Holophrase members Luis Etscheid, Malgosia Stacha, Tyler Lindgren and Caleb ‘CFreddy’ Henning. Photo by Sander Roscoe Wolff.
Last week, I was stomping around in the basement of The NAMM Show and ran into Brian Frederick and Miguel Vasquez. They’re the minds behind Stacks FX, a boutique guitar effects pedal company, and owners of 3 Pt. Studios, both in Long Beach. They suggested that I connect with Mantic Effects, a company from Denver that had a booth nearby.
“They’ve got one of our pedals, there, and one they made for Ikey Owens,” Fredericks said. “How could I not go?”
At the Mantic booth I found Malgosia Stacha, Luis Etscheid, Caleb ‘CFreddy’ Henning, and Tyler Lindgren. Luis and Caleb are the minds behind Mantic, but the four of them are Holophrase, a band whose first EP was produced by Owens. Being multitaskers, they booked a tour with Rubedo in advance of, and following, The NAMM Show. Their next gig, it turns out, is this Thursday, January 28, at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach.
Long Beach Post: How did Holophrase come to be?
Luis: It started five years ago when friends Caleb Henning and I started making music together. Gosia Stacha was added on vocals shortly after that, and this version of the band played shows for a couple years and made a record, “Horizons of Expectation,” with production from Ikey Owens. In January 2015, the band changed direction and added drummer Tyler Lindgren to the line-up.
Gosia, what attracted you to the band, when you joined?
Malgosia: I heard Luis’s solo EP first. I loved the mood of it. It was heavily effect driven Satie mood guitar playing. I just loved the sound.
Your music seems to draw from, or evoke, a variety of inspirations. What are your influences?
Tyler: We definitely have some prog [rock] influence in there. We all have love for prog music but, nowadays, are influenced by many different kinds of music. Our gear holds a heavy influence on what we sound like, currently.
Luis and Caleb have a company called Mantic Conceptual that makes effects pedals and does circuit bending. They have won the Moog circuit bending competition a couple times. Most of the gear that we use is custom built or custom modded to our specification. When you make the gear you use it helps to define a unique sound and vibe to the music. Gotta keep it fresh!
When you’re crafting these devices, are you striving for a specific aesthetic and, if so, what is it?
Luis: With effects, it usually starts with some kind of specific intent but, once we get going, it starts to sort of help create itself. It is like sculpture in a way. Accidents or unexpected results start to influence and/or derail the initial intent and we like to try and embrace that. With circuit bending, a lot of it is just aleatoric.
For those who don’t know, can you provide a thumbnail sketch of what circuit bending is?
CFreddy: Circuit bending is busting open electronic devices and connecting parts of the inner circuit board that usually shouldn’t be connected in order to create weird sounds and/or visuals.
How did you connect with Ikey Owens?
CFreddy: We met Ikey in a bar in Boulder. He was on tour with Free Moral Agents. We asked him to produce our record and he was down. He was a huge influence on us. He helped to keep things laid back. Like many of his other projects, he took us under his wing, professionally and personally.
Tyler: We all met because of Ikey. I was in another band that he produced. All four of us may have never met if it wasn’t for Ikey.
That first EP has a very distinctive sound and feel, almost as if it were recorded live in the studio. The new track, that just dropped, is in every way completely different. What’s happened between then and now?
Tyler: The first EP was recorded like Ikey wanted: Fast and to the point. Simple, effective and with a very live feel. Mantic was launched in between the two albums, and that explains a lot of the change in sound. The band had planned on Ikey producing current record. When he passed away things changed, obviously. Luis reached out to me to drum and help produce a couple tracks for them, one of them being “Cubicle”, because I had worked with Ikey a lot in the last couple years. The gear, the personnel, and the time between the two releases are responsible for the new direction.
Luis: The song writing process was completely different on this one, as well. Most of the songs’ primary ideas were just stems ripped from jams that Gosia, Caleb, and I threw down in a garage for fun, as opposed to the calculated process in the EP.
Tyler, tell me about the work you did with Owens prior to joining the band.
Tyler: When I moved to LA, Ikey would call me up to engineer and play drums for a lot of his tryouts as a producer. An artist would call Ikey, Ikey would call me, and we’d roll to whenever the artist wanted to be. I usually brought a mobile recording rig and some electronic drums, and Ikey would bring a keyboard. Ikey would talk to the artist about who they were and who they wanted to be, both as an artist and as a person, and the three of us would write and record a song or three. I learned so much from those sessions.
Mantic also built a pedal for Owens. What was that process?
CFreddy: Ikey asked us to make him a delay for his Jack White tour.
Luis: Ikey called me up about it before the Lazaretto tour. He wanted us to build him a dark-sounding delay that could get gnarly, but would be his ambient choice. He didn’t want any more than three controls and he didn’t want it to ever get muddy or drown out his signal source. We sent him a box full of stuff with the prototypes. He really dug them, and immediately started using the prototypes on his tour rig.
Tyler: Ikey always liked analog-style delay, dub style. The Isaiah is that kind of delay, done a bit cleaner. Ikey liked simplicity in his pedals, the more functionality with less knobs, the better.
The new Holophrase record, “Stay Being,” comes out on May 13th. It features Nick Reinhart, Juan Alderete, Kalyn and Josh from Wheelchair Sports Camp.
To learn more about Holophrase, visit HolophraseMusic.com. To learn more about Mantic, visit ManticEffects.com.
Alex’s Bar is located at 2913 East Anaheim Street. Parking and entry are in the back. Joining Rubedo and Holophrase are Bobby Blunders and I/O, with a set by DJ Dennis Ownes. Visit AlexsBar.com, or call 562.434.8292, for more information.
{FG_GEOMAP [33.7828017,-118.1573649] FG_GEOMAP}