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DR: Do you have a name for the new album or is it a secret? Kristin: We do! And no, its not! It will be "Into the Gold Wave, A Future Non Rip-Off" DR: What does that mean? Kristin: We're trying to make up mantras that get us through life, and get us closer to not being so fucked over the whole time! So, that the future won't have any more of this bullshit! Aaron: And the gold wave is just very ethereal - For some reason I keep seeing this golden wave you're riding on, which is weird because I don't surf! Something very golden, you know? But definitely non-rip-off! Kristin: FUTURE non rip-off! Aaron: So like you're not being ripped off! No more being ripped off! Fuck that! Kristin: And also some people used to call us cold wave? And I think that with part of changing so much, we were a lot more sterile and that was sort of our aesthetic, of that sterile band. That was more with Nick. Now that he's gone, the difference to the music is it has actually gotten warmer, and it's not this cold thing, its more gold. It was a bit more about oppression before. Aaron: And something about Kristin and I starting to play music, just me and her together again, there's a lot more emotion, a lot more dynamic and exciting. It's more liberating in a lot of ways for us personally. DR: Have you found many differences in people's appreciation or perception of music in Europe as opposed to America? Kristin: Definitely. It seems more in a way like that tribes thing, when you're the musician and you're taken care of because that's what you do - when you're sick - there's the doctor, you're not asking where to get food - its being made for you. It feels like that more here. People get everyone to come, how would they even know who we are? We're not on a big label or anything. But people are interested in these other projects that are happening outside of here. Maybe they don't get enough here, or they've tasted some stuff that's from America or elsewhere. Some good shit. DR: What prompted you to uproot yourselves from San Francisco to for example your time in Spain and Italy, and at the moment, Berlin? Kristin: Pretty much for that reason we were just talking about Aaron: For me I always wanted to live in another country, I've traveled a lot and I've always thought about it everywhere I've gone, but it never worked out. Music has made that a possibility, to live somewhere else, at least tour and also to feel part of the environment your traveling through. Because a lot of times if you're just traveling as a tourist you don't get as close to what's going on immediately. And with playing music in a band, you're automatically part of what's going on, and your sharing something with people already; your bringing something, and so there's automatically this social relationship happening that make things a lot more possible. DR: That's definitely different from the tour experience whereas now your day to day life is here in a new place.
DR: Any other places you've been that have added to your experience abroad? Kristin: We lived in Amsterdam for four months, during new years 2000 - the millennium. That was the premise for a lot of the recordings on Casio. We did a lot of street recordings used for background sounds there, like Body Bag and all that. We went to Peru and tripped out on that as well. Now we add a lot of flute to our music, underlying flute! DR: Do you feel like the new album will be much of a departure from the older stuff now that its just the two of you? Aaron: I definitely feel that it already has been a departure, a welcome one. I'm attached to that music a lot, but its definitely moving somewhere else - I don't know where exactly. Kristin: Its weird too, for people that got interested in us before. Like people who knew our stuff from shows. I wonder how people feel about it - [imitates car skidding 180] "woah, what the fuck?" Here we go. Completely different. Well, not completely. Its still us. But you can tell the change. That makes it kindof exciting; how people perceive us. Aaron: What's cool is, before we left we played a couple of shows with just the new stuff, and we've got a really cool response from a lot of people who've seen us play in San Francisco so many times, and perhaps they too, were bored of our previous stuff already? But a lot of people were into the newer music, which was inspiring when you know you're taking this stuff on tour. Just that people appreciate it and people were supportive of it. Kristin: When you know a song, and you know music, you dance, because you know it. When you first hear something, for most people, its an analytical process. How can you dance to something you don't know at all? So then we're back at this beginning in a way. At least with people we already knew. But here in Europe, people dance like crazy to stuff they never heard before anyway!
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Kristin: I wanted to see what happened being affected by something totally different. We've been in the bay area for ten years; you need inspiration sometimes. 54th and Oak street is just not going to cut it!
