Interview: Unknown Motives' Jordan Palamara discusses new studio album 'Lag'

Australian musician Jordan Palamara hasn’t let their Tourettes keep them from pursuing their dreams. With their alternative/industrial rock group Unknown Motives, they were able to transform their condition into something magnificent. The result is the band’s debut album Lag, which will pique the interest of Queens of the Stone Age and Devo fans. We spoke to Palamara about working on the record, which you can check out below.

When did you decide to use your Tourettes as a musical inspiration?

I’ve used the rhythms of my tics as inspiration before in some of my previous musical projects, but it wasn’t really something I was specifically focusing on. For a few years, I’ve been considering taking the rhythms exactly as they are and not altering them, it just seemed fitting to do it for this album because it was written through a period of stress, and stress is a big trigger for many of my tics.

What's the meaning behind the name Unknown Motives?

The words Unknown Motives were written in a message to a friend from about a year before the project came to fruition, and I found the notes around the time I finished writing the first song, ‘Reckless’. I think the name lends itself to the narrative quite well. The character singing feels like an honest representation of me, but I’m aware his feelings and motivations are a little more vague to the listener. After I realised that was the type of person he sounded like, Unknown Motives just felt right.

What was the recording process like for Lag?

Stressful! I think you can hear that in the final cut of the songs. It really shouldn’t have been as much as it was, but we all had so many things going on all the time, it was all a bit much. Now that it’s done I’m glad that quality was retained in the recordings. All the drowsiness, stress and tension in the songs, it was present in every part of their formation.

I wrote, recorded, and mixed the album all within a year. I had help from some friends but none of us were professionals by any stretch of the imagination. I was really attracted to lo-fi sounds, so I capitalized on my lack of experience to capture that energy. All of the drum machines were recorded first, once as a direct in into the desk, and twice after that through a guitar amp to capture the intense, crunchy sound of our rehearsals. We then created unique blends of those 3 different drum machine tracks for each song and recorded the guitars, live percussion, vocals, and synthesisers gradually over the top.

The ideas were great and felt unique to the project, but we were very lucky to have Darren Reston step in to mix after I had finished my initial versions. He really helped bring the album up to the level it’s at now.

What is your favorite song on the release?

So hard to say… I have a real affinity to “Reckless.” That song really solidified the concepts I wanted to explore for the rest of the album, not only in my tics, but also my feelings of stress and exhaustion. Keely (our keys player) loves “Goo Groove.” That one is the most divisive between listeners, and I’m kinda into that. My love of childhood video games really shines through on that one. But “Cynthia” has a special place in my heart because it nearly didn’t make the cut. It was written real late into the process, and it felt a lot more melodic than some of the other ones I was working on at the time. The story feels quite concise, and the groove is infectious. I’m not sure the album would sound as diverse and rounded as it does without “Cynthia” there.

What are some of your musical influences?

For this project, I’d say my main influences were Nine Inch Nails, PVT, Gary Numan, and Queens of the Stone Age. PVT are a relatively small Sydney based band signed to Warp Records, they’re incredible. Highly recommend checking them out.

What are some of your favorite local bands in the scene?

Huge shout to Clear Tears, a band fronted by my mega talented brother. Treats are crazy good too, we played an intro show last year with those 2 bands, we’re all friends from way back. The Dead Amigos are huge as well, their keyboard player Will Dunn helped record Lag.

Do you hope this record can inspire others to use their condition(s) in an artistic way?

Of course! A few years back I wrote an ambient album under the name Sonoflo; the album followed the many stages of the sleep cycle. I wrote it around my ongoing issues with sleep. I found the writing of both that album and Lag to be quite cathartic; they’ve both really helped me come to terms with and feel empowered by some of these parts of who I am that I don’t feel like I get a lot of say over.

Imagine if everyone had the time or creative confidence to create art around these huge topics that have such sway over their lives? Not only would it be so helpful for so many, but it’d be so interesting getting an opportunity to listen to, or watch people explore these parts of themselves. If you get the opportunity to do it, I highly recommend it.

Follow Unknown Motives on Facebook and Instagram for all updates.

Interview: Easy Allies' Isla Hinck discusses their love of synths

Hailing from Los Angeles, Isla Hinck is known by many as one of the members behind video game website Easy Allies. When they’re not busy producing shows, Hinck is busy playing with synths. We talked to them about their background in music, working on music for Easy Allies, and if a studio album is in the works.

How did you get involved with music?

I grew up in a very musical house. We would always have a CD playing. Anything from Chanticleer to Gregorian chant to Ray Lynch to Sounds of Blackness. It was a really wide range of stuff. My parents would take us to concerts at the orchestra hall in Minneapolis/St. Paul a couple times a year for various things. I took piano lessons for 7 years as a kid, but they basically fired me because, turns out, I've got problems with authority and I don't like being told to practice. Haha. I started playing trumpet in band in 5th grade and continued through high school. I started singing in earnest in 9th or 10th grade and fell in love with it. I would be in the plays and do the singing competitions and everything.

About midway through high school, my friends and I started a terrible goth rock band called Spolia Opima. A few years later, we stopped taking ourselves seriously, changed the name to Dr. Survivor and the At Seas, and the music got a lot better. In college, I was in DePaul Acappella, and we sang a wide range of musical styles. I loved it. The director of that group had a deep love for Georgian folk music (Georgia the country, not the state) and introduced us to it as well. He started a Georgian folk choir called Alioni in Chicago, which I was a member of until I moved from Chicago to LA in 2010. I miss singing in a choir setting, especially Acappella. In Chicago, I was also in two bands: one called the Closers and another called The Evening Redness named after the subtitle to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Pretty dumb band name maybe. Haha. The Closers was kind of 90s-ish funky rock, and The Evening Redness was more hard rock. I joined TER after they had much of the music written, they were looking for a singer, so that was an interesting experience to join something that was kind of already in motion.

What attracted you to synths?

I grew up listening to, like I mentioned above, Ray Lynch and things like that. And my dad would sometimes put on prog rock stuff that had some synths in there. But when I was a super depressed teen, I got REALLY into Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, and that kind of set me on a course from there. I also have always had a deep love for John Carpenter, and so I'm sure the soundtracks from those films got into my head somehow. And growing up playing a lot of video games got the 8, 16, or 32-bit palate of music-making sort of in my head, too. But what's maintained my love for synths is just I love the sound. It's comforting to me. It can be really exciting, or really mellow, it just has so many sonic possibilities.

What acts have influenced you as a musician?

Well, NIN and Radiohead in my formative years. I just can't escape even when I try it seems. I'll make a thing and someone will say "oh very Radiohead," and I'll be like, "Damn, it is isn't it?" Which is very far from a bad thing, of course. But I think I find influences all over the place. From the psychotic energy and lyricism of Tom Waits or Nick Cave to the gorgeous harmonies of a motet from the renaissance era, there's something to appreciate in just about every kind of music except country and bubblegum punk. When I was a kid, we saw this hammered dulcimer player, and that really stuck with me. Hearing that you could make such full tones with just one instrument like that was really something to a young me.

And I've always loved Acappella music, too. I mentioned them above, but Chanticleer is really something else. More recently, I find Lorn really influential, as well as Agnes Obel, and serpentwithfeet. The mixing and mastering on the latter two is really good. That's an area I hope to get better in.

You've played in a handful of bands. Do you remember your first live show?

I remember a few early shows, I don't remember which was first. But Spolia Opima played in a battle of the bands between a few local schools in rural Wisconsin. We won, but I think it was rigged. I was in a bubblegum punk cover band (that's what I grew up calling stuff like Blink 182, and ironically it's my least favorite kind of music, it just makes me really really depressed. Probably because I was really depressed when that stuff was super popular), and I didn't know any of the lyrics, so I had them all written down the side of my arm in black ballpoint pen. Haha.

One of the best early show memories with Spolia Opima was we did one of those scam shows where you have to, like, try to sell a bunch of tickets yourself and you had to buy them first or whatever. I know now that is like totally a scam, but anyways, we got to play at Quest, which was the club Prince started in Minneapolis, and as a weird little sad high school kid, that felt really cool.

What's the process like for creating music for Easy Allies?

For a long time, I would do a song a week for my show with Easy Allies called Easy Update. I mainly decided to do that as a form of practice to try to learn better techniques and stuff. To hold myself accountable. Eventually, negative internet comments kinda killed my enthusiasm for doing that, which is sad, but I do feel like I did learn a lot and improve a lot, and I kind of want to get back into that habit. Just making a song in two hours and calling it good. The pressure was off because I didn't feel like those songs had to be overly serious or really even all that perfect. There's something very freeing to making just silly funny goof-around music. But that was something I just did on my own and stopped doing on my own.

For the live shows and stuff, the first two times we did it, I got a little band together of people I know in LA, and we paid them and we adapted songs I'd already made into a rock band format and that was great. It felt really good to get back in that saddle again. Then for year three, we hired my friend Daniel James, who's a composer, to do like a medley of popular video game tunes and myself and Noah did a kind of karaoke thing with the audience which was a blast. I did one musical episode for Easy Update, but I'd like to do another, I've got some ideas. It's just a lot of work, so I need to find the time. And with Covid it's not possible to get people together to record or shoot anything.

What advice would you give people looking to get into synths?

DON'T! It's expensive! But actually do! Spend all your money on it because they're great!! I was very afraid to get into modular because I knew I wouldn't be able to control myself, and lo the prophecy did come to pass, and I've got a whole boatload of modules now, and I love them like they were my children. They cost about as much as a kid, probably, so I might as well treat them that way. In all seriousness, I think starting with a good mid-range synth that can make the kind of sound you like is really important.

Besides goofing around in Fruity Loops and then Ableton and not counting the Yamaha S80 we had when I was a kid (which I just googled, and WHOA, I didn't realize how expensive that thing was!), my first real hardware synth was the Korg Minilogue which I still really love! The Minilogue, I think, is a good place to start because it's polyphonic (multiple notes at once) and has loads of presets and it sounds really, really good. It's got a little sequencer and arpeggiator and everything, too. You can do lots with it for $500. Otherwise, there are lots of good software synths that are even cheaper. Pigments by Arturia is really good and is visual, so it could be a good learning tool. And you can learn modular for free with VCV Rack!

What current acts are you listening to right now?

Ochre, Lorn, Rival Consoles, Kelpe, The Comet Is Coming. The Sea Shanties album by Robert Shaw Chorale recently re-entered the rotation because I was playing Sea of Thieves. And Nils Frahm is always close by for the last few years too.

What was the last concert you've seen before everything was shut down?

I went to see John Carpenter a while back. That was awesome. Saw Nils Frahm (and Brad Pitt was sitting right behind me, I'll never get over it!!) in an old church, and it was incredible. Just watched the Nick Cave alone concert which was quite sad but really good. That was online just a couple weeks ago.

Will people ever see a full-length album outside of the material done for Easy Allies?

Here's hoping! I have every intention of making that a reality. I currently have a handful of songs I tolerate that might make the cut. Haha. I hope before too long, yes.

Follow Isla Hinck on Twitter and check out their music on Soundcloud.

Interview: Todd Gillissie discusses forthcoming rock band RPG Rising Star 2

13 years after the release of Rising Star, fans will get to live out their rock star dreams with Rising Star 2. Set for an August 12th release on Steam, the game was one of the standouts at the recent Steam Game Festival. In the game, your goal is to bring your local band to the big stages. This means having to write some amazing songs, perform at some local gigs, and tour across the country. Rising Star 2 developer Todd Gillissie (Gilligames) took some time to discuss the forthcoming game.

The first Rising Star game was released in 2007. What took so long to create the sequel?

I’ve stayed busy working on several projects over the years. In October 2009, I initially released Stranded Without A Phone for iOS, and continued to update it over the years, including an Android release. In May 2010, I quit my “day job” as a business software developer to focus on game development full-time.

In January 2011, I released The Pantheon Cycle: Shrouded Aspect for iOS, which was a tactical turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy world. Despite positive reviews, it turns out that deep strategy didn’t belong on mobile platforms, and it didn’t sell well. I didn’t continue to update it, and it’s no longer available today. In March 2011, I joined a game development startup named Spooky Cool Labs, where I lead the development of a Wizard of Oz city-builder game. We had another team working on a free-to-play casino slots game titled Hit It Rich!.

Spooky Cool Labs ended up getting acquired by Zynga in 2013, so I started working at Zynga by default, and switched over to the Hit It Rich! team, where I pretty much stayed until I quit Zynga in February 2018. I needed a break from working on slot machines. I continued updates on Stranded Without A Phone, including the first Android version, and decided to dust off Rising Star. At this point, I was very experienced using Unity, so I felt confident in porting the code to a modern game engine.

In May 2018, I joined another game development startup named Block & Chain Games, which was technically the game team of Halo Platform, a crypto-currency startup. Unfortunately, as many startups do, it ran out of money. In March 2019, I decided that I would focus full-time on Rising Star 2 until it’s finished.

The first game featured a slew of genres to play. What made you trim things down to simply rock/metal?

Based on the feedback I got from many fans of the first game, I felt like rock/metal were the genres that most players enjoyed the most. I wanted to simplify things that didn’t need to be complicated, so I could focus on other features that add more fun. Eliminating genres was one of the things that happened as a result of that. Technically, the whole game is genre-generic, so you could consider your band any genre you want (other than no longer having access to instruments such as horns & turntables). It’s mainly just the soundtrack and the cover art that’s rock/metal at this point.

What was the process like working on the in-game music?

I’m a musician, and I have two sons that are also musicians (Josh and Cameron). I also have a lot of musician friends. So, I’m surrounded by music all the time. I’ve used some original music from a band I used to be in named Mime Bomb, and also had Cameron come up with some original material. I was also introduced to a talented instrumental guitarist named Damen Edgar, and have asked him to provide a few originals.

Typically, the musicians write and record whatever they want, and I listen to it and decide what fits the game. Sometimes I give feedback to make some changes if it’s close but not quite right for the game, and they’ll go back and tweak it. I think it’s similar to a producer’s role when recording, except that it’s not as real-time since we’re all in different cities. The original game had contributions from artists of every genre that was in the game, so it was more of an “exposure” thing for them. This time around, I didn’t want to ask for use of musicians’ songs without intention of paying for them, so the soundtrack is smaller, but it’s really, really good.

While the first game ran on Blitz3D, the sequel gets a major upgrade with Unity. How was it working with that game engine?

I started using Unity in 2011 during my Spooky Cool days, and have been using it ever since. I’ve seen it grow quite a lot in the last 9 years, and it’s very nice to work in an engine that is not only very capable of cool things but has great ongoing support and a great community. The fact that I can use the same engine whether I’m making mobile games or PC games is fantastic. Using a modern engine like Unity really helps developers get things done much quicker than we used to. Even with Blitz3D, I had to develop a lot of subsystems myself, which meant less features could be developed in the same amount of time.

Aside from the visual upgrade, what are some new features being added to the game?

Most of the new features are visual-oriented. Aside from obviously better character graphics, using Unity has opened up a lot more possibilities visually, such as first-person exploration of homes, venues, and other locations. And since your homes are 3D, you can now buy art to decorate your homes, and hang your awards and guitars as decorations too. Your home’s jam room is stocked with equipment based on the musicians in your band. You can design banners to hang behind your band during gigs.

The timed songwriting “memory” minigame from the first Rising Star has been replaced with a kind of puzzle. I wanted to get rid of any features that rely on speed or arcade abilities, and instead represent songwriting as more of a decision-making process, combined with random factors that are affected by your songwriting skill stats.

The main focus for the initial launch of Rising Star 2 was to have all of the original game’s features plus a few more, all looking better than ever. Then after launch, I plan on continuing development to add new features such as other countries besides the USA, maybe a T-shirt designer, maybe a stage designer, maybe a way to actually hear the songs you write, maybe a random lyrics generator. I don’t know what I’ll do in what order, but rest assured that feature development isn’t complete when August 12 hits.

As a musician, you've seen how the coronavirus has affected the music industry. With no possible live shows in sight for a while, how do you feel about younger musicians using the game as a way to live out their dreams until things get settled again?

Honestly, I think Rising Star 2 is a way for many people to live out this dream, whether they’re a musician or not. Many people would love to be a musician, but either never had the means to become one or simply don’t have the natural aptitude. But the spirit is alive in anyone that just loves music. I think that the coronavirus pandemic is worse on fans than professional artists because there are more fans than professional artists. I’ve been happy to watch artists continue to play on live streams, and I know they’re taking this downtime to write new material.

Don’t get me wrong, I support the artists and feel bad that they can’t go out and make their normal living, but I feel even worse as a fan that I can’t go see them play live. My advice to most people is to buy their favorite indie bands’ merchandise from their web site, or buy their music from Amazon or Apple or whatever, to help support them when those sales are the only revenue they have right now.

Fans can follow Rising Star 2 on Facebook and YouTube.

Kentucky ska punk group Pimpslap pays tribute to late vocalist with compilation

In the late '90s/early 2000s, ska punk group Pimpslap rocked several venues in Kentucky. While the band split in 2004, the members remained good friends. Unfortunately, tragedy struck when singer Jeremy Pryor was killed in a drunk driving accident in 2014. Over the summer, Pimpslap bassist Josh Hines compiled a slew of unreleased material for the compilation Close Enough For Rock 'N Roll, which includes the unreleased album 13. The 44-track compilation will be released tomorrow (October 24), which would've been Jeremy’s 37th birthday. Hines spoke to us about finally releasing this music and shared some stories about his late friend.

MP3s and NPCs: What was the process for finishing up the unreleased album?

Josh Hines: Back in 2000, we laid down tracks to 13 songs, one of which was an instrumental. We ran out of money, and the album stalled. Sometime in 2003, Jeremy did vocals to four songs, and our trombone player Jon mixed those four. We had rough mixes of the other nine songs from the initial session, but Jon never put any time in them without the vocal tracks. Fast forward 16 years, those individual stems are long lost, and all I have to work with are those rough mixes from 19 years ago. There are flaws on some of the songs that we would have definitely fixed back in the day, but they're unchangeable at this point. Volume issues, sour notes, timing problems, etc. They all live on as they were when we recorded them.

I played with the EQ a bit to help it out, but I basically just laid down vocals on top of rough mixes that I really couldn't adjust at all and tried to blend them. I did some backing vocals on the four songs Jeremy did and did all the vocals on the other eight. Out of those 12 songs, when the band was going, I would have sang lead on maybe two or three of them and provided backing vocals for most of the others, so it was strange singing lyrics and melodies I'd never done before. Especially because Jeremy was very loose with his lyrics and melodies the entire time. They would change slightly almost every show, so I had to listen to a lot of live tapes to find the consistent parts and just decide what I thought sounded best for everything else. It was amusing singing about his girlfriends from 20 years ago, and it was a bit haunting harmonizing with him. There are two other recording sessions represented on the first disc of this collection, and I added some backing vocals to a couple songs from the 2003 session. For the live disc, I overdubbed some guitar, bass, drums, and vocals in various places to help even out some mixes that were just a little lacking on certain instruments but for the most part the live disc is truly what we sounded like as a live band 16-20 years ago.

MP3s and NPCs: What was it like looking back at old footage of the band?

Hines: Looking back at old footage was like revisiting a past life. I'd seen pictures, but I'd never actually sat down and watched any of the old videos. It's been nothing but good memories. It's made me miss Jeremy quite a bit, but we had so much fun that it's difficult to be sad about any of it. At this age, I'm old enough to be the dad of the people in those videos, so it's literally like watching somebody else do things that I somewhat remember doing myself. I've stayed active in bands the entire time, so some of the shows and recording sessions aren't as distinct in my mind as they once were and it all becomes a bit of a blur, but some of these performances I remember pretty well.

We were so young for most of it, doing such stupid shit, and acting like idiots, but we had so much fun, and the crowd was always into it. I can't imagine doing that stuff on stage now, but I'm glad we didn't hold anything back. Jeremy and I were constantly trying to one-up each other on stage, and it's awesome looking back at the relationship we had in those roles in the band. Trying to be the funniest one but also encouraging each other and doing little routines together that we'd organized. We played together in another band called Commander after Pimpslap, but Jeremy switched to drums so the stage dynamic between us was different. I'd give anything to have done just a single reunion show with Pimpslap.

MP3s and NPCs: What were some of your favorite memories playing with Jeremy?

Hines: It's difficult to pick out a small number of favorite memories. Between Pimpslap, Commander, and a few others, we played together for about 10 years and even after that our other bands would do shows together. If I had to try to make a short list, it would go something like this: During one song I would get on his shoulders for a section and we'd keep playing (you can it during the break of the live song "I Hate You" on the second disc). At the end of The Drunker They Are, I would stand behind him and we'd play the right hand of our own instrument and the left and of each other's instrument. There's plenty of video of that happening. During "Guitar Up," we always did a lot of moves and dances together. We used to cover The Cars song "Magic," and we'd run in place the entire song.

Along with our drummer Nick, we would sometimes leave the stage and come back out wearing Santa beards and call ourselves The Italyon Stallyonz, then play five minutes of improv metal. There were just so many things for each song and show over the years. This is going to sound corny, but more than anything I just miss looking over at his smile on stage. Every show was just so much fun and full of shit to laugh at. It was all smiles all the time. Sharing that with your best friend rather than somebody who was just a bandmate, nothing beats that.

MP3s and NPCs: How was the Kentucky music scene back in the day?

Hines: The Kentucky scene was a lot of metal back then. We'd find another punk band from time to time, but we mostly played shows with heavier bands. We almost never played with other ska bands. I think some people were under the impression that the punk and metal crowds had some sort of rivalry but that just wasn't true. We shared the stage with so many heavy bands, and everyone got along great and was very supportive. This was the 90s and early 2000s when it was more difficult to get a band off the ground without the help of social media and the internet, so everyone came out to shows to see bands and it didn't matter what they sounded like. The scene was much tighter back in those days. There weren't any little cliques that would blackball certain bands. These are all-ages shows back then. I don't have a clue what the bar scene was like because we broke up before we were all 21. I think we played one or two bars the entire time and they were out of town.

I'll admit we were cocky as fuck back then, and that rubbed some people the wrong way. Most of the time, we were the youngest band playing, and we sort of relished in that. Like we had more energy and could upstage the other bands on that alone. We'd show up and have a horn section while everyone else just had guitars, and we loved the attention that would get, especially from the older crowd that hadn't been exposed to ska. We always had a pretty strong fan base and a lot of female fans, too. Isn't that always the goal? Haha.

MP3s and NPCs: Did the band have any missed opportunities (tours, opening for bands) while they were active?

Hines: I think the biggest missed opportunity was not releasing all the music we recorded. We opened up for some good bands like Goldfinger, Show Off, Mustard Plug but we had nothing to hand them to listen to later. We had nothing for radio stations to play. No videos online. We played a lot of big shows, but there weren't any specific times when I felt like we really blew an opportunity. We got disqualified from several battle of the bands, but that got us more credibility than the bands that won.

MP3s and NPCs: What have been some life lessons you've learned from being in the band?

Hines: That's a tough one. This was my first band, and I think you learn more in that than any that comes later. How to handle yourself around fans and the crowd, things not to say on the mic, don't panic if something goes wrong, look like you're having fun, don't have too many cooks in the kitchen during song writing, be organized, be positive, know your goals, enjoy every moment, and most importantly release the goddamn music so you don't have to do it 20 years later.