Last Saturday, Oct. 27, San Francisco duo Sic Alps performed their feedback-heavy garage-psych jams at No Radio Records. Sic Alps’ demented and dense lo-fi grooves summon the 60s era — the decade that gave birth to The Stooges, Syd Barrett and Soft Machine — in ways that have been compared to Royal Trux, Ariel Pink, and the most recent Magik Markers release, the bluesy Boss (Ecstatic Peace).Sic Alps once were conceived as a mellow side project, but it’s clear that the band is now the main focus for drummer Matt Hartman and founding member Mike Donovan. Both have had plenty of experience in other projects: Hartman was briefly a drummer for John Dwyer’s now-defunct San Francisco noise-punk outfit the Coachwhips, and was a touring guitarist for Cat Power for several years before joining Donovan as Sic Alps. Donovan has played in Big Techno Werewolves, Ropes, NAM, Sounds of the Barbary Coast, and Yikes, and heads Folding Cassettes, which puts out tapes from fellow West Coasters Ben Chasny and Yellow Swans.
Pleasures and Treasures (Animal Disguise Recordings), Sic Alps’ “lost” debut LP (it was recorded in 2005, and re-released in 2006), features the original lineup of Donovan, Bianca Sparta (of Bay Area no wavers Erase Errata), and Adam Stonehouse (of noiseniks The Hospitals). The album earned Sic Alps an impressive #3 position on Thurston Moore and Byron Coley’s influential Top 80 of 2006 list for their column Bull Tongue, praising the release for its “incredible raw psychedelia.” Roland Woodbe, author of the irreverent website Siltblog (of the legendary label Siltbreeze Records), praised the duo for their “ramshackle hooks and motifs.”
Recently, the eclectic duo released a 10-song 12” EP, The Description of the Harbor (Awesome Vistas), and they’re currently working on their next full-length. You can find other Sic Alps releases on Folding, mt. st. mtn, Skulltones, and 777 was 666.
At the end of November, Sic Alps will embark on their first European tour, performing at the Belgian (K-RAA-K)3 Pauze Festival for the psychedelia-dominating show “Wild Tyme Acid Rhyme,” which will feature Japanese headliners Acid Mothers Temple, Howlin Rain (Ethan Miller of fellow Bay Area rockers Comets on Fire), and Soft Circle (aka Hisham Bharoocha of Black Dice, Lightning Bolt). We spoke to Matt shortly before an early show at Philadelphia’s Big Jar Books.
Popcorn Youth: So, how’s it going?
Matt Hartman: I’m walking back from parking the van, just the typical tour logistics. But we’re all square. I’m going to have to get some change and walk back and plug it back into a meter, but I can talk and walk.
Popcorn Youth: So you’re in Philadelphia? What are you playing with? Can you tell me a little bit about the show tonight?
Matt Hartman: We’re playing in a bookstore called Big Jar Books. (To someone else) Hey, Mikey, are you playing tonight? (Back to us) Yeah, it’s just us and I don’t recall who else is playing. (To someone else) Are you playing? What’s your name again? (To us) Mikey. Mikey Wild. I just met him.
Popcorn Youth: Do you frequently play unusual venues, like bookstores?
Matt Hartman: It kind of depends. I remember the last time we played, we did a record store show in Baltimore. (Talking to someone else) Did you get change…? Sorry hold on… okay I’m off. Sorry, I just had to get change for the meter. We’re good to go now, we’re good to go. You have my undivided attention.
Anyway, typically, on a tour, it can just be a mix. Last time we were in Philly, we played in an art performance space, it wasn’t really a “club,” it was some sort of a community art space or project, something to that effect. I can’t remember the name of it.
For example, on our last tour in Madison, we played a house party, but in Chicago we typically play regular clubs. It varies from city to city, but we do seem to playing unconventional venues a lot. Whether or not that’s desirable, I don’t know, but sometimes that’s just how it goes when you do it all yourself. We book our own tours. We don’t have the fancy artist representation or anything like that.
Popcorn Youth: How different are Sic Alps live gigs as opposed to your recordings?
Matt: Well, it’s always just myself and Mike. And there’s definitely material that we’ve recorded that we can’t even do live, because in the studio, we have a lot more freedom to play around with arrangements, so we kind of get beyond the fact that we’re just a two-piece, particularly on the newer stuff. So unless we find a third person to join the band, we won’t be able to perform those [newer] songs, if ever. (Laughs) So the set list on tour tends to be a pared-down version of what we know. It’s kind of funny, because this tour is meant to be in support of our new 12” that’s out, but, if I’ve got it right, we’re not even playing any songs off of the new record! We got a little ambitious with our recording style, just trying to get more hi-fidelity [sounding].
Popcorn Youth: Is that a direction you want to keep going in?
Matt: It kind of depends. The new record that we’re working on now, that we’re kind of in the middle of, that one is a little mixture of both. Some of it is trying to sound pretty sophisticated and some of it is really low fidelity, just more crazy-sounding. We have a 7” that we just finished that will be delivered to us in New York. It was supposed to be delivered to us at the beginning of the tour, but there was a brief delay. And that one is all dirty sounding, so… I don’t know — it’s hard to say what direction we’re going in. It’s just happening. It just depends on what the tune requires, you know? Some of the tunes present themselves as obviously being super damaged-sounding, with kind of poor execution or whatever. And other tunes need to be cleaner, nicer and more audible.
Popcorn Youth: So would you say that sounding lo-fo is an aesthetic decision or an economic inevitability?
Matt: I would say, actually, it’s a bit more aesthetic. Well, it’s hard to say really, but for me, it’s somewhat down to aesthetics in the sense that I’ve never really cared for digital recording, and the way it sounds — the distortions that you get on a digital system, the odd harmonics, it’s really unpleasing to the ear in a subconscious way.
Popcorn Youth: What’s your setup like? Do you use lots of effects and pedals?
Matt: When we’re recording, we’ve got a handful of tricks up our sleeves. When we record, we don’t really have that much by way of outboard effects. So when we’re recording, we’ve got, like, one reverb unit and one echo unit and that’s about it. There’s no compression, there’s no fancy stuff. It’s a really simple 8-track system from the mid 80s.
Popcorn Youth: Did you use the 8-track system for this recent recording you were telling me about, the one that sounds more hi-fidelity?
Matt: Actually, yes, we’re still using that thing. The thing with this machine, you can use it in both directions. It has the capability, if you do it right, so that you can do something that’s pretty clean and straightforward. You can also hit it hard with distorted signals and it’s forgiving with that as well. It’s the best of both worlds, I guess.
Popcorn Youth: So, I saw you played with Magik Markers recently.
Matt: Wow — you were in Phoenix for that show??!
Popcorn Youth: No, no, I mean, I heard that you played with the Markers in Phoenix. Like, online.
Matt: (Laughs) Ah. So you saw THAT we played with the Magik Markers.
Popcorn Youth: Right. Right. And so they’re partly based in San Francisco, too?
Matt: I think Elisa just recently moved there. As far as I know, Pete is still living in Connecticut, or at least I know they’re from there originally. Elisa’s been in San Francisco for a while, but I actually hadn’t met her until that show.
Popcorn Youth: So the Markers have recently taken a big leap towards a more song-oriented, bluesy sound.
Matt: They definitely decided to go for some structure, and their live set was pretty good reflection of that new record. We got a copy of the new record, and it sounds like they play live pretty much what’s on the record, word for word.
Popcorn Youth: I’m pretty curious to see what they’re like live these days, because their live shows are typically quite chaotic and unpredictable.
Matt: Yeah, yeah. If you’ve heard Boss it was very much along those lines. There wasn’t a whole lot… I mean, if they did go into free jam mode, it would still stay basically thematic within the song.
Popcorn Youth: Do you feel like you identify more with their newer sound or their past approach?
Matt: Hmm… good question. I don’t know. Seeing them at the End Times Festival a year ago sort of left me feeling like “Ehhh, I don’t know.” It wasn’t really scratching any itches. But when I saw their show this last time, and I don’t know… maybe we’re somewhere in between. The tricky thing with pure noise and improv, is that it’s a 50/50 proposition and it’s really easy to do it poorly. Even when you’re good at it.
Popcorn Youth: San Francisco has a really interesting noise and improv scene. People like Karl Bauer, Ben Chasny, The Skaters, and so on. Do you identify with that community and with their sound and approach?
Matt: I think that we have a little bit of that in us. I come from that background, a little bit. I used to play the sax in this band Total Shutdown, earlier in the 2000s. It was like a jazz-noise offshoot of this project called Murder Murder that I was in, too. And in 2000, 2001 and up until fairly recently, those bands were active.
We kind of have our moments live, too, where a song will devolve into a bit of noise. And we tend to record [with that in mind], too. Like there’s a new track on the 7” that’s going to come out soon, and it’s a noise collage of sorts. It’s eight tracks of noise. [Thinks] I’m trying to think if we’ve done that more than once — the new 12” that we’ll have out, Description of the Harbor, the A-side is a cover of a Strapping Fieldhands song, this obscure band that was on Siltbreeze. But the other half of it is a long extended noise collage.
Popcorn Youth: So will your live performances incorporate improv at all?
Matt: A little bit, but not that much. We’re not really… Mike doesn’t have as much of a history of improv that I do.
Popcorn Youth: So what’s your general approach to collaboration? In a live setting or live, have you done it all with other people?
Matt: As far as trying jam with other people? Well, a weird thing that happened recently and that was a lot of fun, was we recently played with Neil Hagerty. It was kind of a strange thing, that for whatever reason we ended up doing this. But his new record is out, and this is the one show that he’s chosen to do so far in lieu of tour, which may or may not happen, but I suppose that it might. But he decided that he just wanted to do this one show in San Francisco, and he contacted us to see if we had any interest in being part of the backup band, for whatever reason, I don’t know. (Laughs) It was strange because he sent us a CD of seven tunes that we definitely needed to know cold, and then he sent another CD of tunes and it was like, we only got it three days before the show. So there were definitely moments during the show that we were having to think on our feet a little bit.
Popcorn Youth: Are you a big Royal Trux fan?
Matt: Yeah, I think we both are. It was definitely a kick in the pants to play with him, for sure. (Laughs) I think Mike’s pretty down with their entire career, and I’m more into the earliest stuff, I’m a huge fan of [Royal Trux’s 1990 album] Twin Infinitives, but the later stuff that came out in their career just kind of struck me as like blues rock, I don’t know. Maybe someday I’ll return to it and listen to it and go, “Oh yeah, that’s good!” (Laughs)
Popcorn Youth: So how did the show go?
Matt: The show was great, actually. It was a lot of fun. It was one of those experiences where the set was approximately two and a half hours long. We had some really long jammers in there — and it seems as though that’s where he’s at these days. He gets on these extended jam vibrations without even realizing it. I think the last song was in the neighborhood of 35 minutes.
Popcorn Youth: Did anyone record the set?
Matt: Yeah, it did get recorded, but I don’t know how well it was recorded. (Laughs) A friend of ours did record it and eventually we’ll be able to listen back to it and see if it’s even worth letting anyone else hear it.
Popcorn Youth: It would be great if you could talk a little bit about how you approached Mike and eventually joined Sic Alps; the kind of dynamic you two have, and how Sic Alps has evolved since then. Were you involved in any other projects at the time?
Matt: Sure. Well, around the time that Mike first started Sic Alps, and you may know the history already, it started with the guy Adam Stonehouse, who did The Hospitals, and from what I can understand it was kind of like, almost more like a recording project than a real band. Like a virtual band. And they did a quick little recording, a split 7” with this band California Lightning, and then they went on an ill-fated one-week tour of the Midwest and then they came home. I’ve known Mike for a really long time, and I knew Adam from when he relocated The Hospitals to San Francisco.
Popcorn Youth: How did you know Mike? From playing in various bands?
Matt: Well, a long time ago, this was like 10 years ago or plus, maybe 11 years ago, I went on tour, and the band I was playing in at the time, Henry’s Dress, played this boat show in New York at the Chelsea Harbor. And his band was playing too, The Ropers, and I think that’s how we met. And shortly after that, he moved to San Francisco, and we’ve been friends for quite some time.
Popcorn Youth: Are you originally from the Bay Area?
Matt: Well, no. Mike was at D.C. at the time, and I moved there in 1993. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Popcorn Youth: Have you actively been involved in various bands and projects since Henry’s Dress, throughout the early and mid 90s?
Matt: Well, post-Henry’s Dress, I kind of actually went into a bit of a musical hibernation. I didn’t really do much. Actually, in order to satiate my tour fever, I would roadie for this band called The Champs, who then became the Fucking Champs. And so I did that on and off for about three years. And then I guess it was in the early 2000s period that I started playing saxophone in Total Shutdown. I came to the Coachwhips a bit later, in 2003 — [John] Dwyer just kind of hit the reset button with the band and replaced everyone entirely, and he asked me to play the drums. And that was around the same time that I fell ass-backwards into this gig playing guitar in Cat Power.
Popcorn Youth: Was that for a particular tour or album?
Matt: It was for the “You Are Free” tour. I never recorded with her. It’s an extremely long story. Suffice to say, I fell ass-backwards into it — otherwise it would take me half an hour to explain how it happened. So that lasted for a couple of years, and now we’re actually coming full circle to how [Sic Alps] got started. So in 2005, I did what ended up being my last tour with Cat Power. That summer was the final Coachwhips shows, and John had decided that he wanted to pull the plug on Coachwhips. And so after that all got done I came home, and a mutual friend of mine and Mike’s told me that Mike had quote unquote “fired” Adam from Sic Alps.
Popcorn Youth: How did Bianca figure into this arrangement?
Matt: Bianca? Yeah, well she was still in Erase Eratta. And again, the original concept of the band was that it had a side project vibe to it, and it was definitely a side project for Bianca.
Popcorn Youth: But it doesn’t have that vibe now.
Matt: No, no, this is definitely both of our main pursuits at this point. So when I heard that [Adam left], and I don’t know if the band would even have continued at this point, but I decided to write Mike an email and I was like, “Hey, I decided I’m in your band.” And so we just took it from there.
Popcorn Youth: How did Sic Alps change when you became a part of it, if it did at all?
Matt: Well, I’m sure it has to have, in some sense. When Bianca was in the band, when I saw them live, it was still the same, it was basically drums and guitar. Adam was playing a full drum kit, and Bianca was playing like a smaller set of percussion things. So in that sense it’s not that different, but then…
Popcorn Youth: In your opinion, what do you feel that you bring to Sic Alps?
Matt: Hmm. Well…
Popcorn Youth: Or is it too intangible to quantify?
Matt: Haha, yeah. That’s a tough one. I’m tempted to answer with a “Well, yeah, I’m a way better drummer and song arranger,” but I can’t say those types of things!
Popcorn Youth: Tell me about what the songwriting process is like between you and Mike.
Matt: Well, typically Mike comes in with a skeleton on acoustic guitar, and sometimes his ideas will be fully formed, but a lot of times he brings it to me.
Well, one thing that’s shifted lately in the past year, is that we’re sort of writing the songs as we record them a lot more. Whereas before we were focusing more as a live band, so we would learn a lot of the new songs, then we would hash out a live version of it, and then we would record it. But it’s kind of flip-flopped lately.
What will happen is we’ll just start recoding something, and it’ll be like one track at a time, is the modus operandi. We don’t have the capability to multitrack, we don’t even have enough microphones. So that would be our economic limitation, plus our recording space is incredibly small. So it’s a matter of getting the guitar down and then maybe getting a vocal down and then from there we just figure out what the song needs and built it, kind like a sandwich or something. “Would this taste better with provolone or swiss cheese?”
But that’s now where we run into some difficulties with whether or not we can reproduce what we’ve recorded live. So sometimes, some of them we can do, and some of them we can’t. It’s just one of those things.
But that also where we run into some difficulties with not being able to reproduce what we do in a live setting. Some of them we can do, some of them we can’t. It’s just one of those things.
Popcorn Youth: Are you ever afraid that someone would go to one of your gigs and experience something totally different from what they’ve heard on your records?
Matt: It kind of depends on what record they have. I don’t know, it’s a tough question to answer. I hope not. I hope that’s not happening, but the thought has crossed my mind, and it may become more of an issue with our newer stuff.
Popcorn Youth: So with regards to being in San Francisco, do you feel like that’s a good place for you guys to be, in terms of being a part of a music community and so forth?
Matt: Yeah, by and large, it’s also one of those things where if you hang out in one spot for long enough, and for me especially, it’s kind of like where I feel rooted right now. Culturally and as far as “the scene” be it music or art, or those types of things are kind of constantly ebbing and flowing. But I don’t know. So far it seems like where I want to be and where Mike wants to be.
Popcorn Youth: You guys are heading to Europe soon. Is there a reason why you waited this long to make your first trip over there?
Matt: That’s basically thanks to this organization called KRAAK. They put on a festival in Gent, and they just asked us if we wanted to do it, and we said sure. And them there was a suggestion that perhaps we would want to do some dates around the festival, and it was all serendipitous, really. We had people write to us from Portugal, and someone wrote to us from Spain, just of sort of like “Hey do you guys have any plans to come to Europe?” So I think we were going to attempt to book it ourselves but that was proving difficult because we don’t have any contacts over there. But eventually one of the guys from the Kraak organization said that he would take it on, so he’s doing it and I’m not really sure — we’re going to have in the neighborhood of 5 or 7 dates. Something very, very low-key. It’s not going to be our continent tour by any means.
Popcorn Youth: So have you ever been to the Upstate New York area?
Matt: No, I don’t think I’ve ever been, actually. This will be my first time.
Popcorn Youth: Do you ever head down to Southern California to play show?
Matt: We’ve played L.A. a couple of times. We attempted to play San Diego, but it literally fell through. It was one of those things where we turned up and the promoter was there, suggesting that we cancel the show. This was going to be at Gelato Vero. And so anyway, it didn’t go over well, so we skipped it over this time around. But I have a good friend there, and she was trying to suggest a place that we could do it.
Popcorn Youth: With regards to your approach in Sic Alps, who would you cite as influential?
Matt: Well, oddly enough, I don’t even think it shows that much musically that much, but Mike and I both have a big soft spot for Syd Barrett. And from there it kind of just branches into all kinds of just eclectic music in general, from all of rock history, you know? (Laughs) It’s kind of in the bag there. I don’t know — it’s just because we’re both a bit older, we’re both in our mid-30s and we both have copious music collections and record collections, so it kind of runs the gamut from all kinds of rock. I remember that one of our record reviews said that it encompasses everything from the 50s, 60s, 80s, 90s and the future. The idea that it spans all this time.
Popcorn Youth: And do you feel like that’s an accurate description?
Matt: In some ways, yes, just the fact that we’re definitely not trying to nail any one particular spot in time. With some acts, they’re trying to do “1969 Psychedelic Folk” – you know? And that’s all that they’re trying to do. I kind of feel that we’re trying do something a little more organic, that encompasses a lot more. It varies from song to song, too. One particular tune that we’ll be working on, it’s kind of like, “Hey I’m feeling something kind of Ray Davies about this,” and maybe you’ll try to shoot for a Kinks thing. Or there’s another tune that you’ll be working on, and you’ll be like, “This sounds like Japanese psychedelic to me.”
Popcorn Youth: It almost seems like a cliché, but do you feel like there is still a big crowd for psychedelic music in San Francisco?
Matt: Well I don’t know. I don’t know if the word would be “big” crowd.
Popcorn Youth: There’s just so much history in that area.
Matt: Yeah, but that history is really kind of faded and it’s sort of a history, a museum piece. So psychedelic music in general, I don’t know, it’s hard to say, of that as a “thing.” I think what people seek out – the scene in San Francisco has always been pretty eclectic. Especially if you think about the fact that the Bay Area produced the Grateful Dead, Journey, and Metallica. There’s a lot of different stuff coming out of there, some good, and some horrible.
Popcorn Youth: So do you still try to buy a lot of records?
Matt: Actually, I myself have totally slowed down. I kind of peaked I think in the 90s, and I hardly buy any records any more.
Popcorn Youth: Which is funny because there’s so much more available now — especially esoteric or obscure things.
Matt: It’s funny but I guess I just lost the desire to own a lot of objects. I still really like hearing new stuff, but I myself don’t have the bloodthirst for the next rare record, or a previously unreleased whatevers. It’s kind of strange, in a way. And I think that what’s happening, too, it that I’ve kind of find myself more and more interested in my own music, in a weird way. Like being a fan of being your own band, for a change.
Sic Alps will play at No Radio Records Saturday, Oct. 27. The show is sponsored by the Fanclub Collective. Aaron Phillip Tate will open. The show begins at 8pm.