purveyors of: hopscotch, dark secrets and staying up late

Sleeping Kings of Iona are into dragons, Werner Herzog and video games.  This Buffalo, New York band gets lumped into the electronic genre, but their songs range from spooky cinematic soundscapes to upbeat, playful tracks kids could hear on their favourite cartoon show, or maybe at the next ALLCAPS!  Lisa Aldridge spoke with Ray Fulton about Terminator 2, the band’s shows with Blondie and Mogwai and why they love Canada.  

I understand you started out as a guitar-based post-rock band. Talk about how you morphed into your current form.

Yeah, when we started we had two guitars and we relied heavily on our then drummer, Matt. When he left us we began writing electronic music. At first I think it was our attempt to fill that gap with sequenced drums, but when Mark started playing with us we continued writing that way, combining electronics with live instrumentation.
 
When Chris (who primarily played guitar), decided to leave the band last year, the idea of guitars in our music sort of took a backseat. I think it will be a temporary hiatus from playing around with guitars. I’m sure we will incorporate them into our sound again, in some form.

What is your fave Herzog flick? Mine is Aguirre: Wrath of God.  Have you seen Cobra Verde?

I’m a huge fan of Fitzcarraldo. The speech that he, played by Kinski, delivers at the dinner party where he says, “I will out-rubber you!” is just fantastic. I don’t know if I can say that’s my favorite, though, because I also really enjoy My Best Fiend.  I can watch those two again and again. I have to also mention The White Diamond and Wild Blue Yonder as well, because out of his latest films, those two really stuck with me. And I’ve yet to see Cobra Verde.

What was it like performing with Mogwai?  What about Blondie?  I imagine those were very different shows.
 
Sharing a bill with Mogwai was wonderful. We've always been huge fans of pretty much all that they've done. I remember it was the biggest crowd we played too, and they seemed to enjoy what we were doing. It was a really cool experience for being such a young band.
   
The Blondie show was neat but pretty strange as well.  I think she jumped out of her limo just seconds before she played. I could explain it some more but that sums it up.

What's so great about Canada?

We’ve just had so many positive experiences, both playing in and visiting Canada. We’ve met so many cool, genuine people when we come up. It’s such a big breath of fresh air for us. Like stepping out of our little, stuffy home or something, you know? There’s just so much positive creativity and a lot of nurturing of that creativity. Plus, and I might be wrong by saying this, but it seems like most Canadians are pretty proud to be from Canada. Maybe excited is a better word. Regardless, it’s nice to be around that energy.

I've read that you tend to play short sets – half an hour or less. Is there a reason for this?

There’s not a big reason for that. I think we tend to not want to overstay our welcome. If we’re in the position to play longer, or if people would like us to, then we usually will.

Do you get any musical inspiration from watching films?  Do you think songs like "Chivalry" or "Seventeen" are what film soundtrack music could be like, say, if it got good?

Yeah, we definitely do. These days it's mostly on a subconscious level, whereas there was a time when we would put a movie on with the sound off and write music while watching it. That only happened on a couple of occasions, but it was interesting. There's a song on "…Love in the Streets…" called Fyrefli and it has a synth in it that plays something very similar to the music toward the end of Terminator 2. It sounds ridiculous, but Joey and I realized it and discussed how much we loved the music in that scene when we were younger. So I think it kind of crept back into our lives like that.    
 
I'm not sure if the songs we write, or have written, could necessarily be soundtracks.  Other members of the band may disagree, but I do feel that those songs are even too cinematic themselves, like maybe there wouldn't be room for them in a film. They're sort of scenes, or even little films. Films about medieval teenagers maybe, I don't know. They could be about anything. We would really enjoy scoring a film. That would be ideal for us. So yeah we are very inspired by film, especially those with dragons.
   
Have you guys ever been to Medieval Times?  What do you think about the Black Death?

No, we haven’t! I think at least two of us would enjoy going there a little too much. Is the Black Death a menu item? You’re not referring to the plague, are you? I’m not sure what to think of that if you are.

How would you describe your last album, “We Found a Love in the Streets…”?  I read something about "painful honesty," does this sum it up at all?

It's hard looking back to that record because although it's technically our latest record, it was made so long ago. It was released two years ago this month and obviously written well before that, so it's kind of hard to remember where we were when we wrote those songs, you know? I suppose "painful honesty" is a pretty good way to describe it. It's a sad sounding record at times and sort of dark, as well.  And it is a pretty honest record lyrically. Even the more abstract songs are sort of giving us away somehow.
 
To me, your new demo tracks seem quite sentimental.  Is this what you guys were going for?  What will you next album be like?
   
I don't think we were going for that exactly. I think that element of sentimentality is just always present in some form in our music. It's just there without us knowingly placing it there. It's in the way (we) write. There's always a hint of melancholy. The next album will definitely have that, but it's also going to be a fun record. It will most likely end (up) being rather layered but raw at the same time. The songs we're working on are more upbeat and we're really trying to capture the live energy of the songs while recording them. So (whereas) "…Love in the Streets…" was a bit darker, I think this one will be looking up, which is all we want to do right now.

By Lisa Aldridge