Coma in Algiers was interviewed 7/17/12 at Stone Gate Studios by Shawn Truitt live on KAOS Radio, kaosradioaustin.org. First off, we started by playing 1. The Delmore Effect, 2. House On Fire,
STT- Introduce yourself and the member not here and what instruments you play.
CIA- I’m Cramer, I play the drums. Johnny, I play guitar and I sing some of the songs. Ish Archbold, sing some of the songs, play keys. Jeff is on bass. Evan is on guitar, occasional keys.
STT- All right then gotta get the basics out of the way. What can you tell me about the name of the band?
Ish- Another member, since when you leave you are not really out of the band, it’s like the Mob that way, Kyle or Killshire and I originally started just to have something to do in my apartment when we’re bored. Anyway, we were hanging around at a party on someone’s porch just thinking of band names, the worst of which was Crying Staples. I blurted out “most vulnerable state or position in the worst place in the world and he blurted out Coma In Algiers. We were like oh, that is C.I.A., cool.
STT- For some reason I thought I was gonna hear that it’s a Wm. S. Burroughs reference.
Johnny- We’ve heard that before, we’ve also heard the New Orleans, you know the one across from the canal so that is especially relevant now with the events from the flood and hurricane. Next Question.
STT- For the laymen how would you describe the sound of your band?
Cramer- My usual descriptor is noisy that seems to get the point across pretty effectively. We’re occasionally aggressive, occasionally silly, and occasionally contemplative but most of all we are just noisy. We make a big racket.
Johnny- I consider us pretty straightforward Rock and Roll and we’ve gotten more and more straightforward lately. There is some harsh, noisy in there, there’s a little 80’s Hardcore, there’s a little Post-Punk what ever you want to call it but the thing is that we have real guitar lines, we plan stuff out, I think it comes off a little bit different. I also think that in our minds we have the idea and the concept that we are conventional. Not straight up Rock and Roll but Noise Rock I’m happy with that, choose your own genre or someone is going to choose it for you.
STT- Genres are very shifty from how they start and what they become. I was calling you all Post-Punk and then I decided I was just gonna call it Underground since that is such an open ended term that someone would have to listen to it to make their own decision.
Johnny- I like Post-Punk too and we all do and I think that was one thing when we started the band but sometimes when I think Post-Punk I think the Disco type stuff which is great and wonderful and we all love it but we are on the other end of that spectrum I guess.
STT- Sweet, all right we are gonna get back to it and play…
Cramer- 3. House On Fire from our first LP, 4. Possess It which was on our second LP and 5. Swansea, which is brand new and as yet unreleased so you heard it here first.
STT- The song is about what?
Johnny- Which one? Oh Swansea, it starts off about disrespecting women and degeneration in society then is goes into the horrors of World War I.
STT- That fits in perfectly with my next question, is there a message to the madness or is it just an artistic expression?
Ish- If I said it wasn’t an artistic expression I’d be bullshitting you, yeah we’re having fun, we’re expressing ourselves but as far as lyrical content or why it’s noisy, a lot of people refer to us as cathartic and I think that’s true. It’s true for us. Sometimes weather we are performing or working on a song we are just getting something out. Doesn’t mean that we are trying to get out our demons because we’re disrespecting women or we survived World War I but the thing is a lot of negative experience or emotional experience in general is tied to the good stuff too and even if you don’t relate to a particular incident you can relate to a certain register on the emotional level. In the end, that is really the point of music, it’s why we go dance, and it’s why we listen to Morrissey some mornings and why we listen to Slayer on some evenings. That is what music is for, that is what expressing yourself is about.
Johnny- There are plenty of bands in my collection that you can’t make out word one, there is no lyric sheet in there. We made a concerted effort to where you can pick out some lyrics and you can here them and listen to them so there is real meaning there. I think one of the requirements we had starting out, at least one of my requirements, is that songs would be about something and in general they are. We are varying degrees of socially slick but there is some sociopath in us definitely, there is some ne’er-do-well. There are a lot of men about 30 years olds that’ll tell you that they’re not supposed to feel 15 but they definitely do feel that way and it’s much grimmer. Being 15 at 15 is fine but feeling 15 at 30 can be a grim, depressing proposition. We are intelligent, well-spoken guys; we are probably the most well spoken band in Austin. Crammer?… (laughs all around).
STT- Crammer is not touching that one. He’s gonna leave the well-spokeness to his musical performance I guess.
You can hear more of this interview and Coma in Algiers music by downloading
http://kaosradioaustin.org/node/46462 or go to www.comainalgiers.com/
