John Masters é Harness Flux, e se você por acaso gosta de Television, Pavement, VU, SY e afins, aqui é o seu lugar.
Todos os singles do Harness Flux estão compilados aqui e vou falar somente uma coisa, a referência pra mim é nitidamente Tom Verlaine, ouvir as músicas do Harness Flux pra mim é mais ou menos o seguinte, passear pela obra do mestre Verlaine e logicamente cair na do Harness Flux, é uma sequência lógica, aquela elegância lo-fi esta explicitada aqui.
Resumindo, Harness Flux é pra ouvir e viciar e reouvir e viciar novamente, acima.
***** Interview with Harness Flux *****
Q: When did Harness Flux start, tell us about the history
I started Harness Flux on a bit of whim in 2012 when I began to mess around with home recording by myself. At the time my main musical output was playing drums in The Cheniers and it had been several years since I had tried writing and playing any solo music. For almost a decade I had created ton of songs with my other band Metropolitan but that was always more of a collaborative effort. I was gifted a device that hooked my electric guitar straight into my iPad and I just went from there. The early recordings were a tad primitive as I was sort of learning the ropes of recording as I went along.
Q: Who are your influences?
I’m heavily into lo fi and indie rock from the 90s and the 00s — I have a pretty major Pavement/Sonic Youth obsession. My ears are mostly blown out from seeing those bands dozens of times live when I was younger and I don’t tire of noisy guitars packed into melodic tunes. I’m also really into The Velvet Underground, Deerhunter, Silver Jews, The Feelies, Elliott Smith, The Clean, Beck, Sebadoh, The Fall, Yo La Tengo, Dinosaur Jr, Unrest, Beat Happening, Animal Collective, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, countless others.
Q: Make a list of 5 albums of all time ...
Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
The Velvet Underground & Nico - S/T
Silver Jews - Starlite Walker
Beck - Mellow Gold
Q: How do you feel playing live?
Harness Flux was a daunting live task at first because its a solo act and was rather nerve-wracking since I was used to being in bands - now there’s no one else for the audience to look at but me. I’ve become really comfortable with the presentation of the songs by fleshing out the sound with live backing drum tracks and guitar loops. I like to think I make a pretty nice big noisy sound for just one guy up there.
Q: How do you describe Harness Flux sounds?
Very guitar and vocal driven — noisy but melodic and often psychedelic. Lots of distortion, lots of reverb, lots of echo on everything essentially. I like to take the guitar as many far out places as it can go during the songs and rein it all back in when it feels right — jam it out. Hooks are always good, I like to make a tune memorable.
Q: Tell us about the process of recording the songs?
Like I outlined before I do all my recording at my home studio digitally with iMac, Garageband, etc. I play all the instruments and dub them over one another and that process it not always easy. I usually track the live drums first and add the guitar and vocals, in that order — sometimes things don’t sync up perfectly and I actually like to just let them flow without a ton of corrections. I try not to go overboard with additional extra overdubbed guitars in order to be able to keep a more minimal sound that can be recreated live. A song doesn’t need a bunch of extra bells and whistles to be good, I don’t like to drive myself crazy with the recording process.
Q: Which new bands do you recommend?
They’re not all entirely brand new but some bands that are doing great things these days: Spider Bags, Scott and Charlene’s Wedding, Insect Factory, Octogrape, Obnox, Chain & the Gang, Andrew Aylward & Golden Triangle, Viet Cong, Greenland, Nice Breeze, Plums, Schooner, The Caribbean
Q: Which band would you love to made a cover version of?
I’d like to cover more Elliott Smith but I’ve found a lot of his tunes are actually pretty tough to pull off — lots of alternate tunings and intricate things about them. Always fun to do a Velvet Underground cover, I know a lot of those songs like the back of my hand (and they’re beautifully simple).
Q: What´s the plans for future....
Just to keep on releasing music and playing shows — I hope to never stop doing either of those things!
Q: Any parting words?
Make an effort to listen to new music at any age and it will keep you young, guaranteed. Additionally if you’ve ever thought about trying meditation, give it a shot, I can’t recommend it enough.
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Thanks
https://www.facebook.com/HarnessFlux
https://harnessflux.bandcamp.com
