Behind Electro-Art Rock: Interview w/ Michael Friedrich of Rarechild

The music scene is changing. Like it always does. Over the last few months I’ve been thinking more about what this generation is defined by in terms of music. The truth is, I’m not really sure. While you are in the middle of a “scene” so to speak, you never acknowledge it’s happening. It just does. This brings me to today’s interview. I have had the pleasure of knowing so many great musicians and I love nothing more than to share their vision and art form to a wider audience.

I first met Michael Friedrich when I lived in NYC. Throughout the years he’s been involved in numerous musical endeavors, each one with a clear aesthetic and direction. Rarechild, his current project is an electro-indie hybrid of some sorts that remind me much of the Velvet Underground sound that spawned the art-rock movement in the 70s.

“Hybrid” and “Way Down”, their new singles were released last week accompanied with a new video for “Hybrid”. I got the chance to ask the singer/songwriter more about what’s behind the music of Rarechild and ultimately what’s next.

LB: How did Rarechild form / come together? 

MF: Tim McCoy, CBX, and I grew up on the far east end of Long Island, in the Hamptons essentially. It was almost as glamorous as it sounds! We’ve all played music together, in different iterations, since we were teenagers. They’re two of my most trusted writing partners, two of the best musicians I know. A couple years ago I was making music with my computer. I wanted to make this sort of fractured pop with lots of drums. And I wanted the three of us to keep circulating the veiled homoerotic energy we’re accustomed to with each other. Tim and CBX agreed.

LB:Describe your songwriting process. 

MF:Usually I’m doing something else and a melody or a rhythm or an idea creeps into my head. Then I hum it into the voice recorder on my iPhone. It’s very modern! Then I spend time in my studio putting pieces together on the computer and writing lyrics and thinking about what it means. Later I show it to Tim and CBX and they add something really perfect or disarming and we’ll hack up the arrangement a bit, get frustrated, get excited. Then we’ve usually got something approaching a song. 

LB: I’m absolutely in love with your videos. How are the concepts developed? 

MF: I’m glad you like. I’ve been working with Steve Nolan and Eddie Costas at Nerd Rage for these videos and they’re really talented at representing the themes of the songs visually. I’ve wanted to look at how the self – personality, gender, the body – isn’t really a stable thing. It’s a bit of a commonplace to say that at this point. But that’s my experience. Self is changeable, it’s mediated through screens. Memory is unreliable. 

So I’ve just talked about that with Steve and Eddie, and we watched Cronenberg and Lynch together. And they’ve had a lot of ideas for creating characters and making the videos playful and pretty and strange. They’ve kept it weirdly joyous and celebratory, too, where I think I can be overly serious. I like that they’ve created a little self-contained world for each video. It’s important. Also it’s important that they have the technical know-how to put four or five of me onscreen at once. I like to see a lot of me.

                                                                                                                   ph: Melinda Melmoth

LB: What’s your favorite decade in music? Favorite artists? 

MF: For the purposes of your blog I wish I could say it’s the 90s. I grew up listening to Sonic Youth and Nirvana and the Melvins and that stuff, and I think it always made me want to make noise and stay ragged. 

 

But the things that really inspire me and that I go back to now are late 70s and early 80s artists like Kate Bush, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, John Cale – these people who are so capable of crafting uncommon sound landscapes into perfect pop songs. Stuff that sounds really pristine and organic, but somehow even now sounds like future music to me.

LB: You’re based in New York, would you say the city influences your sound? 

MF: Yeah, honestly all I’ve wanted to do in this band or my last one is to have a lot of people playing buckets and trashy cymbals and drums. I want to get that subway clatter on stage. And I haven’t really made it happen so far. You’ll be seeing more of that this year with our new music. I’m determined.

LB: Who are some of your favorite fashion designers and/or influences? 

MF: I’m not so good with labels. I always like Commes but that shit is expensive. I’ve been collecting sick patterns. I’ve especially been looking for patterned Missoni shirts from the 80s, but the arms are always too short. Style icons? Bowie and Jagger in the video for “Dancing in the Streets”. Christian Slater in Gleaming the Cube.

LB: What band or album have you recently heard that you really enjoyed? 

MF: Well, I really like the new Autre Ne Veut record. He’s doing something special. I like that last Liars album, but I always go back to Drum’s Not Dead. I like Mykki Blanco’s song “Wavvy” and that video. This question is tough. I end up liking an A$AP Rocky or a Kendrick song but then I can’t get into the whole album. Plus I just have a hard time keeping up lately.

LB: What’s next for Rarechild? 

MF: I want to get more drummers. We’ll be playing here and there this year. With more drummers. “Hybrid”, the single that comes out this week, is part of an album we’ve been working on. That’ll be out later on. It should be pretty rare.

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