All photos courtesy of Daniel Jackson.
A few days before I headed off to Austin for Fun Fun Fun Fest, I had the pleasure of chatting with Children of Pop. This experimental electronic band creates dreamy, lush melodies dripping with warm and bouncy synths. Listen to just a couple of their lo-fi tracks and the buoyant vocals layered over pure pop magic will have you dancing in your chair. There are moments when Children of Pop conjures up a similarity to the equally addictive, ‘Casio Blaze’ sound of Brooklyn-based, Small Black. While on other songs, like “Taking Over”, the vibe gets more seductive with nods to alternative R&B not unlike How to Dress Well.
During my interview with Chase, the quirky instrumentalist behind CoP, we talked about to his upcoming BB J tour with Ronnie Heart of Neon Indian and his new Pre Madonna release. The 7” vinyl, which was pressed on clear square plates, features previously unreleased “Jealous Lover” and the aforementioned “Taking Over.” The official release date is Friday, November 28th (Record Store Day!)
Bearded Gentlemen Music: Are you originally from Houston?
Children of Pop: I am, I grew up in Humble. I went to University of Houston, lived downtown and stayed here.
Who’s in the band?
The Children of Pop live is always changing. The way that I try to do things is record a song on Monday, then put in on the internet on Tuesday, bounce down a track on Wednesday, practice it on Thursday and play it on Friday. That’s the goal, the dreamland of CoP. But who has all day, every single day to work on my band except for me? It’s just hard to keep a whole band practiced up. So I’ve been trying to slim it down just because I want to be able to move really quickly.
It tends to rotate around from a couple different friends of mine. Right now it’s basically just myself and my friend Gabriel Lopez, sometimes we play with our other friend Christian Alexander. Since we’ve been doing the Madonna thing, we’ve had our friend Emily Whittemore singing a lot. But because she’s so good, we’re gonna try and work her into future stuff. I used to do it all with live musicians, drums, guitar, bass, synths, noise machines, but lately it’s been working out where I just use a computer and then add to that.
How did you get into making music?
I’ve been playing music since I was 16, that’s when I picked up the guitar. When I was 18, I read Henry David Thoreau’s’ Walden Pond. At the time I was working at a grocery store and I quit and decided to focus on music. I’ve been doing it ever since. I went to college, studied music theory and when I graduated I was like “okay, well now I did that.” I called myself a musician but I didn’t have any real music that I was proud of, so I figured I should do that. I started buying gear and trying to figure out how to do the thing that is recording music. Children of Pop was the vessel that allowed me to make stuff.
How did you come up with your band name?
It’s just something I thought of. It’s about coming of age, trying to get a bigger scope on things. The enigmas of life, we’re just like mirrors and mirrors sometimes. I think it’s an okay name. I sometimes think I want to change it, but that’s every band, right?
What equipment do you use?
A Roland Juno-60, which is maybe the coolest piece of gear on the face of the earth, so I have that and it’s great. I just picked up this analog bass sequencer that is making its way onto the new album quite often, it’s called a Korg Volca Bass. That’s how I recorded all the basslines for the Madonna music, it just sounds so rich. I’ve been using the DM1 app on the iPad to do a lot of drum sequencing and they sound pretty good, most of the time but I’ll edit it even more. I use an Apogee Duet interface for tracking all my ideas and it’s been great. I bought this really cool, small TASCAM tape recording machine, I’ve been trying to do vocals on that. I also have been using this reel-to-reel that I”m going to record a lot of stuff on.
What is your usual songwriting process?
Wake up, jam on some coffee, crank some lyrics, go program a drum machine, record it, jam on some guitar, throw a bassline on it. Go for some vocals, if they suck, bummer, but I just go with it and finish the song as soon as I can. Sometimes it drives me crazy and I won’t like something and I’ll try to work on it, work on it. That can be so tiring, but I want to be the best it can be. It’s hard to make good music, especially a lot of good music. It’s like whenever you’re swimming in the ocean and you don’t know which way to go, how do I get back to shore?
At the benefit show at Fitzgerald’s your treatment of Madonna was so good and so weird. How did you decide to approach it? Were you scared of messing with Madonna?
Oh yeah, a lot of times when we were trying to rehearse it, we were constantly messing up but then ended up like “well that was actually pretty cool.” On “Physical Attraction” we did the chorus way too slow but then thought it was sick, so even though it happened by accident we were like “we’re keeping that.” So initial mistakes like that are actually going to make it on the new Children of Pop stuff, some of the songs are gonna be a different tempo. I could never do that with a real band, but with a computer, you can set it up where it drops 20 beats per minute and everything is perfect. It’s so powerful, and it has a really strong effect and it just freaks people out.
I never approached the Madonna music with any sacred ground and some of it I just couldn’t do because she’s a girl and she sings like a girl and I had to change it somehow to make it doable. I had a guitar pedal to pitch my voice up and down. I don’t know how weird it was, it felt like I was doing karaoke. I recorded all the parts as close as I could to the original Madonna music, it didn’t sound exactly the same, but I liked it.
I try to keep to get my live sets in this weird place where it’s about to trainwreck and we’re all just holding on and it’s like a bullet. I think that’s fun and I like to see what happens to my friends when they don’t know what to do. I just love that. It’s way more fun and way more interesting and that’s a sure fire way to make sure everybody is engaged. It’s hard to be clocked out whenever you don’t know what’s happening next.
What albums or artists are you really into right now?
Right now, I’ve been listening to a lot of Madonna. Whenever I did that Madonna set at Fitzgerald’s I had to learn all her music. I went and recorded all the basslines and then sequenced out the drum machine. Then I put them from one computer to another computer, that way I could do it live. So I’ve been doing the Madonna thing pretty heavy for the last month. Some other music I’ve been listening to is Todd Terje, It’s Album Time. He just has the richest recording quality, it’s so good. I’ve also been listening to Darkside a little bit, they have a way with phrasing that allows them to give the listener expectation for the next phrase. Then they do this thing where they have nothing going on for a moment, it’s so cool. Also spazzkid, Mount Kimbie, Classix, Ben Kahn. Been listening to Herbie Hancock a ton, that dude just knows.
I saw that you liked other experimental electronic bands like Grimes and Purity Ring on SoundCloud. What do you think about contributing to the growing popularity of that electro sound in Houston?
Yeah, it was impossible for us to get a show in Houston in 2011 and 2012. I think I played one show that whole time. It was weird because everywhere else, we played with nothing but bands that were in the same style. It was popular everywhere but Houston, it was so weird. Now there are more bands that are using different instruments, it’s cool.
But you know, I try to not think about the band as a local Houston-based band. I try to think of it as an internet band. I don’t remember the last time I went to a show or concert and found a band that made me go “this is awesome!” I find my music on the internet, that’s all the music I listen to. I try to do my music in the same way, there are billions of people on the internet who could get into it. I’m all about the idea of keeping everything small. I do mostly everything myself – record, mix, master, then I can spend most of my time playing music instead of having to work another job and pay a bunch of people. The internet allows me to have a smaller system. It’s great.
But you know, there is something to be said about supporting local bands. Most bands who are on the internet spend so much money getting in people’s streams. The only way they can really make money is to have a steady local draw so they’re able to do what they do, it helps out a lot.
Do you tour a lot? I know you’re going to be in Denton later this month.
We went on tour before we really played in Houston. We did the midwest and then over to the east coast and down around this time last year. It was very cool, I met a lot of great people. When we got back, Houston Press shed some light on the band and the album and named it one of the best albums of 2013, so we were finally able to play in Houston. Since then we’ve been playing around Houston and Texas. Once I got a band practiced up it was just a lot easier to do a show. Now we’re gonna go on a small tour around Texas with Ronnie Heart from Neon Indian and this is gonna be right as we release the Children of Pop single “Jealous Lover.” And in January, we’re going to do an east coast tour.
Do you enjoy performing in public? Describe what it’s like for you.
I really enjoy performing. I approach it with this Andy Kaufman type thing but it’s very rare when you can really get in the moment and it all works perfectly so I think it’s more fun to write and record music. The only way to do that is if people listen to your music online enough that they want to see you live, so you play a show and then you make money to buy more recording stuff and then you can record some more. But I like performing too, it’s very fun. If everything is working right and you can transcend the time dimension, I mean, what else is there?
Pick up Children of Pop’s amazing new single “Jealous Lover” on limited-edition, hand numbered 7” clear square-cut vinyl (only 100 copies!) available at these upcoming shows in Texas: