The dance-pop of Rob Barber and Mary Pearson is tinged with an esoteric eclecticism typical of the indie music of New York (where the project was born). Since migrating to LA, their sound has never been more refined than on their latest home-recorded offering, Original Colors. Below, the duo share some words about the album.
How do you feel about the new album, happy with it?
Mary: Of course! It would be criminal to release something we're not proud of. Obviously we're our own worst critics, but finishing and releasing an album is always an incredibly rewarding experience.
Rob: What makes a record fully functional for me, is when we play it live. Then it makes more sense, taking it off the computer. You get tunnel vision when recording, so seeing people react is a really nice gauge on a group of songs.
What records were you each listening to when you were composing ideas for this record?
M: I try to not listen to too much music when we're writing because I find it to be a bit distracting. I get a lot of ideas from books though. I was reading 2666 by Roberto Bolaño whilst making Original Colors. The book portrays Northern Mexico's desert in a really ominous, desolate way. We referenced that idea with some of the album's lyrics and sounds.
Rob: I listen to just way too much stuff. It's constantly on in my house. I pull a kick pattern out of my head, and then realize it came from something death metal like old Obituary or something. I jump around so much in my musical moods, metal, hardcore/punk, house music, dub, '60s psyche folk, it just oozes out in a really weird way. Since we work so back and forth it's really hard to be aware of any particular influences. We just sort of surprise each other a lot with what we come up with.
What were you each listening to when High Places first began, and how have your tastes changed over the years?
M: Our tastes constantly ebb and flow, but we still stand by a lot of the records we loved back in 2006. In those early days of our friendship, Rob made me a 3 hour+ mix that included Black Dice, Amps for Christ, Broadcast and Bobby Brown (an underrated musician from Hawaii, not the other Bobby Brown). We still love all of that stuff. We've always dialogued well with weird psych records, classic and underground hip hop, and experimental, ambient sounds. These days we've introduced more dance-based music and dub reggae into the mix too.
Rob: I think for me the dance music side has always been there… but maybe the production obscured it a bit. Early songs strongly pulled from dance hall beats, and the occasional straight four-on-the-floor dance beat… But we still put a lot of the psyche and dub influence in there even when we are interested in making a house-ish song. Like running pianos through a '68 Fender reverb for example.
All three of your full-length albums are released on Thrill Jockey, what are they like as a label, are you a fan of the way they work?
M: Thrill Jockey has given us total artistic freedom since day one. They always encourage us to go as crazy as we want with packaging and the visual representation of the band. That's rare in this day and age, and it's something that's really important to High Places. The way Thrill Jockey handles the business side of releasing music also really jives with Rob's and my punk backgrounds.
Rob: I really like that they have no specific sound or genre that they work with. You have the IDM of Mouse on Mars and Oval, and then you have posi-black metal like Liturgy. Then on top of that you have the Boredoms… So that makes it exciting!
You've previously worked on music whilst living together, and you now live in separate residences, how has this affected the dynamic of your composition/recording processes?
M: Rob and I have lived in separate places for more than three years now, but we've always lived within a mile of the other person. It's great he's just a short walk away. The dynamic of our music-making hasn't changed much because we've always liked to record ourselves and then blend and layer our different ideas together. When we were roommates, we would leave files open on the computer for the other person to work on, and these days we use file sharing to send ideas back and forth. Now that we have our own places to work, I don't have to kick Rob out of the house when I want to write and record vocals!
You done a number of splits in the past - Xiu Xiu, Soft Circle, Aa - do you enjoy making these, and how does it differ from working on your own stuff? Any intention to do more splits in the future / who would you ideally desire to work on one with?
Rob: We love collaborating! And a split is such a great way to do it and have a memento marking your friendship. But we just collaborated on a song with our deep friend David Scott Stone, who was in LCD Soundsystem the last couple years before they ended. That was an amazing experience, to just get together and jam out a song, and make a little document of it.
http://soundcloud.com/high-places/high-places-david-scott-stone
http://vimeo.com/thrilljockey/all-the-days
In general, who are some picks out of the colourful NY scene you're particularly digging these days?
M: Peter Schuette (formerly of Soiled Mattress and the Springs, Silk Flowers) makes super maximalist funky house music under the names Peter's House Music and Test House. We're pretty stoked to play with Test House in Brooklyn in a couple weeks. Our friends Pete and Willow have been performing soulful, bluesy guitar and voice tunes under the name Bow Ribbons for years, and they consistently blow me away. They're destined for greatness.
Rob: Bow Ribbons is total minimal blues- so good. I really like Daniel (from Mi Ami)'s new project, Ital. Weirdo dance music. Robert Lowe (aka Lichens) is another face - amazing what he does with just voice and modular synth. Matteah Baim, formerly of Metallic Falcons, is finishing up a new record I am very excited to hear!
Such is the diversity of timbres in your music, you use a lot of samples live, is it important to you to recreate the recorded sound at a show or are you happy for it to be a different experience?
M: We write pretty strictly structured songs, but we like to play around with the pacing of the songs in a live setting. It's fun to watch a song evolve as we perform it night after night. We add and take away elements of songs all the time, and we process different musical elements in new ways.
Rob: Just the volume and physical dynamics of playing (percussively or strings, versus effects etc) causes a pretty big shift. Some songs we play faster live than on record. But volume and bass, really make it more exciting for me to play.
Where do you see High Places being five years from now?
M: Ooh it's so hard to predict, but I would guess we would have several more albums under our belts and many more miles on Rob's van!
R: Sadly, I don't think our van (named Hal Herman) is gonna be around too much longer. But we are experimenting with a lot of new ideas, such as a museum show/installation in January up in the San Francisco Bay area. And more non-strictly music projects.