Words: Rick Taylor
Photos: Bill Jenne (except live photo by Justin Dodd)

I was quite saddened (and very surprised!) when DC-area noise merchants Alcian Blue decided to call it a day in the fall of 2006. Bizarrely, the break up came only months after the band had released an impressive self-titled debut album and seemed poised for wider recognition. DC-area shoegaze fans, myself included, held a special place in our hearts for that band. They weren’t just one of our favorites, they were one of our own!

But if there’s one thing that can make the bitter pill of a break-up a little easier to swallow, it’s the formation of a new group featuring members of the defunct band you’re pining the loss over.

Fans found solace in the announcement that Jake and Kim Reid, the talented husband and wife musical duo behind half of Alcian Blue, would continue making music together under the enigmatic moniker Screen Vinyl Image. The new band would feature a stronger emphasis on keyboards and experimental sounds, the Reids said, while delving into science fiction themes. The early work of John Carpenter was touted as a key source of inspiration.

Needless to say, the Reids didn’t disappoint. Though Screen Vinyl Image were never going to be a band for the shoegaze purists (they’re a little too “weird” for them), fans of dark, wall-of-sound pop and moody, cinematic atmospherics have found a lot to love about the Reids’ new band. At the same time, the group’s more expansive approach to creating new kinds of otherworldly sounds has ultimately resulted in even more compelling music.

Indeed, the sound of Screen Vinyl Image is just as hard to pin down as the meaning behind the band name itself. And I suppose that’s the point—these are musicians that revel just as much in the unknown and the path less taken as they do the familiar murky shadows their music always seems to conjure.

Just two weeks ago, fans were given an exciting surprise with the announcement that a third member would be joining the group: percussionist extraordinaire Nathan Jurgenson, who previously played with members of Chicago shoegaze outfit Airiel. The band’s monstrous live show, already a source of some controversy in some quarters, now threatens to be even more devastating and unpredictable with the addition of Jurgenson.

On the eve of their Friday night Velvet Lounge show (and DC live debut of Jurgenson), BYT was fortunate enough to speak with Jake and Kim about their fantastic debut album “Interceptors,” (released on the Reids’ own Safranin Sound label on Valentine’s Day!), their new band member and love of all things sci-fi and John Carpenter…

BYT: When Screen Vinyl Image first started making music shortly after the dissolution of Alcian Blue, did you already have a set idea of how you wanted the band to sound or has it been a gradual process of discovery?

Kim: After Alcian Blue Jake and I wanted to focus on more electronic music and infuse that with the fuzzed-out guitar aesthetic. We developed the sound over time through experimentation with our various synthesizers, pedals, and sampling. We started sampling random sounds we would hear like creepy church bells in small towns or our washing machine rattling or even the screeching of brakes on a Boston subway train and with those random sounds we would create beats or sound effects. We focused on creating original sounds from everyday things and turning those into something musical. We also started experimenting with other equipment and building our own effect pedals to obtain a more gritty sound that is often absent from a regular effect pedal.

And, we wanted to explore different subject matter with SVI and much of this has been influenced by cinema and obsessively watching old Twilight Zone episodes.

BYT: Outside of the songs themselves, what I find most striking about the Screen Vinyl Image sound is the scope. Many of your feedback-friendly contemporaries are making music within a fairly rigid set of parameters tied to traditionalism, whereas your band takes a more expansive approach. On your debut album, listeners can hear the influence of dub, krautrock, Detroit techno, psychedelia, trip-hop, modern electronic music, space rock, post-punk, and late 70s/early 80s John Carpenter soundtracks, just to name a few. With such an obvious love and appreciation for so many different styles and musical eras, is it ever a challenge to figure out just what the Screen Vinyl Image sound is?

Jake: We generally have an idea to start with, and then from there we will go into a number of different directions and see how things sound. It never feels like a challenge, but more of an experimentation in figuring out how certain influences might seem right for one song, but not for another. And once the song goes through a process of demos, I think our personalities tend to come through and tie everything together.

Kim: One thing we discussed at the beginning of SVI was that we did not want to limit ourselves in any way. We definitely did not want to approach music with set rules and boundaries.

BYT: Speaking of John Carpenter, not many bands list the director of such classics as “Halloween,” “Escape From New York” and “The Thing” as an influence. The track “Cathode Ray” features a sample from “The Thing” and the Screen Vinyl Image logo was designed around the “Escape From New York” font. Can you tell BYT readers what it is about Carpenter that you find so compelling?

Kim: Carpenter’s use of synthesizers to create moody and atmospheric soundtracks is amazing. The beats and sounds on soundtracks like Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween are very memorable. Carpenter creates a distinct and unique sound, which emphasizes the moment and underscores the tone of the entire film. We’ve been influenced by his use of synthesizers but also by his use of simple electronic beats.

Jake: Carpenter for me always seems so grand and epic from his plots to his characters and especially his framing in his films. He also was a very DIY type person up to and including writing his own soundtracks and recording them with synths and drum machines. That aesthetic really appeals to us. Plus, Halloween has always been one of my most favorite movies ever. 

BYT: Jake, I know you are quite a technologically savvy musician. I was wondering what impact technology has had on the songwriting process? Do you guys ever write songs on the guitar at this point or is it all done in front of a computer or a keyboard? I would image it would depend on the song…

Jake: It definitely depends on the song. Fever, for instance, is a very guitar heavy song and it was written on guitar. Slipping Away, however, was put together using a sequencer and a bass synth. We really enjoy that process of turning knobs and messing with effects and patching things together, and a lot of times that process usually hashes out a beat or a bass line or a lead line that fuels the basis of a song or an idea for a future recording.

BYT: The band has a new member, Nathan Jurgenson, that joined a couple weeks ago. What can you tell us about him? What does he bring to the Screen Vinyl Image sound?

Jake: We met Nathan at the Sunny Day In Glasgow show we did last year. He used to play music with one of the guys in Airiel from Chicago. When he moved here they told him to look us up and we started hanging out going to shows and talking about music. We eventually got together over at One World Studios and tried doing some songs with him playing to the electronic samples and beats. It worked out really well so we continued to adjust our live set up to have both live drumming and samples. Nathan not only has a ton of great ideas, which is going to be amazing for the next album, but he simply is an incredible drummer. We just did our first show at Pianos in NYC, and a lot of our friends who saw us recently couldn’t believe how quickly and naturally he fit into the band.

BYT: The Screen Vinyl Image live show has gotten a lot of attention for how loud and kick ass the sound is—but it’s an equally impressive experience from a purely precision-based standpoint. Can you talk a bit about the prep work that’s involved with your shows and preparing for a tour. I hear that you guys practice some pretty long hours…

Kim: We do practice quite a bit especially before shows. Prior to Nathan joining the band, Jake and I would practice 1-2 hours every day at least two or three weeks right before a show and sometimes two to three times a day on Saturdays and Sundays. We would always practice, but would step up the intensity to every day before a show or tour. Since we use samples and electronic beats it is important to be tight as the sampler and drum machines do not make mistakes. Jake and I wanted to be so tight that we could play the songs under any circumstances, i.e. extreme exhaustion, intoxication, etc.

We have also spent quite some time creating a collage of abstract projections. We periodically update the visuals and recently extended the visuals to accommodate longer set times. In addition to projections we created, we also have strobes, which we customized for our shows to provide extra atmosphere and to accent the visuals.

Jake: We also would spend a lot of time just tweaking everything for our live show. Sometimes drums needed to be adjusted or programming needed to be fixed. Sometimes bass samples didn’t sound as good loud as they did quiet. If something didn’t sound right or felt even slightly off we would make sure to fix it until we felt like it was 100%.

BYT: I know the band has had some memorable tours and great shows recently. I was wondering what you’re best experience has been so far—any standout moments on the road you’d care to share? What about least favorite moments on the road?

Kim: Jake and I enjoy playing live and since June 2007 I believe we have played over 50 shows.

In 2008 we had opportunities to play shows and tour with amazing bands. We had an awesome tour with the December Sound and another amazing tour with Ulrich Schnauss, Auburn Lull, and Luxa. We also had a fun tour with Thunders from Indianapolis. It was fantastic to watch these bands perform each night and all the bands were incredibly cool and nice. We also had an opportunity to play CMJ this year with Phillip Eno, Dead Leaf Echo, Luxa, and Soundpool, also all amazing bands and people.

One of the most interesting shows we played was at Soundpool’s loft in NYC. For the show, the bands were requested to bring visuals. Prior to this Jake and I used an oil projector and strobes. This show prompted Jake and I to create our projections, which we spent over a month creating.

We played some awesome shows with Ceremony and have more shows scheduled with them in March and April. We are also looking forward to playing shows this year with Music for Headphones and the Water.

The least favorite moments would be long drives at night after a gig either to get home or to get to the next gig. When touring with Ulrich, Auburn Lull, and Luxa we had a brutal drive from Boston to Washington DC. We left Boston at 3:00 AM after playing a show and arrived in DC at 11:00 AM. Ulrich and the members of Auburn Lull were following us in two vans. We kept stopping to trade drivers and run around the rest stop parking lot to wake up. We were so psyched when we made it to DC and could finally pass out for a few hours before the next show.

I think a moment for me personally that wasn’t pleasant was playing a show at a venue that had that old brown sticky fly paper hanging from the ceiling in the bathroom. I walked into the bathroom, saw half-dead flies struggling on the brown paper, turned around, and left. The venue and bands were great, but I just couldn’t deal with old school fly paper.

BYT: I also wanted to talk about your label, Safranin Sound, and how that came about. Can you talk a bit about the impetus behind the label and how things are going with it currently?

Jake: Safranin Sound started up back in our old band Alcian Blue. We didn’t have a label for a long time so we just released everything ourselves. After Alcian broke up, we decided to turn Safranin into a collective type label with our friends where bands would help each other with anything from shows to videos to silk-screening shirts to album design. The label is very DIY, though we handle the business side of it when we need to. Currently, we are going to be making a shift into focusing on doing all digital work for the bands still on the label and also doing digital work for Custom Made Music who put out the Ceremony/Screen Vinyl Image split 12 inch as well as Interceptors.

BYT: Speaking of Custom Made, I’d also like to thank you big time for putting out your music on vinyl via those folks. You’d get a lot of dirty looks with a name like Screen Vinyl Image if you just went the cd or mp3 route (laugh).

Jake: Thanks! We definitely wanted Interceptors to come out on vinyl and we couldn’t have done it without Dave over at Custom Made. The Ceremony split turned out amazing and he knows lots of great people, like the guy Mark that mastered both the split and Interceptors. Custom’s going to be putting out the new Ceremony record as well as a re-issue of Skywave’s Echodrone too. Safranin Sound will be teaming up with Custom Made to do future releases which will be great for both labels.

BYT: So let’s talk more about specific tracks from the album. “Cathode Ray” may be my personal favorite—it’s definitely one of the most propulsive, 100% unadulterated kick ass tracks I’ve heard in recent memory. It also seems tailor-made for the live show. Can you talk about how that one came about? A cathode ray is some type of electron beam as I understand…

Kim: “Cathode Ray” is influenced by the movie Videodrome. The movie is surreal and disorienting. It quickly becomes difficult to discern what is real and what isn’t. For the song Jake and I wanted to create something along the lines of “The Midnight Sun.” “The Midnight Sun” has a repetitive beat and bass line and then we layered textures and sounds over top. The song is quite exciting to play live. “Cathode Ray” was created in the same fashion; however, we did interject a break in the song to give the listener a bit of a breather as the song starts at ten and stays there until the end unlike “The Midnight Sun,” which builds. We experimented here with high frequencies and a variety of effects on the guitars like a bit crusher. This particular song is sparse on synthesizers. There is a sample from Carpenter’s The Thing blended in with the chaotic guitars and noise. We dropped in that sample to add to an unsettling effect.

BYT: The John Carpenter influence really comes to a head on the track “Slipping Away.” I must confess I see images in my head of a pissed off Snake Plissken walking the streets of a post-apocalyptic New York every time I hear the opening rumble of those deep synth sounds. What can you tell me about that one?

Jake: ha ha, that’s some awesome imagery! Slipping Away came about after I had been listening to this Gang Starr record that had a song called “Credit is Due” on it. I really liked the drum sample they used and thought it would be cool to try and replicate it in some way. The bass line was influenced from a Misfits song only slowed down and programmed with a sequencer. Kim had done some synth lines for it, but kept trying out different synths until she landed on using an organ sound which really gave it this processional feel. The lyrics are personal to me, but they are about losing your memory and the void that opens in a persons life when that happens.

BYT: “Fever” has a sort of deceptive quality where it starts fairly accessible in a dreamy sort of way before going all Lou Ferrigno with its transformation into a loud, snarling beast of a song—me likey!

Kim: “Fever” is a love song. I used a Roland Juno-60 and the Prophet 600 to create the high frequency synthesizer lines which float through the song. We then juxtaposed that with distorted guitars and an awesome bass line, which was added by Paul Baker of Ceremony. The beats are really the heart of this song and the end has this crashing sound that is reminiscent of The Cure.

BYT: “Asteroid Exile” is another interesting track. Those synth sounds do have something of an otherwordly quality about them, not too dissimilar from some of Martin Rev’s work. And vocally, dare I say you’re dipping your toes a bit into that old 4AD Clan of Xymox/early goth sound?

Kim: “Asteroid Exile” probably has more tracks than any other song on the album. There are quite a few synthesizer tracks on this particular song. We used a Moog Voyager, Moog Prodigy, SCI Prophet 600 and a SCI Six Trak. I think I may have also recorded a part using an Arp Omni 2. This song is influenced by a Twilight Zone episode called “The Lonely.” This is an early episode and one of my favorites. It is about a man convicted of murder and is serving his time in solitude on an asteroid 9 million miles from Earth. I wrote down lyrical ideas and Jake shaped those into the formal lyrics. When we were trying to think of a name he didn’t want to use “The Lonely” so I suggested “Asteroid Exile.” I don’t think he liked the name at first, but then he started to dig it. The episode had such a great impact with the grandeur of the solitude. We wanted the song to build in intensity and overwhelm the listener.

BYT: “Lost in Repeat” has to be the band’s most dub-influenced track thus far, and again, is another standout. How did that song come together?

Jake: I was messing around with our bass one night and playing this riff that was really fast, almost like an old punk song. We had just finished working on a couple of songs that were fast and rocking so Kim said she wanted to work on something a bit more melodic slow and spacey sounding. We had been checking out some dub collections during that time so I just decided to play the bass line in a more dub type way. It seemed to work so we quickly programmed a rough beat and that became the song. It has mostly atmospheric synths and guitar feedback run through delay pedals that float over the moving bass. I think the hardest part was figuring out the right way to do the vocals, that took a long time.

BYT: “Conscience Collider” features some interesting percussive patterns, sparse guitar and is quite heavy on the atmospherics. It might be the most “spacey” of the tracks on the album. Again, you’re showing a slightly different side to the band by shaking up your approach a bit.

Kim: “Conscience Collider” is a bitter song until atmospheric synthesizers kick-in at the end. I wrote down the lyrical ideas for Jake after watching the tripped-out Disney animated Alice in Wonderland movie on TV. I hadn’t seen it in awhile and it prompted feelings of regret for some reason. The song was originally demoed over a year ago, but we could never really get it to sound the way we wanted it to. It really came together after the lyrical ideas were down on paper. I particularly like the end of this song because there is a sense of resolution, but that last note I think leaves doubt.

Jake: The drums were actually inspired by a mix I downloaded by Dave Nada. I went to high school with Dave and I still try to keep up with what he’s doing musically when I can. I really have no knowledge of the Baltimore Club scene, but as soon as I heard that different 4 on the floor beat, I knew I wanted to use it somehow. Instead of making it prominent though, I ran it through a bit crusher distortion to make it sound like it was being blown apart.

BYT: You guys should feel very proud of the album. Nice work! How does it feel to look back on the finished product after all the effort that went into it?

Kim: It is good to have the album finally done. We’ve been working on it for some time. We tend to get lost in the writing/ recording process. We’ll keep recording tracks and layering or we’ll re-record songs a few times.

Jake: We spent over a year working on this so it feels great to see the finished product. We spent hours trying out ideas and trying out different processes and sometimes re-recording songs 5-6 times until it sounded the way we wanted it to.

TONIGHT!!!
Screen Vinyl Image
Payloa Reserve
Sik Sik Nation
Nerd Parade
@ VELVET LOUNGE
915 U St. NW
Washington DC 20001
9pm, $8
www.myspace.com/screenvinylimage
www.velvetloungedc.com