“The Sonic Wave”

Interview with the drummer Jason Deppong

By Sergio Vilar

How did Alientar begin? 
Alientar began about 5 years ago in the mountain area near Santa Cruz, California. Most of the band has known each other for longer and even jammed together on separate occasions. Eventually, Forest, Derk, and Jeremy met up with Jason. A few weeks later, they invited Joseph to jam at their “trailer jam space” and within a couple weeks, they were offered a New Years Eve gig at a huge outdoor party in 1999. Playing mostly original jams that night, except for a Grateful Dead and Bob Marley cover, we got along well and discovered we had similar musical ideas and a common Alien “tar” that connected us. We haven’t stopped playing since then.

How would you describe your music? 
You can definitely hear sounds influenced by psychedelic and progressive rock, but, there are certainly modern influences as well. There are 4 main song writers in the band, so their personal influences are heard in their original compositions. But after they bring it to the rest of the band, it always morphs into something new, which we call... Alientar. We have over 50 songs right now. Some have classic rock elements, funky jams, reggae, or even bluegrass punk in them... But, of course, there are also several long partly structured or strongly improvisational space rock jams that we play. Basically, our music is transgenre-in-your-face-alien-rock-and-roll... both disrespectful and respectful... It’s our favorite music!

What are Alientar’s musical influences? 
In no particular order: Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Rush, Jane’s Addiction, The Grateful Dead, Phish, The Police, Yes, Led Zeppelin…

How does one view the psychedelic and progressive rock that's within you?
Not sure what this question is asking exactly...but...we think that our audience enjoys the musical direction we’re heading. We fuse many different styles into our music. If you go to an Alientar show, you have to stay for the whole show if you really want to hear “our sound”. Otherwise, you may walk away thinking we’re a blues band, or just a funk band. If you watch the entire show, you’ll see how psychedelic we are. There are some heavy structured progressive compositions that turn heads and that’s where the 70s prog influences are heard. But, we don’t like to stick to just one style. We don’t get bored that way. We also believe our fans appreciate and respect that.

What themes do you try in the lyrics of the songs? 
Our songs are either about alien abduction, psychedelic experiences, science fiction, partying, or just getting stoned...

What's presented is a theme of musical diffusion at the international level. Would you say that for new bands, the only way to get to know your work is through the Internet? What has been your experience in regards to this?
The internet has been extremely helpful. In the last couple years, we have met very nice people from Brazil, Finland, Belgium, Russia, Hungary, France, and... Argentina through the Internet. We believe it’s an excellent tool for new bands to get their music to a large audience. We have had total strangers show up to our shows because they found us on the internet. More people are using the internet to find new music these days and we are glad our music is easily available. We have put our name on many websites and continue to search for more. At this point, we are happy to allow people to download our music for free from our site. If they want the artwork and best sound, they can buy the album, of course. Soon, we plan to put up a new live mp3 from our rehearsals every week or so. Check our site in the coming month.

How do you distribute your material? 
Cdbaby.com makes it very easy for people to buy our music. We are also looking into a distributor in Europe, but we’re not sure that’s even necessary. Our website has more information about buying our CD.

Alientar is a band that puts a lot of effort into the visual part of their show. How do the visuals help your show? 
Forest and Jeremy have created some very psychedelic art over the years. We have used computer software to filter their art and create video that we show at certain gigs on different sized screens. Our website has a free downloadable video of an earlier version of the song “Music Box” that uses this artwork. We also include the standard fog machine, projections, and other psychedelic lighting to make our shows a multisensory experience. We believe that visuals are very important to our show and hope to expand this part of our show in the future. Lasers would be nice...

Do you think that in this day and age, across the entire music scene, there exists a philosophy of innovation?
Well... the band discussed this question and quickly came up with this answer...”No”.

What are your future plans (short and long term)? 
In the short term, we plan to record another album and produce it ourselves like our first full length album. We learned a lot from the last experience, and look forward to doing it again. We have over 50 compositions, most of them ready to be recorded, so we hope to make many new albums in the future. Otherwise, we’re interested in the festival scene in the US and abroad, hooking up with other bands... and well... becoming obscenely rich!

Many thanks friends. A final message for our readers?
Thank you Sergio for contacting us and the rest of you for reading this interview. Tell your friends about us, check our website often for more new Alien music... and, of course, invite us to your country!

¡Viva Alientar!

 

http://www.alientar.com

 
Nucleus interview: 14/03/05