The Future Is Russian

ihm: Now, The Russian Futurists is essentially just you, right?

MAH: Yeah.

ihm: So how do you get it to sound so big?

MAH: I spend a lot of time in my bedroom on my computer. Ever since I started, that's been the music that influenced me a lot -- the old Phil Spector, Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys, Smile-era Beach Boys, stuff like where the production was really dense. When I started I was using such shitty gear that it was a way to cover up that I couldn't do a pristine solo on these keyboards. It started as a way to mash everything together so that it covered up the lack of fidelity, and then I just stuck to it. I still like big-sounding stuff, like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins and bands like that. I'm drawn to those kinds of production values. If you want to do that kind of production style and you don't have a roomful of people to do it with or all the gear you just do it with anything you've got. It all started with that.

ihm: How do you find it translates to the live setting?

MAH: Live I've got three other guys on stage with me -- it's a four-piece, and we have four keyboards, and sometimes a guitar. Basically we try and sound as close to the record as possible, without being too hung up on that. It doesn't have to sound exactly like it, but as close as we can, and then change it a little so that it works and makes sense.

ihm: Why do you have the philosophy that it should sound like it does on CD?

MAH: It's because it always started that way. I never started the group thinking I wanted to have a band. I never even wanted to play live. I just wanted to make my records, and have them speak for themselves, and that would be that. The more you do it, though, the more you get offers to do shows, and the more you get people saying "You have to do shows, you have to do shows." Now that I've started doing them on a semi-regular basis, I know the value of them, of connecting with people through a live show. I like it now, but I was dragged into it kicking and screaming.

ihm: Do you enjoy doing a live show, or would you prefer having been able to stay in the studio?

MAH: If I could just stay at home and make records, I think I'd ideally like to do that. I like to travel, and there's a lot of great stuff about the road, but to be honest, I'm still pretty nervous in a live setting. I get pretty antsy about it, and I'm still not one hundred percent comfortable with it. I'm starting to get better with it, though. Plus, when you're doing these shows that take you halfway across the world, and you get to do these great festivals, and you get to stay in nice hotels and eat great food, you're like, "Wow, I can't really bitch about having to play live." There is some good stuff that comes out of it, and you can have a lot of fun with it, it just depends on the show.

ihm: Our Thickness is only your third album. Do you think that, if you'd had the chance to not have to tour behind it, you would've released more stuff?

MAH: I think so, but we've only really started touring in the last little bit. It does take me longer, I think, than most people to write songs. I don't know why that is, because I'm not doing something that's any different, it's just that it takes me a little while longer. Maybe because I'm doing it all myself. We've only started touring in the last two years. But I think now, as I'm trying to record stuff for a new album and I'm leaving for a tour on Tuesday and I'll be gone for a couple of months, that whole time means no recording time. I kind of have a love-hate relationship with the live thing.

ihm: You can't record on the road?

MAH: It just doesn't happen that way. When you're on the road, your schedule is too ridiculous for you to sit down. It's not like I can sit down with a guitar and write the skeleton of a song. I need to be in my home, and it takes about a year for me to make songs the way I want them. It's just that on the road, it's the last thing on your mind -- it's more where are we going today, how much money do we have, where are we staying tonight, all these boring things. Doing interviews before the shows. It's things like that that are more apparent at the time than let's work on some songs. Before you know it, a month or two goes by and you realize, "Shit, I haven't recorded anything." It's a weird thing. Some people can do it, but I think I'd have to have a laptop and a few keyboards and stuff, and it'd be pretty hard to lug around in a van. Last time we toured, the four of us did it in a Ford Taurus, so there wasn't room for any extra stuff.

ihm: What was it like suddenly being asked to play halfway around the world after recording an album in your bedroom?

MAH: It's always really flattering, and it's encouraging, too, because if no one had heard it I don't think I'd be making such a push of it now. It was great, the initial response in England was huge, while in Canada no one knew who the hell we were, and we couldn't get arreseted, but the second everything became popular in England Canada was like "Oh, okay, now we like it too." It was good, but it made you a little upset that you had to get recognition halfway across the world to get it in your own country. It's changing now, because there's so much great Canadian music, but I still love going over there. We've had all three records come out in Spain now, so we get to go there a few times, and it's great over there -- they have a wicked scene and a beautiful country. It's great to travel for free.

ihm: Why do you think that is, that Canada doesn't recognize it first? Even though, as you said, there's a boom right now, a lot of it is because these bands are getting recognized elsewhere first.

MAH: I really don't know. I think people are afraid of jumping on something and saying, "I really like this" before someone else tells them it's okay to like it. I don't know why that is. But a perfect example is the weekly press in Toronto. They didn't even write any articles about me until something happened overseas, and then all of them called me that week, and were like "Okay, now it's okay to like you." You kind of wish they'd just go out on a limb at the start, and say we like you or we don't like you, or just give an opinion. It's maybe just that people are afraid of liking something that turns out to be shitty. I wish I had an answer, because it's something I get asked all the time.

ihm: Do you feel any resentment towards the smaller and independent media that should be responsible for breaking these lesser-known acts within Canada?

MAH: I definitely do. Not to slag any other bands, but if you're even a cousin of someone in Broken Social Scene, there's stuff written up. But if you're not part of these certain crews, people get ignored. So there definitely is a responsibility for Canadian media to say "Yes, we like this", or "We're championing this band for this reason." They need to stop sitting the fence. The amount of reviews you see in the weeklies in Toronto that are three out of five are almost all of them, because they don't want to say either way until something happens with them. So you definitely start to resent it after awhile. But as long as you're getting attention and people are picking up on it somewhere, you're happy. I don't really care about being huge in Toronto, or being some minor celebrity, but you can still get upset with people for sitting on the fence.

ihm: Do you think, though, that your music could've caught on in Canada the way it has elsewhere? Do you think Canada, or even Toronto, has an electro-pop scene that could've supported it?

MAH: I think it's getting better. Now you're seeing bands like Metric, who are big in Canada, and..I'm trying to think of some others. But Canada is definitely getting a taste for more experimental or different types of music. I can see why it was popular in Europe first, though, because synthesizers and electronic music happen to be more popular over there. But I think so, definitely. I don't think anything I'm doing is so bizarre that it would freak anyone out, really. To me it's just pop songs.

ihm: Is it nice to go elsewhere, where it's not seen as being really out there?

MAH: It is. It's not so much like that anymore in Canada. When we toured Canada, the response out west was amazing. Some of our best shows were in Vancouver and Victoria. People's tastes are changing. When we started out, it was definitely something weird for people to see, four guys playing keyboards on stage without a drum kit. They were like, "What the hell is this?" But now people are getting used to different live configurations, so it's not as freaky for people anymore.

ihm: How have you found that touring has changed your sound at all -- or, even, if it has?

MAH: I'd be lying if I said that it didn't, because you see what songs go over. That's not to say that you go home and you write songs that sound like that, but it makes you think about how it will sound live while you're recording. Because that's become such a big part of my life, I kind of have to think about it a little bit. Having said that, though, I don't want to change my sound for a live setting, because it started out as being home studio recordings, and I'd like to keep it like that.

ihm: Have you reached a point where you're able to make music full-time?

MAH: That's what I do now. I did it for the first record, where I was doing it as my job, then there was a pretty big amount of time -- two years or so -- between that record and the last one. I worked at the end of that, up until February (2005). We were on the road from March to almost the end of June. It's pretty hard to keep any steady jobs, so you have to try and make it work out for you.

ihm: I've actually run out of questions, so my next question would be: what do you want to talk about?

MAH: The tour coming up is going to be great -- we're going back on the road with Caribou over in Ireland, Scotland, and England, and then overseas, and that should be great. Then hopefully I'll have some new recorded material in the next year to bring out again.

ihm: You toured with Caribou and Junior Boys across Canada, correct?

MAH: Across the States and Canada. We did 42 shows in 45 days.

ihm: What was that like?

MAH: It was crazy. I've known the Caribou guys for ages, and some of them used to play in Russian Futurists for a period. We got along with the Junior Boys great, too, so it was really fun actually. It was a pretty crazy schedule, and it got to be a blur after awhile, when you have three days off out of forty-five.

ihm: How do you cope with that?

MAH: A lot of booze, to be totally honest. And you're with your friends, so it's not that bad. At the end, though, you get the need for stability. You want to have your own bed, and I have a girlfriend, so I wanted to spend time with her. You just start to miss your friends and your girlfriend. I can't imagine being in one of those bands that tour for, like, two years. I don't think I could handle that.

ihm: Do you lose track of where you are?

MAH: Oh yeah, for sure. When we toured Italy, too, we were waking up and saying, "Where the hell are we?", and not remembering city to city. It's the same even when I look back to the US tour. I can remember little bits and pieces, but there are huge chunks that you're just, like, where were we then? Places like Charlotte and Virginia, it just becomes a blur, and you forget a lot of it. But you remember a lot of the good parts, and you remember a lot of the fun stuff. Like I said, being on the road with your friends is great, it's like four or five road trips. It's pretty fun.

ihm: Did you find you started getting more notice with Our Thickness?

MAH: Yeah, definitely. This album's definitely picked up the most attention right off the bat of the three. It's already sold more than the other two combined, and it's only been out since May. It seems to be the one that's getting a bit of notice, and with that people are discovering the old stuff.

ihm: So did it start picking up after the tour was over?

MAH: Yeah, and during the tour. When you're on the road, you get media attention, because the local press will write about you, and people will come out and see you, and you start selling CDs on the road, and it just increases people's interest. From the start, though, the response to this record has been amazing. We haven't had to force it down anyone's throat, and it's been picked up by a lot of word of mouth, so it's been good.

ihm: So there wasn't any point on the tour where you noticed it suddenly picking up?

MAH: Certain cities, you definitely notice it. But it was just the time period. We were on the road when the album came out, so it was hard to pinpoint a moment. It's been a steady climb, and the album keeps going up and up right now. We're going to be releasing it in the UK now -- there are a couple of labels we're talking to -- and we're looking at releasing it in Japan and Australia. It just keeps going up incrementally, so it's great, and it makes me excited to keep doing it.

ihm: Would you prefer this small, incremental growth, or that it suddenly exploded everywhere?

MAH: I like this slow build. For me, it legitimizes the whole thing, as opposed to hiring a crazy amount of publicity and press people and bombarding the public with it. Then you'll have one record people really like, and they'll say the next one is a piece of shit because it doesn't sound like the first one. I prefer doing a slow build. You look at bands like Guided By Voices, that have had to slug it out for a lot of years, but at the end of the day people stop and say, "Holy shit, they've got a really great catalogue." I like it better that way. I don't think I'd be able to handle a big, overnight thing.

ihm: How do you think your next album will sound?

MAH: So far, it's similar to Our Thickness, but it's got a bit of my hip-hop influences -- more sampling and that kind of stuff. It's hard to say, since I'm only about four tracks in. But for me, it's definitely different record to record. Some will say they all sound the same, but to me, I notice a difference. This one will probably sound dancier, maybe, a little more beat-driven.

ihm: Do you sit down and plot an album out, or do you write it song by song and them piece it together at the end?

MAH: It's always song by song, which is why it's hard for me to get a sense of what it's going to be like. You do a song, and it'll sound one way, but then the next one will sound like a country song. You do the songs, and then try and fit them together in a way that makes sense as a record.