Innerpartysystem - Interview
StudentPunch caught up with American band Innerpartysystem this week, before they took to the stage in support of 3Oh!3, to talk about everything from Google, their favourite toiletries and like most people visiting Scotland the weather!
Student Punch: Hi guys! How does it feel to be back in Scotland?
Jared (Piccone, the band’s drummer): ‘Oh it’s great! The weather’s been great today!’
You’ve been lucky today, the weather’s been awful this week! So is it fun to be back on tour with 3Oh!3?
JP: ‘Yeah, we toured with them back in 2008, they’re real fun guys’.
I can imagine! So I wanted to ask you about the origins of the band’s name. What made you change to Innerpartysystem, from your original name The Takeover?
JP: ‘Well one of the reasons we had to change it was because when we started the band, and we Googled The Takeover, a billion things came up, and if we went on MySpace, (this was when MySpace was huge), there were like 75 bands called The Takeover. We started coming up with different names; we had Inner Party System, as separate words, but when we put it all together (as InnerPartySytem), and we Googled it, there was nothing. So from then on we knew everything typed into Google with that word would be related to our band. It’s funny, every time that question comes up and we give that answer, I start to think about how it’s funny that a central product of these times had an influence on what our band’s called. Google had an influence on what our band name ended up being, which would never have been said five, ten years ago. That was definitely our biggest selling point, because there’s just so many bands now and it was awesome to find a name that we liked, and on top of it anytime you searched it, it was the only name that came up.’
So your new EP, Never Be Content, is it fair to say that it’s very different from your self titled EP? For example, one of my favourite tracks, [the controversial] ‘American Trash’, seems a lot heavier than a lot of your earlier tracks. Would you say you’re changing musical direction?
JP: ‘I think we just make it as we go. We’re not like, ‘Oh, we gotta make this. It’s gotta be dubstep now, because dubstep’s huge!’, or anything like that. What we’re working on and what we all like in the studio is what we end up putting out. Our new material is all over the board. There’s heavier tracks, but there’s tracks that are ambient. So, I think it’s going to continue this way as the band grows. I think that music has become so genre specific over the last thirty years; it’s gotten so important for people to categorise stuff. Now it can be like, ‘Oh, I’m a dubstep guy, I only make dubstep tunes, now there’s a new genre drumstep, and I only make drumstep tunes!’ That idea is pretty foreign to us, and we just want to make songs without thinking that way, and I think every album’s going to be a little bit different, it’s just part of us growing as a band.’
Kris (Barman, guitarist and synthesist): ‘It’s just gonna get really weird!’
Definately! So who’s your musical influence?
Patrick (Nissley, vocalist): ‘It’s kinda all over the board with us, we listen to a lot of music....Robert Palmer...’
KB: ‘Sade’.
PN: ‘Arnold Palmer!’
KB: ‘Sade influences my life, not necessarily the music.’
JP: ‘Like what toiletries you like?’
KB: ‘Yeah...just everything!’
JP: ‘It’s like we listen to every kind of music there is, like everything. We could sit here and name bands forever, who have influenced us somehow.’
KB: ‘A lot of early nineties electronic music. Like Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, stuff like that.’
Well when I was listening to the Never Be Content, some of it reminded me of Nine Inch Nails are they a big influence? I know you guys and Trent Reznor are both from Pennsylvania, was he a bit of a local hero?
JP: ‘Yeah, yeah he’s from Scranton.’
KB: ‘Is he? I didn’t even know that!’
JP: ‘It’s funny, because I always feel that a lot of our older stuff is more in that realm than our newer stuff. ‘American Trash’ was a spill over song, a lot of our songs on Never Be Content have been written for a long time, we put it out as a kind of bridge to the next record, as we finish it up and get it out.’
Well I can tell you have a varied music taste because of the remixes that you do as well. It’s everything from The Beastie Boys to Katy Perry. Did this just stem from a hobby?
JP: ‘People actually come to us. At first, you just do it for fun, and to get known. Bands come at you, and it’s a great way to pay bills when you’re not on the road.’
So when you’re not on the road, and if you’re in a club, do you ever hear one of your remixes being played?
JP: ‘Yeah, it’s funny, it happened once, I told someone and they didn’t believe me! The Katy Perry ‘California Girls’ remix, the one with Kali Swag District? [To Patrick and Kris] I was at Legends one time [a nightclub in San Diego], we told someone and he was just like ‘Cool Man!’ and you could tell by his face he was like, no it’s not...’
KB: ‘Didn’t it say Innerpartysystem on it?’
JP: ‘No, this one didn’t it said Kali Swag District on it.’
So what next for Innerpartysystem? Are you going to tour again soon or is now all about getting the record out?
KB: ‘When we go home, we have a week off, a week with Skrillex, and then we have nothing planned, except a few festivals, and then we’re just going to wrap up the record.’
JP: ‘We have a full record, definitely coming out later this year. We have too many songs for it just now so we have to go home and cut it down a bit. We’re doing Sonisphere, and Wakestock, so we’ll be back for that. I’m sure we’ll do a UK headliner around this Fall, we don’t have it planned yet.’
SP: ‘So are you not doing any Scottish festivals this year?’
JP: ‘We don’t get asked! To be honest we don’t get to do as many UK festivals as we’d like, so deliver this message, ‘ask Innerpartysystem to come play some festivals, and we’ll come!’
Catch Innerpartysystem on tour with 3OH!3 now and pressurise UK festivals to get them on the bill. (Okay the band made me say that last bit.)
Erin Woods
