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Interview with Burnside Project
By: Caz* Bevan
 The Burnside Project comes at you
with the flare of Moby-like electronic pop, rock with a taste
of New York, or quite possibly Japanese "brain-group-rock."
Whether you're a music fan or a lyric junkie, Burnside
Project will please you endlessly. They are a band of talent,
variety and sensible pop. Like it. Love it. Read about
it...
(Answers submitted collectively by Burnside Project
members Richard, Gerald and Paul.)
NowOnTour. I love your video for "Cue The Pulse
To Begin" by the way. When did you film this
video?
Thanks, we filmed this video in the fall of 2003. Glad you like
it, it's definitely guerilla-style and we had about $150 to
shoot it.
How involved were you with the video? Were the
ideas spawned by the Director, Jacob
Hensberry?
It was completely Jake's idea, start to finish. We loved it
because it was quite opposite of the way a traditional "first
video" is for a band, where the band members all get a lot of
camera time. I mean, we're probably in the clip for all of 10
seconds, and you really have to pay attention to see us in
the shots. The other four minutes is this anonymous couple
making out with each other, with New York City as the
backdrop.
On a side note, I always wondered if people who saw that
video, and didn't know what we looked like, thought the
couple was the band.
You've done three videos with Jacob Hensberry. Is
he a personal friend? How did you meet?
Actually, we have done 4 - the video for "one to one" will be
released soon-ish. Yes, Jake is our close friend - but he is
also someone whose creative vision we totally trust. Gerald
and Paul met him in Florida, they worked
together.
You've received quite a lot of press. Do you like the
press? How does it affect the band?
We have? Of course, we love the press. I suppose it only
really affects us by giving us more exposure, which is a
good thing.
You play mostly around the northeastern US it
seems, but you've also been to Japan. Did you like Japan?
What was the fan response there in comparison to the New
York scene?
Japan has been very good to us. There was definitely a lot of
enthusiasm about us over there, I'm sure partly because we
were a foreign band visiting their country. I also think the
Japanese audience took to our blend of electronic and rock
elements. Throughout the tour, different interviewers kept
bringing up the same descriptor, "brain-group-rock," as if we
were spearheading some new genre of music.
Do you have a favorite place to
play?
Oh wow, that's kind of a hard one. How about I tell you our
favorite NYC shows, which would be in no particular order:
playing with the Notwist and Styrofoam at the Knitting
Factory, our show with Film School at the Delancey and our
CD release party back in October at Rothko.
I like your lyrics. What inspires them? Who writes
the lyrics?
Thanks. Richard (me) writes the lyrics for the band. I would
say I am inspired by my observations of the world. I know
that is a cliche and typical answer but it's true. I tend to
reflect on society and culture when I am writing but I also
try to bury that inspiration within language and metaphor.
How's that for a brainy answer?
What about touring? Are you planning any
significant tours for 2006?
No dates to officially announce quite yet, but the plan is to
hit the Eastern Seaboard again early in the year, and then
hopefully out West in the spring.
As a band, what do you view as your purpose? Do
you have any New Year's resolutions?
Well, I can't say that we have an official "mission statement"
per se. We're all just friends bringing in our various personal
musical influences with hopes of creating pop music that's
catchy and interesting all at once. I think 2006 is going to
find a very active Burnside Project on the live-front, much
more so that the past two years where we were mostly
focused on writing and recording.
You're playing a pretty big show on January 13th
with Eiffel Tower, Diggs and Debutants. Undoubtedly you're
excited about this. What do you look forward to the
most?
Honestly, just getting up on the stage and playing, and
definitely looking forward to seeing the other groups too. Oh
yeah, also the beer tab, of course! Except for Richard, he
drinks wine.
You've released CDs in 2000, 2003 and 2005.
Should we expect something then in, let's say, 2007? Do you
think you'll continue in the same style of music or are there
other aspects of music you'd like to explore?
Well, in the process of writing this past record, we've also
accumulated more than another album's worth of songs. If
you've been coming to our shows over the past
year-and-a-half, you've probably heard us play a few of
them live. At some point, we're going to revisit those and
very possibly use some on the next record.
One of my favorite things about working in this band is that
we leave all stylistic options on the table. If The
Networks... is considered to be our indie-tronic album
and The Finest Example Is You is our rock
album, there's no telling what the next one will be. It'll all
kind of fall in place while we're putting it all together in our
studio, and we probably won't even know until the CD
master's being shipped off to the pressing plant. That said,
heavy metal does seem to be getting pretty popular again.
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