Unveiling Notes: School of Seven Bells Interview
Named after a legendary pickpocket training academy, sporting an album with the heady, mysterious title of Alpinisms, and packing enough dreamy, pop-psychedelia to make lucid dream forever, it might be reasonable to expect School of Seven Bells to be a terrible interview: a trio that takes themselves too seriously, giving banal, ambiguous answers and seeming above the occasion. Fortunately, though their music seems to come from the sky, the group finds themselves planted strongly on the planet’s surface, discussing terrestrial matters like touring, financial security, and finding the right sound.
Pensatos: How’d you all end up touring with M83?
Alejandra Dehaza: They asked us.
“I didn’t really have a choice, cause [music] was the only thing that I could do well enough to make a living.”
Benjamin Curtis: Yeah, they asked us. They did a tour in England opening up for Secret Machines, so there’s a bit of a connection, but I’m not sure that’s why we got it. I think maybe they asked us because we didn’t have a drummer. They have a lot of gear.
Pensatos: What does the title of your album mean: Alpinisms?
Benjamin Curtis: Well, Alpine style is a kind of mountain climbing, it’s like a philosophical approach to mountain climbing. You basically only take what you can carry. You really take care not to deface the mountain. It’s kind of a great metaphor for your conduct, and we’re kind of treating it more as the philosophy of that rather than the actual mountain climbing part of that.
Pensatos: I don’t want to water this down too much, but, it’s a very minimal idea about not harming things, how does that to apply to the music that’s on the record?
BC: It applies to our conduct as kind of being serious and kind of pure about what we do, you know just kind of doing everything the right way.
Pensatos: Listening to your album it has a sort of esoteric quality to it, is that purposeful, and if it was, what decisions went into creating that texture?
AD: I actually think it was, our only motive when making this record. I guess its best put together as we basically didn’t want to make any creative decisions that were based on habit - that were based on things we had done before. We wanted to do something really fresh individually and it just happened to mesh very well together. So it’s just kind of like it was an exploration of what we could do musically - the three of us - individually to bring it together and see how it turned out.
BC: Really, how it turned out is just what we do. I don’t think we intended it to be any more esoteric or obvious either. We didn’t mean it to be either of those things.
“We didn’t know we were going to make this kind of music until last year.”
Pensatos: When did you all decide that music was going to be what you did with your lives?
AD: I actually thought I was going to be a writer. When I moved to New York, that’s what I wanted to do I had all these romantic ideas about who I would be and a friend of mine told me one day he was like, “Well, the only way you’re going to make it as a writer in New York is if you put it into a song.” So I was just like “Okay.”
Pensatos: Why’d he say that?
AD: I don’t know, he’s a cynic, but it worked, cause then I was just like, “Well I’m going to pick up the guitar then.” We had guitars and instruments; we were always playing instruments in the house from way early on, but I’d never thought of it as doing it as a career or something like that. I’d never thought of that before.
Pensatos: How about [Claudia]? The same?
Claudia Dehaza: For me it was basically that, I didn’t really have a choice, cause it was the only thing that I could do well enough to make a living.
Pensatos: And not hate it.
CD: Yeah, it kind of worked out really well.
BC: I always wanted to. I thought when I was really really young I was going to be a famous concert pianist, but I never got that. I was never that good at piano. I kind of plateaued really early, but I kept going with my other shit.
Pensatos: When did you first figure out this was the kind of music you were going to make. This is a pretty big jump from classical concert pianist to…
BC: Oh, we didn’t know we were going to make this kind of music until last year. It was a surprise. That’s a good way to operate, you know, with a little bit of plan but not too much of a plan you don’t know exactly where you’re going, but there’s a distant point on the horizon.
Pensatos: It’s pretty obvious that this album doesn’t really sound anything like what [Benjamin] did with Secret Machines or what [Claudia and Alejandra] did with On Air Library. So in your previous projects, were there specific points of creative dissatisfaction and curiosity that led you to this specifically?
“I definitely was not being challenged enough in my last band. I just truly wanted to make music.”
AD: Yeah, I knew that in On Air Library I wasn’t making the music that I wanted to make. You know it’s kind of like it started actually really fun, I’d never been in a band before, you team up with the people around you and it’s like ‘oh this is great,’ but I knew that with my next band I wanted to very deliberately pick the people I wanted to work with. That I knew who I would get along with creatively and musically and make it something that was very intentional. You know; to have collaboration with these three people that all respect each other.
BC: You want to work with me?
AD: Oh God, but you know what I mean, in the beginning when it starts off for fun, you’re just kind of like hey cool I’m putting my friend in this band, you know but I just really wanted to do something different this time and actually like really respect and work well with the people that are in the band.
CD: I just truly wanted to make music, so I guess that I feel like in hindsight I did realize that I definitely was not being challenged enough in my last band. I think that probably led to a lot of the boredom that I experienced in the last band, and in this band that doesn’t happen so it’s really great.
BC: Yeah, I think that’s true for a lot of us. This stuff is more like we’re playing at our full capacity all together, and that’s a good way to work.
Pensatos: You left Secret Machines in 2006 right?
BC: Actually, for real yeah, but officially in 2007. The last show I played with them was in 2006.
Pensatos: When was that?
BC: November or December of 2006.
Pensatos: At the end of 2006, Secret Machines wasn’t the Rolling Stones or anything but you were a fairly well-received band, so were you at all worried about leaving the security of that?
BC: Yeah of course, you know getting a steady paycheck playing music … I think a lot of people would say it’s crazy to quit that job. But I don’t know if that wasn’t the plateau I was ready to live on for the rest of my life. You know what I mean? There’s a lot more to me and there’s a lot more potential to life if you know what I can do. And that’s more fully realized with Allie and Claudia. Yeah, I mean of course it’s crazy to leave the band, but this is better.
Pensatos: Alpinisms just came out - it’s not even a month old - so I guess this is probably a slightly premature question but when you’re done touring to support this do you know what you’re going to do?
CD: After this particular tour, we’re still going to be touring for another few months.
AD: Yeah, we’re going to tour more. But then, after that, we’re constantly writing.
BC: I think we’re going to work on things [after] the holidays. I’m kind of excited to start work. Then hopefully, to have an album next year too, that would be ideal.
Pensatos: are there any specific things that have happened on this tour, stuff like the general experience or the crowd response to the material, that have made you think about what you’re going to do next.
AD: I wouldn’t say that, but I would definitely say that this tour is probably a really perfect fit cause the crowd response has been really great so far. I don’t think it’s going to influence what we do in the future, but I think we’re definitely reaching more people than we did last year on this tour.
BC: We’re playing our music a lot louder, I don’t know how that’s gonna show up on the next record. But you know, we made this in our home, in Brooklyn, and it’s different when you go onstage and rock everything out man.
+ video: School of Seven Bells ‘White Elephant Coat’
