WQHS Interviews Nick Sylvester of Mr. Dream
This Friday, November 4, Brooklyn punk rockers Mr. Dream will take the stage at the First Unitarian Church playing songs from their new album, Trash Hit. After making their quick transition from the music critiquing world to performing, they’re kicking off their Fall tour Friday night, opening for indie supergroup Mister Heavenly. WQHS DJ Aldrin Abastillas chats with drummer and producer Nick Sylvester.
Aldrin Abastillas: Your band has a pretty interesting back story. Your members moved from writing about music to actually making music. What led you guys to make that transition?
Nick Sylvester: I think all of us were probably making or playing music before we were writing about it. I know in my case, writing was just a way to see bands for free and get people to send you CDs for free. That’s changed now in the way you originally needed to have a relationship with promotions people to get free music. For me it wasn’t really much of a transition; it just stopped being what I did to get into shows for free.
AA: You started fundraising through this website Kickstarter- I was wondering how you got the word out because you guys didn’t even have a recording yet.
NS: Part of it was just that we got in there really early with Kickstarter. It was such a novel idea. It’s just a version of begging; what Kickstarter did was make it cool to do that. They made it almost rebellious and anti-establishment to go around and directly appeal to people for money for funding a project. I think we were just really lucky to have that. It’s almost entirely funded by our fans. It’s just organized begging, not unlike asking people to come for a 13 year old’s birthday party and asking money for a skateboard.
AA: Do you think your writing background is something you consciously think about? The ideas you write about when you critique an album, is that something you think about when you write an album?
NS: I think about this question a lot actually, about how the writing affects the songwriting process. If you were a pool player, a professional billiards player, you probably learned geometry and even studied math, but at a certain point it’s just innate in a way that you’re not referring to previous opinions and previous aesthetics. I experienced a lot of music pretty quickly, much in the same way as you being at a radio station. I can only imagine the crazy archives of music, from bands who send in just one cassette. It’s just finding out about more music. New music doesn’t come out of a vacuum, it exists building off of stuff that’s happened before. But there’s no way to gauge the system. Even if you know how a critic thinks, there’s no way you can get in there and give them what they want and all of a sudden you’re a “9.5, Best New Music” band. I don’t even know what those people even think or what they value. If you’re writing music for critics, I hope you have a day job. It should be about personal fulfillment.
AA: You’ve been compared to artists like the Pixies, Boris, and Jesus Lizard. When you’re looking for a particular feel or sound, would you pull those records and get inspiration from them? Or do you think it happens more organically in the studio, when you’re jamming and that’s how it came to sound?
NS: I think that is probably a mix of the two. I think that there is pretty conscious borrowing. There are bands that do well by borrowing from themselves. They’ve basically rewritten their songs many times. I think the hope is that every person or every band and combination of people is unique. The three of us being in a band at once in 2011, hopefully that will put a weird angle on our music and take us beyond our influences. I know all those records inside out so I know how to make us sound like that. All that stuff is built into my DNA at this point; those ideas have been swimming in me for years. You have no control over it and the hope is that you being a unique person will put a unique perspective and put your music in a new territory.
AA: Because you’re as a huge of a music geek as I am, you probably have an eclectic taste of music. Is there anything random that you’re currently into or have been that someone wouldn’t expect listening to your record?
NS: As song-based and as concise as our songs are, since they’re usually melody driven, I really, really like loud, noisy music. There are these bands that I’m currently into that write pop songs for a different planet- it’s something very catchy but crazy. My parents never played me The Beatles or The Rolling Stones; I actually grew up listening to a lot of disco and funk. I used to be involved in the Philadelphia jazz scene, which was something I did on the weekend. I also played in this wedding and Bar Mitzvah band, so we needed to know the Top 40 charts pretty well. I guess those are my hidden pockets. As for our bassist, he knows men’s choral music pretty well and that’s his hidden talent.
AA: When I was listening to your record it sounded very lo-fi with thick distortion and overdrive, but overall it came across very clean, which is something that sounds contrary. Would you agree?
NS: Yeah I think that it’s really hard to make a loud noisy record and have it not sound terrible. For whatever reason it’s very difficult, like black magic. Part of it was that it was a deliberate decision. It’s all about range. If we’re going to have a pretty melody, it should sound pretty disgusting. I guess since this is an Ivy League station, I can be a little pretentious, but I think that distortion glows in a beautiful way. If you know the Boris record Pink, the distortion on those tracks, I just love the way that their guitars just hum.
AA: I actually just saw Boris play last Friday with Liturgy and Asobi Seksu.
NS: Wow, awesome. Liturgy is just a super good band. I think they over think their music a little bit. But they’re super good, and I’m really glad you got to see them.
AA: I heard someone say once that metal heads are the most pretentious fans out of any genre for some reason.
NS: I read a funny response to the Liturgy guy’s essay about the state of transcendental black metal. The writer said it’s embarrassing if you’re in a metal band and you still play out of a combo amp. The Liturgy guitarist plays out of a Fender Twin Reverb, which is just one of the most beautiful amps and its loud as anything.
AA: Yeah I guess I’m the same about metal; I take it with a grain of salt sometimes.
NS: I just have to hope and trust that the people who are deciding that it’s a thing we should care about are being discriminatory, because sometimes it feels like there’s not really context for it in my life.
Well, it looks like we’re out of time, but it was great talking to you.
AA: See you at the show!
- Aldrin Abastillas, GO EZPASS! (Wednesdays 10-Midnight @ WQHS.org)
