Interview: Ra Ra Riot

Saturday, January 12th, 2013 // Blogs,J-Walking

Interview and photos by Jess Phoa.

On Nov. 29, I went to the Passion Pit and Ra Ra Riot concert at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia and had the opportunity to go backstage and interview Mathieu Santos, the bassist of Ra Ra Riot, before the show.

Ra Ra Riot is releasing its third full-length album, Beta Love, on Jan. 22. Here I talk to Santos about the best television shows for touring, his spirit animal, the band’s upcoming album, and more. Check out the full interview below.

Mathieu Santos, bassist of Ra Ra Riot (photo by Jess Phoa)

Jess: On your Facebook page, it says you like “Spaghetti, Scramble, and Planet Earth” is that true?

Mathieu Santos: Milo makes amazing spaghetti

Jess: Is it a family recipe?

MS: He studied abroad in Florence as an architecture student and brought back with him some amazing sauce recipes. So we eat lots of spaghetti as a band, we do play lots of Scrabble, and Planet Earth, so yeah we do love all of those things!

Jess: Do you have a favorite food aside from spaghetti and if you could have a sandwich, what would you want on it?

MS: My favorite food aside from spaghetti, that’s a great question. Well, when I’m home I eat a lot of amazing Portuguese food, and that’s probably my favorite food.

Jess: You’re Portuguese… are you fully Portuguese?

MS: I’m half, my dad is fully Portuguese and my mom is fully French so I’m 50/50 and they each grew up in their respective gene pools.

Jess: Are you multilingual?

MS: Ahh, no… I speak a little French, no Portuguese. My sister, though, is a French major and speaks really good French. Portuguese food is definitely my favorite food and so I would have to say that the cacoila sandwich, which is a Portuguese marinated pork, it’s delicious…it’s unbelievable. That’s like the first thing I do whenever I’m home, go straight to the amazing Portuguese restaurants in New Bedford, MA.

Jess: You watch Planet Earth, do you watch anything else? Do you have movie nights or something like that?

MS: There’s a lot of show trading on tour. I know a couple of years ago, everyone was really into The Wire, we did all of The Sopranos…

Jess: I know Breaking Bad is pretty popular right now.

MS: I don’t know if anyone is watching that, but I know Wes [Miles, vocalist for Ra Ra Riot] has been into Game of Thrones, Becca’s been into Girls. There’s lots of TV watching on tour. I usually just watch sports mostly, but I’ve been rewatching The Sopranos recently.

Jess: So I understand you’re a huge Bruins fan, but what about the rest of the band?

MS: Wes is a huge Devils fan, ‘cause he’s from New Jersey. Becca’s also from Jersey, a fairweather fan, “Oh did they win?” [laughs]. Everyone puts up with it, that’s probably accurate. Listening to us talking about it at dinners and stuff. If they win, we’re happy and they’re also supportive if we’re going through hard times too.

Jess: How are you coping with the NHL lockout?

MS: …well I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask me about this [laughs]. It’s been really tough on us. We have our fantasy hockey league, it’s been on hold for a bit. The hardest part is that I’ve been boycotting my Bruins merchandise, which is a good portion of my wardrobe. I’m in just the apathetic stage of “Okay, who needs those bums…” Every night I’m home in my apartment, “Oh the Nets are playing…” then I watch 30 seconds of it and I’m like, “What am I doing? I can’t get into this.”

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Second Sense: Yoshi Sodekoa

Thursday, December 20th, 2012 // Blogs,Second Sense

Hey, Reader! Welcome to the first installment of Second Sense, my new A/V blog. Here we’ll take the time to appreciate the amazing thing that happens when sound and sight enter the ring together.

Let’s start with Yoshi Sodekoa, a Japanese artist working out of New York has been making visual art for quite some time. Maybe you heard of him over the summer — he designed the vignettes for Yeasayer’s “Fragrant World” scavenger hunt. The videos (featuring a song off of the album) were hidden all over the internet, and clues were given so fans could find them. Pretty neat stuff.

“Henrietta” by Yeasayer

But Sodekoa has been making these glitchy, psychedelic vids for a while, and for a whole bunch of musicians. My favorite is a multi-chromatic visual attack made for the song “Youth in Trouble” by The Presets. I know you want to watch it.

“Youth in Trouble” by The Presets

Glitchy, colorful, wonderful. Featuring pixelated unicorns and tweaked video footage of riots. What’s not to like?

Sodekoa has more of his A/V work on his Vimeo and his website. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Paperhouse: On you, me, and rainbows

Monday, December 3rd, 2012 // Blogs,Paperhouse

As I sit down to write this week’s Paperhouse, I am a little saddened. While looking through my past rants in this column, it became shockingly clear to me that I have a very decisive opinion regarding music. In columns past, I’ve endorsed this album or that subgenre, or belittled some artist or criticized a musical trend. While I typically encourage you to believe every word I write, today I want to make it perfectly clear that your music taste is your own. Do not let a magazine, blog, or other individual dictate it.

The music you listen to should be entirely up to you and is truly one of the few choices you have in life. With the wide variety of ways to be exposed to new artists and genres, it makes little sense to rely on the opinions of others. Granted, there are probably too many musicians releasing music today, but that is not a sufficient reason to take someone else’s advice instead of sorting through what is available on your own. As consumers we have become inundated with musical output, with blogs advocating one album this hour and then posting on Twitter about an entirely different one minutes later. It’s important to remember to breathe.

Over the upcoming winter break, after you listen to your finals study playlist several hundred times — I recommend filling it with as much deep house as possible — spend some time figuring out what type of music you actually like and, more importantly, why you like it. What is it about a song that strikes resonance with you? Is it that catchy lyric, that garbled bass line, or that wonderful dissonance? Whatever it is, take note and then go out and find more music that fills that need. In the end, it doesn’t matter what music you like, as long you know why you like it independently of anyone else’s opinion.

(Originally published in The Tartan)