Three Stars: Lode Runner

There aren’t a whole lot of bands in D.C. going the route that you guys are taking. Are synths just something more up your alley?

Scott: I’ve always listened to more electronic music. Like, I got tables, probably in 2003 or something like that. I was really into old synth-funk and old electronic rock and stuff like that. I just kind of got into electronic music from the early synth stuff. Brock was really into analog synths at the time. So, we had a lot of fun exploring that.

Eddie: And we all felt that way, because I did a lot of electronic stuff, too and we didn’t have a drummer.

Ken: And I’ve always liked the idea of taking a drum set apart and not playing it in a traditional way. I always feel that a drum set is kind of out of convenience, 'cause it would be nice if you could have four people each playing an individual drum, you can get a lot of intricate stuff. But it’s easier to get one guy. So I like taking it apart and by using the loops.

Scott: When we started out, we were a lot more guitar, more angular rock, and then just with time, it started getting more and more electronic. I think partially to differentiate from Ra Ra, too. To explore different things that they weren’t doing.

Eddie: I wanted to do more rhythmic stuff, too.

Scott: And I was getting into my dance night more.

Ken: Did you DJ before Lode Runner?

Scott: I DJ'd when I lived back in Tucson, but I hadn’t done it before here. I started the band and DJing again about the same time.

Are any of you guys from D.C.?

Ken: I’m from Herndon, VA.

Eddie: I’m from Fairfax.

Scott: Brock’s from Omaha.

Would you say that dance nights are just as influential to your sound as the bands that exist around you?

Eddie: I think we all just like to do our own thing, really. We all like really rhythmic stuff, ya know, dancey kind of things.

Scott: I think we were all influenced by that 2003 New York/Brooklyn DFA kind of stuff, you know? So all that stuff that they were doing, was really cool, it’s still really cool. So I think we kind of started out with that as an influence. And then further exploring back what their influences were, listening to more of the post-punk stuff and then listening to early house stuff. There was a period of about a year where we were really just listening to early dance music, right at the start, like early '80s, late '70s. I think for all of 2008, we were more influenced on more of old production techniques and playing everything live, analog synth. We kind of got sick of that lately, and now we’re more interested in modern production techniques.

Eddie: It’s definitely a new direction we’re going.

How does the songwriting process go for you guys? It sounds like there’s a whole lot of experimentation.

Ken: We actually write a lot of the music individually and we use a lot of the software we have on our laptops to kind of jot down ideas. Typically, we’re working during the day, we have computers, so we send a lot of emails. And we’ll have a basic idea, and maybe it’ll just be something that somebody threw down on the laptop and then, if a couple of people say it’s good...or sometimes we’ll have these really long email chains. Lots of capital letters and it’ll say, “This is FANTASTIC, we love it.” Or sometimes we’ll send something out and not really get much of a response behind it. So, we’ll kind of tell which things we like and once we have some stuff down, little demos electronically, we’ll go into the basement and we’ll figure out how we can use the live instruments to play some of the parts. Then, we’ll figure out which parts we want to keep looped, electronic-wise and kind of going back and forth between the basement and back at home and working with the technology.

Scott: We kind of write it individually first and then when we have something kind of worked out, we all come together, come up with new parts, we work on things like how certain people’s parts will play with other people’s parts. So then we’ll record these, come back in and then work on it again ourselves so we’re kind of rewriting the song a couple of times before we’re finally done with it.

Ken: We pass the song files back and forth and maybe, I’ll get it and I’ll tweak all the drums and I’ll go in and add all these electronic drum sounds and parts and patterns and fills and little intricate things here. And then maybe we’ll give it to Scott and Scott’s real good at messing with the actual sounds and the real sonic qualities of the different instruments, so he’ll get it a little more mastered and then maybe we’ll give it to somebody else, Eddie, and he’ll add in some live guitar and we’ll literally email back and forth between each other until we can get into the basement and actually work on it.

Where is this basement?

Scott: It’s mine and Brock’s house in Bloomingdale. We used to have a practice space. There’s an old capoeira studio on 7th and U that we used to play at, which was cool because they had it til 9, so we could always go in there after 9 until whenever. Which is usually like three or four in the morning.

Ken: Really late.

Scott: And we could play as loud as we want because there’s no residential area right around there. So we could play for five or six hours at a time. Which was cool, except at the same time, we’d have to pack up when we were done which would take up a lot of time. And when you’re done at four in the morning, you don’t want to pack up your stuff. When me and Brock moved over to Bloomingdale it had a full unfinished basement so that just made for really convenient practice space.

Do the two of you from Ra Ra Rasputin pull any elements from there that you also use in Lode Runner?

Ken: Both drums are both very heavily, solid, kick drum stuff. Ra Ra’s more live, we don’t do a lot of looped stuff, and we have lots of percussion. It’s more dirty, sloppy, real loud and I think Lode Runner is trying to be a little more intricate, trying to be a little more focused on the sounds themselves.

What are some of the software programs that you’re using?

Ken: We use Reason, recently we’ve been using Abelton onstage. Our newest evolution is, we used to have some old school stuff and Scott could probably talk about it better, but we had a MIDI sequencer, and we had a drum machine that accepted the MIDI input and then we had a keyboard that would accept the MIDI input, so we’d have this MIDI sequencer that would control all these instruments. What we decided to do recently, partially out of convenience, but also because it offers us a little more control is that we actually pre-record the backing tracks for some of the songs, in, say, Abelton, and then we put it onstage, on a laptop. And then I have a foot controller with a bunch of buttons on it, so I can trigger the different tracks to come in and out of the different instruments, and then kind of do some live effects over that with my feet, to control a lot there.

I just got this sweet iPhone and my next step is to figure out how we can use this. I know there’s got to be an app, you can hook it up using bluetooth, you can turn it into a chaos pad. There’s got to be all sorts of cool shit.

Scott: Watch, you’ll get a phone call, mid-set. It’ll pause your app while you’re onstage.

Ken: You’re right, that could be problematic.

How do you compromise using all this technology with putting on an effective live show?

Scott: That’s the hardest part.

Ken: I think we’re always trying to make sure all of us are doing something and adding something to the song during the performance so we’re not just pushing play. Ultimately, the electronic stuff is a foundation that we can then put all of our live elements on. And there’s some amount of improvisation to what we do.

Eddie: There’s live lead parts that change during the set. From show to show it’s completely different. The songs change all the time.

Scott: Also, a lot of time we’re dependent on the sound system of the club so if it’s not mixed really well and if that part of it is not really prominent in the mix, it can sound a little bit dead. So a lot of it is bringing our own mixer onstage, making sure our own levels are right.

Ken: We’re always trying to make sure that we’re doing as much live stuff as we possibly can, but there’s only four of us. We only have 16 limbs. So, we do as much as we can, but dance music is very much about layers and lots of things coming in and out and lots of different parts, so I think, ultimately, if we had 20 people, we wouldn’t need any electronics. But we don’t. In terms of making it a compelling and engaging live show, all of us are doing something. And the vocals are a part of that, too. There are some great acts where all of the music is pre-recorded but the vocals are really what give it that live element, that interaction with the audience.

Are there any sound systems in the clubs around here that you particularly love?

Ken: Yeah, Rob at Rock and Roll Hotel is always good. And he puts up with our bullshit. When we show up with four synthesizers, two guitars, some fucked-up drum set where I’m standing up, or drum machines, bass guitar, three vocals, all sorts of shit, he’s pretty good about putting up with that. But I think that one of the things that I like about D.C. is that all of the clubs have pretty decent sound. Every place you go, they’re going to do a good job and they’ve got a good sound system.

Scott: And good sound guys that are cool and willing to work with you.

Eddie: Because we’re really dependent on it. It can go really bad if something’s not mixed in. Like, our last show, we didn’t have a sound check.

Ken: That was our fault, because we were late, or something.

Eddie: Yeah, we were late. We didn’t know if it was a good show. It turns out it was, but you can’t hear.

Any recording plans in the future?

Ken: We’re working on some recordings. We’re trying to get that together. We have this sort of idea...we want to do our songs and release two different versions. We want to have a single version, vocals, a shorter mix and then we want to make a longer more instrumental mix. We feel like we’re kind of going back and forth between which direction we want to go. So we kind of decided to do both.