There is something definitively artful and, yet, ambiguously bookish about Oryx and Crake’s self-titled debut. It is rich with metaphors and allusion and a ghostly noir-esque atmosphere lurks in the background like an old black and white film projector running idly in the corner of a crowded room. Seeing as the band draws their name from the title of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian work of speculative fiction, it’s clear that there is more running through the members’ heads than how they might arrange some notes, chords and melody to construct a song. As the band prepares for their record release show this Saturday at the Earl, they will be guest editing Latest Disgrace all week, discussing the artists, music, literature, and other influences that went into creating their stunning debut.
In today’s installment, the band discusses the influence that literature—especially the works of Atwood and postmodern author, Haruki Murakami—have had on their music.
—————————–
There are stacks of books on the back cover of our album for a reason.
The obvious and most important connection is to the novel Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I love Atwood and have devoured everything that she has written since I read The Handmaid’s Tale in the ninth grade. And we didn’t choose the name Oryx and Crake just because we liked the name or the animals (although the oryx/unicorn connection is pretty rad). Ryan can and has written everything, from honky-tonk country to four-on-the-floor dance electronica, but for this album, he had a clear sonic goal: he wanted to combine old world traditional instrumentation with modern, computerized sounds. The nature of the two title characters meshed very well with Ryan’s concept for the music. The romantic earthiness of Oryx butts up against the rigid, selfish futurism of Crake. We mimic the struggle for identity and power in the novel in many ways: the yin/yang of Ryan and I as we attempt to create together, the delicate balance of our many instruments to create a harmonic whole, and, within the lyrics, the promise of joy and growth in the midst of a pretty messed up world. Atwood is a major inspiration for us, and I hope we do her proud.
But there are other literary influences as well: The poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E.E. Cummings, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murikami, “Late Wife: Poems” a collection by Claudia Emerson, and, more generally, the stack of memoirs that I’ve been reading for the last few years.
Matt Gilbert: A lot of my contributions to the band have been for the live show rather than the album, in the form of these strange little music controllers made out of salvaged electronics and older technologies. I was doing a little of this before meeting the band, but it meshed well with what they were doing.
I like to imagine a post-apocalyptic landscape like the one in Atwood’s novel, where someone cobbles together these contraptions from whatever is left lying around in the trash or washed up on the seashore. So far I’ve built controllers out of an old IMAX control panel (one of my favorites), a manual coffee grinder, parts from an inkjet printer, an old hard drive and other parts from a laptop, a sewing machine pedal, even embroidery hoops. This little family of MIDI controllers is always growing. Hopefully, these instruments evoke Atwood’s imagery, and reflect the combination of acoustic and electronic elements in Oryx and Crake’s sound.
Ryan Peoples: We get asked this kind of question a lot, “Do books and literature influence you music?”. It’s funny, I don’t notice other bands being asked this on a regular basis, but our band is named after a book. But I think that all bands are influenced by what they read in the same way that they are influenced by what they hear … so my simple answer is always “yes.”
It is harder to recognize exactly where the books are influencing the music. It’s much easier with other songs and albums. Unless there is a song that borrows from a certain book (or perhaps a band borrowing their name from a book), it is sometimes hard for me to tell when I am being influenced by what I’ve read.
However, there is a certain genre (if you could call it that) that I definitely consciously try to emulate, and not necessarily lyrically. The strange worlds that Poe and Kafka created influenced me as a kid and still come up all the time in my mind. I love their ability to take us to a completely made-up world that is totally engrossing.
There are more modern examples, of course. Kurt Vonnegut, although bringing a more obvious humor, had a similar feeling, as did Tom Robbins. Cormac McCarthy is good at this sometimes too. (Rebekah and I are actually working on writing a song that borrows heavily from The Road; it’ll progress a lot faster once I convince Rebekah to read the book.)
More recently, I started reading a lot of Haruki Murakami. He basically just goes completely wild in his head, letting any twists and turns that come to his mind flow freely, and somehow keeps me totally engrossed the whole time. I want to make happen musically what he does with his writing. I want to create a sense of time and place for our albums, and allow listeners to be transported there.
I can’t even say that we’ve achieved this yet. I think the bands that do are great ones: Radiohead comes to mind first, as does Joanna Newsom in a completely different way. The Antlers did it with their Hospice album in ’09. Going back further and in a much more obvious way, Pink Floyd was really good at it. The list really goes on and on.
I’m not going to be happy unless the next album takes me and everyone else to some place out of time and mind.
More Info:
Bandcamp: www.oryxandcrake.bandcamp.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/oryxandcrakeband
Twitter: www.twitter.com/oryxncrake
