Baby Monster : Interview

Oregon originating Baby Monster are the dynamo duo behind the magnificent yet lo-fi ‘Ultra Violence and Beethoven’ track; brimming with atmospheric synthesisers and echo-drenched vocals and plunging them head first into the sea of new talent currently pummeling the UK.  

A triumphant stint at New York’s’ CMJ Music Marathon this autumn followed by their first shows on these shores, served to cement Baby Monster as favourites for championing upon entry to the beckoning new decade, and their reputation as forward thinking, creative musicians continues to grow.

The duo comprise of lauded producer Danny Sterbaum and frontman Marty Larson who’s musical cv’s convey a multitude of experience and aptitude that when combined becomes a super-powerhouse of vision and ability.  An organic mash-up of electronica and rock and roll takes prominence throughout the music, evoking dark but beautiful melodies and glitchy controlled beats at its epicenter.  Ethereal yet jarring, Baby Monster have superbly marked their territory across both dance floors and live environments alike, creating their own niche for dynamic production and genuine instrumentation that leaves you salivating for more.

MGMT for the goth crowd or electronica stars in the making; whatever your personal stance on their music, be assured Baby Monster will be headlining ALL those hotly tipped lists that rear their ugly heads every teeth-chattering, depression-inducing January. And with future recording and remixing already in mind, this is a prospect that we already like the sound of.

In the meantime here is a little introductory interview we did with Baby Monster, proving those Michael Jackson rumours are in fact true...

4or The Record: Baby Monster, welcome to the UK.  You both individually have interesting musical careers to date, but how did you come to work with each other?

Marty Larson: [Laughing] which story do you want to hear?

4TR: Is there more than one? The truth will be fine…

Marty: Ok the real one is that I was playing in a different band in Oregon and Danny was living in Los Angeles working as a producer and a few years ago he recorded my old band; so that was how we became friends.  When my old band split up he was still in LA producing so we met up about a year ago and started messing around with songs; like I would give him some stuff and he would mess around with it and then give it back and it would go back and forth a little bit so that was when it all kind of started for Baby Monster.

4TR: So it's been quite a quick progression to get the band where it is now, about to release your debut single!

Marty: Yeah it has, once we realised we had something good going on we started doing a lot of recording and working on the songs properly.  We both come from really different perspectives with music so it made for kind of a quirky mixture.

4TR: And is there a story behind the name?

Danny Sternbaum: ‘Baby Monster’ was actually the name of one of the songs we recorded with Marty’s old band. 

Marty: Yeah, we have a friend who writes these crazy stories and he had a character named Baby Monster in one of them; he creates really crazy bizarre stuff and so that’s where we took it from.

4TR: Ok so I'm assuming that as you have only been playing together for about a year there hasn’t been a great deal of progression sound wise – are you now making the music that you always set out to make with Baby Monster?

Danny: I think with the first initial songs we were working on we were kind of trying to discover something between us and so obviously the more songs we ended up doing the more focused we became on something and the sound.  I mean there was a time when we were going completely left of what we were both doing before, so had to try and find a centre balance between the two; we have definitely focused our sound a bit.

Marty: Yeah but its still progressing because we haven’t been together that long, so we are still figuring stuff out.  The songs that are out now are just scratching the surface of what’s to come I think. 

4TR: How would you describe the Baby Monster sound as it is now?

Marty: Well it’s a mixture of electronic elements and a kind of organic rock and roll; a combination of things. But like I said we're definitely still figuring it out.  I don’t think we actually consciously think of a direction for our songs, it just progresses as it happens and because we both come from such different perspectives it opens our eyes when we collaborate to new ideas that we wouldn’t have thought of individually.  

4TR: So obviously with Danny’s production expertise you guys keep all aspects of recording and production in-house?

Danny: Oh yeah we do everything when it comes to our music, which definitely has its positive aspects to it in that its really pure coming from us.  There's no real outside perspective, but because of that and the fact that as we spend so much time recording, sometimes we have to step away for a little bit to get an accurate perspective of what we are doing.  Like we may finish a song and then come back 3 weeks later and completely re-do the entire thing, which has actually made it so much better in some cases.

Marty:  Yeah it’s tough because you get so close to it, so you always have to try to keep it objective.

4TR: Your debut single ‘Ultra Violence and Beethoven’ was released this month on bespoke singles label 50 Bones.  How did they get involved?

Marty: I think they head Ultra Violence through somebody and they got in touch with us and wanted to do the single, which was cool.

Danny: We weren’t really thinking about putting anything out at the time because we were just working on getting more songs. Ultra Violence is of one of our earliest songs; so this is our very first release anywhere.

4TR: It's a brilliant immediate track – where were you coming from when you were writing it?

Marty: [Laughing] well it’s apocalyptic and it’s got a dark vibe to it for sure.  We wrote it when we were first experimenting with sounds and trying to put everything together into a song.

Danny: It was actually only the second song we did and we have only done like 15 in total so far; Ultra Violence is dark but at the same time uplifting, it has that kind of bitter sweet feel to it which I think we have noticed a lot of our songs tend to have that within them.

Marty:  But we really try to avoid cheesy uplifting songs...

Danny: Yeah we’re not trying to make that but it’s like a rainy day when you are driving in your car and you want to get absorbed by a song; [laughs] I think that kind of describes the feeling that song creates.

4TR: Are you thinking about future recordings and releases yet?

Marty: Well we’ve almost got a whole album recorded already actually, which we are hoping to put out soon and then we can move Baby Monster on from there I think.  We are doing everything on our own for now because we don’t need label support to record an album. A few years ago you probably needed a label to pay for a good quality recording but Danny has all the equipment and skills we need for us to be able to do something great ourselves.

4TR: Is all aspects of songwriting collaborative between the 2 of you?

Marty: Oh yeah, we sort of start with a basic idea either a beat or a melody or chord progression and then work off that to feel out the vibe of the song.  From that we kind of imagine what it will end up like and then add to it.

Danny: As far as the writing goes its kind of like a painting where you are creating it as you go rather than actually sitting down and writing the song and then going and recording it.  Everything is being recorded as we are writing it. 

Marty: Yeah so it’s kind of different to a traditional band who might figure stuff out on an acoustic guitar first; we work out all the electronic elements maybe around a little vocal melody then make another part and create it like that.  It’s a very organic approach.

4TR: So Danny I have to ask, but is it true that you turned down the opportunity to work on what is now Michael Jackson’s last album?

Danny: [Laughing] er yeah its true; I got a call probably about 2 weeks after we had recorded Ultra Violence and Beethoven and I ended up meeting with the producer who was doing the record and he wanted me to start that same day. I told him I had too much stuff going on and then I got hounded for about 2 months by him asking when I would be ready to start, even though I’d already told him I wasn’t going to do it.

Marty: I don’t think anybody has ever turned down Michael Jackson…

Danny: [Laughing] but its something I wouldn’t have had that much creative input in because I would have been engineering it.  But you know Marty and I had just connected with Baby Monster and for me it was the obvious and right decision.  I don’t expect many people to understand that but when you are passionate about something you have to trust your instincts.

Marty: Also apparently working with Michael Jackson supposedly never ends; you go into the studio and are there forever so it would have gone on and on.

Danny: Well I guess it would have ended in June…… or maybe not though I am sure they are still working on it.

Marty: [Laughing] yeah years of your life would have been devoted to it.  I told him to do it as well; I was like dude you have to do it, you need to steal some of the files ands then we will sell them and get so rich

4TR: No regrets then?

Danny: No I don’t, I definitely don’t.  I remember the day, we were actually working when we found out he had died and I was like whoa that’s kind of weird but I have no regrets.

4TR: Lets talk about the remixing side of Baby Monster as you have already been asked to do some quite prolific remixing work, for people like Wolf Gang and Zero 7.  Is that something you would like to do more of?

Danny: I don’t think we were ever consciously thinking about doing remixes initially but once we started doing them it was a lot of fun.

Marty: But we haven’t had enough time lately because we’ve been working on our own stuff but yeah we would love to do more in the future.

4TR: So Oregon is not somewhere we know a lot of in terms of the music scenes in the States, which are usually dominated by places like Brooklyn and Silver Lake.  But what’s happening there at the moment?

Marty: Yeah you don’t heard about it much, but actually there are a lot of really cool bands that have come from a little town in Oregon called Eugene like Warpaint, who are in LA now, also Ambulance Ltd, and The Hunches.  Portland is more well known, but everyone gets out of there you know, so no one really stays in Eugene, they go to New York or Portland, or like us south to LA.    We’ve been in LA for a while now and there‘s some really cool bands coming out of there as well, but there's like a hippyish vibe which is really nice with bands like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Danny: And bands like No Age.  But we are not really very involved with the electronic scene there, because we’re kind of secluded while we are recording but we are going to get out and about when we get back.

'Ultra Violence and Beethoven' is out now on 50 Bones.

www.myspace.com/babymnstr

Words: Francesca Strange

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