Josh Nacho: The first thing I want to know is, when I first heard the band name I thought it was going to be a girl doing a solo thing or something, so how did the band name come about?
Brian: Actually, it's nothing really all that special. One of the guys was just like "Alison Ranger sounds cool". I don't know where he got it from. There's no real big meaning behind it.
J.N.: There's no real origin?
Brian: No, not really. He just thought it sounded cool. That's it.
J.N.: No one really knows. It's gonna be one of those mysteries?
Brian: Yup.
J.N.: And people are probably going to ask you that time and time again too.
Brian: Yeah. People wanna know who she is, like, is she an ex-girlfriend or something... Nope. No Alison Ranger.
J.N.: She doesn't exist?
Brian: No. I know there's somebody out there named Alison Ranger, a girl who lives in Canada, but we didn't find that out until later.
J.N.: What happened when you found out about her? Did she track you down?
Brian: No. Somebody just told us. Actually, somebody searched it on the internet, she was in a court case, so it came up on a search engine, and we were like, hope she doesn't sue us.
J.N.: I guess it's coincidental then.
Brian: Yeah. She probably doesn't know we exist.
J.N.: One day, she'll probably just be sitting there and be like, "Wait a minute, that's my name". You should just track her down and find her address and send her a CD or something.
Brian: Yeah, really.
J.N.: She'll be like, "Hey, I put out a CD? What's going on?"... So it's been pretty well touched upon by many people-including myself-what your sound is like. Trying to describe it is probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but how do you describe your sound?
Brian: We usually just say we play rock music, because we don't want to pinhole ourselves to a certain genre. I know that sounds cliche, every band says that. If somebody asks us, we say we play energetic rock music, so you gotta come out and hear it to fully understand, because I guess it's hard to try to define our style.
J.N.: I think it just branches upon too many different things, you can't really say it's one specific way.
Brian: Well, what would you call us? And I'll tell ya if I think it's right.
J.N.: When people ask me, I think it's kind of like, hardcore or rock mixed in with the keyboard parts, the piano parts. The way I put it is you get into these spots where it's just so slow, and you can hear the piano and nothing else, and it's just so soothing and beautiful, and then five seconds later, it's just like, anger and all guitar and bass and drums, and it's getting to the hardcore point where you can see kids pushing each other around.
Brian: Kids don't even really do that though. There was kids in there even tonight moshing or whatever they call it, and we played and no one did it. So that was interesting. I don't know, whatever anybody's into, but... I don't know what we are. That's a good question.
J.N.: But then you have the aspect of everyone moshing, and then it went into a slower part, they're all like...
Brian: What do we do now?
J.N.: That'd be cool though if they all just started dancing. Just grabbed the person next to them and slowly started dancing. I think it's definitely unique though. I guess that's why I'm attracted to your sound, because anything-well, not anything-but too many bands out there right now sound the same.
Brian: Yeah, I agree.
J.N.: It's been too long, I think, before anything really new has come along, because people can use whatever words they want, they can say something is "emo", but it's really just pop punk or indie rock. It's just a new label, it's not a new style of music.
Brian: Definitely.
J.N.: I think it's been a while since we've heard different kinds of music, I think it's about time someone just started expanding on it.
Brian: Yeah, well, that's what we're trying to do. We're just trying to do something new, something honest. We're sincerely trying to do something new. I know a lot of bands say that, but they'll kind of do the same stuff as other people.
J.N.: It's working good though, I think. I think it's coming along good. Some bands try to experiment and they're like, "Let's be a hardcore band and put in an accordion", and it's like, ehh... I think it's an even mixture, it's not too slow and it's not too fast. The way the two kind differences of it being calm and being rough, they just kind of flow and they just like... Ahh, I have a word I want to use and I can't think of it. Fuck, and I'm a writer too. They compliment each other very well, the way they go together.
Brian: Cool, that's what we're going for.
J.N.: This actually is a weird question, but, you have a song called "Black Forests on Baltic Shores", that's coming up on a comp.
Brian: Yeah.
J.N.: Do you know what other bands are going to be on that comp., when it's coming out, anything like that?
Brian: It's a bunch of PA bands, and it's a record label called Kick Start Audio who just contacted us and said "Hey, you wanna be on a comp.?", and I'm not really sure who's on it. I know we're on volume two, I know who's on volume one-there's a bunch of cool PA bands. It should be coming out like, next month. It's the first comp. we've ever done with a brand new song that hasn't been released any where else, so it should be pretty interesting. I just got the song back yesterday from the studio and it sounds good, so I'm excited about it.
J.N.: Kind of using a nice little tie in here, with the sense of the new song, I know you guys have been writing, do you have plans to release an EP or an LP?
Brian: We don't even know really. Right now we're just concentrating on writing. We're not even playing any shows for a while. Right now, we're just trying to write and whatever comes along, comes along. It could be a full length, it could be an EP. We're even talking about doing a split with another band. We're just pretty unsure right now. We just wanna write songs, cause it can take us a long time to write songs. We could have five new songs in a month, or we could have it in six months.
J.N.: Do you think that kind of with the fact that what it says in your CD about it took "maybe twenty minutes to listen to and a life time put into it to make", do you think that because of that song writing process- it's not like, "Hey, we're going to make a CD for our record label now"- because you're not really forcing yourself into writing songs, do you think that in any way hurts you more than it helps you?
Brian: No. I think it helps us a lot. I'd rather have five really good songs that we are really happy with, that we spent a long time on, than ten songs that we just kind of rushed through to just kind of get out. I think quality always comes before quantity in the band. If it takes us month to write a song, then so be it. We're definitely going to put out quality stuff. We don't want to pump out a whole lot of stuff.
J.N.: Like some bands put out CDs with ten or twelve songs and only four or five of them are really good.
Brian: We're confident in the fact that any single song on anything we release has the most time put into it.
J.N.: It's not like, "We have ten songs and it's a twelve song LP, so let's throw on these two songs".
Brian: I don't think we'd ever do that.
J.N.: A lot of bands do though. I think that's what makes your music unique too though, just for the CD and the tape, because it's not really like you ever get to any song you want to skip over. You listen through it and you listen through it.
Brian: That's good, yeah. I'm glad.
J.N.: I think it's good when CDs do that, when usually it's like, "yeah, this song's not that great, but the rest of the CD is good". And I think it flows together too well.
Brian: Cool. Thanks.
J.N.: Ok, let's stop talking about the CD. You guys are on MP3.com. You're up there in the charts too. Like, I flip through the charts and I see you.
Brian: I check it every once in a while, it's pretty cool.
J.N.: Do you think it's weird going there and seeing your band?
Brian: Yeah, it's cool. We've actually reached a lot of people through that, and through the internet, that probably would have never heard of us. It's definitely an awesome thing, because kids will just be going through sites or whatever and just come across us. You can actually see how many people download a song per day and all that. It's pretty awesome, just seeing that many people out there are doing it.
J.N.: It's kind of like, "Hey, I saw this band, you should check them out", but that person's in California, so this maybe the only way for them to check them out. That's why I think internet music is a good thing, and shutting down Napster was a huge mistake, but that's for the courts to decide. It's kind of a typical question, but I find it interesting to ask you any way-who are your influences going into making music and what bands do you listen to now?
Brian: As far as influences go, I think musically we're influenced by everything in our lives, it doesn't just come out of music. We try not to say "Hey, I like this band, let's write a song and kind of go like that". I think we just have a song that feels a certain way so we just write it like that. Personally, I'm influenced by such things as way back I took classical piano, that has definitely influenced me because I studied that for years. Then I kind of got into punk rock, and just kind of the music that sounds like ours. And the other guys too, we all kind of came from weird places. The guitarist actually used to play in a grunge band. When we started the band, we never said "We wanna play this kind of music", we just let it happen and whatever came out, came out. As far as bands that I'm listening to right now... I listen to 400 Years, Engine Down, At-the-Drive-In... Those are three biggies. Have you ever heard of them?
J.N.: No. Other than At-the-Drive-In.
Brian: Ah man. Look into these bands-these are good bands!
J.N.: Every time I get into a situation like this with a musician, they start naming off bands that I've never heard of before.
Brian: That's cool though, that's how you learn about new bands. Who else... I listen to so much music. Within the band, we all listen to different kinds of stuff. We don't all like the same bands, and we go through phases where somebody will like somebody at one time. Those are some of the bands I like.
J.N.: Going back to who's influenced you though, is there any kind of one person or moment that made you say, "I want to be a musician"?
Brian: Not really. Ever since I started playing music, I just wanted to be in a band. That wasn't really any one band that made me wanna do it.
J.N.: What do you think about labeling in music today?
Brian: What do you mean, as far as like, genres?
J.N.: Yeah, someone actually described me... No, wait-someone described you to me as "screamo", and it's just like, we're breaking so far down from where it's punk to pop punk to emo, to screamo, we're mixing all these...
Brian: I think it's definitely limiting in some respects. In a lot of ways, it's unavoidable. It definitely limits people, especially us, because people will say that or-
J.N.: You have a keyboard, you're emo!
Brian: Yeah, exactly. Personally, we don't like to be labeled any of those things, because then one person hears that and says, "Oh, I don't think I'd be into that", but they might be. In some ways, it is unavoidable.
J.N.: You should just make a new genre to put yourself in. Just create a new word to put yourself in... See, this actually ties in with the genres... This is actually a direct quote from your web site, "Trite observations on gender conflicts are something we try to avoid".
Brian: You want me to explain that?
J.N.: I know what that means, but I kind of want to know what you think about, because that's basically saying we don't write songs about girls, right?
Brian: Well, I don't know about that. Girls are definitely gonna play some part in our lives, as people. I just think it gets really old when you hear a band with lyrics like, "I went to a party, I saw a pretty girl, then she broke my heart". We're just trying to avoid that. I'm not going to say that we don't have any songs about girls, because there's definitely influences there because that's something that's in our lives. Does that answer the question?
J.N.: Yeah, but I was kind of thinking like with the music, with bands today, you get different pop punk and emo bands and their CDs, one song after the other is about heart break and heartache, about a girl. Do you think music's kind of hit that point where it's gone too far with songs about girls, and in some ways everything that could be said already has been?
Brian: In some ways, yeah. It just gets old, everybody's doing the same thing. There's definitely a place for that though. I'm not going to say I never listen to songs like that, but I think that's just one example of us trying to do something new, not trying to do the same thing as everybody else.
J.N.: I'm really done for questions, but, do you wanna talk about anything?
Brian: I never know what else to say, when they say is there anything else. Check out our web site. If you haven't heard of us, check us out, that'd be really cool. Don't be scared to take a peak at the site or just listen to our music or something, that'd be really awesome.
J.N.: Worst thing that could happen is that you might actually like it.
Brian: Yeah, seriously.
J.N.: Just don't fall asleep while listening to it, you'll have nightmares.
Brian: Ah man. I never knew that our music was that scary, someone else was telling me that tonight. I guess it's haunting.
J.N.: I think part of it is just because, I don't like to use the word emotional because then people think emo, but just the intensity of it to hear it on a CD or see you guys live, you can feel the emotion being conveyed. You can sense the emotion, and it's like, it's a bit too real for people.
Brian: We just try to put in as much energy, and there's emotion again, and intensity and all that.
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