New album highlights complexity of Ratatat's beats
This isn't first time the band has brought its infectious music to Columbia.
Published March 10, 2009
Be it the catchy name or the infectious electronic music, Ratatat is a band that is hard to forget about. Quirky Skidmore College students Mike Stroud and Evan Mast began working together as musicians in 2001 and quickly became known for their live shows and raw musical talent. With the 2008 release of their third studio album, LP3 (the band has also released two mixtapes where they reworked well-known rap tracks), the duo showcased its ability to create some of the most complex beats and multi-layered pieces of music being produced. MOVE checked in with Mast to talk about the band's musical progression, hip-hop and the ups and downs of the road to stardom.
MOVE: You're about to start a new tour in mid-March?
Evan Mast: March 21, I think, for sure.
MOVE: Have you guys played in Columbia before?
EM: Yeah, a long time ago, probably right after our first record came out. We were touring with the band Clinic, and we played at The Blue Note.
MOVE: How do you feel like this tour is going to be different from the last few that you've been on?
EM: The last tour we did was probably six months ago or something. It's kind of different. We switched up the way we're playing the songs. We're switching instruments a lot more than we used to. We've got a lot more instruments on stage, and we're kind of running around doing different things. We're a lot busier than we used to be during shows. The last tour we did was in Europe, and we did it that way as well, and it ended up working really well so we're going with that again.
MOVE: Are you going to pursue playing with a live band ever?
EM: It is a live band, even if it's just the two of us. There are different levels of live, too, I guess. Because of the way that we write songs, there's so much layering, and there's so many different things happening in the arrangement, and the interpretation changes so much from song to song that I feel like if we ever fully did it with just the four or five dudes playing in a live band, it would probably sound pretty horrible. It'd be hard to capture all the details. We talked about in the future maybe rearranging the songs for strings or something. I hope to keep it kind of open-ended so we can approach it from different angles.
MOVE: What is usually your strategy when laying down new tracks? Do you do drums first? Do you start off with just a basic concept? How do you go about it?
EM: A lot of the time we start with drums. For the last record, I had been making a lot of the drumbeat stuff while we were on tour, so I just kind of made a stockpile of beats and then when we went to the studio we just started listening through. If we heard something that kind of inspired an idea, we just started playing over it, and a lot of the songs happened that way. A few of the songs started with just piano parts or guitar parts or whatever we had around. It tends to be us starting with a melody or a chord progression or a beat. We just start playing over the top, and we just improvise things and kind of just put on another layer and then respond to that and then put on another layer and just keep going until it seems kind of finished.
MOVE: I just downloaded your latest remix album. It's really, really good. Is the remix an art form that you'd like to mess around with a little more, kind of expand on?
EM: I'm not sure. We haven't been doing many remixes. We've kind of been taking a break from it. We did so many for a couple of years that I think we're just kind of more inspired to do our own stuff...I don't know. Not right now. I'm not that inspired to change the form much right now, but maybe eventually.
MOVE: How did the hip-hop community receive your remixes? What is your relationship with the hip-hop community?
EM: Uh, we don't have much of one, I don't think. We never really got much feedback. I think rappers are kind of closed off from other forms of music, although maybe not (as much) anymore. I guess now you have like M.I.A. and Santigold showing up on Jay-Z tracks, so maybe they're starting to take credit. They have like little things here and there. It would be like, "John Doe has a friend that works at Def Jam yet again," and whatever. I feel like there's been a million little connections like that that were supposed to happen but nothing ever amounted to anything. We might have to give up our dreams of being hip-hop producers (laughs).
MOVE: Would you ever consider laying down any sort of vocals yourselves on your tracks, or no?
EM: We've done a little bit of stuff just using vocals as sounds, kind of in the same way we would use another instrument. But I don't think we'll ever get into writing lyrics and any kind of that weird vocal stuff. I can see, like, possibly producing tracks for other people or doing, like, side projects with other things, but I think for Ratatat we'll probably stay pretty much instrumental.
MOVE: How do you feel that you have progressed as a band from when you started to now with the release of LP3?
EM: We've come a really long way. In the early stages we didn't really know what we were doing. I don't know, maybe we still don't know what we're doing. I think we still approach songwriting in the same way. It's still just about trying to keep us entertained and keep doing what keeps filling up the house. I guess we've just sort of defined our sound a lot since then and expanded on it. It's a weird thing. We just make the songs, and the project just sort of grows and expands. It's a lot of work, and you guide it, but I feel like it ends up, I don't know, it's become this massive thing that we never expected.
MOVE: Who are your influences? What influenced you to pursue this?
EM: I have a brother who is five years older than me. When I was in junior high, he was getting into punk rock, and he would talk about music to me. That was definitely a huge influence because I kind of avoided a lot of the bad music that a lot of kids get into at that age. He's also been in bands and stuff, too. That kind of inspired me to get into playing music when I was little. He proved that it could be done.
MOVE: What are you into right now musically?
EM: I've been on a big Bach kick lately, harpsichord music and organ music, a whole lot of French, a lot of African stuff, like African guitar music. I tend to go through phases. I'll get into one style of music for a couple weeks and then move on to something else.