Words by Nicole Andreat
Date: March 22, 2005

I met Tyondai a few years ago when he was playing an afternoon show at an outdoor parking lot party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We were introduced by a mutual friend and we did the whole small-talk thing and he soon said, “I gotta go, I’m on next.” I had no idea what to expect. So I was waiting by the stage to check this guy out but then I realized the crowd was gathering away from the stage and staring at the ground. Ty was sitting on a blanket with his pedals and his guitar and keyboard. I’m thinking, “What’s he going to do?” Then he played and it made sense. It was like no other sound I’d heard before coming from one guy. It’s like, “Where’s the computer?” But no, it’s just Ty blasting out these incredible mesmerizing looping sounds that I don’t think I’ve heard since the Sonic Boom Speak and Spell tour.
After the show, we talked and became instant friends. I found over the years that there is so much more to Ty then just pedals, guitar and a voice. I would say he’s quite a musicians’ musician. A true artist, and it shows in the beautiful, confusing, non-traditional ballads he creates. As amazing as he is solo, it doesn’t stop there. He recently collaborated with Ian Williams (Don Caballero), Dave Konopka (Lynx), and John Stanier (Helmut, Tomahawk) to form Battles. I saw them play a show at a bonfire party in Austin at this year’s SXSW. It was the best show I went to the entire time. Ty will be touring solo and with Battles this summer, so if they’re playing in your ‘hood you best go check them out. P.S. Ladies, Ty has the most beautiful green eyes – you just fall right into them.
What instrument did you first start playing and what brought you to pick up a guitar?
I started off on clarinet for a long time, but I wasn’t into it. It was fun, just not my thing. So I switched to guitar because I fell in love with Nirvana and wanted to learn all the Nirvana songs. I eventually started playing keyboards and drums.

You sing and compose as well?
Yeah, I think the human voice is the most expressive instrument that each person has that is unique to them, to their own self, so I love singing – it’s my favorite thing to do. I like composing. It’s really fun to create stuff. It really is the most fun to come up with something that you are really excited about. It makes this whole business worth it.

When did you begin going playing solo?
Actually, I didn’t want to do anything with loops for a while. I would do it in between playing in bands. I only wanted to play in bands and compose for huge groups. I only wanted to play with bands of like 10 people because I like the sound of all these things going on at the same time, but I realized early on everyone has a different idea of what they want the band to be and the inner politics of a band are very complex as far as everyone trying to come up with a unified vision. This is great because every single person is different, but it became apparent to me very early on that if I was going to try to develop something I couldn’t rely on other people, I had to find something for myself. So bottom line is after my band from high school started breaking up I had a delay pedal and I started banging on it. If you turn the delay time and rate as far as it can go and then have the effect maximum repeat, then I had like two seconds’ worth of delay and I would play my guitar with this two-second delay and kinda loop. I would loop stuff and then develop it. Picture a phrase that is laid down and then it keeps coming back and every time it comes back you have the option of laying something new on top of it and something new on top and so on. In that two-second frame I tried to find ways of developing sound as fast as I could, to make it sound like it wasn’t just me playing. At first it was kind of a novelty. I was like “Well, this is fun, I can layer stuff and it sounds like there’s more than just me playing.” But after a while I realized that I could take it a step further and develop something that’s my own. I stopped playing in bands until recently.

How did you establish yourself as a solo artist once you decided to do your own thing?
I started doing the loop thing more in college, and around that time I started playing shows. Actually I started doing raves at first. Yeah, like straight-up raves with my guitar. It was kinda weird. [Laughing] Then after a while I started bringing it into another direction and it wasn’t as dancey, I started to want to take it even more outside of just alt rhythm; I wanted to try to do more ambient stuff even more seriously and get the most out of these seven effect pedals.

How many pedals do you use now? Where will it end?
I use nine and I want more because I’m starting to get sick of my sounds, but it’s great to start off small and not have too many effects; those limitations force you to come up with as much as you can with the little that you have so you can really get an understanding of the tools that you’re using like any instrument. There is that restraint that you’re taught, then you are forced to learn. I feel as far as developing your own language to be as creative as you can with as little as possible and slowly start branching out using that same method until you have more. Now I am feeling stifled with what I have enough where I would like to get some more pedals and incorporate more into what I am doing.

Who do you compare yourself to or do you think people compare you to?
I get a lot of comparisons with people that are a little more ambient. I do get compared a lot to other one-man bands, which is annoying because there is a certain novelty to what I do. There are other people that have a similar aesthetic, but I don’t like to fall heavily in the one-man band category.

You recently did a spilt CD with Parts And Labor, then a tour. How did that go?
Yeah, I toured doing my solo stuff in November all over the US, with Parts And Labor, who are great by the way. I love those guys. We did a split CD recently that came out in October, so we supported it by touring. That was fun. People seemed to like it. But in retrospect I realize how hard it is for what I do. [Ty looks at my cat] By the way your cat is very cute – I want that to go on record. You take what I do and lump it with something else, and it might not make as much sense. I mean, I’m glad I did the split, but what I took away from it is how important context is for what I do because it could sound weird against other things that are going on, not like because I think I’m so great just aesthetically to have two different things that are together doesn’t necessarily work all the time. But it was fun and I’m glad I did it.

How did Battles come together?
I was a fan of Don Caballero for a long time, since college. I learned a lot of their records on guitar and it helped me with my training. Later on I met Ian in NYC when he played a show at CBGB’s and I introduced myself. Then we got to talking and later on we started playing together here and there a little bit. After a while there was a kind of frequency and we thought maybe we should do something, so Ian called up John and Dave and then it just snowballed.