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French Horn Rebellion, the latest electro-pop buzz band from Milwaukee, recently took the time to talk to BYT about O’Hare Airport, producing MGMT,  french horns and hot jams. Said hot jams can be experienced via their self-released, self-titled, self-everythinged 2007 album.

The French Horn Rebellion plays a show with Tigercity tonight at DC9.

1) David, you’re also a composer for advertising? How did that come about and how does it compare with being in FHR?

My first and foremost goal is to create and be apart of projects that inspire me… but my mom didn’t totally understand that.

2) Both of you had a pretty classic musical upbringing. Were you in bands as teenagers or was this kind of music something that became of interest later on in your life?

Robert says: I think I’ve always been interested in being in a band.  Way back when I was 7 years old, our mom got us the very first version of Logic (at that time it was called Notator Logic) for Apple IIGS.  It was her goal that we would use it to compose classical music and make arrangements for Broadway hits. That was really the spark for me, I just ended up making MIDI arrangements using our old Yamaha keyboard’s sounds for Disney songs.  From there I started writing my own stuff on the keyboard, and eventually got into all kinds of genres of music– including a Ben Folds Five cover band in high school.

David says: As early as I can remember I had a strong fondness of music.  Our parents had a few records/cassettes of the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and Abbey Road and a bunch of the real early stuff where they sing “Ain’t She Sweet” etc . . . I remember setting up pipe works instruments and pipe works mics and mic stands and performing karaoke to recorded music of the Beatles and Beach Boys with the television being our audience.  I guess things haven’t really changed much in that regard.

3) I read somewhere that O’Hare Airport in Chicago was a surprisingly large influence on the music. Can you expound upon that?

Robert says: There’s a tunnel in Terminal 1 of the airport that plays this super ambient, dreamy, future music while you travel on this moving platform.  It’s unbelievably inspirational. When you get on that platform you know you’re about to embark on a fantastic journey.

David says:  I think it also had to do with the fact that when we were traveling through O’Hare airport as kids it was generally en route to visit our grandma in Florida which meant also a trip to Disney World.

4) As far as I’m aware, there’s only two of you and the songs on the record sound so full. How do you recreate it live? Would you ever consider hiring a full-time drummer or another multi-instrumentalist or something?

We do play with a drummer for about half of our shows, his name is Paul Hammer and he is fantastic!  He plays most of the time in his band, Savoir Adore.  Also Deidre Muro sings in some shows with us as well  . . . she also is in Savoir Adore. But we return the favor and play in their band too.

5) How far do you plan to take the french horn? Are you worried it’ll turn into a gimmick by the next album?

Robert says: The french horn is the central reason for why the band exists.  The music itself is completely about playing the french horn.  Growing up, I spent a lot of time practicing and practicing the horn, and learning how to make it sound beautiful.  But, it was always frustrating for me because in 30 minutes, I could slam out a hot jam on my laptop.  Many people don’t even understand the amount of time a horn player must invest in his instrument just to sound decent.  As a horn major, I would get up before class every day and warm up for an entire hour, then practice an additional 2 hours between 4 or 5 hours of rehearsal a day.  If you don’t warm up your instrument, you sound terrible for the whole day.  If I just spent 1 hour on my computer, I could slam out a hot jam that would land on some blog somewhere where thousands of people will hear it.  And at the same time, jobs across the country for french horn players are fizzling out as fewer and fewer people decide to slam on Beethoven in their iPods. So basically, I’m a French horn player who’s rebelling by creating hot jams.  It’s a tragic paradox, and that’s why the band exists.  It won’t be a gimmick any time soon because French Horn Rebellion is a name that accurately describes where I’ve come to be musically in my life.

David says:  Robert is actually a really good french horn player and I think he’s a bit touchy about the whole thing . . . but the central core concept about the group I think is a strong one.  It’s about not letting other people’s opinions or expectations get in the way of what you really want to do creatively.  Filtering our individuality weakens our ability to express ourselves distinctively. Not only that, we will not be doing justice to our own wealth of experiences from childhood to the present (and additionally how we have thought about the future along the way). We all have an exciting unique and eclectic set of tools . . . all we need to worry about is finding the courage to use them.  French Horn Rebellion is a mechanism in which we have found some of that courage.  One thing Robert forgot to mention is that he REALLY likes creating those “hot jams”

6) David, you produced MGMT’s Time To Pretend EP. How did that come about and are you still in touch with the band? It wouldn’t be that hard to imagine an MGMT/French Horn Rebellion tour.

My friend Will Griggs asked me if I wanted to record/produce/engineer this band called The Management that he wanted to help out.  So I did and we had an awesome time doing it.  I would love to work with them again.  Right before they got signed to the major label we were working on some new stuff including a wacky version of “Electric Feel” . . . really fun.  That project was my saving grace; at the time I was doing a lot of commercial work and feeling very depressed about the world and about music.

7) You guys have chosen to release your album thus far all by yourselves. Is the music industry these days making this increasingly easier to do or would you ever consider signing to a label?

Robert says: I think we would consider signing to a label if we found somebody that we really dug.  We’ve had offers from a number of indie labels, but we’ve never found one that we truly felt comfortable releasing anything with.  To be honest though, we enjoy releasing this stuff on our own– it’s like Sim City only real life.  We come from a long line of small business owners in Wisconsin– I think it’s in our blood to make the music and release it on our own.

David says: I don’t think it’s ever easy to do anything on your own.

8) You guys released the album back in 2007 but it seems like the buzz is really starting to pick up lately. Since the music industry, in all its fickle glory, seems these days to chew bands up and spit them out in the span of a week, what are your plans for the rest of the year and for the future to avoid being another casualty of the blogs?

Robert says: Well we have another album that we are going to release next year that we are really, really excited about.  It’s about going on fantastical journeys and seeing where they take you— while at the same time jamming out to hot beats.  I think we’re just going to keep doing what we’ve been doing and hope people dig it.

David says: I don’t really feel like we’ve been apart of the music industry.  Part of me wishes that we would get chewed up just to say that we were apart of something . . . incidentally I think that’s the same part of me that is still trying to prove myself to Mom and Dad.  But I don’t think that’s right; we are VERY lucky that we get the chance to make music that we love and release it how we want to release it.  I think about that every-time I work on French Horn Rebellion stuff… the possibilities are truly endless.

Here are some hot jams foe you to sample…

Up All Night-

Up All Night is just about that — being Up All Night.  However, it’s
not exactly what it seems.  At the time, I was dating a girl who used
to go out often late at night with her friends.  One night, I was
waiting for her to meet up at my studio, and was thinking “it’s ok..
you should stay out all night, I’m here in my studio making this hot
jam!” … so that’s where the name came about:)  Turns out, it took
her a while to get there, and by the time she arrived, I had written
most of what is, “Up All Night.”

Broken Heart-

This was a song about the same girl- but when we were first starting
to date.  I thought she didn’t like me, so I wrote this song about my
hipster sadness.  Turns out I dated this girl for over 2 years!  We’ve
parted ways since, so now I guess it takes on a new meaning.

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