Kyle and Orhan from Blind Man’s Color.

Bands come and go. Especially these days, where the internet makes you simultaneously want to download a million albums a day and throw your hard drive out the window and cuddle up with some vinyl and headphones. So when a band’s last release was more than ten months ago and they are still making their way into my daily listening, I’d say they are going to be around for a while. Blind Man’s Color is just that band.

I had the pleasure of speaking with one-half of the creative core of the band, Kyle (seated to left in the above picture). Orhan couldn’t make it due to various school responsibilities. We talked about the creative process of the band, digital vs analog cassette recording, and what the future holds for this very young and promising band.

BMK: Hey Kyle, how’s it going?

BMC: It’s going well- done with class for the day, about to go swim in the lake if it doesn’t rain.

BBK: Are you back home in Florida? Where does Orhan go to school?

BMC: We both go to in-state schools; I’m about two hours south of Saint Petersburg in Fort Myers, Orhan is about an hour north of me, in Sarasota.

BBK: How long have each of you lived in Florida?

BMC: I was born and raised in Saint Petersburg. Orhan moved to Florida in 7th grade, where he joined my middle school.

BBK: Did you guys each make music on your own before starting to work together? How does the collaborative process usually begin?

BMC: Orhan started picking up his dad’s old guitar in 7th grade. at the same time my parents bought me a drum set, we sort of became friends over that common bond, and started jamming. We started actually writing together the next year, and it’s pretty much the same now as it was back then. One of us would have a song idea, chords, lyrics, melodies, and we’d get together and expand on it.

BBK: How has that changed now that you do most of your recording on the computer? You use Reason [a music software program] mainly, correct?

Do you each have a copy and pass files back and forth?

BMC: We started doing computer recording from the start, back in middle school, and often just emailed each other audio files, just like we still do, but the majority is still in person. We’ve been using Reason since middle school, but engineered by my older brother Evan, until we started picking it up ourselves in early high school. The music style is always changing, but it’s been a relatively similar approach.

BBK: Who does the majority of the vocals?

BMC: On the album, the majority is probably me, but the following EP has a good balance of both of us, and all future stuff is going to be pretty 50/50.

BBK: Do you guys use Reason strictly for sounds or do you also use it for sequencing?

BMC: Yeah, Reason definitely isn’t a recording program; we use it for basically any electronics you hear on the album. For the synths, we usually use MIDI, so it’s still us playing a keyboard, but run through the software. The EP was mostly all analog though, with an old beginners keyboard that Orhan has had since he was little, run through a cassette recorder.

BBK: Is this an upcoming EP? Or the Rainbow Faces EP?

BMC: It’s a 6 song EP called “Wooden Blankets” that we wrote and recorded simultaneously with the album, in early 2008. It’s mostly all cassette 4 track. It’s coming out on Kanine Records before the end of the year sometime, on Vinyl and CD. As well, a friend of ours who started a cassette label called “Woven Tones” is going to release a limited 100 copies.

BBK: Ah. Did you purposely record the EP and LP separately using different formats?

BMC: Sort of. During the time of recording both, we really didn’t have the idea that we were making an album or an ep or anything, we were just hanging out after school in high school, recording stuff. Sometimes we’d want to do the more digital and layered stuff, and sometimes we’d be in the mood to record songs that we thought would sound better through cassette. It wasn’t till we were basically done with a lot that we sort of realized we had enough material for an album, as well as a completely different sounding EP.

BBK: Do you think you’ll upgrade equipment any time soon?

Do you want to continue with the cassette stuff at all?

BMC: We definitely are going to invest in some better microphones and such, but I think our next material is going to still have the bedroom cassette feel. Maybe a mix of the production styles of the album and EP. Very layered, but very analog.

BBK: You came up to New York for your first shows a while ago. How did those go? How are you approaching translating the very layered material to a stage?

BMC: The New York shows went relatively well, though we’re still very new at the live thing, considering those 3 shows were our 3rd, 4th and 5th. We have a bassist with us named Ben Goodman, as well as a drummer named Ashton Willard. We’re sort of going for a very “real time” approach. No samples or anything, as we didn’t use samples in the recordings, but it is still very much different than the album, seeing as we just have one keyboard, one guitar, one drum set and one bass guitar. But as our shows go on, we’ve been coming up with some more interesting interpretations of the songs, like we just played a show the other day where our drummer beatboxed the song “Jimmy Dove” instead, and started playing the album song “The Dinosaur Ride” in a full band setting, rather than just acoustic guitar.

BBK: Why did you purposely try to not include any samples?

BMC: I wanted to do real time drum machines, and more backing tracks, but Orhan wanted to try to do it more completely live, so we compromised and have some songs with backing tracks, and some with drum set etc. But we both agreed on not wanting really dry and repetitive loops and stuff.

It’s working out really well for us so far, with the live set up, and should get more interesting as we continue.

BBK: How much time are you guys able to devote to music now that you started school again?

BMC: We have a couple of shows on the calendar for the rest of the year, but we definitely want to stop soon, so that the little time that we do have, we can devote to writing and recording again, because we’ve never gone this long without doing so.

BBK: I know that most of the press that you’ve gotten has mentioned Animal Collective, but what are some other bands that you feel inspired by?

I know you’ve mentioned the early Of Montreal stuff that was also recorded on a 4-track.

BMC: Animal Collective was a band that we were really into in high school, but after the release of their new album this year, we’ve sort of faded away from listening to them really all that much, maybe 1% of our listening time. Right now for me, a lot of palm-wine music: Coco Rosie, Beach House, Ducktails, Lil Wayne, James Holden, 90′s hip hop. I know Orhan has been listening to a lot of Miles Davis, Grizzly Bear, Here We Go Magic, some weird old stuff, and a lot of the same stuff as me. I think most of that will all come through in our next stuff.

BBK: Do you find yourself purposely seeking out music that was recorded at home or on a four-track?

I know some of the above follows those guidelines, but obviously not all.

BMC: No definitely not, I’ll listen to something because it looks interesting to me, a lot of 4-track stuff I hear about, I don’t check out because for some reason it doesn’t sound appealing. But yeah, I definitely do find a nostalgic, timeless warm quality to a lot of lo-fi music like Ducktails and old Palm-Wine music.

But it has to be good first!

BBK: Cool. How has it been working with Kanine? Do you feel like your music is similar to anyone else they’ve worked with?

BMC: Kanine are great people, are very open minded to listening to our wants and needs, and are wonderful to be around. We definitely work well with them and are endlessly thankful for their work with us. I think their two biggest accomplishments; Chairlift and Grizzly Bear are the closest related to our sound. A lot of their stuff is sort of punk rock.

BBK: Cool, glad to hear that is working out. We haven’t really talked about lyrics at all- how important are they to you in the general scheme of things?

BMC: Generally, lyrics are extremely important to us. We both write a lot, mostly in poetry form, which often get turned into our songs. We write from a range of total fiction, historical fiction, to straight up-front lyrics about day-to-day experiences. Even if it’s something that doesn’t mean something to us in terms of love or anything, the content and structure always has to be something we’re proud of in poem form. We posted the album lyrics on our Myspace recently.

BBK: Well, thanks for your time Kyle. Sorry Orhan couldn’t join us.

BMC: Yeah, next time. Thanks again!