The artistic musicians of Japanther have climbed to the top — literally — higher than most bands.
Bandmates Ian Matt Reilly and Ian Vanek met when they were both students at Pratt and have been putting on crazy events, such as 84-hour performances, concerts on the top of the Williamsburg Bridge, and shows surrounded by flying BMX bikes and dinosaurs.
Their songs tend toward the punk-dance collage, a meeting of Devo, Thee Oh Sees, and the Unicorns. They are currently touring in support of their newest album, “Eat Like Lisa Act Like Bart.”
This paper chatted up Vanek about the band’s antics.
Danielle Furfaro: You guys straddle the line between rock band and art project. What do you consider yourselves?
Ian Vanek: Japanther is either a spirit animal or an art project. We’re just trying to stay interested in our daily lives. Some rock bands get very comfortable and then very boring. When you’re falling on your face, that remains exciting and fans like it. They want to see what we’ll try next.
DF: What are you doing next?
IV: We are going to build a zipline in the woods in upstate New York. The people at Olana, which was the home of Frederick Church, asked us if we’d do a residency in a beautiful place and make an art piece. Of course we would. There are not a lot of rock bands making zip lines in the woods.
We’re also producing a piece for the Performa Biennial in November. It’s about Jewish mythology, a guilt-complex piece.
DF: Tell me about the concerts you did on the top of the Williamsburg Bridge.
IV: We rode bikes up there and had bicycle trailers with a generator and the amps. It’s a way of taking back New York City and making it interesting and exciting again. We want to free ideas from music venues to places that are more exciting. Some of our friends from Black Label Bicycle Club helped us out. We did it twice. We didn’t tell anyone on the internet, we just sent some text messages and a bunch of people showed up. New York City has all these public spaces like Zuccotti Park that New Yorkers should be playing with. There’s such a fixation on money and rent that we aren’t playing as much. It doesn’t have to sounds amazing for it to resonate. We brought dancing to new places. Modern dance in all its forms, both slam dancing and ballet. We did it a couple of times in the summer of 2010 or 2011. Only one person ever got arrested.
DF: How do you guys make your albums?
IV: We use a hip-hop process where we make beats on a sampler and set harmony and melodies to that. For this album, we worked with producer Michael Bloom. We’ve done a bunch of artist residencies and they all give us time to work on a piece, so we usually end of coming up with a bunch of songs. We just did one recently at the Experimental Media Performance Art Center (in Troy) and that gave us a lot of time to work on things. Our goal is to make the curator happy and, in the meantime, writing and throwing a lot of stuff at the wall every day.
DF: Where do you fall on the hipster debate?
IV: I think a hipster is just a friend you haven’t met yet. I come from a place that’s really redneck. If we can tolerate each other and have a good time, we can all find some commonalities. There’s a fine line between love and hate.
DF: Last question. Who do you like better, the Beatles or the Kinks?
IV: I really like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles have never resonated with me. Matt likes the Kinks. He says the Kinks and the Zombies.
Japanther at Rare Form (1102 Broadway between Pulaski Street and Dekalb Avenue). July 11 at 7pm. $7
Reach reporter Danielle Furfaro at dfurfaro@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2511. Follow her at twitter.com/DanielleFurfaro.
