Interview: The Depreciation Guild
Meet You At The Show: So how’s the tour been going so far?
Kurt Feldman: It’s been going really well actually, we’re on the road with Serena Maneesh, they’re from Norway and we’re supporting them. It’s been really fun so far.
MYATS: I’ve been hearing great things about Serena Maneesh. How has it been touring with them?
KF: They’re a really awesome band and live they’re just a totally more awesome entity then on record, I think they just pull everything off. The shows have just been sounding really good and we’re really happy to be joining up with them.
MYATS: So have there been any interesting stories that have happened on this tour that you’d like to share with us?
KF: Well this is our first tour on a bus actually. We’re sharing a bus with Serena Maneesh. They rented it and we’re sort of tagging along. So that’s been a totally amazing experience for us because up to now we’re only ever toured on a van or an econoline or even a Rav4. It’s just a lot of driving during the day and you show up just in time for sound checking. We didn’t really experience much of the city. But on this tour we’ve been able to sleep through the night on the bus and wake up in the city and have all day to explore and see stuff which has been a really cool experience visiting all these cities I’ve been to before but only ever scratched the service as far as understand the local neighborhoods and the good food and stuff.
MYATS: What has been your favourite show on the tour so far?
KF: I think one of the best shows we’ve had so far was in Seattle. We played at The Triple Door which is an incredible venue. It was like a sit down audience. It was so fancy and the sound there was just awesome. I think that was definitely one of the best shows. They’ve all been pretty fun and cool in their own way like last year we played in Vancouver and that was actually a really great show. The responses have been very good on the tour. Very positive over all
MYATS: Have you ever played in Montreal Before?
KF: We have, we actually played in the venue we’re playing in this time, Il Motore.
MYATS: Oh cool. So let’s talk a little bit about the music. Your music has a very videogamey quality. Could you give us a little insight on how you create the video game noises in your songs?
KF: Well in the past we’ve used this program called (fare?) tracker, it’s a sequencer, it was developed for DOS in the late 90′s. They kind of abandoned it and it became this freeware thing that they ceased to develop and we used that for years. I started using that in 2003 just to compose the tracks then the program would export its code authentic NES code which you could load onto a game cartridge using special hardware so that was our set up for a while.
MYATS: Were you a big gamer growing up?
KF: Yeah, definitely, when I was much younger I grew up playing Nintendo and was loving the sounds and humming them in my head all the time and I always kind of wanted to be able to make my own music like that but also not make music that sounded like video games really, to challenge myself to make interest and beautiful sounds from the same system that I had always listened to growing up.
MYATS: What is your favourite video game music soundtrack of all time?
KF: That’s a tough one. I would definitely say I really like this one game called Journey to Silius. I think that’s a really awesome soundtrack and probably the songs in this game called Klax was also really cool.
MYATS: Have you heard the music to Castlevania?
KF: Sure, I think a lot of the Konami stuff was actually really cool. Contra, I was always humming those songs in my head, Castlevania was a good one.
MYATS: You have a new album coming out on the 20th of April is that right?
KF: Yeah digital on the 20th of April, and CD and vinyl on the 18th of May.
MYATS: So how will the new album differ than the first one? What can your fans expec to hear that will be different?
K.F: Well, it definitely still sounds like our band but we’ve included a lot of additional interpretation on this record and I played bass on this album and guitar and did some additional auxiliary percussional stuff. Whereas on the first record we’ve had where Anton plays drums on most of the songs and there’s still a lot of the same stuff but we’re also supplementing it with lots of (digital synthesizers?) which we didn’t have access to on any prior recordings so there’s definitely a bigger fuller sound and a lot more going on. Whereas our first record was very stripped down. It sounded like a lot of sound happening at the same time but it was all either coming from the guitar or the Famicom itself. This one is definitely those two elements plus a lot more stuff. The songs also reflect a couple of years more of song writing and practice so I think it’s definitely developing on that front too.
MYATS: How do you manage to reproduce it when you play live?
KF: We have Anton on drums and Christoph and I playing guitar and I’m singing and the rest is backing tracks. I mean that’s sort of how it is with electronic music. If you really want to replicate that sound you sort of just have to play it back.
MYATS: So what’s next for you guys after the tour and the album comes out?
KF: Well, we’re touring Europe as soon as we get back so we’ll be doing that for about a month and hopefully recording more music and writing stuff and playing for another album down the road. We’ve already got a couple of songs we’re working on.
MYATS: Any summer festivals in the plans?
KF: You know, I’m not really sure. Sometimes those things get booked not too far before the actual events themselves so right now nothing really has been scheduled but we’re doing a big tour so hopefully good things will come out of that and we’ll have some opportunities to play in summer festivals next year.
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We’d like to extend a thank you to Kurt Feldman and the rest of The Depreciation Guild for taking the time to chat with us. We’re so excited for their upcoming show this Saturday, April 3rd at Il Motore with Serena Maneesh. Tickets for the show are only $10.00 in advance and $12.00 at the door and can be purchased online here.
