Quick & Dirty - Blind Mans Color
By: Orlando da Silva
June 30, 2009 – St. Petersburg, United States
The more psychedelia changes, the more it stays the same.
Case in point: Blind Man's Colour. Much like Animal Collective and The Legendary Pink Dots' recent output, the St. Petersburg, Florida duo of 19-year-olds, Kyle Wyss and Orhan Chettri, are developing the new psych-pop vocabulary on their debut LP, Season Dreaming. I had a chance to ask them a few questions and found out that, interestingly, their forward-minded sound was developed using a four-track tape recorder.
"Sometime in 2007 we were getting into some lo-fi albums that just felt extremely homey and nostalgic. Specifically the Early Four Track Recordings by Of Montreal hit us as a really personal and emotional album that, despite the great song writing, wouldn't have had such an appeal if it weren't for the production."
While they acknowledge that Season Dreaming also uses digital production techniques to achieve their unique underwater soundscapes, BMC enjoy the process of working within the limitations of tape. "It definitely is a lot more fun and satisfying to record directly onto tape, because what you're hearing is what it is. You're physically printing the music in a sense, sort of like a typewriter, compared to using Word or something. Mistakes are heard, and things are unpredictable, and that is the most beautiful and real thing about it."
Having recently received a big break in the form of a mention on Kanye West's blog, the guys reflect on the experience of overnight attention: "It was very surreal, but nothing changed except for some MySpace friend requests and some emails. It was strange to see our name and song on such an (apparently) popular website of such an innovative and popular music producer. But what really made us feel like we were appreciated and that things would now be different was when some record labels were emailing us, instead of the other way around.
"We know how amazing all these opportunities are and how extremely lucky we have been to have people helping us out like this. The one thing we love in life, other than swimming, is playing music, so if we can do our best to make that a full living at some point, it would be stupid to pass it up."
Having gone from beach parties (all their shows up until this point have taken place on a beach) to Internet hype with one major blog mention, BMC's plans are refreshingly humble, striking a balance between passionate enthusiasm for a potentially bright future and more down-to-earth priorities, such as college.
"We are definitely thinking about the future a lot. That's pretty much all that's on our minds, even though it shouldn't be like that. There seems to be a clear outline, but what's within it is completely hazy. We're going to do what we want but we don't even know what that is at this point. There's a lot of mental maturation and preparation required when considering making this music thing a career, and just finishing our freshman year in college . . . One of us is actually in summer school right now, and we all start in the fall/late August. So despite thinking about the future, we've decided to pretty much just go with the flow and see what happens".
Of course we'll all see what happens when Season Dreaming is released on August 18 – a week or so before Blind Man's Colour start their Fall classes and begin what could prove to be a rather bizarre balancing act: anonymous college students by day, and innovating psych-pop extraordinaires by night.
Video: "Vine Singer" by Blind Man's Color
