All Hail Discordia! - Times New Viking bring back the lo-fi font to the rock page
Steve Guimond / photo matador records

Columbus, Ohio’s Times New Viking – guitarist Jared Phillips, drummer Adam Elliott and Beth Murphy on keyboards/vocals – have been living the rock and roll dream.

Much buzz greeted this year’s Rip it Off, their Matador debut, following two equally stellar Siltbreeze releases, 2005’s Dig Yourself and 2007’s Present the Paisley Reich (hell, they were single-handedly responsible for resurrecting this infamous label, home to Harry Pussy, Guided by Voices, the Dead C, Sebadoh, Bardo Pond and Charalambides). Hounds and hacks alike have been drawn to their sound of sounds, a distorted sun-drenched pop concoction, wrapped in layers of gauze, punk, bang and, fuzz. If you dig this and them, the time is ripe with a new underground explosion of aboveground like-mindedness. We spoke to Adam about this and that.

Montreal has always had a soft spot for Times New Viking. What are your thoughts on the city?

I love Montreal…One of the times we were there it was really, really frozen, which I liked about it. We played at some anarchist bookstore before we played with Super Furry Animals, and it was pretty amazing [ed:   he infamous gig at Black Dot in February ‘08]. There were like 50 people packed into this little room.

How important has your association with Siltbreeze Records been?

For us it’s very important. We’re very good friends with Tom Lax, the man who runs Siltbreeze. His sort of finding us in our basement kind of really gave us confidence to keep doing this thing and go around the country and play music for everyone, and keep recording. We still talk to him on a weekly basis. He’s helped link us to other bands that we may never have known about and just encouraged us to keep making music.

"I like the immediacy of it, and the idea of letting room sounds be captured in there." Adam Elliott

Much has been made about the sound and production values of Rip it Off, in that it’s probably harder to create such a sonic platter than the typical clean sounding indie fare we hear today.

I think we make it harder for ourselves. We don’t necessarily try to, but we come from Ohio where there’s a big history of making records in your basement for yourself. The equipment that we have actually makes it harder. For that album, we recorded onto various different analog things, then we had to dump that onto something, and then dump that onto tape, and then give that tape. So there’s a lot more processes to it, to keep it analog nowadays, than just recording straight onto computer and sending that file to the guy to put it on record. We do it because it’s what we were taught to do, but also because I love the way it sounds. I like the immediacy of it, and the idea of letting room sounds be captured in there. Mistakes eventually become melodies. I like the level of attention it takes for people to listen to it. It’s really loud for a reason and it’s not necessarily just background. You either listen to it or you don’t.

11 novembre MONTREAL | Théâtre Plaza

With Deerhunter

12 novembre TORONTO | Lee’s Palace

20 novembre VANCOUVER | Richard's on Richards

myspace.com/timesnewvikings