Floraline
Randall Stephens interviewing Jesse Atchison
Who will don skinny ties and black hair roots on a blond head, and play herky-jerky euro-synth tunes in the Southwest? Very few, save Floraline. Q: What does Atlanta, Georgia have to do with new wave? A: Floraline. What follows is a primer on understanding why Floraline are who they are, where they are, when they are.
A question of scene: Coming from Atlanta, are there any groups that you guys play with or are affiliated with that are excavating the same new wave dance material as you guys?
No, not really. It’s been very hard finding like [-minded] bands to play with. We just got back from a five-week tour, and we really didn't match that well with most of the bands we played with. Locally though, there’s a band called Seely who we like, and another called Underwater. You couldn't call either of those bands very new wave though, but they're the closest match, locally, that I can think of.
When I first listened to the CD I thought a lot about Blondie's disco/new wave stylings, and about Duran Duran's first big single "Planet Earth." The guitar jangle, groove bass thumping, and keyboard sounds are very historically distinct. The rub: there is definitely something nostalgic about Floraline, but you also manage to sound very au courant. What is it about Thatcher/Reagan-years music that draws you?
I don't know, I guess what you grow up with is often at the core of what you like. I was a huge Duran Duran fan back then, and I still love all of their stuff today. Blondie too. I don't like most of their stuff, but some of their hits are undeniable. All of us have very different tastes in music, but we do all love pop in one form or another. Our influences go everywhere from Marvin Gaye, to Georgio Moroder, to Prince, to Berlin, to bands of today like The Sea and Cake, Bjork, Aphex Twin, etc.
Jesse Atchison and Jason WinterJarnigan were in Punk bands before Floraline, right? What went into the decision to switch genres?
It was a lot of things. After so many years of rocking out, I think we just grew tired of it. The screaming vocals . . . the screaming guitars. We were just over it. There was this point that we realized that the music we were playing was very different than the music we were listening to. Jason and I were in a band with other friends from high school, and we played around with restructuring it, but our tastes had changed [so] much [that] it was impossible to write songs that everybody liked. Anyway, one day, while we were trying to figure out what direction to go in, we invited Darren over to our practice space and he showed up with his little Casio keyboard. That just got us thinking more and more about taking a new direction. We decided that we wanted to just start all over and change everything. Kind of go down the list and do everything the opposite of how it was being done before.
Has the band played/toured much in the U.S.? (Would you like to tour in Europe or the U.K.?)
Yeah, we got back from a five-week tour about a month ago. Other than that, we did an East Coast thing last fall, and that’s about it. Touring is great, we'd like to do it as much as possible. But, like I said, it’s been hard to find bands to play with.
What has the response to the music been like? I think that if fans are not dancing to this music live, then something’s wrong with them.
The response has been really good so far . . . There don't seem to be very many bands that try to do what we do live. They either go completely electronic, which to me, for the most part, seems like a waste of a "live show"; or they end up rocking out all of their songs and losing most of the elements. We're doing our best to try and find a middle ground to help keep the shows more interesting. We do get people dancing to our music live sometimes. I know when people get into what we're doing, it makes us do a lot better. When people are just standing there, we tend to do the same. We've played dance clubs before. We tend to fit in better there than at most music venues. Our first show was actually at a club that is primarily a dance club, MJQ (here in Atlanta).
About recording the LP: What was it like working with David Trumfio? I can see that his lounge sensibilities, which shine through on the Aluminum Group's Plano, are at work on your CD.
Dave was great to work with. The only problem with recording this LP, and it was a big problem, was time. Everybody had all of these great ideas but we really couldn't work out most of them because there just wasn't time.
Did you come to the studio with most of these songs worked out, or did they evolve slowly in the studio?
All of these songs were already worked out for the most part. The only things that really changed were some of the beats and some keyboard lines that got turned into horns.