The High Llamas

The High Llamas

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PET SOUNDS
Britain's High Llamas Create a Menagerie of Sounds, Old and New
What would the Beach Boys have sounded like if Brian Wilson had been born in the age of electronica? Probably like the High Llamas. Meet the Llamas' mastermind Sean O'Hagan, an Irish-bred PET SOUNDS fanatic, part-time Stereolab technician, and wily popsmith of the '90s. On the Llamas' new SNOWBUG, he finesses the fringes between '60s pop, lounge exoticism, spaghetti Western soundtrack orchestration, avant-electronica, and Tin Pan pop. O'Hagan recently took bn.com's Jon Dolan on a ride through his favorite points in music's history.

barnesandnoble.com: So, what is it that gets the High Llama higher?

Sean O'Hagan: The orchestrated, escapist pop of the Beach Boys is having a bit of a second life in the '90s.

bn.com: Why do you think that is?

SO: I've been listening to this music for a long, long time and a number of people that I've been working with -- like Tim from Stereolab -- have been as well. I put its revival down to two reasons. Number one, DJ culture actually created a need to look for new sounds. It got bored with sampling James Brown or the Staple Singers, and they had the need to sample different, more interesting harmonies. They went to jazz at first -- Miles Davis, bits of Duke Ellington. And they eventually went to soundtrack samples -- Ennio Morricone, John Barry. And the dots joined between the new kids into DJ culture and major collectors in London and New York and Stockholm. Between those two cultures a major subculture grew. It became lounge culture, and it's since moved on from there. For us -- people who were into Italian soundtracks and the arrangements in West Coast avant-pop -- it's something more than a passing thing.

bn.com: How do the High Llamas fit in?

SO: We were trying to create that sort of sound -- be it "lounge core," be it "electronica," whatever -- with acoustic instruments. We were trying to show that acoustic music doesn't have to be all about singer-songwriting and, also, that weirdo, DJ culture stuff doesn't have to be solely about club music.

bn.com: Who do you see as fellow travelers?

SO: Tortoise, Mouse on Mars, Jim O'Rourke. One of the things I find really fascinating about Jim is that he came from experimental music into harmonic music, whereas I came from a mainstream pop background to become more left field. Jim challenges some of the more conservative elements in experimental music -- saying that you can be creative and avant with a tune, that you can pull off lovely tracks like that moment on [O'Rourke's recent album] EUREKA, where he plays a fantastic acoustic guitar passage and brings in the filtered sounds and what have you. He recontextualizes things.

bn.com: John McEntire from Tortoise is a guy who came from hardcore into experimental music. He's got a great ear for mixing, and when he mixed SNOWBUG he didn't cut things up on a laptop, he worked with the arrangements.

SO: Mouse on Mars are the masters at the center of that German electronic, bubbly, bouncy synthetic pop. I love To Rococo Rot and Schneider TM, but Mouse on Mars defy belief. They have 15 things going on in the studio at one time, and originate sounds from basses and guitars and filter them beyond recognition. They're almost like magicians -- the speed of the hand defies the action. They've also got a lot of humor in what they do. I like the idea of putting a smile on the face of experimental music.

bn.com: Along the same lines, which albums have you been listening to lately?

SO: Gal Costa, her record from 1969. Mad pop! Outrageous Brazilian pop, great arrangements, great melodies. Autechre, EP 7, I don't understand them at all and I find that very exciting. They don't work with melody -- you have to learn how to listen to them. They don't give you an easy ride. The new Pavement; Steve Malkmus is a splendid lyric writer. You know, "type slowly" -- what the hell is that. You can go see Pavement just to watch Steve play his Tom Verlaine and Richard Thompson guitar, with a little bit of Fall thrown in there.

bn.com: What albums/artists inspired you back when you were first getting into music?

SO: Obviously a number of Beach Boys records, PET SOUNDS or SMILE. Van Dyke Parks, DISCOVER AMERICA. ROCK BOTTOM by Robert Wyatt. MORE SPECIALS by the Specials, which basically made 1979 ska and predicts what happened in '95 too. Kraftwerk, COMPUTER WORLD. Couple of German things -- Cluster, Harmonium.

bn.com: How about your lyrical influences?

SO: John Cale, PARIS 1919. There's a kind of subtext going; he could be writing prose. I also love the fact that he doesn't finish the idea off. It's not like, "I traveled to France to see a friend and we got drunk and hung out." He'll refer to the trip to France and then the next line will be about something else completely different. Each line has its own life.

bn.com: Do you strive for the same sort of feel?

SO: When I write, one line might be about architecture, one about travel, one about a conversation. You end up with prose and words that have a musicality, but there is actually no sense to them. When you can see sense in music you lose something. You see, I love intrigue, incongruity. I love to be able to say, "I've loved that song for five years and have never been able to tell what it's about." Not understanding a painting is better than understanding a painting as far as I'm concerned. So much pop is obvious, and about consumerism, and it's really important that someone confuses you -- that someone lays forth trials and uses the slight of hand. That's what I try to do.