Interview with Titan

Titan are from Brooklyn, New York and play a style that is heavy and progressive music yet at the same time they are beyond that as well . They released their album "A raining sun of light and love for you and you and you" on Teepee records in early 2007. It's an incredible release and it made number three on my top album list of 2007. This interview was done with keyboardist Kris D'Agostino.

MM-Can you tell us some about the history of this band?

KD-Well, Josh and I started playing music together during the summer of2004. I was looking to start a punk band and so I posted a craigslist ad, which Josh responded to. He basically wrote me and email saying,"hey, I play guitar. Used to be in punk bands, but I'm not really interested in doing that anymore, but I see you like the boredoms."and we started talking and he told me about this prog project he wanted to start. So I met up with him and a drummer name Adam Kriney and we played together as La Otracina with Dan Bates on bass. After a while Josh, Dan and I parted ways with Adam and picked up Dave Liebowitz as a drummer and started writing music as Titan. I thinkJosh and I really wanted to keep a really basic, rocking, driving sound and fuse it with what we liked about progressive rock. Dan eventually moved on to other things and recently we've been jamming with Steve Moore on bass, which has been amazing.

MM-Who are your influences?
KD-We have a zillion influences. Everything from ELP to Yes to High on Fire to Discordance Axis. I think that great thing about the guys in this band is that we are into a ton of different shit outside of what we draw upon as influences as a band. I think all of us are open to new things and we're constantly excited about new stuff we here, be itold 70's Kraut records or Wu Tang.

MM-Your album “A Raining Sun of Light and Love For You and You and You” came out about a year ago. What have you been up to since then?
KD-Since the record came out, we did a west coast tour for a few weeks, hitting California and Oregon. And we've been working on new material and we finished mixing an 12" version of our CDR Pilzmarmelade which should be out on Wakusei Records soon.

MM-Prior to the album you had some earlier releases that you released yourselves onto CDR. How do those songs compare with your album?
KD-In my eyes, the album is a lot more focused than our CDRs. And what I mean by that is that on the album we actually "wrote" songs that are really structured and we practiced the shit out of them and tried toget them as tight as we could. There are jams on the record but we always tried to keep it within a structure. Most of the stuff on the CDRs is pure improvisation. We'd come up with an idea or a theme and hit record in our friends' basement or in the practice space and jam. For the record we got studio time and an engineer and did it "proper". The CDR have way more of a DIY approach behind them.

MM-How was the whole recording process different between the album and those prior releases?
KD-Like I said, for the album, we had money in our hands from Teepee and we had Steve Revitte on board to record and we booked time in a studio and we went in and tried to get the sound we wanted. The CDR's were recorded by our friend Jeff Yellin who did an amazing job, but those were basically done super DIY on a mobile protools rig in a basement in Brooklyn.

MM-Do you have any new material written? If so how then does it compare to tracks from your last album?
KD-We have a couple new songs written and we're working on building up more new stuff for what could possibly be our next full length. The new songs are very heavy, very rocking and have less frills attached to them. I think we're honing in on the best parts of what we do, as opposed to just A Raining Sun of Light and Love which has a lot of different elements to it. Our new material seems more streamlined tome. More urgent.

MM-Any touring plans for the near future?
KD-No touring plans for the future that are set in stone. But we'd really like to put something together for the summer. We are working on it. We want to be on the road this summer.

MM-How have TeePee records treated you?
KD-Teepee has been great. Tony and everyone at the label have been super supportive and have been there for us whenever with whatever we've needed.

MM-On your Myspace page under “sounds like” it states "...they plucked a demon’s jawbone for a guitar pick to strum the massive tones". Where did that quote come from and can you elaborate a little on how you would describe your sound?
KD-Haha, that demon's jawbone comment came from a review of the record that was online somewhere and we thought that was best compliment and so we posted it up there. I have a hard time describing our sound to people, but I have a hard time describing any music to other people. I think it's really hard and often pointless to sum up a band with afew words or a "they sound like ______". it's really limiting in away and you never to a good job describing. It's best to just get your hands on some songs and hear it for yourself.

MM-What should someone who comes to see you live expect?
KD-Someone who comes to see us live should expect a headache the next day.

MM-Choose the band you prefer from the following pairs and tell why you chose that band?

Black Sabbath or Deep Purple
ELP or Yes
Dream Theater or Spock’s Beard
Electric Wizard or Sleep
KD-I like all of those bands. Don't really know which I'd pick out of the pairings. They all kinda rule and we rip off pretty much all of them.

MM-“A Raining Sun…” is available on vinyl. Are any of you big fans of vinyl?
KD-Josh and I are huge fans of vinyl. Dave, too. I think we were all most excited about the fact that Teepee was doing vinyl. I remember getting the copies of the full length vinyl and really feeling super psyched about it. Everything sounds better on wax, even if it doesn't, it still does.


**Thanks to Kris for doing the interview.


http://www.myspace.com/titanaut