INTERVIEW: Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities

Currently traveling around Europe with their clever blend of ambience and pop, The Void decided that now would be a pretty good time to chat with Matthew Mehlan from The Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities about the band, their influences and the European Tour.

The Void:Matt, thanks for finding the time to chat to us! First question, how the group was formed?

Matthew: No problem at all! The group was formed through a laborious audition process, over 4 years time, of extreme physical and psychological testing.

You’ll be starting your UK tour soon – on record, your music has a lot of depth to it, with multiple layers of instrumentation. What can we expect from your live show in terms of how you recreate this? Are computers used at all, or do you bring in musicians?

The music is all played by humans, with instruments. The records and the show are often two very separate things, but the record is also all humans, and any computer interaction was at least partially programmed by a member of the band, also human. We have pretty high expectations for ourselves to find something different in either situation, and they’re so different! You can move a lot of air with big speakers at a live show, plus the fact that people are watching to make it…

You’re playing a lot of different dates in the UK this year at a variety of venues. Are there particular types of venues that you prefer to play?

We like to play in places where people want us there. It can be really nice to have a huge sound system. We tend to do best wherever the people are engaging with you – whether in a tiny basement, kitchen, club…

Tell me about Shinkoyo. Is it a label, or more of a collective?

We’re still waiting for the money to fall from the sky! It’s a really good reason to make things and trade ideas and relax and talk.

How much of your last year’s album ‘Lucas’ is your own vision, and how much is influenced by a group or collective environment? Do you prefer working alone, with your own ideas, or is it better to have a group of people to bring in their own ideas and approaches?

I spent a good amount of time holed up alone on Lucas, though it’s not my preferred way of working all the time. You also hear things and learn things way differently when people are around… in a good way!

You seem to have a very improvisational attitude towards your music, and the album has a very spontaneous sound to it… how much of the album was planned? And did it change a lot in production?

Once you start recording a song, no matter how sure you are about all your ideas, it will change dramatically. Lucas changed pretty slowly… like a big glob of goo that needed to be shaped, but the goo takes days to dry every time you move it.

Its hard to define your music – I heard a lot of things in ‘Git’ and now ‘Lucas’; jazz, soul, disco, and an almost ethnic sounding percussion… does this come from the group influence, i.e. people bringing different approaches, or is it a sole conscious decision to combine your own tastes in your music?

We’re lucky to be a group of people who’re all pushing each other to find new things, and for the most part anything one of us finds the others will be way into it. We wouldn’t make music together otherwise! The only thing preventing wildly different kinds of music from merging is your own tastes and hang ups and insecurities – which are constantly changing!

Your music is described as ‘experimental’ a lot. How do you take this term when applied to your music?

Maybe we’re to experimental what Fresh Prince was to NWA? Though experimental isn’t really a good “genre” name is it… I suppose we “experiment” with songs, anything less would be unacceptable! We’re pretty mainstream.

What are the instruments used on ‘Lucas’? I hear ‘conventional’ instrumentation but there are some things in there I can’t pinpoint… some unusual percussion, for example.

When we make music we tend to use what’s around, what we have access to. While we were recording Lucas there happened to be a wide array of things lying around… We had a big metal sign that read: “groovy”, a giant metal chimney, gongs, flapwratchets, jingle bells… Jon (our drummer) had just gotten back from Morocco and I went to the Dominican Republic and we both came back with much percussion instruments. Overall, there’s just usually way more sounds still stuck inside normal instruments… just trying to find the sounds a recording needs.

Last year you released a record as a free download… ‘Deity of Hair’, which is probably the most abstract of your records. What was your purpose in making it available in this way? And what are your opinions on the internet as a whole, in regards to the music industry and the careers of new bands?

This is something we’ll keep doing. I think it’s really exciting to be able to make something and make it available almost immediately. I think across the board of all media, people will start to consider free things on the internet worth as much as anything else… cds, dvds, newspapers, magazines, softwares? I don’t know what it was like in the past really, but it seems tough to be a new band if you’re trying to be a part of the “music industry”… If you’re truly psyched about music and you just make it and put it on the internet I think it’s a great time for that! It just seems like (at least in America), we’re dead set on making all art “a hobby”.

So what are your plans for the rest of the year?

Tour, record, tour, back to work.

Finally, ‘Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities’ is an interesting name. Where did it come from, and can you explain the changes it’s made over the years? …and what’s it going to be next..?

You never know!

The Skeletons and the Kings of all Cities are touring Europe throughtout May and June. Click here to find out just where they are playing!