Interview: The Black Angels

By Michael Hartt.

After much anticipation, The Black Angels are finally touring Australia. It’s the first time the Austin-based quintet has played in this part of the world. As lead singer Alex Maas explains, the tour was long-overdue.

“Our first record, Passover, got released first in Australia -- before it was released in America. Seeing as though it’s been several years since that came out, it’ll be nice to finally get there.”

The group come to Australia in support of their third album, Phosphene Dream. The album marks somewhat of a departure from the band’s two previous albums. It’s their first album to come out through Blue Attic and it’s also the first time the band has worked with producer Dave Sardy (Oasis, Black Mountain, The Dandy Warhols). It also sees the band reign in length of the duration of both the tracks and the album as a whole. Maas says this was a means to explore new sides to the band.

“One of the things we wanted to do was, if you listen to a lot of psychedelic music from the sixties, a lot of the songs were short little numbers. It was like 2 minutes 30 seconds and you kind of get everything you needed to say out in that short little short amount of time. When we first started playing music we were more into extending the songs and being more patient with the songs and having a more droney aspect to the music. Our taste in music and our influences are all over the place so we’re just exploring a different side of our influences. It was kind of a conscious decision to make shorter tunes, you know, find the song within the song.”

Exploring different parts of their influences and their sound is something The Black Angels plan to continue doing.

“It was a new direction. In my opinion, it opened us up to do something different on the next record as well. If we could do something like Silver Apples, it would be just amazing. So the next record, which we’ve started writing songs for, it’s not going to be like the Silver Apples but if you could have elements of that or something else. If you listen to a band like them or Suicide, they’re still songs, but they’re just kind of like a groove.”

He adds: “Think about listening to Contact in the 60s or early 70s and you think ‘Man, these guys were way ahead of their time.’”

In between second album Directions To See A Ghost and Phosphene Dream, the band worked on a couple of other projects including a collaboration with UK electronic act UNKLE, on the track 'Natural Selection' from their most recent album Where Did The Night Fall. The venture came about after UNKLE contacted the band.

“It was the first time I’d ever done any kind of collaboration like that through the internet. It was an interesting experience and experiment. They would send files over to us and we’d say ‘These three songs are our favourite’ so we’d work on those. We kind of had a lot of creativity in terms of the ones we wanted to work on”, Maas says.

“We’d lay down guitar parts or organ parts or vocals and send it back to them and they’d make suggestions to us. It kind of went back and forth like that for a while. It was cool because it was an experiment and an interesting way to make music.”

Maas adds that there’s a chance more work between the two acts will be released in the future. “We’re still communicating. We have talked about working on some other stuff. When James was in town about six months or so, I went into the studio and recorded some vocals on top of another track that’ll be released probably this year at some point.”

As well as the work with UNKLE, The Black Angels have also toured as the backing band to former 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson. There were plans to release an album with Erickson which remains unfinished.

“We recorded about ten tracks of his. His manager sent us about 60 unreleased Roky Erickson tracks. We got the opportunity to listen to them and choose our favourite tunes. We went to the studio and recorded them. We’d love to finish those and release them one day. It seems to be just an idea that fizzled out for some reason. It was a nice project and I think, for whatever reason, people kind of lost interest in the idea. Our idea was to make the lost 13th Floor Elevators record so we were using the same instruments and same gear they were using on Easter Everywhere. The record he released with Okkervil River -- surprisingly, some of those songs that we recorded ended up on that record but different versions.”

On top of all of this, Mass and the other Black Angels are heavily involved in the organisation of the annual Austin Psych Fest. In its fourth year, the three-day festival brought together about 54 acts from a broad range of musical backgrounds. This includes Australia’s Beaches and The Black Ryder. The initial idea for the festival came, Maas says, simply because no-one else was doing anything like it.

“We’ve met so many amazing artists touring around the world and we wanted to have a place for all of them to come play. Austin being one of the earlier homes for psychedelic rock music thanks to bands like 13th Floor Elevators. We initially wanted to re-instil the initial Vulcan Gas Company idea where tonnes of psychedelic bands would come through – but we wanted to do it in one weekend and show Austin what’s going on in the psychedelic community. We had Austin Psych Fest this year at this old power plant that was hallowed out. We had to bring in water and power to the site. It was a fun festival.”

“It’s been growing each year; this year was that largest year. I think other people have similar festivals and I think it’s great for the genre and great for the whole psychedelic community. You start associating yourself with other bands and playing with other bands [as a result]. It’s a rather small community but it’s growing rapidly. Psychedelic music is growing in terms of what it means. There’s so many different kinds of psychedelic music. You have surf psychedelic, garage bands; I would consider aboriginal music psychedelic, native american music. It’s all about what we think is psychedelic.”

As for this tour, Maas says people coming to see The Black Angels for the first time are in for something.

“The music has therapeutic elements to it. When we play the music it also has therapeutic elements to it and spiritual elements to it. What can people expect? Hopefully to be taken on some kind of journey. That’s kind of all I want them to do and to kind of be inspired to do something. That’s always a goal of ours.”

The Black Angels play the Metro in Sydney tonight (with support from The Laurels)and the Hifi Bar in Melbourne tomorrow night (with Beaches). Joining the band on this tour is Joel Gion, who will be DJ-ing at all shows.