INTERVIEW: Polyrhythmics bring their danceable beats to NYC area
Ben Bloom and Polyrhythmics are ready to bring their danceable tunes to New Jersey’s Debonair Music Hall. The Seattle band, who is touring in support of their new album, Caldera, will play Thursday, Sept. 28 at the renamed music venue (formerly Mexicali Blues).
Bloom, who plays guitar for Polyrhythmics, promised to bring many songs off the new album, which was released Sept. 22. On the recording project, Bloom joins with Grant Schroff on drums, Nathan Spicer on keys, Lalo Bello on percussion, Karl Olson on percussion, Jason Gray on bass, Scott Morning on trumpet, Elijah Clark on trombone and Art Brown.
They provide funkified entertainment and match the energy of the volcano reference in the new album’s title, Caldera. In fact, the studio effort was recorded in the shadows of Mount Hood, an actual volcano. New songs on the album include “Stargazer,” “Marshmallow Man,” “Cactus Blossoms” and “Goldie’s Road.”
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Bloom about their East Coast tour and the new album. Here’s what he had to say.
On what audiences can expect at the New Jersey concert …
“Well, we’re going to be coming hot off the heels of a brand-new record release that’s coming out on the very, very beginning of our East Coast swing, so we’re going to be playing a lot of music from that record as well as music from our three previous releases. Since we haven’t had too much time yet in the Northeast, I think all that music is going to be relatively new to our fans out there. Our live show is pretty high energy and very different night to night. We tend to expand on different songs. There’s a lot more improvisational elements that come out in our live shows that are not necessarily captured on the recordings.”
On whether the band works off a set list …
“We do change the set list every night. We kind of do things a little bit differently than most bands in the sense that we actually every day, before we get to the show, we tend to have a pretty long-winded, sometimes heated conversation about the music we’re going to play the next night, kind of rewriting our set list from scratch each night as we go. But what we find is that this sort of gets everybody engaged into the music that we’re about to play. Everybody has their mind on the music. …
“It kind of helps everybody, all the different collaborators in the group, to keep finding their voices, keep the music interesting for everybody. I mean, the most important thing for a band of super-creative individuals like this is kind of keeping everybody interested and entertained. It’s not just about going out and playing our hits. It’s about creating new music each night and staying vital to the music, staying with it and trying to push things forward.”
On making the new album, Caldera …
“We’re very, very proud of it. It’s definitely, in our opinion, our best work yet. I think that fans of Polyrhythmics will definitely notice all the similarities in the tones and the style of music that we play, but as well, I think people are going to notice that this record is a little bit more mature in a lot of ways, a little bit more cohesive in terms of an overall sound and also a little less focused on exclusively dance music.”
On the band’s sound …
“I think the first part of our seven years of performing together, we always kind of focused on making music that would ignite the dance floor, so a lot of our songs, the tempos of the stuff were quicker, and a lot of our polyrhythms that we included in the grooves and stuff were really kind of designed to motivate dancers. … We take a step back from that exclusive focus, and really just try to dig deeper into grooves and play a little bit more moody music and stuff that is more inspiring to us at the time that we’re at right now.”
On how the band first formed …
“It started basically myself and our drummer, Grant, have known each other through the music scene here in Seattle, and we kind of at the same time had this concept to put together a large format polyrhythmic funk band. We sort of independently had those ideas and sort of contacted each other to see if we were available to start a project like this, so it was sort of serendipitous that we were sort of picking it up at the same time.”
On the band’s original focus …
“Our focus was really not a live band, but a recording project. I had put out a number of 7-inch releases with an artist named Lucky Brown on a label called Tramp Records in Germany and was really into vinyl and really into releasing singles and funk music on vinyl. And Grant was really into this concept, so we sort of put together players and started writing music with the goal of recording a session that several different 7-inches would come out of. So we did. We kind of got the players together.
“One of the first times we were actually all in the same room together was at that first recording session where we recorded our first EP, and shortly after that, we accomplished our goal. We got a couple different labels to pick up some tracks from those records and put them out as 45s.”
On how the music was initially received in Seattle …
“We [planned] an album release show in Seattle, a medium-sized venue here, didn’t really expect too much about it, but felt like it was the right thing to do since we had put all this work together and got all these great musicians. We were really proud of the sessions, so we put that album release show together. And it sold out and was just a slamming success, and one of the things that was really noticeable … was the energy and enthusiasm of the crowd on the dance floor. Seattle is kind of known as a town that doesn’t really dance as far music goes. There’s a lot of great music that happens here and a lot of good funk music. … We have a dance here called the Space Needle, which is when you stand upright with your arms crossed and watch the band, and so it was really apparent to us that we were on to something that needed to be experienced live. And over the next year or so, we sort of started putting the pieces together to become a live band, and several years later started touring, and seven years later here we are.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Polyrhythmics’ new album is Caldera, and the band will perform Thursday, Sept. 28 at the Debonair Music Hall in Teaneck, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
