BTS: So maybe you could start off telling us how your tour has been.
John: This is like fucking the best tour of our lives. Like light years beyond anything we’ve done. This is like our tenth or eleventh tour and its also our longest. I think we’ve been on tour now for like two in a half months and its pretty much going to be unbroken. I think we have one day off between now and Europe. I’m getting on the plane tonight and we’re going to do two more shows and then go to Europe. It’s pretty unbroken. It’s going to be like a five month tour.
BTS: Is this your first time playing in Europe?
John: In Europe, we’ve played the UK. We did a DIY two week UK tour that was just really haphazard last fall and then, this is our first real European tour, where we do the whole thing.
BTS: Is there anything in particular so far that has been different?
John: The majority of this tour has been with Crystal Castles and we’ve never really done a tour that big or a support tour like that. That’s fucking crazy, to play for that many people every night and have shows that big. That was incredible. Also we’ve been fans and friends for a long time but to get to hang out with them and see them in person everyday, that’s been awesome. Our previous tours, up until two tours ago, still last tour, still even now we’re playing tons of basements and random shit in a lot of towns. We still play a lot of basements on this tour cause we like to do it but yeah it’s a pretty different deal. Especially with Crystal Castles.
BTS: I saw you guys, I think you guys were fairly new… I think it was one of your first shows at Il Coral and you guys had a different sound, I think, compared to what you’re doing now and the new record. Was that a deliberate move or did that just organically progress into what you’re doing now?
John: Yeah um, the thing is, like at that point… when we first started we had a totally different sound but no one ever saw that. It never really saw the light of day. By the time you saw us at Il Coral, that was like really early HEALTH but every song on that set, minus one is on the album and we still play them. People always say “you guys have totally changed” and I think its just that the new songs we wrote are different but we still play all those songs and they are all usually in the set. I’m not exactly sure what changed. I think it’s that the new songs were different so maybe the overall experience is different whereas all the early songs were mostly really fast and thrashy so the whole experience was like, I guess thrash or whatever. Now they’re a lot more dynamic.
BTS: I’ve read a ton of other interviews about how you’re viewed as being representatives of the Los Angeles noise scene. How do you feel about that?
John: That’s pretty cool, but here is what I’ve got to specify, people say Los Angeles noise scene and there’s a lot of dudes in L.A. that would get really fucking pissed if they heard you say that. I just say L.A. scene because the L.A. scene has a bunch of different sub genres and the noise guys and the noise scenes is actual noise guys doing stuff with pedals, Pedestrian Deposit and a million people. It’s really awesome. All the stuff that Bob Bellerue really spearheaded with Il Coral, that was supposed to be an noise and sound art venue and then it branched out to bands and that’s when we started playing there so its like, I like being an ambassador of the L.A. scene but the big thing everyone is talking about is the Smell scene which is, well we’re all part of the smell scene but the whatever… “rock” part of the Smell scene. I feel like it could be divided into ravesploitation like Captain Ahab, the punk or the rock like Mika Mika and Abe Vigoda, the noise which is actual noise like Toxic Loincloth and Human Hands. All those guys who keep changing their band name every week and are impossible to follow and release hundreds of cassettes and then this electronic thing and I feel like there’s like two more I can’t think of right now. But the L.A. scene is really varied and I guess one part is really gaining the attention and the other stuff is harder to report on. I feel good being an ambassador to the scene. I’m really stoked that people actually give a shit about L.A. now whereas two years ago they would totally shit on it.
BTS: You’re definitely not a noise band.
John: We’d like to be representatives of the noise element. We’d like to be called a noise band but noise guys tell us were not a fucking noise band. All the L.A. noise guys, who are our friends and we’re very much a part of that world and we play with them a lot. They tell us we’re not noise. And the thing with those subgenres, we don’t exactly fit into one really, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s friends. Everyone is part of the same scene. We just don’t fit into any of them.
BTS: It seems like there is a lot of crossover with stuff like that.
John: Yeah, like other scenes where its really banging across the country I feel like there’s more of a unified sound. Like Baltimore, even if bands sound different there’s like a thread through the Baltimore bands. Its really awesome. There is a Baltimore sound. I mean there are aesthetic things that are similar about L.A. bands, there is a style and culture but the bands sound really different.
