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Interview Podcast

Over the past 10 years, The Helio Sequence has produced multilayered pop music that is often categorized as "indie-tronica." Though the shoe may fit because of the duo's combination of electronics and indie music styles, it seems to only cheapen the group's attempts at creating what would simply be considered good music.

Since 2005, The Helio Sequence went missing in action as result of singer Brandon Summers losing his voice during an extensive period of touring, playing with such acts as Blonde Redhead, Modest Mouse (whom Benjamin Weikel of Helio Sequence once drummed for), Kings of Leon, and others. After taking some time off for Summers to heal, the duo became much more focused on not only simple organizational tasks, such as practice scheduling, but also on rethinking their own songwriting process. The process evolved from layering vocals over essentially completed songs to composing the old fashion way: with a guitar and voice.

The result is Keep Your Eyes Ahead, which is the group's second album for indie stalwart Sub Pop.

Brandon Summers chatted with MP3.com about their last album, the process of healing his voice, and what would have happened had he not healed.

MP3.com: Did you expect me to call? Brandon Summers: Yeah, yeah, I did. I was just--I wasn't looking at the clock. The phone just rang; I just picked it up, but yeah. MP3.com: Oh, bad time? Good time? No, it's just fine. MP3.com: Okay. Well, we should probably talk about the album a little bit. But I'd like to start with the obvious, which is that it has been, what, approximately four years now since Love and Distance? Yeah. MP3.com: And perhaps you could catch our readers up on what has happened in that time, the Reader's Digest version, if you will? The Reader's Digest version. Well, we spent a good, solid half of the year after Love and Distance came out touring, about six months of touring, and during that time I completely ruined my voice to the point where I had to stop singing for a few months, in the early months of January 2005, and I would say a majority of the time after that was spent getting my voice back, learning how to keep it, and refocusing on song writing and kind of retooling everything that we do. From getting a new practice space to actually recording the album took a good two solid years, two and a half years. We had the album done at the beginning of 2007, but it was--we've been kind of sitting on it. MP3.com: Why were you sitting on the album? Well, we had it finished a couple of months into 2007, and all of the spring release dates were so booked up, so we were looking at a fall release at that point. And because we had more time, we got to go back and we'd look at the mixes and make some little tweaks and work on the mastering a good deal, send it back and get everything all in order. So then it came time for fall and, actually, that release date got knocked back again to winter of 2008. It just has to do with how many records Sub Pop is putting out right now and where it all is in the queue. MP3.com: If I can backtrack for just a second, what do you think the most of the beneficial, or let me rephrase that, what have been the biggest benefits of your losing your voice and this refocusing in terms of the bands and potentially in your personal life? It all just goes hand in hand, band and personal life, really. And I think that the most valuable thing has been that it caused me to rethink a lot of things. In the time when I wasn't able to sing at all, and there was a good chunk of it I wasn't actually able to speak because it hurt so bad, a few weeks of it, that I really had time to just sit down and think about things, everything from the music that we had made in the past, the way that we write songs, the way that I look at music, and having that break was really good because when I was coming back into things, it really caused me to refocus. And I refocused on a lot of levels. I started taking a lot better care of myself physically--structured things. You know, Benjamin and I sat down, I always structured our practice schedules a lot more. And, you know, it was just a really pensive and thoughtful time, which I think really helped me in my songwriting. MP3.com: What do you think you would have done had you not regained your voice? Ah, man, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. It was really, it was really terrifying. I don't know. I looked into kind of the stuff, all the things that Benjamin and I do, production, production work, recording, and engineering, because that's something we've always done with our own records and have actually--we're actually taking that up now. We're going to start producing other bands and all that stuff. That was a big thing I was thinking about. I dropped out of college like in, when I was 30 or something, so I was looking at going back and finishing my degree and taking things from there. But the entire time, I knew in the back of my mind that I was one way or another going to get through it. I was going to get over it, and we're going to make another record. MP3.com: Well, congratulations! Thanks. MP3.com: That you had the ability to do so. Oh, I was reading over the press releases Sub Pop sent over with the album, and it makes use of the term "minimalism" with regards to the album, which we should say is Keep Your Eyes Ahead. How do you feel this term or technique applies to this specific album? I think it's all relative, especially the use of the word "minimalism" in describing Helio Sequence. But I think what that might refer to is that, going into the songwriting process for this record, we started very bare bones. Instead of getting together at our studio and playing together and just starting to layer sounds, you know, like we'd done in the past, it was more of like constructing things from just the essential elements. So I would have a song at home playing on an acoustic guitar that would begin just with acoustic guitar and vocals. And then we would be very conscious of building it from there and only choosing what was necessary to put in the arrangement. So I wouldn't call it "minimalist;" I would say that it was just a greater focus on necessity in the arrangements of the songs. MP3.com: That sounds like just taking it from a classical acoustic songwriting approach? Yeah, just something really different from us, and that is an extension of me losing my voice in a lot of ways, because in order to get my voice back, I kind of basically just would sing with my acoustic guitar, slowly getting it back. Besides that, I was going to learn a bunch of songs. I heard a song and I really liked it, and I was like, "Now how do you play that?" I would just sit down and say, "Okay, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to sing and play this." MP3.com: Whereas before, you would just match the vocals to whatever sort of layered arrangement that you had at hand? A lot of times, yeah. We would opt for, I would say, you know, eight out of the 10 songs would come from that angle, where we would sit down together and Benjamin would have a keyboard line, or even sometimes the full song, and we'd work from there. We'd say, "What kind of drumbeat works with this?" How can we, you know, we'd change things around in the process or--what kind of guitar setting? And then, very last would come the vocals. I'd say, "Okay, I'm taking this, and I'm writing lyrics with it." Whereas this album was much more the lyrics and the music came together at the same time. MP3.com: How did just sitting down with an acoustic guitar and having your voice as an instrument and the guitar, obviously, how do you feel it impacted your lyricism? Well, I've always tried to pay attention to lyricism, but really it just showed me, you know, when you're dealing with just an acoustic guitar and voice, how important the element of the lyrics really is. And different ways that you can say things, and in different ways, just lyrically, and it just really taught me to focus on it. Yeah, and it showed me how much it's important that it does interact with the chords in the music. They're not separates at all. MP3.com: All right. You mentioned that if you'd lost your voice, you know, that production was an avenue for you to walk down. And you and Benjamin have produced all of the Helio Sequence albums, correct? Yeah. Yeah, we have and engineered them, and even mastered the first two, for better or for worse. MP3.com: Would you ever consider working with an outside producer? Are there any circumstances that would bring that about? Oh, yeah. Well, we've considered it, definitely. I don't know if we have at this point. Well, it's two issues. It's the financial means because--and the time matter, because we take a long time just in general with our songwriting process. We think a lot about things. We deliberate. We talk about things. We sit on things to make sure that they're working out for us in more than just the short term, like you create something you really like at that moment, and maybe your enthusiasm fades. So, it's always been a matter of, for us being not working with a producer, I'm wondering if we could even afford that kind of extravagant studio time, and then there's trade-offs to be made, and we'd have to change how we work in general before we could go into a traditional studio and work with a producer. But definitely, it's something we are considering for the next record. MP3.com: Well, the album includes an impressive multipage insert, and I was just wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the artist and the artwork itself, as in--is it purely decorative, or does it sort of fit with the puzzle of the album in some way? I think it's very, very close to what's going on musically in the record. Benjamin and I have sat down with my wife, who's the artist, and we were getting to the end of the process, and we purposely waited until we were getting to the end of the process because we knew we wanted the artwork to relate to the themes in the songs and things like that. And we had a big brainstorm of basically really abstract things, colors, you know, what colors do you hear, or do you see when you hear this music? Images. And we just threw it all on the table and let her sort it out. You know, I don't want to go through it. I don't want to be didactic and describe what the things mean to me and the lyrics and everything, but they're very closely related, and I like the fact that the images themselves aren't literally taken from songs most of the time. I don't know if I think about an apple on record, maybe. I don't think so. MP3.com: Right. Right. Or a pterodactyl, something contained in the lyrics. MP3.com: Or an apple core. But you know, I'm sure, the nice thing about it is that it's reminiscent of days past where you could really sit down with the artwork and listen to the music and try to decode. That was deliberate. I mean, we left lyrics out for that very reason. We wanted the package to be something visual that you could see there and listen to the music and have it in your hand and be flipping through the pages and, you know, unfolding them in different ways and be interacting with it and have it come across like that. There were a lot of albums that we really like like that. Like, you know, Tommy...Sgt. Pepper's and all of those things that you could pick out inside of them and have a fun time with the art at the same time as you listen to the music. MP3.com: Well, what are your tour plans for this album? At this point... We're going to be doing a big West Coast tour where we have release parties in Seattle and Portland and LA, and playing Noise Pop Festival and SXSW. And then that goes to the end of March, and then we're looking at the full US tour, and we're going to Europe. MP3.com: Oh, great. So people will have an opportunity to get out and see you relatively soon. Oh, yeah, we'll be, we'll definitely be out there. MP3.com: And then my final question is that it's, well, it's approaching a decade since the first Helio Sequence release. Did you foresee yourself doing this project for the amount of time that you have? And where would you like the project to go in the future? I think when Benjamin and I began making music together when we were teenagers, we knew that this was, you know, a long-term thing. We were really good friends, and I think one of the things that we value when we listen to different artists and bands that we really love is seeing how they evolve over time. And, you know, we always knew that would be the case with what we were working on, and that was our just overall view of it. So, yeah, I would say definitely, and I'm looking very much ahead to the future right now. And we're already thinking about the next record and the things we're going to do. And there's--nothing is definite right now, you never begin with a definite idea, you know, and then try to pursue it, evolve. It's all about evolution and how it keeps going and changing. MP3.com: So true, huh. Well, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. Thank you.