For those of you who don’t know, “Tjutjuna” (pronouned “Choo-choo-na”—last time I’m doing this, I swear...) is essentially a Siberian Bigfoot. Although the Russian angle is still kind of a mystery, the sound of Tjutjuna the band definitely has a wooly quality to it; with its bevy of fuzzy guitar tones and distortion matched with the heavy, plodding thumps of rhythm central to their groove, the name fits to a T. But take a look at the cover of their latest, self-titled record, which somehow awesomely amplifies and further explicates what these guys are all about: Tjutjuna is not just that hairy beast. They are that hairy beast wearing rainbow sunglasses in space. Free-floating, astral-gliding, and completely out of this world.

I had a chance to sit down with drummer James Barone and guitarist Brian Marcus of the Denver quartet (which also includes Adam Shaffner on samplers/guitar and Robert Ballantyne on bass) to talk about playing shows in unconventional venues, geeking out over homemade gear, and musing musical philosophies, recording and performing alike. Shaping a successful career through self-production, discipline, and dedication: Tjutjuna, you’re doing it right.

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IYS: So you guys were formerly known as “Mothership”—what inspired the name change?

Brian Marcus: About a year after we formed the band, we found about a thousand different Motherships. And a lot of the other Mothership bands sucked, so we kind of wanted to distance ourselves from that.

James Barone: It’s a silly name. That was kind of when we just wanted to be a basement band...

BM: Tjutjuna is a little more serious... a little more unique, I think.

IYS: Has the band changed since the name changed?

BM: I think the perspective, or the goal, has changed. It’s gone all instrumental, not really writing pop songs, and a little more experimental.

IYS: Your first album (as Mothership), 11th Dimensional Symphony, was a concept album. What was it about?

BM: Oh my God, you want the whole story?

IYS: Sure, paraphrase it!

BM: Spores come down from outer-space and snow some fungus on the world, and everyone dies except for this one guy who makes a spaceship. And he and his girlfriend get away, but his girlfriend gets infected and she dies, so he tries to kill himself, and he ends up going into an alternate dimension. And he has to pass three tests which involve creating things with his mind and drag-racing with a giant space bumble bee to get out of this other dimension...

IYS: That sounds pretty specific.

JB: Well, it didn’t really start that specific, it just kind of snowballed as we went along with it.

MB: Adam came up with the basic concept and wrote three or four of the songs that really set up the whole album, and then as we filled it in, other things happened and other characters were built. But it was mostly Adam. I don’t think anyone really had a clear idea of what the story was until Adam told us what it was.

IYS: Is there anything conceptual about your new music at all?

MB: No.

IYS: Why did you drop that altogether?

JB: That was just one thing we wanted to do, and then it turned into a band, and that turned into shows around town...

MB: Mothership basically existed so we could play at the planetarium, and then we kept it moving...

IYS: Wait, you guys played a show at a planetarium? Was your album geared specifically to that one show?

JB: Yeah, we showed up and they did all the imaging and projecting for us. It was really awesome.

BM: The guy had who did that had never heard the music before, but at certain times, it was pretty spot on. I think we gave him a layout of the story, and he kind of improvised.

IYS: Was that a well-attended show?

BM: For how well we were known, yes. That was our, what, second or third show maybe? We did that one show at the Larimer Lounge with Band of Horses...

JB: It was more well-attended than the Band of Horses show.

IYS: You guys opened for Band of Horses?

BM: Our first show. And they were bitching about how no one showed up, and then two weeks later they got on tour with Modest Mouse.

IYS: Then they never had that problem ever again.

[laughter]

BM: Yeah, I like to think that, you know... it was mostly us.

IYS: You guys gave them that Tjutjuna bump? The Mothership bump?

JB: Motherbump. [laughter]

IYS: So you played your celestial concept album in a very celestial location. Though your new album isn’t a concept album, what sort of environment would you imagine playing it in? Is it more terrestrial to you?

BM: I think it’s still pretty spaced out, but there is definitely a space-opera theme to 11th Dimensional Symphony that the new disc doesn’t have. Sometimes I think underwater maybe? But I don’t know how we could play underwater. The logistics of that are best left to the sound guy I guess.

IYS: Do you build a lot of your own pedals?

BM: Adam does, mostly. I’ve built one pedal.

IYS: What kind of sounds or features are you grabbing for that you can’t get from something you buy in a store?

JB: Something durable.

BM: Definitely. you can make your pedals way more rugged than Boss or Electro-Harmonix will because you can load them up with solder and everything. Adam’s built a few circuits that are based around basic one-oscillator synthesizers. He’s built some analog delays and he’s built a lot of boosters. I think that was more of a hobby for him, and it turned out he was really good at it. He made an Atari punk console, which is the chip from an Atari machine that has two potentiometers.

JB: When we started practicing and trying to figure out what to do, that was a tool that we used, and Robert and I would listen more to what Adam would start doing with that thing and we’d build these little cycling rhythm groove things over some squelching noise that he would have screeching out of his little noise-maker. And that is what started that song “Riseset.” That groove was made when Adam first brought in that Atari console.

IYS: What comparisons do people make to your band that make you cringe?

BM: The “shoegaze” label.

JB: It doesn’t make me cringe because I don’t not like shoegaze.

BM: I love shoegaze... I get the textural thing, and it’s pretty distorted and stuff, but I always think of shoegaze as mid-tempo, new-wavy sort of melodies.

JB: Here’s the thing: I don’t even feel like the handful of band that were shoegaze don’t even fall into categories together. And when I think of shoegaze, I hear bands that aren’t very... shoegazey.

BM: Just vaguely psychedelic, all within 90-120 BPM, never gets too fast, very basely textural. I think we have that in common with shoegaze bands, that we’re very interested in texture. But the name literally means ‘they’re so boring to watch, they’re just staring at their shoes.’ And I feel like our live shows, at least as of late, have gotten pretty intense.

JB: As long as you keep throwing your shit around.

BM: I toss my shit.

IYS: I’ve seen that. I saw you guys play a Secret Chiefs 3 cover awhile back. Do you do any other covers?

BM: “Peaches and Regalia.” [by Frank Zappa]

JB: Sometimes we goof around with Frank Zappa stuff just because it’s fun to laugh at each others pathetic chops. And then we do a lot of Acid Mothers Temple, because they’re the greatest band in the world. And with their material you just need to know one part, and you can just do that for an hour. Their music is more of a philosophy than it is about having parts or written things.

IYS: Let’s talk about your recent (and first) tour. Some of you had been on tour with other bands in different capacities. What was different about this tour with Tjutjuna?

JB: This one was different for me because I felt like I had a lot more invested in it. It was a lot more important to me, every day, every show really felt like we were trying. With other bands it’s been like, “Oh well, I’m just doing this and whatever,” going through the motions. With this, it was like, “I want to do as best I can right here, and I hope we all can.” And when we’d be driving to the next show, we’d have a moment where we’d talk about what we were going to do that night, and how we could make the set better.

BM: Even the shitty shows, everyone was still really passionate about it.

IYS: This was your first tour?

BM: This was my first tour.

IYS: What lessons did you take away from it?

BM: Always put toilet paper on the toilet seat. And I don’t do well in humidity. And don’t expect a great show every time.

JB: And I really think there wasn’t a single bad show in my mind. Maybe there would be by someone else’s standards, but...

BM: There were a lot of shows that I feel in any other situation, it would have pissed any other band off. But we just kind of rolled with it and tried to make it as fun as possible. As long as we were having fun, the tour was good.

IYS: So what about the next tour? Is that in the works yet?

JB: I wish, but we don’t have anything lined up yet. I hope we will soon...

BM: We’re thinking about October, and the West coast, but no plans have been laid out. That’s just what we want to do.

IYS: Tell me about your recording process. How much of your compositions happen in the studio, and how much of them happen in rehearsals?

JB: I’d say half and half. Half of it is worked out in the space and we try not to overplay as much as possible, that way more unexpected things will happen and you’re not just frozen in some 16 measure thing that doesn’t go anywhere. It’s best to underplay it, and then more changes will happen. That’s one of the things we’ve figured out. We tracked at Eston and Trevor’s house [of Woodsman], and we did a couple nights of the live setup, everyone just playing. And we got good enough versions of things and chunks of full band stuff, and then it went to Brian’s computer where it was dissected and stretched out a little bit, and pulled apart or mashed together. Just to make it more interesting, so it wouldn’t just be a full band playing, 1-2-3-4-go! kind of stuff. So I think when we stepped back and listened to it, and mixed it really, we are able to spread things out a bit.

BM: Because we’re an improvisational band, like James was saying, we don’t like to overplay it, because we do want that spontaneity, which makes it exciting. Otherwise, it’s just boring, and for me, I didn’t want it to sound like just a band jamming. I wanted it to have a bigger thing, so when we brought it into the computer, that was when we sculpted it down while adding lots of synths, transitions, taking something that was pretty much improvised-based and bringing it into something sculptured and that is a cohesive thing. I don’t particularly like to hear bands jamming on record. I like it when it’s live, but on the record I wanted it to be more song-oriented while still having a live feel.

IYS: Did it change the way you play the songs live?

JB: It made a couple of them more challenging.

BM: There’s a difference to seeing a band live and listening to it on record. And on record we really wanted to make it cohesive, and live we want to do all the things that a good live band should, like milk the parts and do stuff like that. So we have tried to keep the live versions separate from the recorded versions.

IYS: Are you self-critical about your music?

BM: I think we are. I think we have pretty high standards for what we play.

IYS: What kind of things bother you when you’re playing, and how do you work on them?

JB: I would say when you can tell when someone’s not paying attention, or aren’t interested. If you can see someone not trying. We need to keep things moving with our stuff, because it’s not very scheduled, so if someone is just kind of hanging out and day-dreaming, it’s like they’re letting us down.

BM: It’s like sailing your boat with your anchor down if everyone’s not on the same page.

JB: But I think that was one thing that we got really good at when we played a lot together consecutively on tour. That completely went away. When you play a local show, everyone’s got their own weird home stuff going on...

BM: There’s that girl at the show...

JB: Or there’s a shitty day at work or something that’ll make something weird. But if you’re just out in some city with no one you know, you focus harder on things.

IYS: What piece of equipment could you not play a single note of music without?

BM: My guitar. It’s a Fender American Standard Strat from ’98 or ’99, but it has really really really really really hot pickups in it. So pretty much any amp I play out of I can get more distortion out of and sustain. And for a lot of the sonic stuff that I do, that’s pretty much the way I have to do it.

JB: Probably just my snare drum. It’s a Ludwig... I don’t know what it’s made out of. It’s metal, I guess it’s steel.

BM: I thought you said it was made of dreams.

JB: Yeah, it’s made of dreams. I guess I could play on anything. I would adapt, but it would definitely change what would come out, for better or worse.

IYS: Can you guys speak for Adam and Robert?

JB: Adam would need his stuff, definitely. He would need his sampler... he’s more like the blood vessels of the body, definitely very specific, very detailed. Adam would be screwed without his samples on his sampler and his sound effects.

BM: Rob is quite fond of his bass guitar. He plays a Fender P-Bass. He likes his head a lot too.

IYS: I was going to see if we could try and discover the Tjutjuna musical philosophy. Finish these sentences: “We never...

JB: ...stop.”

BM: ...turn down.”

JB: No, we play quiet! We don’t want to be this... loud band thing.

BM: I know, it was just a joke. Never stop. I like that one.

IYS: “We sometimes...

BM: ...lose track of how long we’ve been playing.”

JB: ...rip off Acid Mothers Temple.”

IYS: “We always...

JB: ...rip off Acid Mothers Temple.”

[laughter]

JB: We always try and reach this point of trajectory. It’s always this launching level. We reach plateaus, climaxes, and then we continue to climax atop the climax.

BM: Multiple orgasms.

JB: But we’re trying to get better at being more in the foothills... in the grasslands. Better foreplay.

BM: Getting up to the mountain, rather than just climbing it sort of thing. Because it does kind of seem like sometimes we have the never-ending going up and going up and louder and faster and more intense and more intense and then it just kind of stops. So we’re always trying to...

JB: ...do something else.

BM: Not every song can move mountains, you know. If every one of your songs is a big long intense build up, then it’s really not that special any more.

IYS: How is the Denver scene fostering what you’re up to right now? Are there things that you wish were different?

BM: I like a lot of the bands here quite a bit, but I feel like we’re kind of our own island sort of thing here. I don’t have a problem with the Denver scene so much as with the journalists. I feel like there’s a lot of self-congratulation and a lot of sentimentality for now. Like everyone’s really nostalgic for stuff that happened last week, and I don’t get that so much. But I think there’s a lot of great bands here, and it’s a vibrant scene that’s pretty diverse.

IYS: Do you think that Denver music journalism is hurting the scene?

BM: No... I just think that [Denver journalists] kind of go after bands that sound like other bands. Like, “See we’re just like this city, because we have this band.” But they never celebrate the things that make the town different. It’s always like, “This is our anthemic rock band,” or, “This is our Interpol,” or, “This is our Franz Ferdinand.” It’s never like, “Hey, this is just our thing.”

IYS: If given the opportunity would you guys move?

JB: Yeah, we were actually talking about that for most of the tour. We didn’t want to stop, and we didn’t want to go back, so our only option was, “Let’s just move somewhere.” I think we might, we could in a couple of months or something, I’m totally down for that. I think anything new or foreign when you’re in a tight crew like that is just healthy and good. Keep adapting together and changing and weeding out things that don’t work.

External Links:
Tjutjuna's MySpace
Tjutjuna's Blogspot (Download the album here)