Under The Rotunda

Before an explosive show last week at the Paradise here in Boston, I sat down with Evan Mast to talk about all things Ratatat. They've come a long way since their days of opening for Interpol -- although, honestly, that's a pretty good start, isn't it? Evan met Mike Stroud at Skidmore College in upstate New York, but it wasn't until years later that they started making music together. "I ended up moving to the West coast for awhile, Mike came to New York [City], and by the time I got to New York -- we ran into each other on the subway or something one day. I knew he did music, so I invited him over to work on a song at my house, and we ended up making a really ridiculous dance song. We were having fun doing it, so we kept getting together and making songs. Slowly we got more together and the songs got a little better, and we eventually decided to make a band out of it."

Mike already had some experience in the music industry, touring with Dashboard Confessional and Ben Kweller. "He had a good friend that was in a band that was touring with Dashboard, and the dude from Dashboard needed a piano player. So his friend recommended him for the job. I think he actually auditioned for it and went on tour the next day, it was super last minute. Then he toured for about a year or two with Dashboard -- and Ben Kweller, too. When we played with Interpol, we'd only played like three shows. We'd just played little bars in New York, then all of a sudden we're playing for 3,000 people in L.A.. It was a really good time -- Mike had been touring before that with Dashboard, but for me it was my first ever touring, so it was really fun. Lately, we've just been doing headlining tours in the U.S., but I kinda miss opening, in a way. It's a bit more challenging, you have to win people over. Especially if you're opening up for a rock band like Interpol, what we're doing is pretty different from what their crowd is probably used to. I kinda like the feeling of trying to win over a crowd. I like the idea of pissing off a lot of people and getting a lot of people into the music. At least that's how I felt about those type of tours -- certain people in the crowd would be like, 'What the fuck, this is amazing!' and then other people were just totally offended, like 'They're not even singing!' "

Sure, they don't have vocals, but they really don't need it. Ratatat do their own thing, and it continues to be interesting for their fans. With their latest album, LP3, they've matured and evolved their sound even more, perhaps as a result of their recording process. "We were recording in a studio this time, rather than at home, like in my apartment. So we were able to get a lot more isolated and just focus on making music all the time. The process wasn't so broken up, like it used to be. It used to be we'd get together for a couple hours a day and work on stuff, and then go home, go our separate ways, then come back the next day. I think breaking it up like that made it a lot more difficult. This time around it was more starting a song and keep working on it until it was done." The studio that they recorded LP3 in was really just a big house in Catskill, New York. "This guy moved up to Catskill a couple years ago and bought this house, and it's just full of all these instruments that he's been collecting his whole life. So there's all these old organs and pianos, harpsichords and guitars, it's a really cool place. It's not like a super-pro type of studio, it was a little more comfortable for us. It didn't feel intimidating, it was just a nice home studio setup."

And then, of course, there are Ratatat's hip-hop mixtapes to talk about. "It was just something to do for fun. We finished our first record and then it wasn't going to come out for a year, so we had all this time to do stuff. I was really into hip-hop production at the time, so I was just trying to learn how to make beats that sound like they could actually work for hip-hop tracks. It was like a practice, something to do for fun. Then we decided to put it out after the fact. The tracks got a little better, too, so I feel like it's worth hearing. But it's just a fun thing to do, that's why we give them away for free. It's like an added bonus. It's a quicker thing, we don't take it quite as seriously as our own stuff. We just throw out loads of ideas and don't get so attached to the songs, because at the end of the day it's someone else's song, we're just giving our own take on it." No matter what they're doing, Ratatat have certainly made a name for themselves. They are creative musicians, and they keep me on my toes with whatever they're working on. I'm ready for LP4.

Ratatat - Wildcat (from Classics)
Ratatat - Imperials (from LP3)

Labels: Interviews