Infinity Window is a bit of a game-changer. Not that there's anything drastic about them, but listening to their atmospheric lull is bound to effect you. Try putting on "Artificial Midnight" on a late, dark Saturday afternoon with your friends, like I did, and see the change. If your friends are anything like mine, they'll sink into the couch and won't budge an inch. But that doesn't mean they aren't traveling.

What are we hearing? An implosion? An explosion? Infinity Window's music is a calm combination of light and dark sounds. Eerily uplifting church-like synthesizers cross with distortion like traveling sounds that just happen to crash into each other and continue on in a caravan. Their music sprouts a seemingly limitless geography, like looking out at a flat horizon, unsure how many miles away the end of your vision is taking you. It's music that travels in the best sense, without a destination or even a map.

Maybe it's better to be lost in the sound, but I couldn't help wanting to ask Infinity Window a few questions. Luckily, as one might expect from a band like them, the answers hardly give us a better handle on what we're hearing.

Alex Geoffrey Frank: Can you tell me a bit about the equipment you use, and why you've picked the equipment that you have?

Taylor Richardson: Right now it's beginning to vary a lot. It started with two synths, and now we're getting more into welcoming a variety of instrumentation into the mix. I've been playing guitar a lot more in the band recently, at least while we record. I don't know how long that will last though. Personally, I like to switch things up to keep it interesting. As long as we are getting the sounds we want, I think we're both into experimenting with our set up.

Daniel Lopatin: My live rig is pretty straightforward -- I jam a Roland Juno-60 and a bunch of pedals. But I'm starting to think about adding a vocal element, and another polysynth that can rip "concrete" style. Right now I'm mostly looking to counteract the melodic element.... so we'll see. But yeah: I'm a synth dude.

How does that translate with your live show? What's the re-creation process like?

TR: I think performing live has been crucial for us lately. A lot of breakthroughs have been coming out of it. We've been experimenting with our sound during sets, and it kinda gives us a better perspective of what stays and goes. More often than not, the reactions have been really positive, though I think the best compliment we've gotten recently was when a friend of ours came up to us after a show and said "Wow, you guys have really changed." He seemed kind of disappointed, and I don't want to disappoint anyone, but it feels good to stay outside of the expectations people have set for you, especially when you're stoked on what your doing.

DL: Typically crowds react to our playing by lighting up. Me, personally, I can't stand playing our style of show in bar-type settings, and its something I'd like to get away from entirely, if possible. On our last tour we played a house show in Boston for the first time since we left the city, and it was the ultimate homecoming party -- the crowd was on top of us and totally slow moshing to drone. Same thing happened in Kentucky at the Fact House. The smaller the room, the better.

I can't imagine the darker moods on "Artificial Midnight" being played live in a bar. And so much of the album is about switching moods, from dark, foreboding sounds, to something way more optimistic and light. Can you talk about what the recording process is like for you guys? What do you have planned out before you record, and what just happens?

DL: Those sessions were extraordinarily bleak. I was going through some pretty heavy stuff, and the record became an obsession and refuge for me. We worked incredibly slow, and the sessions reached a point where we were both so mental that we couldn't be near each other during overdubs -- so we'd take turns leaving the space. In retrospect I think we were just growing -- learning patience, and learning how to push ourselves.

TR: Yeah, That was a pretty fucked time. It was difficult to find time to record. I had already moved to New York, so I had to take a bus for four hours when we wanted to jam. It was stressful to complete, but I'm happy with the way it turned out. We went into it wanting to make a cloudier, denser version of early kraut aesthetics. As far as the changing mood on Artificial Midnight, it could have been the vernal equinox.

DL: That's true about putting krautrock in a fog -- it's like taking the vibe of prog and divorcing it from all the bullshit wankery and cliche. "Sheets of Face" is a little different -- I think of it as a study in Xenakis-style tone shifting and layering. I listened to the record a couple weeks ago and it felt like a gradual descent into some obfuscated, dehumanized zone... except instead of starting in reality, you're already in the murk.

Lastly, who are some of your influences?

DL: Musically: J.S. Bach, David Borden and Mother Mallard, Popul Vuh, The Grateful Dead, Jon Hassell, my dad's fusion tapes, Steve Tibbetts, DJ Premier. Currently, I'm getting a lot of inspiration from Prurient and a bunch of Jeff Witscher-related projects as well.

TR: My friends are really inspirational to me. I feel incredibly fortunate to know a lot of really creative people. It's always cool to get feedback from people you respect who aren't gonna tell you what you want to hear all the time. Musically, Dan and I are kinda in different zones as far as our influences go, though the impact of loner psych does intersect for us.I've always been into to outsider psych stuff, Italian prog and 80's noise. With all that being said my favorite bands have always been Sparks and Amon Duul II. I don't really see that changing anytime soon.


Interview by Alex Geoffrey Frank, March 2009
Photo: Infinity Window

Cool Tunes:

Infinity Window, Artificial Midnight, Arbor, 2009.

Continuing Education:

Infinity Window MySpace Page





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Bethany Cosentino is one half of Los Angeles duo Pocahaunted (with Amanda Brown), known for their long, spooky, and almost meditative drone compositions. Their music is both calming and foreboding, often simultaneously, and can feel like being lullabyed into a nightmare-filled sleep. Amid war drums, lulling guitar, and howling voices, Pococaunted always seem to be beating, guiding, and gathering towards some sonic place, a place where we'll probably never arrive. But if we can't know where Pocahaunted are going, we can at least find out where they come from.

Alexander Frank: Can you tell me a little bit about your progression from more standard songwriting to the drone and noise of Pocahaunted? I know that before Pocahaunted, not so long ago, you wrote songs with lyrics and bridges and choruses and all that. So how and when did you make the transition something more discordant?

I was really kind of bored with traditional songwriting, and when Amanda approached me and asked me to start a band with her, we had no real concept in mind of what the music would sound like. Coming from a strong musical background, I figured I would go in there and attempt to construct something, but when the two of us came together, the Pocahaunted sound just happened. And we never questioned it or tried to throw a label on it, we just played the music that came to us, and came out of us. It was only later that people started to call us a "drone" band.

AF: Does genre mean anything to Pocahaunted? What would you label yourselves if you had to?

Well, like I said before, I think we play the music we play because it's just what kind of comes out. Amanda and I have completely different tastes in music, and neither one of us really even listens to “drone” bands, so I wouldn't necessarily say it's important to us to be categorized as a drone band. We make the music we make because it is somehow inspired by our varying tastes, and it just so happens that the mash-up of all these cross genres creates this droney, blissed-out music.

AF: Can you talk a little bit about those influences? The drone and noise influences are obvious, but I also hear the 20th century diva. Your voice is Buffy-Saint Marie, Elizabeth Fraser, and Mariah Carey rolled into one! Can you talk about some divas that inspire Pocahaunted? I hear Patsy Cline, too. Am I crazy?

Well obviously, I am all about the Diva. Amanda and I kind of joke around that we are both divas, but honestly, it's not a joke. We are loud, and demanding, and we require a lot of attention. But we are also really, really inspired by a lot of female musicians, and I think it's pretty clear in our music. I think there is a real feminine quality to the songs, and I think even without the layers of female vocals, the music itself portrays a very feminine vibe. I am really inspired by Elizabeth Fraser, which I think is pretty obvious. I also love, love, love Patsy Cline, so the comparison is amazing. I'm inspired by a lot of female soul singers from the 60s and 70s like Irma Thomas, Doris Duke, and, of course, Aretha Franklin. We're both also really into Nina Simone, and other women of jazz.

AF: Just knowing you as a friend, your personality seems so divergent from the sounds on your records. You're so talkative and verbal and present in person, but on record you sound sort of distant, far away, nonverbal, in a sense. Do you become someone different when you're recording and performing?

I don't think I act any different when recording or performing. Amanda has a hard time getting me to act “seriously” on stage. I think she takes it more seriously than I do from a performance standpoint. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am into it—but for me it's harder, because I'm the one playing the guitar, and carrying the song, so I get a little nervous and I try to concentrate a lot. We recently started playing with a more basic band, so it's easier for me now to ease up and put the guitar down at some point. And when I do that, I feel like I have more room to get into the performance.

AF: What's the process of writing and creating a Pocahaunted song or album? How much do you have planned out and how much just happens during the recording process?

Basically what happens is Amanda and I will brainstorm ideas, meaning, we will say “we want this album to sound like...”, and then we throw out some insane jargon like "Talking Heads meets Cocteau Twins thrown into a blender after smoking a lot of weed”. We basically don't write songs. I come up with a pretty simple guitar riff, and then we add on top of that. Most of our albums have concepts behind them though, and we go into them hoping that we will come across a certain way for a particular album. We have really tried to grow and change with each release, and I think our personal influences show through a lot more in the later albums than in any of the earlier stuff we released.

AF: One last question. What's the best time of day to listen to a Pocahaunted album? Morning? Afternoon? Night, after a long day of work? Right before you go to bed?

At night, I guess...Yeah, at night. When it's most spooky out. And kinda foggy. And close to some mountains, or maybe the ocean. Yeah: listen to us at night in nature.

Interview by Alex Geoffrey Frank

Photo: Clare Kelly

Cool Tunes:

Pocahaunted, Island Diamonds, Not Not Fun, 2008
Pocahaunted, Chains, Teardrops, 2008
Pocahaunted/Robedoor, Hunted Gathering, Digitalis Industries, 2007
Pocahaunted, Mirror Mics, Weird Forest, 2008.

Continuing Education:
Pocahaunted on Not Not Fun website




Like what we're doing here? Just a lil' pocket change can help keep Visitation Rites alive

Like what we're doing here? Just a little pocket change gives Visitation Rites food to live on.