Welcome to a World that was Built By Animals
Built By Animals is a 3-piece band from Brooklyn, NY who have been rocking audiences since 2008. We recently experienced seeing the band live, whose music slowly builds until you have no choice but to move your body and get absorbed by their unique sound. We caught up with Nick, Morgan and Matt, as had they had some thoughts to share about Built By Animals and their project.
Tell us about your project. How did you start your band?
Built By Animals has its roots in an early collaboration between Nick Crane and Morgan von Ancken, two naive young farmers who met at Vassar College. Their early musical outlets had several monikers: The Martians, Halloway, Ugly Nick and the Fat Kids Who Hate Him, Death to Johnny, The Animal Housewives, The Lazy Susans etc. At Vassar, they played countless house parties and other assorted functions, including a memorable gig for the on campus porno magazine, Squirm where they performed their eclectic brand of skuffle bop hop in front of an enormous screen projecting eighties porn. Post graduation they joined forces with Westchester drumming legend/ notorious womanizer Matt Graff to launch Built by Animals, mostly as a coping mechanism for the depravity and emptiness that confounded them at every corner in the modern, mechanized world.
How do your band members know one another?
Nick and Morgan went to Vassar College together; Morgan and Matt attended the same high school.
Who are your musical influences?
Flamingos, all other water dwelling fowl; the way they move, breathe, mate, and generally interact with each other. Also, bands like Yaz. Phyrannasaur. The Bomb Neon. The Unicorns. Islands. Phreak Phactory. Wu Tang. Turk Sheboopis. Frusciante. Kid Kipper and the Slavs. Slug Attack. Toad-forms of Hyperthia.
Talk to us about the writing process for your songs. How are your ideas born?
Our songs are born warm and naked, from our collective imaginations, via caesarean section, covered with amniotic fluid, pissing indiscriminately into the waiting arms of the universe.
What was your most memorable gig and why?
We’ve had a couple good ones — The Knitting Factory, CMJ, the side stage at Jones Beach before a Sublime concert — however, my personal fave was our invitation to play Dr. Weird’s creepy cult party. We had just started and were looking for gigs. Must’ve been the Fall of 2008. We found this listing on Craigslist — “Awesome party, looking for bands! Hundreds of people attending.” Seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, not our swiftest moment. We got there — in my mind, it was way out in the ‘hood — and made our way into this spooky empty space where a handful of hairy weirdos were holed up. There was literally a pedestal with a single bag of chips on it. We set up our shit and started to play to an empty place. Then, halfway through our set, Dr. Weird, who was this sixty year old slimy-looking man with wild hair, came out and started firing up his sound machines. Right during one of our songs. The machines created these super loud beats — for a while we tried to compete with him, but I think eventually we just stopped playing and decided to bounce. We’re lucky we got out of there when we did — I had a feeling that right after we left all those dudes put on rubber pig masks and started carvin people up on the chip altar.
You seem to have a rather large following compared to other NYC local bands. How do you build your fan base?
It is really simple, actually. We shouldn’t admit this, but the key to building and maintaining our exceptional fan base is a little critter we discovered while hiking in Mexico, called the Krios Eel. The eel burrows into the brain through the ear canal, ultimately cuddling up against the cerebral cortex. The immediate effect is to make the host extremely receptive to the first melodies that he or she encounters; the songs are literally imprinted to the cortex in a lasting way. So when we discovered this creature, we brought back a mama eel who has been cranking out little larvae ever since. Nick slips them to unsuspecting bar-goers who then loyally attend all of our shows. However, lately we have had some unfortunate attrition in our fan base, since Krios eel habitation ultimately leads to madness and death.
Also, blackmail.
Tell us about the process of recording your songs. How does that compare to a live performance?
We vary our methods of recording based on the song/the moon’s phase, barometric pressure, and other factors I’m not at liberty to discuss. We usually shack up in Matt’s basement where hes got a rag-tag recording set up. Sometimes we record basic tracks together simultaneously and then overdub extras, sometimes we record each instrument separately. Sometimes we clone Morgan a few times so he can play all the guitar parts at once, then we kill the clones and hide the evidence…we’re not entirely certain whether the Morgan walking around today is the original or not, but I guess it doesnt really matter. We are a pro-clone rights outfit, when we aren’t callously disposing of them.
What do you have in the works for 2011?
HOPEFULLY a full length album, and a tour. Or a rock opera. We’re still trying to get better and we all believe we can take the music to new heights, which is a good thing I think. We’re still chainsawing the ice sculpture that is BBA. It’s not done yet, but we’re getting there. Ice is a difficult medium to work with. Because it melts.
Where can we find your music or hear you play?
Online of course! Where else? The internet is everything.
http://www.myspace.com/builtbyanimals
http://www.builtbyanimals.com
or search for us on itunes, and buy our EPs, Corporate Syndrome and the Summer of Shmiz
or listen to our pandora station
or watch out new music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFeHC6Sb7rs
