Interview et Review - Incubus fevrier 1998

The coolest, funky-est, hip-hop-groove-rockin' band to emerge from Southern California. After circling the globe with the likes of 311, Sugar Ray and Korn, Incubus are back doing some headlining dates in support of their newest musical masterpiece: S.C.I.E.N.C.E.
ACE on the Net
A Music Media Service
Feb. 20, 1998, San Francisco, CA
Interview and review of Incubus
In a small club in the industrialized Potrero Hill section of San Francisco, appropriately named "Bottom of the Hill," I had the pleasure of interviewing members of a young band, Incubus, who are based near Los Angeles. They are a very innovative and talented group of musicians who have combined every possible definition of music. Incubus has invented a creative and powerful new sound. Label it as you will - rock, hip hop, jazz, rap - these lads are going somewhere.
Their new album "S.C.I.E.N.C.E." (on Immortal / Epic) speaks for itself. It is experimentation to the fullest, achieving an original sound that catches you by surprise. They explode onstage and consume the audience with an overwhelming variety of musical talent. With the exception of DJ Kilmore, the members of the band have been together since 1991. The band is composed of vocalist Brandon Boyd, lead guitarist Mike Einziger, bassist Alex Katunich, drummer Jose Pasillas, and DJ Kilmore. This group knows how to rock.

ACE: Was your new album "S.C.I.E.N.C.E.," with its complex music changes and its diverse sounds, hard to record?
BRANDON: When we did "S.C.I.E.N.C.E.," we actually found it easier, because we used previous demos that we already had. It took about seven weeks to make.

ACE: How did getting signed to a label come about?
BRANDON: We were approached by various labels and settled with Immortal, because they have the beauty of a small label, but with the backing of Epic and Sony, who have that power and girth to carry it on, and also believe in us.
MIKE: Almost all the record labels knew we had been doing this for six years on our own. We put out our own CD and have been selling out clubs constantly for a long time. I don't think any of the record labels wanted to mess with that. The wanted to just keep hearing what we were doing, just on a higher level.
BRANDON: During the making and actually recording the album, we only really saw our A&R guy three times. He came in, said like, "Good work guys," and bought us a pizza, and then left.
MIKE: Yeah, and we got to choose any songs we wanted on our albums and what order we wanted them in and everything.
BRANDON: And we're showing them that that can work. That we can be totally in control of making this album.
MIKE: It doesn't work for everybody, but it works for us.

ACE: I notice your songs "Vitamin" and "Idiot Box" capture the full potential of what your band can do.
BRANDON: Those are the good versions of how we have always been. We used to have songs that had 300 parts and go on for 8 minutes. That was when we were young.
MIKE: Yeah, when we were younger we wanted to put our whole album's material into one song. But now we have matured and now we don't have to do as much.
BRANDON: I think the biggest influence was Binklefish, who do go in many areas, as we do, and their musicianship is incredible. They would basically go on musical journeys in their music and they still do.
MIKE: I think back when we were really listening to them a few years ago, that's when our music was going so scatterbrained. That's where we started. That's where we got our carbon base.
BRANDON: And then we went in our own areas where we would go off almost every song. Then there's that part where it breaks down and we do have a structure in every song.
MIKE: Call it chaos.

ACE: Who has the jazz background?
ALEX: In school, I was in kind of a kick-back jazz band. I didn't know how to read music and there were some people there that were serious musicians.
JOSÉ: It's more feeling than anything else. There's less solidness and it's more groove and body. I think my main influences are Neil Peart from Rush and Primus.

ACE: Brandon, you come across with good vocal clarity, especially in the song "Anti-Gravity." I think that makes your band stand apart from a lot of bands that are already in the upswing.
BRANDON: Thank you. Nowadays there are bands with a lot of screaming going on, and that's cool. But personally, for my taste, it's never spoken for me very well. As for the song "Anti-Gravity," Mike came up with that catchy phrase and helps out on vocals also.
MIKE: Hey, it sounded a little like the "Starsky and Hutch" TV show!

ACE: Mike, I see you favor Paul Reed Smith guitars.
MIKE: Yeah, watching Santana when I was younger had a big influence on me, and he plays a PRS guitar. Musically, I like Steve Vai and Bjork has influenced me also.

ACE: I understand you did a little interview on seven string guitars with Steve Vai.
MIKE: Yeah, guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer from Korn and we met with Steve Vai for Guitar World Magazine and it went well. It was very exciting to meet Steve Vai.

ACE: What comes first, the lyrics or the music?
MIKE: It's different every time.
BRANDON: Most of the time the music is laid down first, or when we're jamming, it just comes out!

ACE: I noticed on this album, "S.C.I.E.N.C.E.," a lot of your songs have explosive chord changes.
BRANDON: We like to confuse.
MIKE: We don't do it intentionally. I just get bored playing the same chords over and over.

ACE: You have this incredible energy that thrives in your music.
MIKE: Exactly; when we were younger, we never fit into any music scene. There were all these punk and grunge bands around and I love that kind of music, but we never fit into like those types of shows you know, so we just did our own kind of shows.

ACE: Do you feel that you're starting a new kind of music?
BRANDON: Hopefully.

ACE: Anything in the works, like new songs or videos?
BRANDON: Not immediately. Our "A Certain Shade Of Green" video is going to be released in March and we're too busy with the touring right now to do new songs. We also have a new DJ named DJ Kilmore with us two weeks now, that's working in just fine.

ACE: Can you elaborate on why DJ Lyfe is no longer with you?
BRANDON: What was happening with the last DJ was not necessarily ego. What it was, was there wasn't that energy anymore and the cohesiveness wasn't there and it wasn't there for about half a year.

ACE: DJ Kilmore, why don't you tell us about yourself.
DJ KILMORE: I am from all over the place. I lived in Pittsburgh, North Village, for a while, and then I moved to the country, Byersburg, Pennsylvania. I went to college in D.C. for six years and graduated with a radio and film degree. I was scooping ice cream and on a whim drove out to L.A. with a buddy and I stayed and figured out that being a production assistant on a set is the worst job in the world, and it was taking time away from my turntables, which is my love. I don't know the other DJ, but as my standpoint as a DJ I consider myself a turntablist and that is basically a new term that has come up. The turntable is a technical instrument. I look at it as an instrument. It uses tone patterns, rhythm patterns, drum patterns, and things like that.

ACE: How do you compare to other bands, like Rage Against The Machine and Primus, etc.?
BRANDON: Ideally, we sound like nothing you ever heard before. They obviously have influenced us, as we have influenced them. We never denied it. It's good music and it had profound effects on us when we were youngsters.
MIKE: Of course we have respect for those bands like Rage Against The Machine and Primus. We started playing together seven years ago and those bands were just breaking into the mainstream and we couldn't help being inspired by them.

ACE: Brandon, I saw a quote that you said, "To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reins of your life and let some unseen force do it for you." Do you want to elaborate on this?
BRANDON: I needed to question it at a really early age. I grew up Christian as well, but I don't really consider myself Christian; I don't really consider myself anything, but I am a spiritual person. Positively agnostic. I am not an atheist. I believe there is something.
MIKE: I think all of us pretty much believe that if you do well, and do well by others, the favors will return. You yourself are responsible for the situations that occur in your life in some way or another and everything happens for some good reason.
BRANDON: You attract like energies.
MIKE: We all know that we aren't going to be doing this for the rest of our lives. This band, we keep ourselves away from things that are going to potentially hurt us or hinder our creativity.

ACE: Do you feel the music is turning in any way? The way they label things like "alternative?"
BRANDON: Punk will always be there.
MIKE: Nirvana was a band that came up with the term "alternative." I think they basically came up with the term "alternative" because of Nirvana. That was the first time I ever heard that term. Nirvana was one of our all time favorite bands and had influence on us. Everything that came out before that was land rocker or hard rock and they blew the door open for other types of music.

ACE: I couldn't help noticing your jamming during your sound check. It was actually pretty good.
BRANDON: Something that we have gotten really good at is storing the ideas and coming up with ideas during sound check. Mike comes up with a guitar riff in his head and I have melodies in my head. We don't have portable recording equipment which we are trying to invest in. You need to get good at it. You have a moment when you are really good and it is gone by the time you get a pencil to the page. We are trying to get better at that.

ACE: So in what direction do you think you are going?

BRANDON: We are just trying to continue to evolve. Moving in the same direction as before.

ACE: What's next?
BRANDON: After this we tour the West Coast. We have a European tour May and June.

-Randy Cohen-

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