Empty Exchange: NO AGE

There are few things in this world that improve with time: a fine wine, scotch, Daniel Radcliff and now, No Age. Almost a decade into playing together and the LA based punk duo is still going strong.Now, sitting across from me, bathed in sunlight, and full of smiles, No Age fills us in on the making of ‘An Object’ (out this past August on Sub Pop), the importance of transitions, and meeting Prince... First, check out some pictures of their early show @ the Empty Bottle on Saturday, September 14th.

Dean GIF

ASHLEIGH DYE: I ’m really impressed at your guys’ commitment to hand package and create 5,000 LP sleeves and 5,000 CD sleeves. You decided to do this before the album was finished – how did this affect the writing for this album?DEAN SPUNT: It gave me a big motivation to write for the record. Before that we had tried and I think it felt like we were going down the same path as we’d been to before – get together, make a record, do a tour – and I think that wasn’t very inspiring to me and I think that this idea helped me work through it. It gave me a goal besides just making a record.AD: I’m sure it made it a lot more personal, since you’d physically be making what the record was put in.DS: Yeah, it kind of helped give the record some context instead of just making music for the sake of making music, which is not bad but for me it needed something to help it along.AD: So how many paper cuts did you guys get?RANDY RANDALL: I didn’t get any!DS: No paper cuts, more like lots of blisters.  I’m used to blisters from playing drums but these were like weird red marks on my fingers.AD: Ah yeah, from all the pressing and folding. Did you guys design the album art as well?DS: Yeah, with our friend Brian Roettinger.AD: What was the process for that like? Was there a certain message you were trying to send?RR: I think the original idea had started out, we had settled on the name ‘An Object’ and Dean had the idea of constructing a three-dimensional kind of figure, but everything we looked at – we had an industrial design guy come out and try and figure out were the cuts and scores would be --DS: It got goofy pretty quick…RR: Yea it felt like a pop-up book, ya know.AD: My grandma does a lot of 3D puzzles.RR: Yea! Like that.DS: It got too crafty feeling; we were making lots of trips to Michael’s. Which isn’t bad but it wasn’t the vibe we were going for. We over shot the vibe and it became too complicated and constructed.RR: We wouldn’t have known until we tried to do it. The idea sounded interesting. “OK, this thing, it’s a record and you can take it home or wherever and you can actually make it into a sculpture."

no age

AD: I’ve seen an album cover like that before, the band [Flipper] had something you cut out and folded into an old psychedelic van.

DS: There ya go.RR: That was part of the idea.  So we got away from that idea and we were still trying to work on it as a package. The album sleeve in its own right is an interesting sculpture, in the way of making it, folding it. So we got into that and when it came time for an actual image [for the album cover], we had one that was very stark and a very Swiss looking design with boxes and very esoteric and cold even though it had warm colors like red and white but it didn’t vibrate. And Brian came up with this very high contrast idea.DS: Something that would mess with your eyes a little bit, something you would see and not be able to look away from.  You had to notice it.RR: It also felt like having a picture of ourselves on the cover or anywhere in it was almost unheard of. My mother in-law had mentioned “Why don’t you put a picture of yourself in it?” and Shannon [my wife] said “Mom, bands don’t really do that” and I was like, “Funny enough, that is one of our ideas.” And we just kind of ran with that more because it felt like it gave a pull, putting yourselves on the cover.

AD: What was the meaning behind the album title? Was that has specific as the artwork and construction of the physical album?

DS: After making the idea of making it that felt pretty easy. I had accomplished that and I kind of left it, I didn’t have too many ideas after that.

AD: Right, when so much goes into making it and how it physically looks…

DS: Yeah, I just felt like that was the main focus, so once we figured that out. I was writing something for the press release and I’d written something that we released “an object,” and then Randy suggested that’s actually pretty perfect. And we thought about it, for not very long, and were like that’s what it is.

AD: It’s nice when something just clicks like that

.RR: It felt like a world play, too. You say No Age released

Nouns

in 2008. No Age released

An Object

in 2013. It was kind of calling it what it was. Also, the naming process has been that over-simplification. Like

Nouns

– person/places/things – stuff where we came from. And

Everything in Between

was the space we played with. It’s hard to label these things. Creating an individual song takes so much effort and to give that whole thing a name you start to get down to that critical mass of, “I don’t know how thin you can get to put a blanket over this whole thing.” It wasn’t like it was these concept albums like these are songs about flowers.DS: The title worked because making the records themselves the record ends up being about consumerism. How we’re making these things, why are we making these things, and why are people buying them. I think the titled really just nails it.RR: There was also an element to that it was ‘to object’ or in opposition. I think a lot of feelings like that went into it.DS: Yea it was an objection for us to make these records, it’s sort of against what we’re supposed to do.

AD: Right, it seemed like kind of a no brainer… So you guys took a three-year break in between putting out ‘Everything in Between’ and ‘An Object’. What was going on during those three years?

RR: We sat at home the whole time.DS: Yea I just stared at the television. Ha, no it wasn’t much of a break, we put out a cassette, worked on

Collage Culture

, and we toured a lot. We were busy, we just didn’t put out a record.

AD: Do you think what you did over that time went in to writing for An Object?

RR: Of course!DS: Yea, you can’t ignore what you’re experiencing.

AD: What was it like working on

Collage Culture

, writing music to go alongside spoken word

?DS: It was cool; we listened to the spoken word and figured out how long it needed to be then just riffed off of it. Randy would do a part, then I would do part. We kind of collaborated that way. I think we collaborated more on the sequencing of parts, right?RR: Yea we did a score for a film for a movie called

The Bear

. That was 90-minutes long so we had to develop this way of working in blocks of time. When you’re working for 90 minutes, 10 minutes is just a small fraction of that, so you just create these spaces and then there are the transitions. You work in big blocks, you write in city blocks vs. individual bricks. So we definitely used a similar process with

Collage Culture

. Just writing in pieces and transitioning them into each other.

AD: Things like that seem a lot different than just writing songs for albums, so are these things you do to help combat redundancy?

DS: I don’t know if it was that intentional. I think since we’ve started we’ve always wanted to be doing things other than just putting out records and we always have done little things here and there. It wasn’t to combat redundancy but it did lend its self to writing the new record. It split us in half of making songs and making these long form pieces. Before this album we were just making songs, structured rock songs, but at some of our earlier shows, that other scene show, we sat there and just played noise.  So, its not anything new, we’ve just gotten better at it I think.

AD: I think its probably a good thing that you guys aren’t just focused on putting out albums and making records, it allows you to grow more as musicians.

DS: And I think our structure of writing songs aren’t too off from those long form type pieces. We really consider that negative space in between songs, that’s really important. How it transitions how much space is there. That’s all taken into account.

AD: So you guys have been on a lot of tours together. How many would you say you’ve been on? Are there any special memories that stand out?

RR: This is our first one! I just met this dude.DS: Yea, 10 years. There’s so many, chatting here with you!

AD: [laughing] good answer.

DS: [laughing] We met Prince in Minneapolis! We played at his club and he showed up.

AD: Was he a cool guy?

DS: We barely met him, he came and sat down in the back and I went up to him and shook his hand and I gave him a CD of ours.RR: It was intercepted by the bouncer!DS: I went to take a photo and the bouncer just went like this [wags finger].RR: Yea we brought the camera out and saw that and were like uhh, never mind.

AD: Wow! I want enough power to just be able to wag my finger and make things happen. SO for my closing two questions I’m going to ask: Dean, what’s you’re favorite thing about Randy?

DS: That he’s such a sweet person. He’s the nicest guy, really. Very good-hearted human being, the best.

AD: Randy, what’s your favorite thing about Dean?

RR: He’s a big picture guy. He sees things in a bigger way than most people do and I enjoy seeing the scope and the dedication to these ideas. He’s a synthesizer, there’s a place that doesn’t exist and he kind of creates it and has enough charm and guile to bring everyone in to this space and suddenly it’s a real thing.Interview conducted and transcribed by ASHLEIGH DYEPhotos by ASHLEIGH DYE