I, Fanblades

What's the meaning behind the band's name?

What if all the little humble dirty machines became conscious? Mark Twain captured the menace of it: “It’s like a blight, a paralysis, in which a mighty machine has slipped its belt, and is still running and accomplishing nothing.” Of course, sentient machinery, the idea of a revolution of the machines against the machinists has always fascinated us. What would they do? Would they merely fail to produce? The more populist answer is that the name was taken from an exquisite corpse (a type of poem) that the many founders of the band wrote.

How the band started??

We started originally as a collective, writing experimental exquisite corpse poetry. The band developed out of the need to HEAR and RECORD the poetry, juxtaposed with appropriate (or grossly inappropriate) soundscapes. Slowly, over the years, we have evolved into whatever the fuck we are now.

What's the message you guys want to transmit with your music??

We actually take a very different tack depending on the song. Often I think we're examining something personal, not to figure out what it means but it figure out what it IS. As for our listeners, we also want to leave the interpretations up to them, and it tends to always mean something different to each and every person. However, the general consensus is that there is some kind of general malaise usually accompanying our songs. For instance, a particular listener of ours mentioned that he wasn't able to finish a certain song from our 2010 sampler CD in a single sitting due to the melancholy it brought him. But he also left the CD in his car's player for two months straight and would listen to it nearly every day for as much as he could stand.

What's your method at the time of writing a song??

This also, depends on the song. Some songs, we write entirely individually and then bring to the band. For some others, we write just a piece and bring to the band to collaborate. For still others, we write based on an initial idea or concept and do round-table brainstorming and bounce ideas off of each other. And as a final method, we will often just improvise together for a while until we find something we like, choose to keep it, and build upon it.

Which are your music influences??

We all listen to a huge variety of music, and we all have a different kind of input into the band because of that. As a whole, we draw most of what we do from bands that are either inherently pensive or thoughtful, or from bands who inexorably break the rules and push boundaries of music as we know it. Ideally, a little of both. Through the absorption of music we listen to, we've even begun to focus (unknowingly) on certain purposes and principals like melody and emotion.

What plans do you guys have for the future??

Well, we just finished up a brand new EP and our first regional tour. For now, our plan is to write more new music and continue to evolve in the best (and only) ways we can, and then take the show back on the road in the Spring. Hopefully before long we'll have a pretty new full-length for you all to sink your face in to.

Which has been the funniest prank you guys have been or took part while on tour or after a show??

Javier from The Bad Lieutenants in Connecticut saved our asses when we had a show cancel on us. He put us up, fed us, and snagged us a couple of kick ass last minute shows. So anyway, for lack of blankets and pillows (our dumb asses didn't bring any), Matt decided to sleep in the car with a roll of paper towels as a pillow. Jav gets up crazy early because he does construction or something, and so at 5AM, wearing a ski-mask and brandishing a boxcutter or some shit, he pretended to break in to the car Matt was sleeping in, scaring the bejesus out of him.

If you guys were stranded in the middle of nowhere after a show or while on tour. The help is 65 miles away from where you guys are, ¿Who would you guys send to look for help? And if while the rest wait, there's no food and the only way to feed yourself is by eating each other, ¿Who would you eat first?

Ok, here's what I'm thinkin': Chris is the youngest, and therefore the most able-bodied. So we'll send him for help. He'd probably make it back long before we had to eat anyone, but I think we'd have to eat JW. I can't really explain why. It's purely confidential.

Which country you guys would love to play?

Uzbekistan. Estonia. I don't know. We wanna rock the shit out of some bombed out eastern-bloc warehouse or something.

With which bands you guys would love to share stage??

Man, that's a good question. There are really only a few off the cuff that we would really jump at the chance to play with.. Um, Boris, Harvey Milk, Floor, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Orchid, Isis, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth... Oh, umm.. here's a weird one: The Slackers. Man, we'd ruin a Slackers show. Hahaha.

Are you guys OK, with the direction the band is going actually?

We are actually quite thrilled with the direction the music has taken, especially with Chris deciding to start playing keys from time to time. Also, we're only JUST NOW getting to the point where our new songs actually combine ALL of the previous directions of the band and are really hitting every mark we've hit in the past, simultaneously. And the momentum we've been building up is nothing short of exhilarating. As for future direction, we don't really know where we're pointed, and that's entirely awesome.

Check out more: http://www.myspace.com/ifanblades