On the heels of Octopus Project’s amazing Philly show at Kung Fu Necktie last month I managed to find out a little bit more about their masterpiece Hexadecagon, where the found each other and how they came upon their unusual name.
TWIAPC: I was one of the lucky folks who got to witness Hexadecagon in it’s full glory during SXSW and it was one of the most thrilling and exciting shows I’ve seen this year. How did you develop the idea?
Octopus Project: The idea for the Hexadecagon show came about while we were on tour last year. We were listening to a ton of minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley in the van and began thinking of ways to apply that to our own music. We thought one cool way would be to literally surround the audience with sound and visuals. At the time, we weren’t sure it would actually work — with everything synch’d up together, but thought it would be a fun experiment nonetheless. We ended up figuring out the technical side of things first, then set out to write songs/make videos based around this setup. It proved to be an incredibly inspiring way to work. We spent about 3 months on the creative side of things — preparing for the show. After the show, we decided that we liked the tunes so much that we wanted to make them into our next record. We spent a couple of months after the show recording everything in a stereo format, and now we have a new album!
TWIAPC: Does your dedication to an astonishing level of detail always a part of your creative process? Does it ever get exhausting?
OP: We do have a tendency to get way into the minutiae of things! Every time we start a new project, we say that we’re going to simplify things this time around, but it just keeps getting more and more involved each time. It never really gets exhausting though. I think we’re all really excited to focus on every little detail — wanting to make sure everything is totally perfect. We love that kind of focus. It’s definitely a lot of work, but never gets exhausting.
TWIAPC: I’m guessing you can’t execute Hexadecagon totally when you take it on the road. How did you devise the touring plan? What parts had to remain and what elements were sacrificed?
OP: At this point, it’s prohibitively expensive to take the whole surround set up on the road, unfortunately. We are working on a slightly different set up that would be tour-able and plan on testing it out on a short run in Texas in November.
For this current tour, we pared the songs down to a stereo setup. Now the songs sound more like the record. It’s still crazy and loud and colorful, but instead of the sounds spinning around your head, they’re now ping-ponging back and forth or fading between the stereo field.
TWIAPC: How did Octopus Project come to be? And where did the name come from?
OP: The band began as a recording experiment when we were in college. We had been in rock bands together in the past, but wanted to start a band where there were no rules and where we could be free to get as crazy as we wanted. So, we started this band.
The name came about when we were trying to name one of those previous rock bands. I was on the phone with a friend, each saying one word & the combination of the two became a potential band name. He wasn’t too fond of The Octopus Project, so we kept that in the back of our minds for when we started our own band.
TWIAPC: What were your influences when you first started making music and how have they evolved over time?
OP: When we started the band we were listening to a lot of folks like Cornelius, Stereolab, Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Daft Punk, etc…. We still like all of that stuff, but I think our interest has broadened quite a bit. Just trying to listen to as much stuff as we can get our hands on.
TWIAPC: If you could totally break out of your establish sound what genre/sound would you explore?
OP: I feel like we’re pretty free to explore whatever avenues suit us at the time. We try to not put boundaries on ourselves at all. If we”re excited about something we generally just dive into it, and hope that folks are excited to go along for the ride. There are zillions of sounds and musical ideas that we haven’t explored yet and are incredibly excited to see what’s next! The songs on the newest record are pretty spacey and weird, but the next record could totally sound like Bollywood jams. We’ll see!
[MP3] Wet Gold