Seminal San Franciscan Crew Fights Evil on New Album

It takes a band with the proper levels of collective ambiguousness to ascend the rickety ladders of the DIY underground. With the release of their 10th full-length studio album–and first for Chicago-based Polyvinyl Records after serving their formative years on seminal indie label Kill Rock Stars–Deerhoof has seen firsthand the ripening fruits of their labor.

So we did. Submerge caught up with Jack-of-all-trades John Dieterich in anticipation of the release of the new album–Jan. 25, 2011–as well as the band’s stop at Harlow’s on Jan. 27, 2011.

I understand the band left San Francisco recently. Where are you based now and how has the change in environment influenced the band, if at all?
Yeah, none of us lives in the same city anymore. I’m living in Albuquerque, N.M., now, which has been very interesting and completely new for me, as I’d never lived anywhere in the Southwest before. As for how this distance has affected the band, I think we’re in the process of finding that out. Our writing process has always been one in which each of us works alone, for the most part, so there’s not so much that’s different there. The situation has definitely forced us to be very productive when we’re together, so there’s maybe a little extra pressure in that sense.

The band has said in the past that the listener and audience play a large role in the interpretation of Deerhoof’s music. Explain the process of having no process in terms of creating your music.
I suppose that having no process in and of itself is a process, in that the same kinds of emotions and issues come up time and time again when we get together to work on an album. None of us really has any specific agenda, so we have to work out together what we want the album to be. That being said, we all have a lot of ideas, musical and otherwise, and especially now that we’re living in different places, I think we tend to veer off in different directions even more than before. That can make things very interesting when we then try to figure out how to synthesize our ideas.

In the respect of that ambiguity in your style, what collectively and what individually was the band vibing on with the writing and recording of Deerhoof Vs. Evil?
I really have no idea what everyone else was thinking about. As a band, I think we tend to talk a lot, but not much of that conversation revolves around what we’re listening to or what we like, though there is some element of that, I suppose. I guess we tend to treat each other’s material at face value, meaning that we don’t make any assumptions as to what that material is supposed to mean or is in reference to. We listen to it, and we try to make it something that we can all speak through. It sounds vague, but it really is quite simple in a way.

How did working without engineers, self-mixing, self-recording and without any outside input, affect the finished product?
It obviously affected it in a major way, but I don’t know exactly what would have been different had we worked with outside people. We just decided that we had a practice space where we could play, and while there were some issues with it–bands occasionally playing loud next door, etc.–it was also ideal in many respects. We have a few microphones and the ability to record ourselves. The cost of renting the room for an entire month was what we would have paid for a studio and engineers for a day, so it wasn’t too hard to make the decision. It gave us a lot more freedom to experiment in areas that we may not have been able to in a studio situation. Some of us had been working on recording/mixing/mastering projects for other people, and the move to deciding that we would just do everything ourselves was easy.

The new album bounces between a lot of different soundscapes–from disco-tinged jams like “Secret Mobilization,” to the dreamy electro of “Super Duper Electro Heads” to the pop-rock freakout of “Behold a Marvel in the Darkness.” What is different about Deerhoof’s approach to writing that makes you comfortable in such disparate realms?
It’s funny that the three songs you mention as being so different from each other were all written by one person–Greg! To be honest, I don’t think of them so much as disparate realms. Each of these songs as recorded is just one possible way of dealing with the abstract material of the composition. Sometimes we might just want to explore a certain kind of sound in a very abstract way, and we’ll decide that that sound might go well with this particular song, and so we will fuse the two ideas and see what happens. There are plenty of times when we discover that it doesn’t work–for one or more of us–and then we’ll have to find a way of making it something that we all feel is the best for that song in the context of everything else on the album.

It’s not that I don’t hear differences between the songs; it’s that I don’t see any conflict in the process of moving between them.

Satomi’s voice has now moved much more into the foreground than in previous records. Was this a conscious move?
It’s funny, that hadn’t occurred to me! You may well be right, though it could be a question of mix decisions or the type of material or anything that creates that feeling. I definitely love her singing on this record and feel like it shines in a new way.

What would you like to say to your Sacramento fans, most of whom are no doubt bleary-eyed in the face of a new decade, in advance of your Jan. 27 show at Harlow’s?
Why would they be sleepy because it’s a new decade? I would suggest more green vegetables. No, but we’re excited to come to Sacramento! It’s been quite a long time.

Deerhoof descends upon Harlow’s Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011. Tickets are $12, and the band hits the stage at 10 p.m. For more information, visit Harlows.com.

All That They Can See

Don’t mistake San Francisco (by way of Davis) trio Sholi for a wholly identifiable musical collective. Their creative influences weave through minimalist shoegaze, Qawwali and the drone-y spiral of standing on a precipice, not knowing whether or not it’s time to leap. Their self-titled debut full-length, produced by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, is an endurance test of the best kind; a sort of hopscotch through sidewalk chalk squares, hopping backwards with no knowledge of where the stone lies—guess wrong about a particular movement and you’ll trip and lose. Only according to vocalist/guitarist Payam Bavafa, Sholi isn’t interested in elaborating on the brainier elements of his band; but just hopes that listeners will create or find their own spaces with which to understand the band’s sound.

Established fans and newcomers will get their respective chances, as the band will celebrate the release of their debut on Feb. 14 at Delta of Venus in Davis. The album will be released nationally via Touch and Go/Quarterstick Records on Feb. 17, just two weeks before the band hits the music conference circuit with Noise Pop and SXSW. With so much going on, it’s a wonder Bavafa even had the time to carve out an interview with Submerge. He almost didn’t; but as with the stunning collection of angular neuro-rock his band has put out thus far, it’s definitely better to wait it out.

Sholi is a relatively new band, and you relocated during its formative months. How did the distance affect the band in the beginning?
Jon [Bafus, drums] and I started Sholi in Davis, and then I moved out to San Francisco for work. With the distance, things took a little longer to develop, but it was nice to be able to explore some ideas on our own before collaborating.

I’ve read that your relocation to San Francisco landed you a job as an electrical engineer for a sort of mad scientist. Can you explain what type of work you did, and how/if that work found its way into lyrical themes of your music?
I worked for a neuroscience research company. Most of the work we did had to do with capturing and analyzing EEG—brain waves. We studied sleep and memory among other things. I guess just working in this environment all day inspired some lyrical and musical ideas that explored the line between nostalgia and the “science” of how we actually process memories.

What kinds of theories of memory and the inner-workings of the mind interest you the most or are the most fascinating to you?
There’s a book by Pentti Kanerva called Sparse Distributed Memory that my research director gave me. It explores how memories are physically activated by means of association and attempts to construct a computational model of this idea. Pretty interesting stuff if you’re into technical reading.

Your 7-inch released on Holocene Music included a reinterpretation of Iranian ’70s pop musician Googoosh, as well as a cover of Joanna Newsom’s “The Sprout and the Bean.” Is displacement a central theme of your work as well? In what ways do you hope to invoke messages or insight to the plights of not only Iranians, but of all displaced peoples of the world?”¯
The Hejrat 7-inch was a separate project. I don’t know if our music attempts to do that necessarily, but it could be said that displacement is a theme explored in our music to some degree. Not so much in a “cultural” sense, as with Hejrat, but in notions pertaining to the development of one’s identity or a shift in one’s perspective.

Your new album will be released in just over a week, having been produced by Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier. What was it like working with him as a producer? What sorts of suggestions did he give you in terms of arrangements stemming from those initial production notes from your demos? Was it difficult to sometimes submit to ideas you didn’t come up with on your own?
Working with Greg was amazing. Production began while he was on tour in Europe. He sent us notes via e-mail about the demos he was listening to on his iPod. A lot of his feedback focused on concision, which is funny because we ended up with some pretty long songs. He helped us highlight certain elements of the music, balancing expressiveness of instruments and vocals, which is something that I think Deerhoof does very well. We wanted a producer who would be able to mold Jon’s intricate, complex drumming style with these melodic songs without making them sound too dense or overwhelming. Greg was very helpful in that regard. There were occasional creative differences, but in general, he would leave us with a bunch of suggestions, let us work on the songs ourselves for a while, and then come back to help finalize things.

Your music contains a lot of different movements in energy, it seems; are these movements intended to thrust the songs’ lyrical arcs through to the listener in a more cerebral way, or is being a sort of progressive indie rock trio kind of something you’re just drawn to musically? How might the rest of the band respond to that question?
We definitely put our own thought into structures and themes, etc., but none of them are intended to engage the listener in a more cerebral way, necessarily. If anything, I think we’d be happiest if people could listen to the album in a variety of environments and find whatever way they can to enjoy it.