With their unique moodily textured blend of electronica and organic instrumentation, Brooklyn based duo Home Video are bringing the soul back to a corner of contemporary music that hasn’t been as thoroughly fleshed out since Radiohead’s tangential
Kid A. Nurturing a sound that sits comfortably in it’s own realm of darkness, Colin Ruffino and David Gross have been distilling their musical production since early high school, when the pair’s paths converged thanks to a shared love of the sinister and the musically proficient. Since then the road has been a rocky one, having been signed to and leaving Warp records before even releasing their debut album. Thankfully they rectified the label situation, and have since released one of the more beautifully melancholy albums of 2006. About to embark on a tour that takes in our eastern shores, Lifelounge caught up with Colin Ruffino for a chat about living and creating in New York, and bringing emotion back into music.
DK: The album is stunning, did you have an idea of how you wanted it to turn out, or did it develop organically as you wrote and produced it?CR: Well it happened over a few years, so it wasn’t totally planned out from the get go, it was just songs we wrote which just ended up together on an album. We threw away a lot of songs, so it took a while. There wasn’t really a master plan or anything.
DK: You’re currently based in Brooklyn, how has living in New York influenced your creative output?CR: It definitely has I think. I mean we’re not really part of a scene or anything, but New York is a pretty intense place, and you’re constantly bombarded by new things, like some sort of new sound, or new art. So we play off of what we hear, usually by trying to do something different.
DK: There’s a pretty diverse range of stuff available in New York, so really getting away from existing sounds and styles would be quite challenging I’d imagine?CR: Yeah definitely, although where we live in Brooklyn isn’t really a centre for musical activity, but New York overall definitely has an edge to it. You could try to keep up with it or you can pit yourself against that edge maybe, I think that’s more our thing.
DK: You have a background in film, how has this influenced your music or lyricism?CR: It does help lyrically and emotion wise I guess. There’ll be times when we write some music and the quickest way to get inspired for lyrics is to listen to it and to visualise what it feels like. That’s how a lot of lyrics come I think. I drink a bunch of coffee and then listen to it and write down the first pictures that pop into my head. Other than that it certainly helped when David and I made our video.
DK: So do you find that you’re almost creating a soundtrack for a film that exists in your minds? Do you think you intentionally set out to create these soundtrack style tracks?CR: You know I don’t know that we intended to, but I think we’ve always gone towards making stuff that sounds soundtracky I guess. I mean soundtracks have big moments and low moments and are all about conveying the emotion of a scene, and that’s what we really want to do. We want to feel something, so I guess the soundtrack thing ends up being in there.
DK: In your bio it states that David is a classically trained musician, and wasn’t exposed to pop music until you introduced him to bands like Radiohead, Portishead and Massive Attack, how do you feel that this late exposure to pop has affected his perspective on contemporary music and how you guys approach making your own music?CR: Oh man, I think it’s hugely affected him. It’s weird, only recently have I really grasped what that means. I always knew that he hadn’t heard a lot of stuff until a certain age, so a lot of his musical personality had been formed before he had heard anything. I mean he still hasn’t really even listened to the Beatles. I think it makes him more discerning maybe? It helps with our music in that he has a pretty high standard for what we make. You’ll probably never hear some simple pop hit by us, I mean Penguin is kind of catchy and maybe on the popular end, but there’s a thickness and intelligence to it below that, and I think everything forms from that.
DK: So do you think that his classical training has come into effect, where the actual musicality of what you produce is a lot higher than what it would be if David hadn’t been classically trained?CR: Maybe, back when we first started making stuff in high school we were probably really elitist and snooty about music. It had to be virtuoso, you know, it had to be brilliant. But as we started making more stuff, everything we did got simpler and simpler, because it became more about hitting the emotion rather than showing off your technical skills. We have friends who went to music school who’ve maybe come out a little too on the technical side, to the detriment of the emotional quality. I mean the classical training is ingrained in David, so he’ll never really stray from it, but I think a lot of what he does is forgetting that stuff and just feeling something in the music rather than pulling something over your head, and being like, ‘this is technically proficient’, you know?
DK: What sort of music did you play in your first band Great and Secret Show? CR: Well, that was back when we were listening to a lot of Warp records and DJ Shadow and stuff, more in the realm of trip hop. One of our friends had a sampler, so there were a lot of sampled beats, we didn’t have a live drummer, and there were a lot less pure vocals, it was mostly instrumental, more soundtracky stuff.
DK: Did going through that process with that band help you get to where you have arrived at today with Home Video?CR: Yeah I think so definitely, I mean that was our time when we were doing stuff that we thought was more technically proficient, trying to throw in as much crazy break beat as we could, and show you how we could produce something to be the greatest. Getting it out of our system was definitely a maturing process for us.
DK: You mentioned that you were into Warp records back in the day, so how were you guys signed to Warp Records initially? How come you decided to switch labels for the album’s release?CR: We knew some people working for Warp, so that helped to get our demo to them. The thing with them is that we signed for a few records, and we only came out with the one Citizen EP and a single. We were going to release this album with them, but I guess there were differences of vision, because the album was a little different when we were with them, and it was changed based on suggestions by them. It came to a point where we didn’t want to change it any more and they wanted it to be different, so they let us out of our contract. It was a respectful parting of ways. In retrospect maybe it was stupid because we ended up changing the album considerably since Warp, and maybe they would like it now.
DK: There’s a really strong sense of melancholy and darkness that runs through your music, where does this stem from for you?CR: Hmm… Years of rejection and loneliness! I think we tend to see the world in a pretty dark way, and also when it comes down to it that’s the sort of stuff we feel most strongly about, and we can relate to most strongly in music or art. When there’s something well expressed that is on the darker side I definitely connect with it more and there’s something quite sublime about that. I think we tend to naturally write in that mode, not that we’re never happy!
DK: Having said that, although the music is quite melancholy, it has a real sense of beauty about it as well.CR: Yeah, that’s definitely what we strive for, not to harp on something depressing and make you bored out of your mind with some guy moaning about being sad. We want to express the darkness within you, but in a way that’s sort of transcendent, a sublime, romantic idea. You feel ecstatic because someone else feels the same pain.
DK: Are you guys looking forward to coming to Australia?CR: Yeah, we’re definitely really excited to come there, I didn’t even know if I’d ever visit Australia in my lifetime. I don’t really know a lot about what’s going on down there though, but the response that we’re getting from Australia has been great so it sounds like it’s the best place in the world!
Home Video’s album
No Certain Night or Morning is out now through Etch and Sketch.