Phantogram
by Alex Suskind
Photo by Doron Gild
When we go to sleep, our bodies go through several stages before reaching the point of rapid eye movement (also known as REM sleep). It is during this phase where our dreams take over, exposing us to a universe filled with our strongest and deepest emotions.
If we look at REM sleep through the scope of music, there are very few bands capable of shaping their sounds into the euphoric trance you experience while dreaming. However, Phantogram—a duo that makes, what they describe as “street beat psyche pop” —fits into that mold perfectly. Like dreams, Phantogram’s music is influenced by a variety of emotions, aspirations, and visions, the combination of which explode into a beautiful array of atmospheric and organic sounds.
Hailing from Upstate New York, their music draws on many different genres: from hip-hop to trip-hop to garage rock to avant-garde. And where other bands would likely fail meshing these genres into a coherent set of sounds, Phantogram flourishes. Their music has a three-dimensional quality, which is fitting considering that the definition of a “phantogram” is a two-dimensional object that appears three-dimensional.
Phantogram’s two members, Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, met in high school. Years later, after Sarah spent time in college and Josh was playing in a band in New York, the two met back up in their hometown. Josh played Sarah some of the beats he had been working on recently, and from there they decided to form a band. Two and half years later, they are set to release their debut album, Eyelid Movies — the CD release on Barsuk Records, and the vinyl release on Ghostly International.
I spoke to Phantogram about their new album and their songwriting process before they hit the stage at the Rock N Roll Hotel in Washington D.C.
Thanks for taking the time out of your touring schedule to speak with Wax Poetics. First off, could you define “street beat psyche pop” for me?
Josh: It is actually a term coined by a good friend of ours who was trying to describe our music, so we didn’t come up with it ourselves but we thought it was fitting for our sound so we just rolled with it. Our music has elements of street rhythms and hip-hop and a little bit of dance I guess, and we are influenced by a lot of underground hip-hop and… ’60s psychedelia and obscure French pop and stuff like that and we just thought it worked well.
So when did you guys first meet?
Sarah: Josh and I actually met in high school and we have been really great friends since we were 14 years old. But music wasn’t involved in our lives at that point yet. Josh was a skateboarder, and I was…a…
Josh: …a stoner [laughs].
Sarah: [laughs]…so we were friends and then I went off to college in Burlington, Vt, and Josh went to New York to pursue a previous band that he was in, and after that we met back together and we started working on music.
Were you guys involved in music during high school?
Sarah: Singing in chorus, we were also in band together.
Josh: Everybody in my family, my brother, sister, mom and dad, they all play instruments, so I was always around it, but I was mostly into just listening to music and skateboarding. [Sarah] played the piano a little bit, but we weren’t really creating music then. I really started getting into [making] music when I was 18; my parents bought me a four-track for my eighteenth birthday. I just all of the sudden wanted to start recording, and that is how I got into music and developed a huge cache of weird sketches and beats and one minute long songs…I would go over to [Sarah’s] house because my best friend growing up lived right next door to her, and she’d be playing the piano and it sounded really pretty.
We started [playing together] two and a half years ago. I had been working on a lot of beats and my own solo ideas, and I was kind of compiling a bunch of random ideas and I played them for her one day and she liked them and encouraged me to do something with them. So I asked her if she wanted to try and start a project. She helped me finish a lot of the early demos and then we started writing music together. It clicked.
