MOON TYRANT INTERVIEW

Not having heard from them in a while and with a few items and events coming down the pipeline, we decided to catch up with some of the members of local band Moon Tyrant and see what they’ve been up to and what’s in the works. For those readers who may be new to the Shanghai scene, we threw in a few getting-to-know-you type questions as well.

S247: How would you describe your musical genre? What music do you guys listen to and what influences what you do?

JC: We blend very different styles to form a very fine… eh… malt whiskey?

Ivan: We all bring something completely different. Jaret came up completely self taught. JC is oddly melodic for a bassist, which I really like. I’d be bored to tears in a band with a guy who says “I’m going to play the root of this chord… again… for two beats.” We’ll play shows for a while and then in practice just not really spend too much time honing the tunes, and we’re like “fuck we’ve got three shows to do let’s just run through the set a bunch,” and then when we break the song down we’re like “ah… so that’s what JC’s playing…”

JC: There have been several instances of someone asking me why I was starting to play a certain tune now, when I’d actually been playing it from the very start.

Moon Tyrant - Cities

S247: So who does the arranging, the actual making of the songs?

Ivan: I think Murray and myself do a lot more of the conscious arranging.

JC: I’m probably more into the sound or vibe. I’m more into the ‘feeling’ of the song. That’s why I like to do the recording, I guess. Just making things sound a certain way I think is really interesting.

Ivan: I think a lot of times when we’re making a track someone in the band will come to us with something they’ve heard during that day or earlier in the week.  I’ll sometimes ring up Murray and tell him to play a riff, and then that’s it, and that’ll be something we’ll maybe play later in that week at practice. For example, the song that we’re working on now – JC had this riff that was originally supposed to be a real chilled out verse. Then he played it and I thought it should be ramped up and then be the hook of the song, then that was an argument. It’ll come from one point of origin and then other people will tack things on to it.

Murray: There have been some times where we’ve just jammed and come up with a basic idea but it seemed like every time that happened it just sort of fell by the wayside. I think as time passes, and we get past our differences, we could turn these jams into something.

JC: Most of the time if we’re jamming now someone needs to bring something because if we do the usual freeform shit, it’s just pathetic! We’ve got tapes of 20 minute long jams that go nowhere. It’s the most horrible boring stuff!

S247: Is there a natural leader amongst you?

JC: No, we definitely play different roles in the band but with the song writing stuff there’s not really any one leader. At different times we’re all a little forceful in the ideas.

Ivan: It also depends on whose original idea [we’re working with]. If someone has been marinating on a certain couple of sections over the last few days then they’ll probably have more of an idea of where initially the track will go.

JC: Very few of our songs are written start to finish and just brought to practice.

Ivan: In fact, the ones that were written like that we don’t play anymore. They’re just not as cool as the stuff we do together I guess. The new stuff is really a collaborative effort.

S247: Would you say that your sound has evolved from your first record to what you are playing now then?

Ivan: Yeah, sure. The first album was almost a novelty. We were in this new band together, we had all of these ideas, and we wanted to catalogue everything.

JC: That was back when we were pretty much throwing everything and seeing what stuck. Eventually we figured it out but we didn’t want to waste those songs.

Moon Tyrant - We've Made Progress Since Then

S247: Boring question, how did you guys get your name?

JC: It was not our first name. Murray?

Murray: Our first name was possibly the most uninspiring and ridiculous band name that’s ever been come up with. I was never going to take to the stage under that name, no matter what. I’m not fucking saying what it was, before you even ask.

JC: So rather than just saying he didn’t like it, Murray made up some story about how it was horribly offensive. He’s never said that he’d refuse to take the name before!

Ivan: Wait, he lied??

Murray: Things have curdled a little, I don’t remember it being like that. But it was a nothing name, it wasn’t clever enough to risk the shit that it would have caused.

Ivan: The lunar theme was still there though, and it evolved into this whole big email train with a flood of responses which we eventually catalogued and then everyone chose their top ten, then their top 5, and ‘Moon Tyrant’ was the name that was chosen the most often.

JC: That’s basically how we chose the album name, too…

S247: What drew you each to Shanghai in the first place?

Murray: I was planning a year away from Australia, and that’s how it always starts, right?

JC: I started studying Chinese when I was in middle school, ended up studying here a couple of times, so it was kind of inevitable that I’d settle back down here after I left.

Ivan: Yeah, I kind of just graduated and came straight over. I didn’t speak a word of Chinese before, though, I had to do it all here.

S247: So then how did you guys meet?

JC: Jaret and I worked together. We’d just sit in the office and talk about music and stuff. He’d always tell me about a friend of his who was a sick guitar player, but I didn’t really believe him… And still don’t!! Then he introduced me to Murray, we drank some park wine, we chatted, we started hanging out a bit and then I met Ivan through a guy named Nelson.

Ivan: So we met at Yuyintang on a blind date. I brought flowers, JC didn’t.

JC: It was a bit weird, two dudes meeting up for the first time!

Ivan: So I guess at some point we talked about forming a band together. Originally Jaret was going to play rhythm guitar and I was meant to play drums. But I’d been a drummer in all of my bands and I wanted to know what it was like to not do that, and run around and dance!

JC: I should mention that at this stage I had no idea about anyone’s musical ability other than mine, and none of them had any idea about me. I didn’t know if Jaret could play, I didn’t know who the fuck Ivan was, didn’t know if he could sing…

Ivan: Neither did I! When we first started I was so bad, couldn’t hold a note, actually I’m not sure I can now… The first tune we wrote, I was such an idiot, it had really long, sustained notes. It was horrible. We recorded it, actually.

Murray: That was the first recording in which we discovered our magical tempo changes!

JC: We discovered that we needed to do a lot of work. It wasn’t like one of those demos you hear of some people that from the beginning are just destined for greatness. No. Just no.

S247: So was there any doubt at that time that this was what you wanted to do?

Ivan: We didn’t really have any other options, to be honest. I didn’t really know anyone who wanted to form a band, certainly not anyone who would let me sing.

JC: And at that time, too, our lives were very different. We had a lot of free time then. We were not… dating girls… We would practice three or four hours a night two or three times a week back then, we were just having a lot of fun doing it.

Murray: That’s what pushed us through any questioning of styles or anything like that, just how much progress we were making.

S247: How long was it before you hit your first gig, and what happened to make you think you were ready to go?

JC: I guess about five months or so… And how did we know we were ready? I suppose when we had enough songs! We knew Yuyintang was wide open then, especially on a Wednesday night which is when our first gig was. At that point nobody really knew we were in a band but I was going to YYT maybe four or five times a week. I met Sophia {Super Sophia – main booker of YYT) and Zhang (owner of YYT). They were really willing to give us a shot, and Jaret back then was hooking everything up for us.

Ivan: Yeah, YYT was really great. They sort of gave us the encouragement to take it from the practice room to the stage. You know you come here, you try and get a band together, you hear about YYT and what Zhang has done for music in Shanghai and this guy wants you on his stage! It’s pretty encouraging!

Moon Tyrant - The Gunn Epiphany

S247: So you guys have done some touring in China, where all have you been?

Ivan: Suzhou, Hangzhou twice, Wuhan twice.

JC: Suzhou is actually pretty cool. They have a Family Guy Drunken Clam bar, with the same sign and everything. Suzhou was, I guess, a typical Moon Tyrant road show. It set the trend. There weren’t that many people there but anyone who was there seemed to be really ready to rock and roll. That seems to be a thing when we go on the road.

Murray: We played an international music festival in Hefei!

JC: HA! Sophia sent me a text message one day asking if we wanted to play a music festival in Hefei, and I said ‘YES DEFINITELY.’ I asked no questions. And I told everyone, I didn’t even ask, we’re all going to do this music festival. Everyone said they would. I looked it up a bit later, and I couldn’t really find anything about it, then I found out what it really was. But I didn’t tell anyone because we needed money to pay for our record. So everyone gets to Hefei and the rest of them found out, and I pretended to find out, that this place is selling curtains and plumbing fixtures, it was basically a shopping expo, and our slot was 9:30am for 20 minutes.

Ivan: I’ve never had to wake up so early and start drinking.

Murray: So we were up at 8:30 pounding, no, trying to pound Snow beers. I’d never set foot on stage without some kind of buzz and to this day that’s only ever happened once, on our last night in Mongolia, because all the liquor stores were closed.

JC: Ha, he disappeared for an hour trying to find beer.

Ivan: It was the middle of a national holiday, you know, so all the people were at the festival that we were playing, and everything was just closed. So we were running around thinking ‘There’s just gotta be a convenience store somewhere, please!’ And then, we couldn’t have been luckier, there was this huge storm brewing, and the previous band had gotten the setup out of the way before it hit, and were doing a really good job. The people were enjoying it, this really big crowd in the middle of the huge town square in Ulanbaataar, a couple thousand people. So the second we launch into our first song, massive thunder cloud, rain starts dumping down. It drops from 2,000 to maybe 200 people. But they really wanted to be there and it was great. And the stage had a sort of canopy, but there was a catwalk that went out front, so I was like ‘fuck it, you guys are getting wet, I’m getting wet too!’

Murray: I don’t know about you guys, but I was getting shocked something fierce up on that stage…

JC: You were getting shocked? I was actually out in the pouring rain like an idiot, I followed him out onto the catwalk! We have a video of that, too. And in the crowd there’s these metal kids going nuts and there’s a bunch of cops ad this one cop, he’s got this big happy, happy smile. That really said a lot about what was happening.

S247: You have toured around, you have been to Mongolia, what are you guys thinking now? Are you just having fun with this? Do you have any goals that you are trying to meet right now?

JC: There’s a lot more of China [to tour]. I’d love to go out and do Chongqing and Chengdu and Changsha, some of the cities out there.

Murray: And go to Xinjiang.

JC: We’re going to Beijing next month. I’d like to go to Guangdong in the Spring.

Ivan: We’re organizing this Shanghai compilation, called ‘We Are Shanghai Compilation,’ and I would like to get a couple other bands and then tour together.

S247:  So you have got the first gig in a while coming up on…

JC: January 8^th, we’re doing a show with the Horde, Pairs, some new band called Pacific, and Icenine (of ROM). I’m really excited about that, B.O has this whole weekend planned. It’s basically to encourage Chinese people to go see foreign bands and vice versa. So he’s got this scheme, Saturday is a bunch of Chinese  bands playing YYT, and he’s advertising it in the laowai media, and anyone who goes will be paid one kuai at the door for coming. And then Sunday afternoon we’re doing the foreigner band showcase, which is being publicized in the Chinese venues. So that’s the 8^th, and then the 13^th is going to be Beijing with Mohanik, which is a Mongolian band and very gracious hosts. Then on the 15^th, which is a Sunday again, we’ll be playing with them at YYT.

Ivan: It kind of sucks that it’s a Sunday, because they’re a really really cool band and great guys. I really hope that people do come to see it. People came to see the Mao show and they saw two good Mongolian bands, but they’re just like rockstars and a bit boring. Mohanik has great energy.

JC: But that’s going to be our first show in a bit… We played once in November.

Pairs - Bei Dor Fen

S247: Why the break, have you got something new coming up?

Ivan: Writing, writing. We’re writing with the goal of doing an EP, hopefully in the first half of this coming year. We’ve got three songs that are more or less wrapped up for that, and we’d hope to add at least two more.

JC: Things have come up… I ended up playing in the Halloween show with The Fever Machine, which I had no intention of doing. I didn’t really know any of their music so it wasn’t like I could just pick it up, I had to really throw myself into that for most of October. Then in November we ended up playing one show and since then we’ve been working. It’s harder to get practice room time, and we don’t just write little chord diddies that we can practice at home.

S247: Do you have any idea how you are going to record it and who you are going to record it with?

Ivan: I think we’ll probably get the drums at Juju’s and then we’ll record everything else in JC’s room.

JC: Yeah, that’s how we did the last single. This next one, I’ve gotten into a lot of recording and stuff, so we’ll do most of it probably in our apartment. Or we’ll go to the practice room maybe to record it there. Maybe. That would be good for focus.

S247: Why do you guys write songs specifically for EP? Why spend the time and effort to make an EP?

JC: I don’t know about you guys, but I love recording. It’s the most horrible, stressful thing, and I love it because it’s a whole different thing. As I said, I’m really into all this sound and production, so I was thinking about how to layer the over-dubs and I think with some of these songs in particular, the way they’re going to be played live and the way they’re going to sound on the record will be markedly different. Also, we need to get the new stuff out there. I like the old record, I’m really proud of it, but it’s not really what we do. I think we’ll have a lot more authorship over this one, too, as we’ve learned a lot from the first record in terms of what we want to do and how to go about making it. We’re probably going to pay a lot more attention to sound. We hadn’t even thought about it at the time, we just let the engineer set up the drum microphones and we trusted them.

Ivan: We were green as hell, we didn’t know what we were doing.

JC: I think we all have complaints mostly about how the drums sound, and that’s something that couldn’t just be fixed in mixing. So we’ve learned a lot and this gives us the chance to really do something else. Frankly, it’s also about proving a point, too, for me at least.

Ivan: This is where I’m going on my rant…

JC: This has been brewing for a really long time, and it’s made me so angry, that this scene has this whole fucking bug up its ass about Do-It-Yourself. And DIY is wonderful, we’re all for that, we do everything ourselves, but we do it well. I’m so sick of people just putting a fucking microphone in a practice room and calling it a record. It does sound like shit and you can do better.

Ivan: If we could speak a moment on album art, album packaging…

JC: I’m not even there yet, fuck that, we’ll get there. It just pisses me off that DIY has become synonymous with not fucking trying.

Ivan: It’s like a rationalization. It’s annoying because it takes credit away from other bands in the scene. Think about the latest Friend or Foe record. They did that themselves. They don’t have a label behind them, they don’t have some high-falootin’ producer. The Rainbow Danger Club album, I think, is the crispest thing to come out of the scene in general, and that was as DIY as you can get. They didn’t use anyone outside of the band at all, except for the band photo or something. Nichols mixed that whole thing and it sounds beautiful. There should be a difference between doing it yourself and doing it yourself properly. If you’re going to put something down that you know you’re going to have for your whole life, and you’re going to look at it and say ‘Okay, when I was 25 and living in Shanghai this is how I characterized this part of my life’, you want it to be the best product it can possibly be. Your name is on this! So not only do I want it to sound good, but then I want it to make sense and have appealing packaging and I usually put a lot of attention into that.

Rainbow Danger Club - Drown The Creatures

S247: It is almost cool to have a shit product, then?

JC: But why?! Back in the day it was cool because you were making music on your own terms and that was the only way to do it.

Ivan: Now recording equipment is accessible. Come on, you’re a white guy in Shanghai, you can afford to press a record.

JC: What’s the point of doing it if you’re not going to try? You’re going to make everyone else suffer through fucking crap. And a lot of these people, they have perfectly good songs.

Ivan: It’s also about the term DIY being used to describe an aesthetic rather than an approach. It takes something away from the other groups who have also done it just as much themselves, but in their own way and trying to present the best possible product that they can. That’s just as DIY. It just seems a bit unjust.

S247: Talking about the album artwork, do you think that people do not care enough about that, do not put enough time, effort and money into it?

Ivan: You might as well, right? You only get one shot, once the album’s out it’s out.

JC: But it’s not about time, people are putting in a lot of time. You know, I always say that it was really cool when Pairs did it, because a major part of their aesthetic is this kind of thing, the whole keeping it as cheap and free as possible. It was really cool and they have the total right to do it and I love that about them. And they had been about that from the beginning. Even before the CD they were making free t-shirts, one at a time with markers. But when everyone starts doing it, just because they want to crap the record out…

Ivan: That’s their style, that’s their aesthetic, that’s their ethos, that’s their thing. It’s not an MO that should be followed by everybody.

S247: So if I were going to go out and start a band, and I want to record DIY but have no idea what I am doing, how should I go about learning?

JC: It’s not that hard to find someone in the scene, because if you play shows you’re naturally going to meet people. And God knows how many of us have made records. We’re all very approachable, we have conversations with each other all the time. We bring it up, it’s not hard to ask.

Ivan: It’s not, and when you make such a big fuzz, you meet guys like Brad, you can talk to him. Or Gaensler, even our names are out there. Friend or Foe, an established band, went to Nichols and Acid Ponies when it was time to record their album, even a band who had been gigging and knew what was up. It’s okay to reach out. If it wasn’t this way then I guess none of the bands and our generation wouldn’t be anywhere. It would still just be like Banana Monkey.
If everyone wasn’t open and helpful, none of us would be doing anything. We’d just be like, “Man, I wish I could have a band, too.” So everyone’s helpful. It’s a great thing when a new band comes up, because there’s so few bands.
Take Battle Cattle, I think they’re a great example. They seemed to come out of nowhere, it was just like all of a sudden here’s this band Battle Cattle, and I went to see them and they were super tight and really good. And then they record an album and now they’re going away, which is sad I think because they have a lot more room. It’s too bad.

S247: So I suppose Ivan made the decision to start ‘Death to Giants’ with Nichols. Did you guys know that he was going to go and do that?

JC: I did. We were room mates so I heard all about it.

Ivan: I think I was open about that, I don’t see why I wouldn’t have been. Like I said before, I’ve been a drummer my whole life.  Though I wanted to try something new with Moon Tyrant, nothing feels quite at home like being behind the kit. And while I love the music I’m making with Moon Tyrant it’s not the only kind of music I really like. Nichols, I guess, felt the same way about Rainbow Danger Club. 
You know when it happened? It was last Halloween when we did the Joy Division thing together with Guillaume and Fabien, who was still in X is Y. I remember there was one practice where Fabien was late and I was jamming on drums with Nichols and Guillaume and that’s when we had the idea [to do something together].
We were talking about it for a bit and we ended up just going into a practice room. We just brought a computer and hit record and just jammed and were like, ‘there’s some cool ideas, let’s make this a thing.’

JC: I’m working on some of my own stuff, too, but I’m doing it Prince style. I don’t share. People listen to Moon Tyrant and our own individual personalities kind of get blended together in a way where no one really knows what’s what. We all have different interests. I’m in a position with my recording equipment that I can sort of do side stuff on my own and at least give it a shot, never play a show but put out a demo.

S247: When are we likely to hear the JC Summer Project?

JC: I would say after Chinese New Year. I’ll have a lot of vacation time!

Ivan: I’m doing two EP’s, each five or six songs, just all older stuff. Sad songs on guitar, but ramped up and full band and lots of fun, the pre Moon Tyrant songs. I’m working with Gaensler right now he’s helping me out a lot with taking the songs from just acoustic guitar and singing and arranging them for a full band. He’s going to do some lead stuff and Murray’s going to play on it as well. I want to get everyone involved.

Banana Monkey - Miss Fur

S247: Who do you think the five most important people are in the Shanghai music scene, for whatever reason?

Ivan: I’d have to take up two slots immediately and say Zhang and Misuzu.

JC: Zhang is just Zhang. He’s Yuyintang. I love Lu, but Zhang is probably the real driving force behind bands and the music part of it.

Ivan: Misuzu is really one of the first guys to realize how being in a band and getting shows together and being vocal forthcoming about it works. In his earlier work with Banana Monkey and even before that he was just that guy in Shanghai who was like, “this is how we can get shows going and get people to come.”

JC: It’s hard to name individual people because so many people work together, you know? There are probably a few band promoter types like Dan or Archie… You know what? Sam. There’s a whole sub-section of the music scene which is ignored and that’s the metal scene. That’s pretty much all Chinese. We’ve played with some of the metal bands but realistically we’re never going to break into that. There just aren’t any foreign bands doing it, certainly not here in Shanghai, and it’s like metal-heads anywhere, there’s sort of a defensive chip on their shoulder.

Ivan: If you go to one of Sam’s shows at YYT you will see people you’ve never seen before at any other event ever and you will only see them on Sam’s nights, and he packs it up. Okay, Zhang, Mizuzu, and Sam.

JC: I’m gonna have to say probably someone like Rhys, because Rhys is so good at drawing attention to the Shanghai music scene and getting his voice out there. For one he just seems to try harder than anyone else, but he also succeeds, he doesn’t just try.

Ivan: Fuck, dude, Gaensler. He’s had his hands on pretty much every CD that’s come out this year. At least in terms of the contemporary Shanghai music scene, you can’t talk about that without mentioning Gaensler. So there we go, Zhang, Misuzu, Sam, Rhys, and Gaensler.

JC: I’m just glad we didn’t have to choose someone who has influenced the Shanghai sound.

Murray: There’s no such thing!

JC: That’s the beautiful thing about Shanghai! It’s not like you’re going to Philadelphia and everyone’s playing funk.

S247: Let’s talk about Twin Horizon. JC and Ivan, who else is involved?

JC: A friend of Ivan’s from university, Clem, who is currently in Buenos Aires and is making his way here some time next year, and another gentleman who is a film maker, he came to Mongolia with us and will be participating. This really started with Ivan and [Clem]. Ivan and I have had a close relationship with Moon Tyrant, he knows a lot of my hobbies and stuff, it just made sense for me to join up.
I take care of some of the more organizational things. Even in Moon Tyrant I’m often the de-facto manager. In Twin Horizon technically I’m the business guy. We’re working on our shirts, and I’m the guy who’s getting in touch with factories and bargaining and all that stuff. We’re planning to produce around 500 shirts some time in January, all about bands in Shanghai.
We’re going to do 100 each for Boys Climbing Ropes, Friend or Foe, Stegosaurus?, Moon Tyrant, and Rainbow Danger Club. Ivan and Clem are really the artists. I have a lot of my photography on it and we’re going to fold Twin Horizon Records into this so I can incorporate some of my studio work.
The compilation is a big part of that. But right now I’m more of an organizational guy, and Ivan and Clem are really the creative end.

Ivan: Clem is actually the one who taught me how to hand-stencil t-shirts. We’ve had this idea since we were in college that we wouldn’t be happy working for people. We also like clothes, so we figured we might as well draw on them.

S247: Then what happens to the T-shirts?

Ivan: We’re giving the bands a cut.

JC: We want to have control over the product and not just have people giving them out willy-nilly. We still haven’t worked out a firm deal with them, but everyone has agreed to kind of a tentative one. We’re going to try to sell them in streetwear shops here, we’ve been talking to a guy who’s gonna connect us to some shops in Europe and we’ll see what happens from there.

Ivan: I want to make this a real thing. I don’t want this to be a one-off “Oh, we’ve got some shirts, and there are 400 of them in my closet.” I’ve got our second line already drawn up. They aren’t for bands, but if this first line goes well and other bands want to do something together then I’m absolutely willing to do that.

JC: Right now there’s a lot of focus on doing stuff as a line, but there’s also a lot of work-for-hire. Ivan does a lot of work designing posters and stuff. Anything, if just one band wants to do it we’re happy to help out. The line is called ‘Shanghai DIY’ and it feeds into the whole thing we’ve been talking about. It’s a very DIY scene, but it’s also the same emphasis on quality. We didn’t just go out and buy coarse Hanes t-shirts because Michael Jordan is selling them. We’re getting shirts that are good quality, we’re going good design work, and we’ll get our own price tags like in stores.

Ivan: We’ve got one of those nights ahead of us where we’re just locked in the fucking room with a DVD on pinning tags to these shirts…

JC: There’s a lot going on with Twin Horizon. We’ve got the compilation, too. We just announced the show officially on twinhorizon.com. It’s been a great experience, and we’re really excited about volume 2, which should be out later next year.

Ivan: With the second one there are not only new rock bands, but I would absolutely like to get some ROM tracks on that. Some Icenine, Olive Pixel, One Consciousness, dip into the hip-hop scene a little bit. The DJs here definitely have their own thing going, a subculture, and there’s no reason we can’t reach into that.

S247: So that compilation is for CD and digital release. When is it coming and is it just you guys organizing it?

Ivan: Me, JC, Nichols, Bren, and Gaensler.

JC: It comes out mid January. The launch weekend is Friday 13^th at YYT and Saturday 14^th at Logo. The YYT show is Pairs, Duck Fight Goose, Dragon Pizza, and Naohai, and Morgan is going to do some DJ stuff in between. The Logo stuff is really cool. It’s The Horde, Nick and Ryan from the Song Dynasty doing their electronic project, Nichols and Jessie from Rainbow Danger Club doing their electronic project, and then Battle Cattle.

Ivan: It suits Logo better than an all rock show. Logo, back in the day, rock shows were okay, but that was such a great DJ bar.