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"Soldier"
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| This photo is © Olivia Hemaratanatorn Indie Band of the Week: Letting Up Despite Great Faults May 4, 2010 I'm excited to say that I get to introduce yet another amazing band for your listening pleasure! Earlier this year, I heard the most wonderful song after a friend of mine recommended it to me. The song was "Our Younger Noise" by Letting Up Despite Great Faults. I finally got my hands on their self-titled album last month and I had to share it with you! The Los Angeles band has formed one-by-one since songwriter Michael Lee began producing songs under the name 'Letting Up Despite Great Faults.' Gathering bandmates was not an easy task for Mike, as he explained: "You are basically trying to find an amazing girlfriend every time - someone that gets you, respects you, and actually likes you and then vice versa. And then they have to be talented too on top of all that." Turns out that all of that looking paid off! With beautiful layering and melodic composition, Letting Up Despite Great Faults will enchant you from beginning to end. I hope you love their music as much as I do! Check out my interview with Mike Lee and fall in love with Letting Up Despite Great Faults! How did you all meet and form Letting Up Despite Great Faults? Through years of meeting people through the classifieds. It was pretty painstaking, actually. You are basically trying to find an amazing girlfriend every time - someone that gets you, respects you, and actually likes you and then vice versa. And then they have to be talented too on top of all that. I love your video for “Our Younger Noise,” what inspired you to make the video the way that you did? The idea was entirely Chris Ewing's (the Director). He came to us with the idea and we thought it would work out great with the song. I gave him some ideas about what the song was about and I think he really captured it well. I was really hoping for a youthful vibe and I think the video brings that out and is a lot of fun to watch. The TP scene was a great idea - he shot some performance footage of us in our practice space then projected it on to the makeshift screen made of TP at a faster speed so when they played it back in real time in the video you'll notice everything else is in slow motion. How did you get hooked up with Chris Ewing? And how was your experience with him? Chris actually wanted to use a song off our EP a few years ago for one of his videos. Then he moved out to LA recently and asked us if we wanted to do a music video which was incredible timing because we really did. We met a couple times, he came to a show, and I think we all knew it would be a really easy working relationship and we quickly became friends. His crew is amazing, and I'm still grateful at how lucky we are to have had all of them work so hard for the video. What kinds of life experiences and musical works inspired the music on your self-titled album? I don't think there is anything specific - I think the way I like to write I try to play with lots of different sounds and I don't force anything in one particular direction. Same with lyrics, I mix and match alot of ideas/thoughts I have until they feel right together. I rarely have a central "theme" I write about when doing a song. It's all kind of self-centered I guess since it's just about all things Mike. So the easy answer is to say all my experiences in life and everything I've ever listened to were my sources of inspiration. But right before I wrote the songs for the album I was probably listening to a lot of Shinichi Osawa, ST (from Sweden), Slowdive, Erlend Oye, Butcher the Bar, M83, Club 8, The Chromatics, That Dog, Ratatat. What kinds of changes do you recognize in yourself musically since you recorded your first album in 2006? I think we've become more patient. I try to work things out a little bit more and if it doesn't feel right, I'll let it breathe and come back to it. The first EP had songs where my main goal was just to finish the song and not necessarily find the best edits/mixes/sounds for the song. It felt good just having a finished song. Now I tend to let things float and hibernate until it really feels complete. My choice of tones has also evolved into more of a hopeful one. I'm letting myself choose brighter tones and also allowing some of the drawn out sounds come to the forefront more instead of hiding them like I used to like to do. What's the writing process like for you? How do you put it all together? I try not to have a set way, but there are a lot of back and forths between my sequencer and guitar. The acoustic guitar is a safe haven for me, so I probably always try to write some part of the song that way but I also like spending hours just trying to find the right snare sound. Most of it is actually a pretty tedious process of me listening to loops of riffs I've made and thinking of ways to expand or build on them. Moments of clarity are actually very rare for me, so I just have to plug away, playing tedious loops, and wait for those moments to come and make sure the record button is close to me. I love the instrumental layering that you do. How many instruments do you typically use for a track? Organically, not many. Some guitars, bass guitar and that's about it. Everything else is either a sample or sounds from keyboards/synths. I do have a Rhodes I slip in there every now and again. Inorganically, too many. Some songs have 3 different ambient pad sounds going on that sound like one...probably totally unnecessary. Within one synth layer I might actually build more than one oscillator in there, so I guess that would technically make it 2 different sounds. I probably need a spreadsheet to figure how many different sounds go into one of the songs. Kind of dumb. Do you all have similar music tastes? And who are some artists that inspire you? We all have varying tastes, but there are certain bands we can all agree on, like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Sunny Day Real Estate, New Order, or R. Kelly/ Broken Social Scene mashups. Van fights will however occasionally erupt when Chris tries to put on Lightning Bolt or the Dillinger Escape Plan early in the morning at the start of a long drive. I have too many to name, so I'll just say I'm really enjoying the new Cinnamon Chasers album. What are you up to right now? Are there any more tours or records in the works soon? We are currently writing and playing shows locally in California. We'd love to do another tour soon though. What kinds of books and movies are you into right now? Chris (drummer) has been reading a lot of Sedaris and Bukowski to counteract one another and watches Drop Zone with Wesley Snipes far too often. We also just saw Ninja Assassin in our van on my laptop during the tour and it was awesomely terrible. Somehow watching any movie in the back of a van makes it at least 34% more enjoyable. Check out the band's official site for more information! Check out Letting Up Despite Great Faults' video for "Our Younger Noise," directed by Chris Ewing:
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Letting Up Despite Great Faults'
Discography:
letting up despite great faults
//track list//
in steps
folding under stories told
the colors aren't you or me
our younger noise
pause
so fast: you
photograph shakes
sun drips
release
movement
//track list//
disasters are okay
movement
i hear you drowning but i'm tied
maybe i'll hide with you
mixtape receipt
if you're here today
pretending green grass
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What Mike's into: