Words by Max Feldman
Photos by Felicity Ieraci

Emerging from the creative primordial ooze of New York art collective Lansing-Dreiden, Violens (pronounced Vy-lenz) are effortlessly excellent. They play perfect noisy pop music that strangles as much as it jangles. ‘SUP met them before their gig at London’s Hoxton Bar & Kitchen. They remained refreshingly mild-mannered compared to Hoxton’s hallmark self-congratulation. Indeed, backstage was chaotic, with bands talking to other bands, and managers and PR people lassoing as much as they were ushering. Violens are Iddo Arad (synths, vocals), Ben Brantley (bass), Jorge Elbrecht (lead vocals, guitar, and most of the talking), Kris King (drums). They have come to efface your eardrums.

First off – obvious question: where does the name come from? Is it as obvious as a ‘violence-cum-violins’ thing?
Jorge: Initially it was an Alejandro Jodorowsky reference. In college I saw an interview with him. He’s got a really thick Hispanic accent, and while he was being asked about the violence in his films he exclaimed (enunciates in a Hispanic voice) “I love violence!” and went on about it. He said that he hates people that see a violent film and get scared. I thought I was kind of like one of those people – I get scared, and it’s a shame – but I really like the way he said that and it’s now how we pronounce the name. Then I thought it was a dynamic word and, also, it lent itself to the name with two sides of our sound, which is aggressive and heavy and softer and more melancholy, so it made sense.

As with the name query, industry types attribute your sound to lots different influences. Are there any points at which your musical influences and personal love affairs converge, or upset categorisation?
Jorge: We all grew up on a range of different music, from punk to pop music, to ‘60s and ‘70s rock, to new wave. It’s really a blend of everything we like of those different time periods and genres. But in terms of specific bands, the ones that always come to mind are band like The Nazz, or Todd Rundgren and the things he does with harmonies, The Zombies, The Byrds. Then there are the punk influences: bands like Minor Threat or Wire have been pretty huge influences. Also, we like a lot of ‘90s bands like Chapterhouse or My Bloody Valentine – Creation Records. I think, for me, it was growing up listening to a lot of indie rock and pop music – I have a really heavy love for pop music- and I think our band demonstrates a blend of that.

I heard the tracks you made for Patrick Ervell’s Spring/Summer ’09 collection. Personally, I attribute that to the sort of reconfigurations of existing songs you get in jazz. They’re massively divergent from the songs on the original EP. Where did the idea for it come from?
I’m not really the jazz fan of the band. They’re marches. Patrick and I had a discussion about his collection and how he wanted it to come across when the models were walking. He wanted a very dark, martial vibe to it. It’s got a military feel to it. We layered tracks and tracks of snare drums doing marches. Then we versioned the melodies and the progressions for our songs – abstracted them. It’s actually a great thing to do to songs that are meant to be more like pop songs – to abstract them, to pull them apart and then other parts come out of it and then maybe that makes its way back into the original song. It was cool to do.

I don’t know how much you’re going to be asked this, but how much have you taken from the Lansing-Dreiden agenda?
Not very much. I think that there’s a melodic sensibility that maybe you can link between the Lansing-Dreiden music and the Violens music, and there might be certain leanings aesthetically – maybe like font choice. I don’t think it would be right for the music do bubbly letters or anything like that (laughing). We use quite a lot of colour, and Lansing-Dreiden is black and white. I think that, to us, it’s a clear, separate project, but – being involved with Lansing-Dreiden and having worked on that stuff for 10 years – there’s going to be some spill over. I’m not really that worried about it, I don’t really think too much about it. I just do whatever makes sense.

OK. Are you more like musicians now than mixed media aficionados?
Ben: Violens is a band.
Jorge: Violens is a rock band and Lansing-Dreiden is a company that makes art and music and video and newspapers. It’s a kind of diversified company. The members of Violens aren’t necessarily the members of Lansing-Dreiden. It’s a different group of people. There’s some crossover but it’s not ‘Lansing-Dreiden’s new band’ or anything like that. Lansing-Dreiden is still working on stuff – we’re working on a show, and it has put out an EP in the last year and is planning on doing a full-length soon. It’s separate.

So you’re still New York based?
Jorge: Yes.

What’s your take on what’s going on in Brooklyn right now? How do you relate to that?
Jorge: I like a lot of the bands that are coming out of Brooklyn. We’re about to play a really cool show in December with a band called Acrylics and a band called Class Actress. I’m really excited about that show. They’re all bands doing really cool stuff. We went on tour with MGMT. They’re great friends – we think they’re amazing songwriters and aesthetic visionaries. Pretty inspiring guys to be around. All those bands- Chairlift: they’re pretty close to us. I think there’s a lot of cool energy in the Brooklyn scene that people like to talk about. I think there’s a reason.

What are you expecting from us in the UK?
Jorge: We played a show here about half a year ago. We played The Macbeth and the Barfly and Cargo. The crowds have been pretty varied. The Cargo crowd was pretty charged and ready to dance. The Barfly crowd was a little more arms-crossed-no-expression, but we’re used to that coming from New York – everyone’s very ‘show-me-what-you-got’ over there.
Iddo: I would say we’re pretty impressed with the scene over here overall. People turn out, and everywhere you go you can see some pretty good bands.
Jorge: Some of our favourite music is from the UK.

Are there any UK ‘bands-of-the-moment’ that you’re into?
Jorge: I like Wild Beasts.

What can we expect from Violens in the future?
Jorge: A full-length album? I think we’re going to release the single early next year and hopefully we’ll have the album out by summer but we’re working on all those plans. Did you get our mixtape?

Yeah, I did. It was excellent. I found your remixes really interesting. Guitar bands have only really started doing them in the last decade.
Jorge: I love versioning songs. I think it’s a really great practice. It’s supposed to be a dub and reggae thing to version a song a million different ways and having different people singing it. I really love that idea. I think it’s awesome. I love karaoke (laughs). It modernises pop music.

Violens // “Doomed” from Violens on Vimeo.