties or conversations from years ago, while his take on a chest of drawers’ purpose of holding records of people is similarly intriguing.
YOU'RE SAYING (0)
No comments yet.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Rainbows shooting out of toilets. Trashcans everywhere. And what could possibly be a certain part of the female anatomy. Hmmm. My somewhat juvenile sense of humor is totally with New York-based illustrator and designer, Jesse Kuhn.
Haunts is one twisted, skewered, pulsating, gyrating disco tune. Seriously. Jacob Safari, aka Bark, Bark, Bark, sure knows how to take a dirgey chord progression and dress it up in layers of disjointed, unsettling noise.
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
A young female once said, ‘if I were into hot bikie guys, I would always hang out at Deus’. Translation: Guys on bikes like to hang out at Deus Ex Machina because they love the quality custom bike and all the quality trimmings. And, seriously, even the most Toyota Corolla driving of women will be entranced by the beauty of the custom work done by this place. Men and women alike fill the humid, tin-roofed showroom, running their fingers from the rough leather seat thing to the glossy front cover thing to the shiny metal handlebar things. Of course, if you really don’t care, or don’t know how to appreciate a thing of beauty, then, surely, you will love the Deus café. Truffle oil drizzled field mushrooms appear on the breakfast menu. If that doesn’t make you bow at the Altar of Deus, then you can go to hell.
Oh man, this is good. If Jamie Lidell was born in any earlier era, he would have soul brother number one plastered all over his birth certificate.
Jeans are a science, a science based on the deep knowledge of denim, washes and patterns, according to Dr. Denim, who have certainly twisted and turned every single atom of all their jeans into perfection. Each pair exudes a progressive design, made of superior quality at fair prices. My high waists have become the most desirable item in my wardrobe due to the denim’s strength which magically sculpts to your body yet leaves you embracing the comfort of wearing tracky-dacks. Seriously, there is nothing more important than owning a good-fitting pair of jeans. Dr. Denim delivers unisex designs that appeal to everyone.
Mark Mothersbough, jack of all trades, most famous as frontman of iconic 80s band Devo, has recently started designing wallpaper and rugs, which are available from Walteria Living. Read more
WE'RE RESPECTING
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Almanac Market in Philadelphia is slightly pricey, but you definitely get what you pay for. Offering fantastic bread, cheeses, produce, and cured meats such as sopressata and pepperoni, it was a great pit stop when my band played in town, and definitely more economical and tasty than hitting a greasy spoon for road snacks.
Good thing Kris Kuksi channelled the trauma of growing up with an alcoholic stepfather, his disdain for ‘the typical American life and pop culture’, and his fascination with the macabre into obsessive, baroque assemblages, paintings, and drawings. Read more
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
T-post: the world’s first wearable magazine
So here’s the scoop. Every six weeks, T-post subscribers get a new t shirt issue in the mail, with a news story on the inside and an artist interpretation of that story on the front. Yes, we agree. It’s clever, clever. Read more
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
Cast from actual Keys, these unisex rings by young New York-based designer Kiel Mead are a fun way to celebrate an old car or an apartment. They come in Sterling Silver and we have them for sale through the Lost At E Minor online shop. Read more
FOLLOW US
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.
