5Q

What inspires Beware of Safety to continue creating music?

Adam Kay (guitar)
We all love playing in this band and we cherish creating music together. This simple thought is what inspires us to create new music. There is such excitement when we have something new to work on, an opportunity to do something different. And when the music just clicks, it can be the most amazing feeling in the world. It is like fireworks in my stomach. This is the inspiration for me. The idea that the music will become a new piece of me. The songs and the band become an extension of me. I take it everywhere I go and sticks to me closer than a shadow.

Your last release, It is Curtains, was a great success, what’s next?

Adam Kay (guitar)
I will always look back in amazement at our first record. At first I thought the record was going to go completely unnoticed. We would release it, sell a few at our shows, and that would be that. However, we began to receive some extremely warm feedback on various websites and our MySpace page. I thought this was just tremendous. Then, not too far off, it also began to see it’s respective share of criticism too. I read some nasty stuff and it did sting a bit.

In the end, I was ultimately wrong. It didn’t go unnoticed. For good or for bad, there are people out there who still listen and still talk about the record. I see this as a wonderful success. We are very proud of IIC, because it was our first effort as a full band and we truly love the songs.

As for what is next, we have released our next record, dogs. This new record feels more focused, as we had a specific direction in mind when we began the writing process. And it feels very good.

Now that the record is done, we would like to spend the next year playing as much as possible. We want to get in front of as many people as possible in LA and around the world.

At the same time, we will also begin work on new material. We have a couple of ideas in mind and I am extremely excited to see/hear how they materialize. I feel each new record is a chance to do something different, something powerful. I want to stir up strong emotions the way other records have for me. I look forward to that opportunity.

Post Rock generates creative (and often lengthy) band and track names, how does Beware of Safety come up with these?

Jeff Zemina (guitar)
We don’t really have too many long titles, though I guess there are 2 or 3. Tough to say where inspiration for names comes from because it could be, and usually is, from a different place each time. Each band member named a few songs on the new record so it was really a group thing unless we hated a title and then we had to democratically strike it from existence, which I’m sure happened more than a few times. haha. “dogs” (the song) came from a pretty dark moment for me, originally. It’s not really a happy dog at all. “The Laughter Died” maybe came from a similar vein but it wasn’t necessarily tied to a specific moment in time. It was more about trying to establish the stated emotion over a piece of work, which I think worked out well. So there’s two different approaches. Without lyrics it makes it tough to be specific but if we’re ever able to bring back a particular moment in time for me with just music, its certainly mission accomplished (even if we’ve never discussed it as a group). Obviously the songs are all open for interpretation and we encourage folks to make them whatever they want them to be.

What have you been listening to recently that you would recommend to your fan base?

Jeff Zemina (guitar)
Been so busy with working on the new album that I haven’t been listening to a ton of new music. My favorite instrumental release of the year so far was probably Memory Drawings by the Drift. Old Stories by Giants is a strong record as well. Been spinning a lot of Eels and the more subdued Beck records. Mutations is probably top 5 all time for me. Oh and the track “Are You There” by Mono has been my favorite song for about 2 weeks now. Sometimes songs just take time to hit you and they blindside you as well. I like when that happens. What a beautiful piece of music.

How does Beware of Safety decide which tracks will be on a release? testing them at gigs, or a different method?

Steve Molter (guitar)
Our writing process can sometimes be quick and painless, but more often than not, tends to be pretty lengthy. It usually starts where one person will have an idea and bring it to our writing sessions and sort of introduce it to the other guys. We’ll typically jam around on it for a few minutes to see if anything interesting, or anything unique, comes to mind. If we don’t have anything right off the bat, we may move on to something else – scrap it until another time, or even abandon it all together. But with the stuff that ultimately has formidable potential, or if one of us feels strongly about a direction, or hears something that might work out, we’ll continue to see what types of accompaniment/layers/harmony we can come up with until the piece gets the time it deserves. One piece off the new record – “The Laughter Died” – actually went through serious rounds of change over quite a long time. The introductory part is more or less the same as it was when we originally approached the piece, but the section stating around 6:35 until the end started completely differently. It was sort of a mash-up of Tool and Soundgarden with some super odd time signatures tossed in for good measure. We considered it quite good from a technical and musical standpoint, but it didn’t really gel with the first 6 minutes of the piece, so we ulimtately (after some serious consideration, discussion, and sacrifice) made the move to what you hear now.

Just recently with “Raingarden”, from dogs, we have started to write and compose tracks that are built purposely for studio releases. We are going to try and incorporate everything into the live show, but we don’t want to limit ourselves in the writing process to sounds that only we four band members can create live on stage. We like to add layers and harmony and accompaniment to give the albums as much power and emotion as we deem necessary.

The other thing that we tend to steer away from is having B-sides. I can only think of one track that was recorded that didn’t make our EP It Is Curtains. The decision came about simply because the piece didn’t flow well with the other tracks on the release. For dogs, everything we wrote made the record. We’re very proud of that.

The obligatory political question: Can politics (whichever side of the road) solve global social problems? Discuss

Morgan Hendry (drums/keys/synths)
The short answer is yes, if you are very, very patient and can reach a consensus. That is, however, a bitter pill to swallow for those who are oppressed, discriminated against, or in mortal danger on a daily basis. As rare as they are, the inherent benefit of international political laws (not agreements) is that they have the force of law behind them. That said, law is nothing without the ability or power to enforce it (UN peacekeepers for example, if they count). The opposing argument is to create social change from the ground up by empowering the individual. This too has its disadvantages. How would you combat ethnic cleansing, for example, if empowering the individual means turning them into soldiers and answering violence with violence? There is no easy solution to clear the shortcomings of fervent ideology (read: how the hell did Prop 8 pass in California!?!).

One area that I am particularly interested in is the production of clean drinking water in rural Africa. As an undergraduate at USC, I was involved with a group working for change in Africa. They had asked my technical writing class to work on developing a computer lab to train the population of a small village in N’djili, DRC. I asked the obvious question: where was the electricity for this lab coming from? Did they have basic needs met, like potable drinking water? To my astonishment, there was no answer. Flash forward through the semester, and I had located several technologies and off the shelf products that would be an easy solution to treating non-potable drinking water. Some of these technologies have existed since the Roman Empire, and none of them relied on the centralized processing and distribution scheme prevalent in western society. And they were all very inexpensive. My suggestion was to go and educate villagers on how the processes worked, and to teach them how to construct filtration devices. Their approach: parade the ideas as a PR campaign…

The story is common – it is more politics than technology that is blocking the solutions to these problems. Groups like the one I mentioned are working for the right things, but old politics will not suffice for understanding and solving world problems on their own. The oppressed themselves need to step up (through the right types of aid – not handouts) and develop solutions that suit their local government, lifestyle, economic conditions, etc. After this initial push, there must be a middle ground in the end where the politics adapt to support the change and push it forward.

The obligatory digital media question: We all know that digital downloads (legal or not) are changing the music business, would you say this is a challenge or an opportunity, and why?

Morgan Hendry (drums/keys/synths)
This question really starts with the music fan. For example, do I myself download music illegally? Not as much as I used to, but occasionally yes. There are new artists that friends want to turn me on to, or live bootlegs that aren’t released. Now if I, the musician, am ok with it, how can I blame the non-musician fans out there?

To approach it from another angle, how do you stop music from being illegally copied and distributed? Fortunately, you can’t. Sound by its nature isn’t data, it’s the progression of waves through the atmosphere. As long as the technology exists to create music (recording gear, microphones, instruments), the technology to capture it exists. This seems obvious, but look at what the industry is trying to do. They’re slapping copy protection and regulations on the media. They’re trying to chain soundwaves. I say, let them do whatever they want. As long as I have a set of speakers, a microphone, and free audio software I can take their media and create an “unprotected” copy for distribution as I see fit. And through the internet, I can distribute it to the whole world.

Bottom line, the cat is out of the bag. The industry created portable media (analog tape, cassettes, VHS tapes, DVDs, compact discs, and flash memory) to increase distribution, and it’s that same technology that started this whole “problem”. Let’s take a look at the end game: what will digital media look like in 5, 10, or 20 years? Think about Moore’s law and doubling processor technology. Think about how hard drives have become smaller, more capable, and cheaper. Roughly six years ago, I shelled out nearly $100 to buy a 256 MB thumb drive – today they give out free 1GB ones with a company logo on the side as swag at trade shows. There will be a day in the near future when you get download better than CD quality music online, leaving MP3’s and CD’s in the dust. Combine that with high quality printers in you home for the packaging… What then? Why buy new music at all?

Back to the original question. If we can’t do anything about the technological change, then the smart thing to do is take advantage of it. The same technology people use to “acquire” Beware of Safety’s music is allowing us to release demos and trailers to promote our new album, to book shows with bands from all over the world, and, most importantly, build personal relationships with our fans. And if you build those relationships, the public is more likely to support your creative endeavors, and specifically to understand the value of buying the album as a whole. It personalizes the product again.

There is no doubt that the traditional idea of “the artist” is changing, but there is no question in my mind that this is an opportunity. Those artists who reach people both through their music and through the new technology the internet affords will be the real winners here.