TAS In Session: The Hundred In The Hands

Back in September, The Hundred In The Hands, aka Brooklyn's Jason Friedman and Eleanore Everdell, released their self-titled, dreamy dance-rock debut on Warp Records, an album that garnered them a fervent following not only Stateside, but in the UK.  Devout music aficionados themselves, the ambitious duo also run a mighty cool webzine called Thith Zine in which they promote, review and feature the bands they love, recently writing a moving tribute to Broadcast's late singer Trish Keenan.

Although no 2011 US dates have been announced yet, The Hundred In The Hands will be touring Europe and the UK this winter, kicking things off with a gig at London's Southbank Centre on February 25.

Friedman and Everdell, who recorded their debut album and an EP, This Desert, simultaneously, dropped by The Alternate Side recently and treated us to four live songs, including the enigmatic "Pigeons" and "Lovesick (Once Again)."

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI-BiAatvoY&feature=channel]

Alisa Ali: You guys have a crazy setup going on here. You’ve brought so much.

Jason Friedman: Things that go boop. Things that go boom.

Alisa: Do you have all this stuff in your home studio too?

Jason: Yes, this is actually the reduced amount of gear. This is us stripped down.

Alisa: How long does load-in take?

Eleanore Everdell: I don’t know. Usually for a live show we’ve got it all down to an art, but I think that having someone who is just responsible for sound has become a really important role in the band. Obviously there are many interpretations of how live instrumentation and electronic things mix together.

Alisa: Do you have that now? You’re a pretty young band.

Eleanore: We do. It’s the one thing we’ve prioritized at our live show.

Jason: We just got back from two months of touring. We’ve gotten pretty good at loading in and loading out.

Eleanore: We’ve been out of town pretty much for the past six months. A lot of shows.

Alisa: Well, welcome back home.

Eleanore: It’s nice to be back in New York.

Alisa: Was it crazy and head-spinning [to be on tour]? No time to smell the flowers?

Jason: We had four days off in Portugal. So we smelled some flowers there. We were in Sintra. We looked at an 8th century castle.

Eleanore: A Moorish castle. Pretty awesome.

Alisa: Perhaps a song inspired by that castle?

Jason: Probably not.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4oi_J_s20g]

Alisa: How did you guys first get together?Jason, I know you were in a band called The Boggs. You made the record in Berlin and came back to New York.

Jason: The band was me and whoever I was playing with. I didn’t have a band and put the word out and was about to leave on tour and met Eleanor through a mutual friend. We practiced about a month and then we were on the road for two months; that’s how we got to know each other.

Alisa: For The Boggs was it just you and Eleanor?

Jason: No, it was a five piece.

Eleanore: I joined for one month of touring at a certain point. But I wasn’t involved in the recording process at all, just really late in the game.

Alisa: So what made you decide to become a duo for this project?

Jason: We got back from the tour and we were given studio time. The two of us made "Dressed in Dresden" like in two or three days. There was just something good about it, we decided. It was a good direction to go in.

Alisa: So you just happened to get studio time?

Jason: Kind of. It was connected to The Boggs’ deal.

Alisa: So you made that song in two or three days.

Jason: I had the guitar line and the lyrics and that was about it. And it was with the producers Chris Zane and Alex Aldi, they helped out a lot. The four of us. All trial and error.

Eleanore: Most of the best things don’t take that long. There’s a good feeling and everyone feeds off of that energy … and [the song] comes out.

Alisa: When you were working on the eleven songs for this album, did it happen the same way?

Jason: We wrote and recorded the EP and the album at the same time. By the end it was; we were cranking out a song every two or three days.

Eleanore: But it was more laborious.

Jason: It took a lot longer. It was spread out over a year. But when we got down to writing it, it was a pretty intense process.

Alisa: What made it so intense?

Jason: We’re both used to being the writer so there was a lot of getting used to that.

Eleanore: And what it means to collaborate and collaborate well. We were both excited about the prospect of working with each other because we recognized each other’s talents that were different from our own. It’s easier said than done, getting into a room and making something together, a proper collaboration where not one person is in charge.

Alisa: Is it easier to collaborate over music or sound?

Eleanore and Jason: Sound. Definitely.

Alisa: Did you guys come to fisticuffs? Don’t use that word! Use this word!

Eleanore: Well, yeah, sure. Words are really precise and everyone has their own opinions about it. But I think with lyrics, one of us will take the lead on it. The other person will edit or make suggestions.

Alisa: Don’t you get upset when someone edits something that you do?

Jason: No, I don’t feel that way. It’s just hard to get a hold of it when you think you’re going in one direction and the other person comes in and doesn’t get it or takes it into another direction. It can be a little frustrating at first.

Alisa: Was there a particular song?

Jason: Nope. They’re all pretty much the same. They’re all different, but they’re all pretty much the same and in the end, I think that whenever we found that place to go to together, that was always better than whatever either of us had come in with.

Alisa: This next song you’re going to do, can you tell me a little bit about it?

Eleanore: Yes, this next song is called “Lovesick (Once Again).” This was one of the ones that we struggled with in terms of making the mix because it has a really heavy, hip hop influenced beats underneath it and a classic, post-punk guitar line and more gentle vocals. Making all of these fit together and fit together in one universe was difficult in the recording process. But I think we were both really happy with how it turned out.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xmtni6FBmk&feature=channel]

Alisa: You mentioned on that song, the process of making connections on different sounds. I understand that one of the ways you were able to make connections was digging through crates of records?

Eleanore: I think it was more inspiration for the record. We used it more for writing than recording the record.

Jason: There were a lot of things that we pulled from R&B, hip hop and dub. Production stuff that we were interested in stealing.

Alisa: I was curious about this idea of crate-digging. Do you have a lot of albums?

Jason: Yeah. I used to work in record stores so there’s a lot of cheap things you can get that way.

Alisa: Are there any good record stores in New York that you go to?

Jason: I used to work at Kim’s. Other Music is always good. Academy is always good.

Alisa: Do have a method of digging through crates?

Jason: No. Sneezing is involved because I have a lot of dust allergies.

Eleanore: I would say that Jason is more the crate digger than I am.

Alisa: Do you have a lot of albums?

Eleanore: You can’t not, when you love music. But the vinyl collection is really more Jason’s than mine.

Alisa: How psyched are you that you have your own vinyl [album] out?

Eleanor: It’s pretty awesome. Jason: That’s the good thing about Warp. They like their vinyl.

Alisa: You have some pretty fantastic videos that I quite enjoy. The video for “Pigeons” is really good. Can you describe it?

Jason: It’s a girl vomiting fireworks. It’s these two guys, Daniels. They’re both named Daniel. And they’re pretty amazing directors. They came up with the treatment based on what we told them about the lyrics and then we kind of got into the character together. And Eleanor cast the lead actress.

Eleanore: She’s amazing. Beautiful, a great actress and a dancer and she was a friend. The directors had offered up a couple examples of potential characters and we felt that because she was so prominent, that it really had to be the right person with the right vibe. I kept thinking about Lola as the ideal, not ever thinking she’d be able to do it, thinking that she was living in Detroit. Just by chance I called her up and she was available and perfect for it.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgbCEoEB4Yk&feature=channel]