This week, Hector Mojena and Victor Goizueta (
HM/VJ) interview Mike Montero (
MM), singer/songwriter and guitarist for psychedelic pop smiths Oso (“bear”), who enlightens us about playing live, recording, and “Pedro.” To listen and find out local live dates visit:
http://www.osotheband.com/ or
www.myspace.com/osotheband
HM/VJ: Who is in the band and how would you describe your sound?
MM: -Alfredo Manzur plays guitar. He played synth in the middle of "Summons.." and at the end of "No Clue." He also played piano at the outro of Made of Mistakes. It's also his effected voice you hear in the breaks between the verses of "You Know."
-Felipe Troncoso plays bass, except for on "Split the Scene" (I had to play that line, and he covered the outro on that one.) He also played piano on "Made of Mistakes" and percussion on a few songs. It's his voice doing background whispers on "No Clue."
-Lorena Perez is OSO's official drummer since the fall of 2006, but she's the 4th one since the band's inception in April of '05. She played drums on the last 3 songs of our album, but has learned the drum parts for the other songs so we can play them live. The first 5 songs of the album were recorded with Peter Arzeno, and Danny Lopez played drums and congas on "In Her Way and drums on "Summons..."
-I, Mike Montero, play guitar, sing and write the lyrics and the majority of the songs. I played percussion on a lot of the songs too. Everyone sung at the end of "No Clue" by the way.
I would generally describe our sound as a good blend of rock and pop. Almost everything that falls under those broad categories can be found in most of our songs: From the grunge-influenced tone of "...Essence" to the latin feel of "In Her Way" to the R n' B soul of "Split the Scene" to the prog-rock arrangements of "Seconds Ago" and "You Know" to the psychedelic sounds in "Suchacrush" and "Summons..." -what ties it all together is the voice.
HM/VJ: What are your musical influences as far as yourself and the other members?
MM: In 1991, when my love affair with the guitar began, there were 5 bands that completely molded my mind-frame, approach and beliefs at the time. Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Primus, RHCP and Love Battery. Those are the bands that I either discovered on my own or that my high school friends turned me onto. Those five bands had a huge impact on me when I started playing. Right around this time my father turned me onto Led Zeppelin, the Doors and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Suddenly I began listening to everything I could but at the time it was mostly rock from the 60's and up. I started collecting everything I could afford and I was going to every concert that I could attend (sometimes by myself.) I still have cassettes from that era. Nowadays I try hard to give every sound a chance and not limit my listening to any one particular style or genre. I'm rotating Radiohead, Debussy, Red Snapper, the Velvet Underground and Dr. Dre in my CD changer as I write this.
I can't really speak for the rest of the band's influences but I do know that they all have very broad and eclectic tastes in music. I know that Lore listens to a lot of music in Spanish and she currently loves someone called Natalia Lafourcade. Felipe really likes REM and I remember that when I found out about that I suddenly felt like our little group would work. Alfredo is really into jazz lately listening to someone called Kurt Rosenwinkel but when we first met he spoke often of Sigur Ros and Jon Brion.
HM/VJ: How did you guys form? How did you settle on the sound you have now?
MM: Everyone in OSO met in college around 2004/2005. Felipe, Alfredo and I all had the same sound recording class. Alfredo and I had met the previous term in a different recording class. Felipe caught my attention because he has these big and colorful tattoos, he was very quiet, wore a couple different Suicidal Tendencies shirts and kinda reminded me of Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite. I asked him once what he played and when he said bass a light bulb clicked on over my head. I directed him to my MySpace where I have old demos and he dug them enough to get together once. He had a couple crappy fretless basses and his intonation was sloppy but I figured it could be developed and I liked that he was big into REM. Our first drummer was an old friend of mine Bruce who lived in SOBE. We were a trio for the first year but Bruce didn't last 3 months.Alfredo started playing in OSO in the spring of 2006 and that fall Lorena tried us out and stayed. They both complete this band perfectly. Fredo has interesting ideas (he wrote Icicles- I just added the lyrics) and Lore's syncopated sense of rhythm complements the band's sound immensely. We only settled on the sound we have now by writing and recording songs that we liked and thought other people might enjoy.
HM/VJ: How long have you guys been playing live? Are there regular fans at your shows?
MM: We started playing live in the summer of 2005. Our first show was with a band I liked called Objects in Transit. The venue we played at was/is called The Mental Ward and the place was a dirty hole in the wall. There were only a couple of barflies there sucking on their drinks and glued to their seats in the adjacent room. The stage was adequately sized for hand puppets and only the drum set could fit there. We literally played for the other band and vice/versa. I wouldn't wish a gig there on my arch-nemesis. Well, maybe I would. Regular fans? I don't think so but I'm not sure. We don't play live often enough to garner a following yet, but I have been trying to change that. Which leads us to the next question.
HM/VJ: How did you guys come up with the name?
MM: For those that may not know, OSO is spanish for bear. I came up with it for a few different reasons. First, I liked that it was a simple and symmetrical word. Secondly, I liked that you can't put a "The" in front of it. And thirdly, in my mind it described a cute and cuddly exterior with potential for unpredictable beastly-ness inside. Sometimes we run things pretty fast, but way too often we're lazy and complacent. We're very curious and feel unpredictable and can sometimes be approachable but some of us can be scary too. When we're supposed to be working on something important we all gravitate towards food first.
HM/VJ: What is the songwriting process like? Do you improvise a lot or bring in certain chord progressions?
MM: The process is more like bringing progressions to the table. Unfortunately this band rarely improvises or jams and I truly believe it's time related. I hope and believe that we'll change that someday. Mostly, one of the 3 string players will bring a near complete progression and we'll arrange it from there by either adding to or subtracting from the blob. Usually the music comes first too.
HM/VJ: How has the album You Know fared among fans? How do you feel about it?
MM: So far we've heard positively excited comments from people that have the album or have heard us live. We have a link on our site to another site that provides blind reviews of our songs by random peers around the world. Most of those are positive reviews, but many are by either angry, tired or bored reviewers and such comments can be fun to read.
HM/VJ: What is your favorite song or songs off the record? Does the band have any songs that they like to play more than others?
MM: My favorite song is "Summons..." because of the build up, the tones and the message. I wrote it for my dad and brother and all their crazy surfer friends out west. I think we're all pretty tired of the album by now but we all agree that it's fun to play it all live. I personally have a difficult time playing "Icicles" live because I tend to forget the lyrics. "No Clue" bores me live but the band loves to play it, whadayagonnado?
HM/VJ: Icicles, Summons Me the Sea, and Of the Essence are songs Victor and I like off the album. How did those particular songs come about during writing, recording, etc.?
MM: "Icicles" was a riff with a particular sound that Alfredo brought in one day in '06. He used a Whammy pedal to create this warbly sound and when he showed it to us he said "it sounds like icicles." And that became the title. I wrote the lyrics around the word and I complemented his sound at the intro and outro with a ring modulator that mimicked the sound of wind. I love the distortion pedal clicks at the bass bridge to the solo section and the tones of the two solos: To me the guitars there sound like a young bird on it's first flight that morphs into a Pterodactyl in mid-air. "Summons..." was a riff I began working on in '02 when I lived in Ocean Beach, CA. The riff had a hypnotic undulating feel and later I realized it was due to the single measure of 2/2 sandwiched between a couple of regular 4/4 measures. We used that single measure as a marker point for the drums to go from a mellow ride driven part to a busier hi-hat driven part and that gave the song a constant up and down feel. Alfredo had the idea to play an E-bow (an electronic device that replaces the pick in your right hand and makes the strings swell and vibrate with no apparent attack) thru his overdriven, tremolo-ed Vox at the 2nd verse. There's also the break after the 2nd chorus where Alfredo plays his synth set to sound like the ocean, the guitar riff there pits a measure of 9/4 against 2 measures of 4/4 adding to the overall vibe of cresting waters. The only thing that bothers me about this mix is the overwhelming bass frequencies of the doumbek I played at the intro. The title came from the first line of a Haiku I wrote in high school which can be found somewhere on our MySpace page. "...Essence" was a song I wrote in the 90's and it was the first one OSO ever worked on and played as a band. The lyrics deal with religion, death and our time spent alive but it's difficult for me to define it and hope that some psychologist can someday analyze it properly and tell me what it is I'm trying to say. It was also the first song we recorded and one can hear that my vocals came out a bit plaintive and melancholic. In this mix I worked hard to get one of the crash cymbals to disappear during the choruses, you can still hear it but its volume bothered me for a long time. I don't know how it went unnoticed during tracking but Peter banged the hell out of it like a caveman with a club and it was just way too overpowering in the song.
HM/VJ: What inspired the artwork/packaging of your debut album and who did it? Are there any secret messages in the album art?
MM: The cover art came from an idea that I had about presenting the band as "new". I wanted the image to portray the animal (OSO) as coming from the woods towards you (the fan) in the city. It definitely came out a lot different from what I described to the artist, Rafael Valenciano (a local artist and neighbor/friend of Felipe's.) Actually, when he first showed it to us I was against using it. We argued and disagreed a bunch and spoke over each other and things got heated in that little room. I was so close to kicking his ass out of the room but cooler heads calmed us both with their opinions and eventually the piece grew on me. Now I'm in love with the piece, I framed the original and it currently hangs in my home. I even called Rafael a couple times to thank him but he won't answer or return my calls dammit. The cover has a clear message of "choosing a path" which may not be obvious at first but becomes apparent when opened up and seen with front and back as one. The inside sleeve sort of shows the result of choosing that path. As for anything hidden I recommend 3-D glasses. Might not help much but they're fun and make you look cool.
HM/VJ: How long did it take to finish the album? Was it difficult or exciting in some way?
MM: Too long. We started recording in summer of '05 and recorded the last track in January or February of this year. We had to jump on every chance that we had to get Studio M for free at MDC Kendall and those were small windows that were far and few between. Some overdubs and vocals were handled in Alfredo's Polyphonic Studio. Some things that slowed us down were beyond our control, drummers freaking out and quitting, mixing engineers taking more than a few months to mix 3 songs, visual artists rebelling and re-starting the creative process, you know the peripherals. Not so much difficult as exciting. I absolutely enjoy every aspect of sound recording. The most difficult parts were losing a drummer and re-training 2 new drummers for recording. Other than that I had great fun during the recording process. The lighting there is perfect (I can't spend much time under white lights and luckily there are hardly any like that in the studio.) Also the temperature is very low in there and that's definitely enjoyable. The couches are pretty comfy too. And we usually had the place to ourselves with very limited interruptions which made it feel like we were in our own little world most of the time.
