[Repost from Aldora Britain Records; b Tom Hilton, April 10, 2024]
Tucson, Arizona is the home to post-rock experimentalists LA CERCA. Combining the disparate worlds of ambient
avant-garde, shoegaze, and spacey psychedelic rock, this Southwestern sonic
collective deliver something undeniably fresh and completely reinvigorating. Their original compositions are brooding and
unfolding soundscapes, pushing boundaries and gloriously disrespecting
borders. Records such as 2018’s Night Bloom and 2020’s A Nice Sweet Getaway are archetypal
snapshots of La Cerca’s delightful approach, stellar adventures through
creative worlds, a never-ending journey of discovery. With the fourth anniversary of A Nice Sweet Getaway fast approaching,
key bandmember Andrew Gardner agreed to chat with Aldora Britain Records about La Cerca’s experimentations so
far. We discuss the coming together of
the group, a selection of their recorded output, their approach to songcraft,
and much, much more. That exclusive
in-depth conversation is published here in full for the very first time.
La Cerca have previously contributed their track ‘Free of Expectation’ to
our independent, underground music sampler ‘We Didn’t Start the Fight’. Listen or download HERE.
Aldora Britain
Records: Hello Andrew, how are you? I am
excited to be talking with such an experimental musician. I am a big fan of what you do! Let’s start off by rewinding the clocks. What are some of your earliest musical
memories and what was it that first pushed you towards pursuing this passion of
yours?
Andrew Gardner: Hello
Tom, I just got back from a thirteenday West Coast tour with La Cerca. It was eight shows. It rained a lot in Southern California, where
it’s not supposed to rain. We had a lot
of winter weather. In Tucson, spring is
starting, but not so much for the West Coast.
We jokingly called the tour ‘Prolonging the Winter 2024’.
I grew up in a small town in Ohio before we moved to Tucson,
Arizona. Our neighbours had a guest
living in their basement who had an organ.
I would be over at their house asking to go downstairs to watch the
player, but I was denied, so I would put my ear to the floor. Music was always a constant. My mom had a good record collection and I was
taught how to carefully handle albums and turn them over on the turntable at a
young age. Everybody knew that music was
the direction for me. I had opinions on
Jimi Hendrix records, Dark Side of the
Moon, and Sgt. Pepper. I loved the 1980s Top 40, at least up until
1987. The first album I purchased with
my paper route money was David Bowie’s Let’s
Dance. The Fixx, Reach the Beach was my second
album. I was lucky enough to have guitar
lessons. Within a couple of years, I was
drafting the neighbour kids to start a band.
Aldora Britain
Records: And now, let’s take a leap forward to the beginnings of the
brilliant La Cerca. The early days of
the group must have been such an invigorating time. How did it come to be? How did you meet the other members and what
was the initial spark that brought you all together on a musical level?
Andrew Gardner: La
Cerca evolved from my band called Wise Folk Malcontent, which played the
underground rock scene in Tucson from 1992 to early 2000. The musicians wanted a name change because we
had felt that we had arrived on a musical level and they were aspiring to be
permanent musicians. We were fans of
1970s punk rock and art rock, New Order, The Cure, and 90s
American indie rock. Within a year and a
half, those musicians had moved on to other projects only a few months after
the release of our first album Goodbye
Phantom Engineer, 2001 on Unlike Label.
It was again a revolving member band surrounding my songwriting.
Miguel Villarreal was my neighbour who loved La Cerca’s
music so much that he decided to play bass from 2002 to 2012. I decided to be in a band with my neighbours
as much as possible, but that limited us to not being able to tour. That was okay for a while, but touring
aspirations kicked in and I would go out by myself and then grab a friend or
two along the way and we would go play shows sporadically across the States,
then pairing down to just me playing solo shows. Bill Oberdick came onboard as guitarist in
2005. He is still a big part of La
Cerca’s sound. By the time he had
joined, I felt like the real band had started.
Aldora Britain Records: In 2020, you released
a fantastic record in the form of A Nice
Sweet Getaway. This was my
introduction to your work, so I look back on it very fondly. What are your memories from composing,
recording and releasing this set, and is there anything that you would edit or
change with the benefit of hindsight?
Andrew Gardner: In 2013 and early
2014, the band was in a kind of limbo waiting for mastering and pressing of our
third album, Sunrise for Everyone. I was working at a guitar shop and acquiring
better gear. I was learning how to use a
Tascam handheld two-track recorder. I
just got a monster delay pedal, the TC Electronic Flashback X4 Delay, with a
decent fortysecond looper. I was
obsessed with pedals. It used to be that
I had a chorus, fuzz, and delay. Now
there was much more on my palette.
After La Cerca band rehearsals,
I started these recording experiments. I
would place the recorder in different places to see how the room would
sound. I started making these ambient
mood jams. I didn’t think that much of
it, but in the back of my mind, I thought that some of the recordings were
listenable. I started treating them like
‘songs’, but I would improvise.
Sometimes, I had ideas in advance, like ‘Ice Cubes’, other
times, it was made up on the spot, like ‘Walking the Underbelly’. I would have my neighbours over to listen on
our porch while I was in the process. I
would go to our nearby venue, The Flycatcher, RIP, and record the jams in the
lounge, like ‘Gloomy Vista Way’.
Sometimes, the songs were sculpted for an hour before I hit record, like
‘Shimmering Peacock’.
At the time, I was just trying out ideas and creating new
ideas. I wanted to be spontaneous and
keep a performance feel. There were no
overdubs. I gave a burned CD to a couple
of friends and that was about as far as it went. I liked it, but I didn’t think it was good
enough to release. It was just some
ideas for later. By April of 2020, we
had to cancel a tour and the rest of the music world was on pause. I started listening to these lo-fi
recordings. It felt very fresh and it
still had a lot of melody to the noise.
It was interesting to see how I was nowhere near the state of mind, but
that state of mind was perfect for our pandemic world.
It became a soundtrack to strange times. I felt like it wasn’t too far off from the
noise and melody that La Cerca made. It
just wasn’t made with any bandmates. We
already had a project in the works, but I had many more actual songs and there
wasn’t a studio open for us to record. I
had not yet set up my living room with the studio that I have today. I had Jim Waters do some sonic treatments and
EQing. It has a new life and I wanted to
share it with the world.
Aldora Britain
Records: I am fascinated by the way you make these intense, immersive
soundscapes. There is just something
about La Cerca’s songcraft! How do you
approach this part of your creative process?
Is it a case of jamming away and striking gold, or is it a more
methodical and repeatable approach?
Andrew Gardner: For
A Nice Sweet Getaway, about one-third
of the tunes were improvised on the spot with very little or zero
planning. One-third were sculpted in
advance with a loop or two already crafted beforehand or had some editing,
post-recording. The remaining were a
little bit of both. Sometimes, I would
come up with a title first and go with how I was feeling. Other times, I thought about a feeling and
was seeing if I could recreate a sonic version of that feeling. The goal was to keep it ‘live’ as
possible. I had a lot of jams that
didn’t go anywhere, or so I was thinking at the time. By performing them and pressing the record
button, it gave me the pressure to figure out how to finish them.
Aldora Britain
Records: Previously, if we travel back to 2018, you unveiled another
stellar LP called Night Bloom. This is a brilliant earlier snapshot of the
band and your artistry. How do you
reflect on this set as a whole now, and how would you say you have grown and
evolved as a band since its initial release?
Andrew Gardner: Night Bloom is a widescreen version of the band. We started writing those tunes as early as
2012 or before. We were able to play
them at our shows earlier in the songs’ existence. We still play many of those songs in our live
performance. ‘Echolocation’ and
‘Tumbling Boulder’ have a bit of an ambient feel. As for the new material we have been working
on, there is a bit more of an ambient feel.
However, the new material also has older songs or ideas that have been
around since the beginning of the band.
Aldora Britain
Records: As you well know, I am a big fan of the La Cerca sound and your approach
to making music. That psychedelic
shoegaze wall of sound. Brilliance! How would you say this style of yours came
about, what goes into it for you, and who are some of your biggest influences
and inspirations as a band?
Andrew Gardner: In
the late 80s, Top 40 music was becoming boring for me, so I turned the dial
left to the college radio stations and watched MTV’s 120 Minutes. I discovered
bands like Ride, Pale Saints, Spacemen 3, Dinosaur Jr. I am still listening to those bands
today. I can’t speak for the other
guitarist, Bill Oberdick, but I know he had a similar experience with college
radio and discovering bands like Fugazi, R.E.M., and Minutemen. As music went in and out of fashion, I was
still into bands with loud noisy guitars and I made my own versions of that
music. We tend to go for vintage 60s
guitar and amps, but we use modern pedals.
We like our fuzz pedals, chorus and whammy or vibrotos.
Aldora Britain
Records: A broad question to finish.
We have been through such a unique time in history over the last few
years. Both politically and within
society, and that is before you throw in the pandemic. How have the last several years impacted on
you personally and as an artist? How do
you think this time has changed the music industry, both for the good and the
bad?
Andrew Gardner: When the pandemic
hit, I had a bunch of musical projects to explore. I had a bunch of half songs that I wanted to
finish because I felt they were worth finishing. Going through a backlog of material was
frustrating and yet informing me as a reminder of where I’ve been as a person
and where I wanted to go. I also felt
that I was a lazy songwriter. In the
past, I would start songs but not finish them and then the song would get
placed on tapes for later. 2020 was the
time to finish songs, and so I finished forty songs during the summer. And then twenty more a year later. Some of the songs were mostly written, some
were just ideas, others needed new lyrics.
The other issue was that I did not have a way to record the songs
properly. I had my handheld recorder
which worked for the time being. I saved
money and purchased some great mics and the rest of the recording gear, so I
didn’t have to go to an expensive recording studio for all of my songs. Having a session in the living room actually
works well for my lifestyle and the songs are more realised. I am more focussed than I have ever
been. I have been able to create a life
where I can go on tour more often.
As for changes in the music
industry, I feel as though music is not as appreciated as it once was. There is an idea that musicians should
release more frequently. I agree to that,
but I find that if we release something without promoting it properly or not
releasing it on vinyl, it may become lost in a digital haystack. I’m not the best at social media and
self-promoting is not my favourite thing to
do, but it has to be a big part of the promoting platform. So, now I have to be good at social media and
make better artwork for shows, make more videos, and learn how to edit. La Cerca is a touring band, we can’t only
release music, but there might be a future of not touring with the way gas,
food, and hospitality have gone up. It
seems there are less show venues and not enough people supporting live
music. Some of that might also be
generational. Young adults spend more time
on their phone at home with a much shorter attention span. Same can be said about people my age.
Quickfire Round
AB Records: Favourite
artist? Andrew: Too many favourites.
I am still a big fan of The Cure.
AB Records: Favourite
album? Andrew: Too many favourites!
Big Star, Radio City; American
Music Club, Mercury; Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde; The Cure, Disintegration. AB Records: Last album you
listened to from start to finish? Andrew: The Go-Betweens, Before Hollywood.
AB Records: First
gig as an audience member? Andrew: The Commodores or Cheap
Trick. AB Records: Loudest gig as an audience member? Andrew:
Tucker B’s. AB Records: Style icon? Andrew:
Skate shoes, flannel, Mark Gonzales.
AB Records: Favourite film? Andrew: River’s Edge. Not the best,
but hilarious and creepy.
AB Records: Favourite
TV show? Andrew: The Young Ones. AB
Records: Favourite up and coming artist?
Andrew: Null State.
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