Blasting out of Australia with the highly anticipated album Dystopia (QRO review), the Midnight Juggernauts have been nothing short of a force since. Numerous tours, collaborations and remixes over the last two years haven’t slowed the band one bit. As they prepare to release a new album, Vincent Heilmann, Daniel Stricker, and Andrew Szekeres still made time to play five shows in NYC’s fabled CMJ Music Marathon. But it seems that marathons are something this band of three are quite used to. Squished into a booth with these larger than life musicians at NYC’s Sidewalk Café, QRO got a chance to talk all things musical and nonsensical in a setting out of a movie… or a song? Stay tuned for a several part interview that goes deeper into interesting territory.
QRO: You guys have such an electronic sound, how does that translate when making demos and songwriting?
Vincent Heilmann: Every song is different for us. We’ll be writing sketches on the road, actually it often begins with guitar or piano or something. But it begins very organically, and then we’ll get together and jam these songs out. That depends on the mood we want the song to have. So on Dystopia, our first album, we had lots of kind of rocking moments and pop moments, and then also like dance moments where we just follow through with the production to get the end result we are after.
But with this new album it’s… um… it’s probably the approach we took was a lot more raw and live. Where we jammed out the songs and tried to create something which has all these happy accidents along the way, which is not all completely refined and there is a lot more ideas which were developed in that space.
QRO: These are the songs you played [at CMJ at Santos Party House – QRO venue review]?
Daniel Stricker: We played a few; well we’ve been playing a couple.
QRO: Yeah there were definitely some songs I didn’t recognize.
Andrew Szekeres: Yeah there was like Santos ‘cause that was a really quick set. Because they had to close the place.
QRO: Yeah that was really short.
VH & DS: Yeah
AS: It was like 15 minutes. But we played like three new songs I think?
VH: Yeah, I feel nervous sometimes when we are playing a song for the first time ‘cause you don’t know if… I don’t know if I’ll remember the lyrics myself (everyone chuckles) and how an audience is going to respond. Cause they’ll always have a reaction and if it’s a single song they identify, but it seems like the response has been pretty positive for all those new tracks and so did Bowery [Ballroom – QRO venue review]. We had a really good reaction from the crowd so we are kinda surveying what works and what doesn’t cause it’s early days where the live set, the new songs. It’s been a good experience.
DS: With all those tracks as well, we’re talking about how, how does it work. Especially with the live stuff, I guess ‘cause we try to do everything pretty much live. But there is so many toys and stuff like great keyboards to crappy toys through many pedals. Um… just like getting your head around that stuff, I mean it’s really fun. It’s probably one of the most fun things I think. That it’s also when you are playing a small venue like that, there’s just shit everywhere. And sometimes that can be so enjoyable, just the energy of the manic energy. But at the same time sometimes it’s really bad. But [Santos] was really fun.
QRO: Yeah wish we could have seen that yesterday, I remember walking up to you [Vincent] and saying that I know we will never get a chance to see you in such a small venue again.
VH: Oh yeah.
QRO: You guys use so many different effects having such an electronic sound. A lot of bands just press play but you actually recreate them live…
AS: We have sequenced elements, but a lot of the time it’s, for example, we’ll trigger the sequence while were playing. And the sequenced stuff is really only the arpeggiated stuff. So it’s only like the real necessities. Everything else we do, even the loop stuff, that’s all happening live. We are creating those beats on stage ultimately, feeding them through other things so yeah.
QRO: With so many elements, all those pedals, how do you keep them from breaking down? You have so much to worry about…
VH: Yeah…
AS: Yeah…
VH: It’s a big risk with this new set up as well.
DS: We’ll have to get doubles of everything and have it like, placed the same way off stage and dump it there and replace it. When you have a whole lot of things changing together, one of them breaks down, it cuts out the whole thing.
AS: When you have CMJ like that show, when you have ten bands playing one after the other. You have supposedly ten-minute changeovers. No one knows what’s what. You have everything hashed up properly. You don’t know until you lay the first song whether it’s going to come out the way you want it to.
QRO: Yeah, you guys need a lot of prep time to make sure everything is going to go smoothly.
AS: Yeah usually you have to label each thing, every chord, where is it meant to go because it does get pretty crazy up there.
DS: But we, I remember before we toured, we toured a lot over the last year or two years. And the very beginning was very similar, like we just started doing a bunch of new stuff. And then by the end of it we were so comfortable with it. I think just the more you play it and the more you play it, you get used to the setup you had and change stuff. I don’t know, just the more you do it the easier it gets.
QRO: Do you have any infamous stories of equipment malfunction?
DS: Um, yes… (laughs) We have some funny stories…
AS: Yup… (laughs)
VH: Yeah, (laughs) maybe don’t tell her. (laughs) Horrible experiences which I don’t know we want to relive them.
AS: There’s quite a few. It happens a lot, I mean I remember one time when we played a show in Australia. I remember you were screaming, remember that?
DS: Yessss…
AS:
DS: And he thought I was having a good show!
AS: Yeah, he was having a show, but yeah, but actually the speaker was on fire behind him.
(everyone is laughing)
Another time as well, one of the first shows I played, was at Cut Copy (QRO live review), and they had some party and we played, and we played with them and the speaker stack was so loud next to me that it kept moving every bass hit the speaker stack and it ended up falling on top of me. I was fine. I remember Dan running over-
QRO: Rescuing you?
AS: Yeah, and I kept playing. I had this speaker on me. It was pretty funny.
VH: Good times…
QRO: When is the new album coming out?
DS: Well, we just finished it, just finished it, so yeah, the release is slated for early 2010. So there’s no set date yet, but yeah, early 2010. And then around that point is when we’d be coming back to the U.S. for a proper tour.
QRO: Where did you guys record the new album?
AS: Well, I guess it was recorded in different places. Some of it was recorded in our own studio. A lot of it was recoded in another studio all in Melbourne, Australia. Probably in two or three different places, studios in Melbourne. So yeah, it was good. We’d been home all year. Because in 2008 was touring everywhere overseas. This year it was staying at home not playing shows and recording. Which was good to have a more relaxed atmosphere to be recording in. It was definitely; I mean we talked about maybe recording in other places. Which you know could be fun and exciting but I think because we had 2008 away from home for so long it grew old and we caved to be at home and work. And it worked out really well. It was a good environment for us to work in.
AS: Sometimes it’s like Australia is so far away. I mean it is and it isn’t. It’s obviously linked and everything’s close but sometimes good to like, you get influenced by all these things when you are touring you get to trying to separate and get your space. And it’s a good place to do it.
Midnight Juggernauts playing "Into the Galaxy" live @ (le) Poisson Rouge, New York, NY on September 13th, 2008:
