ArpLine, composed of Sam Tyndall, Oliver Edsforth, Nate Lithgow, Adam De Rosa, and Michael Chap Resnick, is one of my greatest findings to date. Stumbled upon after a late-night exploration of the MySpace music maze, I was flattened by this gem. There’s a great psychedelic feel to the songs, but what’s really great is that they are still structured; reigned in enough to bear the marks of true artistry. Not to mention the aesthetics of the beats. Captivating intros, awesome breakbeats, but lighter on the bass and sub-bass lines, then screaming metal guitar rifts. The progression of the chords is even, and I can’t help but notice a distinct jazz-type feel with the trumpet and unmistakable brass sounds. “Fold Up Like a Piece of Paper” is hypnotic and so catchy I did a little dance when I realized it was a free download on iTunes. Tracking them down was no easy feat, but I caught up with vocals Sam Tyndall to find out more about the band:

Sherene Hilal: What’s the origin of the band name? Have you changed the band’s name before?

Sam: It was originally a song title. But we liked how it sounded, so we appropriated it.

SH: How long have you all known each other? How did you meet?

S: Most of the band members have known each other since high school and they got together for the most part during college, and I joined up after. . . a while later. I met Adam, the guitarist, just around town.

SH: So usually before I interview a band, I like to look at the genre they describe themselves as, but ArpLine flows into so many different fields of sound. What genre of music do you consider your work to be?

S: I don’t know, we listen to a lot of different things. Anything I would say would give the wrong impression. Usually we say that it’s industrial/pop. Really heavy electronic sound. . .not a small electronic sound. Especially when you hear us live you can feel that the beat is really heavy. Most industrial is mean-spirited, for the most part, but our songs are actually pretty up-beat.

SH: Is that why ArpLine chose “Fold Up Like a Piece of Paper” for your iTunes podcast debut?

S: Oh really? It’s on iTunes right now? Oh. News to me.

SH: Is that the song you would say most defines your sound? Because I would have to say “Rope” is my favorite song.

S: “Rope” is cool. I like that one. I don’t know if we really have one song that sums it up. Rope is one kind of sounds that we like. We listen to a lot of rock like Harmonia, White Noise, and Cluster. And “Rope” is more in that vein than other songs. I would say that “Fold Up Like a Piece of Paper” is the first real ArpLine song, so it holds a special place. We have some new things that we are working on now that will give our audience a more clearer picture of our sound.

SH: How has your music evolved since you first began playing music together?

S: I don’t know how a lot of other bands go, but we didn’t have a lot in common when we first started playing together, so we kind of had to do more general common language Rock n’ Roll stuff. But as we started playing together and listening to music in the van we got a feel for what we like. It’s gotten more and more specific. To the point that in interview’s I can’t even define the genre. There’s no getting around the genre question because you have to be able to describe your music in general words.

SH: What has been your biggest challenge as a band?

Right now, our big challenge is getting an American label to put a record out. We’ve kind of been sitting on it for almost coming up on a year now. We have all this other new stuff we want to move onto but at the same time we don’t want to throw what we have now in the garbage. That’s been really tough. We can sell for weeks and it kind of ends up just going into a vacuum. Also we don’t just have the money to print stuff up.

SH: So is that the ultimate direction for your band, fame and fortune?

S: What we would like is to have the ability to keep putting out records. These days it doesn’t cost a lot to do that. We’ve slowly been building up our studio gear and we can somewhat produce semi-respectable recordings. It’s still funny to print things up and distribute at shows. We burned CD’s and sold them at our shows, it was pretty cool.

SH: Especially because nobody buys CDs anymore.

S: I know, CDs are terrible! Vinyl is just so expensive. I think ideally everyone would like to just create mp3’s and print vinyl. But it’s pretty cost-prohibitive for an unsigned band. Although we do have an Australian label. That might be how our song is on iTunes. But I doubt the sound will go state-side unless some dedicated record-distributor decides to import a bunch.

SH: Or a dedicated music-blogger writes an awesome piece. . .

S: That’s true. What we really need is so more interest state-side to get the ball rolling a little faster. We try to do two shows a month in NYC. Beyond that most venues only what to schedule a band every so often.

SH: So this question is kind of on a tangent but if you had to get a tattoo right this instant what would it be of and why?

S: Let’s see. I don’t know. I feel like I want to bring back tattooing other people’s names. I’d really like to get a girl’s name tattooed on me that I’d regret. So I can be like 40 and have somebody ask me about some girl’s name tattooed on me and I can be like, “She broke my heart”.

SH: I guess that only works if she broke your heart, what if you broke her heart. Still a good story?

S: Even better. That would be even better.

SH: So what do you want people out there to know?

S: I like people to know that we have a pretty consistent, aside from recordings, output of remixes we do for other bands and we have a lot of that stuff around. So if people like our sound and are sick of waiting for the next proper release, there’s lots and lots of ArpLine things out there. We’re going to try to compile it all on our website at some point. A lot of remixes, really in-depth mixed tapes that we mix live and live mash-ups that we perform.

 

So there you have it. ArpLine. Their sound is beautifully infectious. Other than downloading the available track I suggest trailing down some live shows so you can hear a big sound and get hooked. If you can’t, keep on checking their site and iTunes, you really never know when something new will come out.