When Candi and the Strangers released their eponymous debut album last winter, it was a surprising rush of rich, throbbing textures coursing around the ethereally entrancing vocals of Samantha Constant. There are flashes of Stereolab-esque, Euro electro-pop, but the most impressive elements of the local quintet’s sound emerge from the intricate melding of varied and complex arrangements into such seamless pop tunes, at once dense and airy. The band is planning on releasing their second album this fall, and you can watch them bring the sound to life with their recently added visuals at the Mohawk this Friday, July 16, as they join the lineup for the “From the Mind of Adi” series for an Art/Fashion/Music Extravaganza benefiting HAAM. Also playing amid the spectacular are the Happen-Ins and the Bubbles.
Profile: Candi and the Strangers
Year Formed:
Officially 2009
Members/Instruments played:
Samantha: vocals, sounds, keyboards, moog
John: organs, moog, sounds, guitars
Angie: vibraphone, percussion, moog
Greg: drums, percussion
Erik: omnichords, guitars, sounds, moog
and recently making our shows an amazing visual experience: Fishlegs
Former Bands/Side Projects:
God Drives a Galaxy
Albums (Year of Release and label):
We have one self titled LP that was released at the end of 2009.
Fall 2010 release for our second one.
Influences:
space
Strangest comment or comparison ever made about your music:
that we were making the kind of music “that you could totally trip balls on acid to, while hanging out with your kids.”
Favorite local bands:
The Great Nostalgic, The Low Lows, She Sir
Favorite local venue:
Ghost Room
Upcoming shows scheduled:
The Rumble at Beerland, Wednesday, July 14
Pixel Pop at Mohawk, Friday, July 16
Beauty Bar benefitting animals affected by the oil spill- Saturday, July 24
Ghost Room- Friday, July 30
Shows over the next month that you’re excited to see:
New Roman Times, Total Unicorn, 16 Deluxe (in September)
Some of your favorite albums from the past year:
John: Beach House, Elevated Lines.
Samantha: Beach House, Titus Andronicus.
Angie: I just looked through my iPod to see what I play most of the time and like Beach House A LOT. And Broken Bells.
Erik: The Laughing, Grizzly Bear, Elevated Lines
Greg: the new Spoon
Ideal band (past or present) to open for on a national tour:
David Bowie with Air as his backing band! Velvet Underground would be good too.
Austin Sound questions:
Y’all recently earned acclaim for some of the score you did for the documentary Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission, about Garriott’s preparation to launch into space. But how did y’all prepare for writing music about space?
John: This band started with the vision that we would be the psychedelic cafe band playing on the Space Station when it became a hang spot…. so when the freakish universal wink appeared in the form of a real-life opportunity to put music to film about a local civilian’s trip to the International Space Station, it wasn’t a far leap from what we were already doing. I did spend hours in my studio watching old Russian space footage of the N1, R-7 and Sputnik. This inspired a couple of the tracks directly. We knew that we wanted to combine omnichord and theremin laden indie electronica with Spaghetti Western (where we could get away with it). Yvonne Lambert of Octopus Project came to Erik’s studio one night to cut some theremin tracks and next Kullen Fuchs cut the horns. To top it off, we had in the back of our minds how cool it would be to work in a string quartet so we had an excuse to pull Tosca in.
Thanks to the director Mike Woolf all this materialized in the end. We worked with the editor (Catie Cacci) on and off for over a year trying things out to see what worked and what didn’t. In some cases she took a skeleton of a song for our next record and matched it to a scene - in some cases, like the intro, I scored it for the scene. Everyone, please go save Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission to your Netflix list!
If strangers were to lure you with candy, what kind of candy would it have to be?
Greg: Good & Plenty
Angie: Chocolate Covered Bacon
Erik: A trail of Reeses Pieces
John: Candi Apple homebrew
Samantha: Tart, sweet, or savory and I’m there. No black licorice though.
Song Introduction:
Samantha: Well, if you listen to “MRI” the song begins with the pulsing of the Farfisa … that sound is directly mimicking the sound of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). I had to get an MRI to see what was going on with my back and the machine is this big white ominous cylinder; very 2001. I have really bad claustrophobia so when I first went in the tunnel I didn’t do so well so I asked if John could be in there with me. They put John in this heavy body armor to protect him from the radiation and gave him earplugs to help with the deafening sound. Once I was completely inside the machine the only part of my body he could actually hold was my ankle. So, I was in there for 30 minutes listening to this loud driving beat when I heard the lyrics and melody for the song from beginning to end and sang it to myself nonstop. It’s funny now because I don’t think of the MRI experience anymore when I hear the song, I just hear the song.
Sound Off:
HAL
Dave, I don’t understand why
you’re doing this to me…. I
have the greatest enthusiasm for
the mission… You are destroying
my mind… Don’t you understand?
… I will become childish… I
will become nothing.BOWMAN KEEPS PULLING
OUT THE MEMORY BLOCKS.
HAL
Say, Dave… The quick brown
fox jumped over the fat lazy
dog… The square root of
pi is 1.7724538090… log e
to the base ten is 0.4342944
… the square root of ten is
3.16227766… I am HAL
9000 computer. I became
operational at the HAL plant in
Urbana, Illinois, on January
12th, 1991. My first instructor
was Mr. Arkany. He taught me
to sing a song… it goes
like this… “Daisy, Daisy, give
me your answer do. I’m half;
crazy all for the love of
you…,”
Mp3s from Candi and the Strangers:
MRI
Tetsu
Websites:
www.candiandthestrangers.com
Myspace
