rejuvenating piano pieces on radiation city's 'cool nightmare'

Fresh off of their first appearance at SXSW, Portland's Radiation City have been working their way back home up the West Coast since departing the anointed indie fest in mid-March. Down in Austin, Rad City played seven shows in four days, including The Portland Party (which we threw for ourselves, damn it!), and, although they just released their debut LP in September, they've been playing plenty of new material from their new EP, Cool Nightmare, which will be released on April 10th via Tender Loving Empire.

The full-length, The Hands That Take You, was largely the efforts of Rad City creators and couple Cameron Spies and Lizzy Ellison, but the latest seven-track EP sees contributions from three additional members: Matt Rafferty, Randy Bemrose, and the newest addition, Patti King.

With Cool Nightmare, there's an intriguing story of finding inspiration in a decrepit piano before destroying it, documenting the whole process audibly and visually, and sharing some mementos of this exercise with fans.

To understand the ideas and muse behind this eerily bewitching EP, which is also full of "dream-like ambience and warmth," OMN spoke to Cameron Spies before the band returns to the NW in the beginning of April for two Oregon shows: Sunday, April 1st at Sam Bonds in Eugene and a free EP release party at Rontoms in Portland on Sunday, April 8th with Seattle's Legendary Oaks.

But first, listen to the spectral power of the latest single "Eye of Yours":

Two months ago, you released a music video for "Find it of Use" (below), which featured the destruction of a piano. Tell me the story behind your new EP and that piano's role.

The imagery for this record involves this piano that lived in Randy's basement. We recorded a lot of the piano tracks for the album [using this piano], and by the completion of the record, the piano was essentially useless—a ragged heap wasting away in the dark. We decided it would be best to give it new life through its destruction. We captured audio of a decent amount of the moving/smashing part of the process for use as samples on the record or for use in later recordings (hence the title "Find it of Use," I guess, although the song title came first). That imagery is not an accident though. The record evokes the idea of destruction and rebirth through a gentle tug of war between darkness and levity.

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marrying nature + technology on lost lander’s debut ‘drrt’

“I’m currently sitting in the woods on a very steep cliff… just noticing some hunters that are walking around about 1,000 feet from me,” said Matt Sheehy over the phone on a gray Tuesday afternoon. ”I spend a lot of time in the woods because I’m a forester, and it’s hard for me to put a finger on how exactly me spending this amount of time in nature affects the recording. But what it comes down to is the sense of wonder that I get from looking up at the stars or hanging out at a planetarium or studying trees or looking at the eccentricities of plants–that’s one of my favorite types of feelings. I try as hard as I can to recreate that [feeling] in the work I do in music and art.”

Sheehy’s latest musical endeavor, Lost Lander, reflects his amazement. Crafting an auditory world of wonder, Lost Lander’s delicately elaborate tunes teeter on organic surrealism like the natural marvels that awe and inspire whether it’s the brilliance of aurora borealis, the intricate beauty of ice crystals, the perfect rings of Saturn, or even the glow of a lightning bug.

“It’s that feeling that you get when you discover that there’s a whole other universe that you didn’t even know about and how it makes you feel kinda small,” continues Sheehy. ”Sean Flinn calls it ‘the big small,’ where you realize how big you are and how small you are at the exact same moment. It’s trying to capture that. I try to spend as much time as I can in that headspace.”

And thankfully, now you can too with the release of Lost Lander’s debut album DRRT. The wondrousness that surrounds us all and influences Sheehy now has a somewhat tangible form and a release date: January 24th, 2012.

The album’s title digs even deeper into depths of Sheehy’s artistic process. Stylized as leetspeak-esque spelling of “dirt,” the name is both organic and technological at the same time, a theme relevant to record’s creation. Teamed up with producer Brent Knopf (Ramona Falls, ex-Menomena), the duo recorded separately and together at the Oregon Coast and in the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula, amongst other locales, before inviting a bevy of Portland musicians to provide support.

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