Interview by Deeper

Chicago’s Deeper released their sophomore LP “Auto Pain” last month. In February, the group had embarked on a three month long touring endeavor with fellow Chicago band Twin Peaks and was to end in Europe after a headlining tour of their own. But much like the rest of the music industry, those dates came to an abrupt halt in early March when life as we all knew it stopped. The release of their album followed, with its heart racing beats and heavy vocals adding a vigor to the long uncomfortable days ahead. The last time we caught up with the band was over text with their label mates at Fire Talk. Now, over Google Chat the band talks life inside four walls, the #1 technique for the perfect chocolate chip cookie and the Brutalist inspiration behind “Auto Pain.”

Kevin: Alright, everybody in?

Nic: :)

Drew: Quarantine needs to be over so Nic can run over and give Kev a big smoochie.

Nic: No, Kevin can come to me.

Kevin: Extend quarantine plz.

Drew: Hahaha.

Kevin: Alright, we'll start this the way everyone starts every conversation in quarantine. So.....what'd you do today?

Nic: I gave my dogs a bath. Now I’m drinking wine in my favorite robe.

Shiraz: I made leftover lamb masala with some couscous, beaded a bunch and ate too many pistachios.

Drew: I went for a run and played with my cats. I made some cookies yesterday– maybe my finest work yet.

Shiraz: !!!!

Nic: Wow please send a care package?

Kevin: I think i've eaten thousands of pistachios so far.

Drew: I think I've made a breakthrough on the baking method. I need more pistachios.

Shiraz: We need to do a swap.

Kevin: 1 pistachios for 1 cookie. That’s my starting bid.

Nic: Pistachio cookie?

Shiraz: I got 38 pistachios ready to be traded Drew.

Drew: Let the bidding begin.

Kevin: Wait forget Shiraz's offer. What's the breakthrough? CONTEXT FOR READERS!

Nic: BAKING KEV!

Drew: Smacking the pan on the stove when you pull the cookies out of the oven.

Nic: God, where’d they get this guy from?

Drew: It removes some of the air pockets and makes them chewier.

Kevin: Drew, that's some Jiro level stuff.

Shiraz: Daaaaamn.

Nic: Wait really? Send pic?

Kevin: That's crazy that it can be so different after you take them out of the oven.

Drew: *sends picture*

Shiraz: Yuum.

Nic: Damn.

Kevin: Wooooo, my offer still stands.

Shiraz: I gotta get my hands on some pistachios.

Kevin: Best snack when you're bored. Gotta get a whole setup going, whole process to eating them. Alright, so we're all eating well in quarantine. What was the first song on Auto-Pain that was played at a show? And what was that show?

Shiraz: “Run” in Cinci I think? 2017? Or “4U” at the Bottle?

Nic: I think it was actually “Spray Paint” or “4U”.

Drew: Yeah, I think it was “4U” actually. That was the first song after LP1 that we wrote.

Shiraz: Yeah, almost snuck in there.

Nic: Probably at The Bottle. We were playing there a lot during that time.

Kevin: “4U” was the first song I remember seeing. But that was in LA on The Districts tour.

Nic: Damn, that’s crazy.

Drew: We played it on the Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever tour as well the September before that too. Those guys love “4U”.

Shiraz: It’s all about the ditty.

Drew: Truly.

Nic: “4U” is for the true deep heads.

Shiraz: It's the deep dog whistle.

Nic: Hahaha.

Kevin: “4U” is a song that really stands out. We've heard a lot of people mention that song since the record came out hahaha.

Nic: It was almost the song we used for the 7 inch.

Kevin: You can kind of hear the song being written as it plays. Is that how that one formed or did it go through some different versions?

Drew: It's true, the intro is nearly identical to the early writing sessions. Maybe even the first time we experimented with that riff together.

Nic: Yeah, I feel like that one was pretty straight forward. It’s basically ABABC.

Shiraz: We experimented a little bit with the outro, but we basically kept the original version of it.

Kevin: When you had enough songs ready, what was the first thing you wanted to focus on and step up sonically from the first record?

Nic: The triplets were the recipe of Mike and I trying to rip Metallica.

Shiraz: Def.

Nic: We wanted to record it quicker. The first one was spread out about a year and a half. We wanted this one to sound fresh like we weren’t burnt out on listening to it by the time it was done.

Drew: I think we wanted to make it sound like one body of work, compared to the first record which has a bunch of different vibes. So using certain tones to give it an overall aesthetic while varying the songs more dynamically.

Kevin: I think when you hear the drum tones, and the general mix ideas, you can hear how it’s more streamlined. But when you hear the record front to back its definitely more lush and diverse tonally. So do you think that comes out of just being comfortable in the studio? Comfortable with the songs?

Drew: I think comfortable with each other. Sort of understanding how we can each compliment one another. Being more comfortable in the studio is a factor for sure. As Nic said earlier, breaking the recording up on the first record made it harder to find a consistent vibe. Being somewhere for an entire week really allows for more exploration and dialing in sounds.

Nic: Having the first one out helped too. It gave us a blue print on what works and what doesn’t.

Shiraz: And feeling more comfortable in taking our time in the small things of recording.

Kevin: What do you mean by the small things?

Shiraz: Had a really good time exploring weird ideas with Dave, like thinking about what the bottom mic does to the snare sounds, or exploring running the top mic through a compressor just for fun.

Nic: Yeah all the bloops and blops.

Shiraz: Feeling comfortable in knowing something feels good, but to keep exploring things to make it feel great.

Kevin: Yeah, I certainly agree that there's some breakthrough moment of recording where you think something sounds good and it opens up the possibility to mess with it or go down a rabbit hole.

Nic: Gotta be careful with that rabbit hole though.

Kevin: The first session I went to was when you guys were in that space in Bridgeport and Nic was doing the guitar overdubs for “Helena’s Flowers”. I had never heard that song before and I have to admit I had no idea what was going on. Talk about “Helena's Flowers”.

Nic: The product of a rabbit hole.

Drew: That was a fun one because we took really simple concepts and chopped them up until it was something a bit weirder.

Shiraz: Haha. Man I remember really loving the bass line because it freed me to move around the beat.

Nic: Yeah, the drums and bass on that song are sick.

Kevin: Where did that song start? The bass line?

Nic: I think so.

Drew: Yeah.

Kevin: A lot of people have asked about the influence of Brave New World for creating the emotional base of the record, but do you remember any other art that was influencing you during the writing stage?

Nic: Movies and their scores. We would talk about Mandy a lot, such a good movie. And Bladerunner 2 haha.

Kevin: I love that new Bladerunner.

Shiraz: We'd talk about the colors and intensity in Mandy and how we wanted to match that sonically at points.

Kevin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Nic: We talked a lot about Brutalist architecture. It was like a visual theme for the record early on.

Kevin: Where do you hear that on the finished record?

Shiraz: Helena's to me feels like a pretty brutal song. So peaceful in the beginning and then we come rolling in like a giant Brutalist building disturbing the clear skies or something.

Nic: I think the packaging of the LP you see it too

Kevin: Shiraz has a great idea for a video for Helena's which maybe we'll see one day, but I think that represents it really well.

Shiraz: Def want to keep Brutalism a theme in all of our art forms.

Kevin: Ok one last question— let's all say our favorite thing about Joe Biden.

Nic: His teeth.

Shiraz: The way he looks at Obama, that's about it.

Drew: I guess that he's not Trump, which is apparently all Dems think we need in a candidate.

Kevin: That one shirt he's worn ever day since quarantine. It's a nice shirt. Alright, that’s it.

Keep up with Deeper.

Deeper on Chocolate Chip Cookies, Brutalism & Their New Album “Auto-Pain” in Quarantine

Interview by Deeper