Guess who’s got a Guardian blog? None other than Interpol’s vampire-on-a-Doc Holliday bassist Carlos D, professing his love for orchestral music via casual composer name-checking and illustrative gambling metaphors (“life is a perennially spinning roulette wheel of change”!). Here’s a bit of D’s love letter to the sweet sounds of the symphony:
When I got bored of banging my head and pumping my fists as a teenager, I turned to the opposite extreme, which for me at the time was listening to classical music. I was looking for a sound that would take me away from my surroundings and transport me to places that the four or five-person rock band ensemble simply wasn’t equipped to do. Because of this, and somewhat regrettably, I missed the boat on a lot of excellent 90s rock like shoegaze, Britpop, and even some grunge that I’ve come to adore over the years. I had immersed myself so much in the structure and history of western classical music that I was painfully ignorant about modern rock’s state of affairs.Once I moved back to the city and enrolled at NYU, I met Daniel Kessler and ultimately joined Interpol. At this point, I was ready to start socializing like a normal human being again and catch up on all the rock and pop I’d ignored for the past five years. My DJ “career” for instance was one expression of this newfound interest in the genre.
…
I’ve been catching up with my old favorites and discovering new and beautiful film scores. At the moment I’m listening to Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony; Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor and Krzysztof Penderecki’s Symphony No. 2. Then film soundtracks like Alexandre Desplat’s soundtrack for The Painted Veil, David Julyan’s music for The Prestige and Philip Glass’ for Notes on a Scandal. My iPod hotel parties are quite a different phenomenon now, I can assure you.
The film score focus shouldn’t surprise anybody; he’s “an aspiring film and TV composer in addition to playing bass and keyboards in Interpol.” His composer site bio includes a pic of himself with his Italian Greyhound, Gaius, so up next expect a blog on the superiority of IGs to other breeds. Agreed! (‘Cause we have one. Good boy, Buckley.)
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It’d be easy to make fun of him for some supposed pretension, but I can actually relate to what he’s doing and how he approaches things and I didn’t even realize he was a real musician and not some art school dude in a band, so this kind of makes me respect him more. Interesting.
Huh…I’ve actually been listening to classical now for the same reasons…but I don’t listen to Interpol anyway
That is a brilliant picture.
What the fuck is with the “we” thing? Using the royal “we,” are we? Stop it. It sounds stupid. (Unless you’re talking about you and your spouse. If it’s just you, for fuck’s sake, say “I.”)
I don’t get it, why do people care about what he says? He is only the bassist! People only care about singers and guitarists do.
stereogum = pitchfork aggregator?
This gives me a pretentious hard-on
diggin the facial hair
Oh fucking please folks. There has NEVER been a musical “idiom” more pretentious in the truest sense than indie rock. NEVER. Besides, I find it a lot more fucking annoying when indie dudes go on about Miles Davis and John Coltrane as if they really “get” it.