purveyors of: harmonious opposition

Lanterns and Conconquidore Truidore are like Zaphod Beeblebrox: two brains sharing one body. While both bands share the same members, they have different leaders. As the head of Conconquidore Truidore, Robert Cole’s lush acoustic yang is contrasted by Alexander Arvelo-McQuaig and Lanterns’ lonesome lo-fi yin. Even just on a metaphorical level, these two bands are already fascinating. Evan Dickson asked Cole how the universal paradox plays out on stage.

You'd better give our readers the back story of these two bands who are one?

Ok. Although Lanterns and Conconquidore Truidore may appear indistinguishable when the acts follow each other, featuring the same members usually standing in the same positions, we are in fact different musical projects serving the world as examples of how to beat the creative-control blues. Very simply put, we are two songwriters under a blood oath to do whatever the other says, going whatever direction is commanded of us, while dragging along our dearest friends and promising them the same for their own projects.

In what ways are Lanterns and Conconquidore Truidore different?

First of all Lanterns is written by Alexander Arvelo-McQuaig, and Conconquidore Truidore is by Robert Cole, yours truly. Obviously there are different influences behind us and I know the music we make contrasts—even though we are beginning to influence each other and there is a blurring. Without breaking down the sounds of the bands, which might give a wrong impression to our fresh ears out there, I can say that there is a particular stylistic difference that shows up in everything we do. If you look at our album covers, Lanterns tends to follow a black-and-white colour scheme while Conconquidore's features exaggerated colour. I believe those details symbolize our bands well. I do not mean black-and-white or colour in the conventional sense of bad and good or ugly and beautiful. I feel Lanterns has a focused simplicity and Truidore has an out-of-focus complexity. Equal but different. Thats the way I like to fantasize they are anyway, because they feel very complimentary to me, which is why we play them side by side.

Do you usually perform together?

99 percent of the 100 shows we've done so far have been together, but with our combined catalogues of songs lengthening our sets, and the inevitable invitations to fill single-band slots for the shows of others, we are beginning to switch it up.

How would you describe your live show to some jerk who asked you on the street?

Well, after he or she came to and apologized, we would explain our sound as un-effects-ed, and thus far acoustic. Though we range from 3 to 5 members on stage at a time, the stage is always crowded to a clumsy degree with bizarre assortments of worldly instruments and ugly decorations surrounding each player. We tend to abandon the front-man flying V formation common to most bands in favour of the cozy C so no member is in the spotlight and we can all look at each other as we play, to make those glances that say "mmmmusic" or "nononono don't!" Every show is different though, of course. Jerk.

Tell us about ReelCod Records. Their website is incomplete.

ReelCod is the name that unifies our always-growing commune of music-making friends. The label is very much in its beginning, but is structured to work as a co-operative with no true figurehead. On a larger scale it compares to the structures of the bands themselves as an interconnected perpetual favour machine. The name reflects our desire to record our music on the analog reel-to-reel, which comes from a wariness of the present day's music marketing technology. Still we seem to have a type of laziness about us that keeps that damn reel-to-reel broken, and that damn website incomplete. So here in the hypocritical middle ground we remain. We'll fix it all tomorrow.

What is the ideal season and weather for your music?

Parsley cloudy.

By Evan Dickson