{"id":1959,"date":"2020-11-23T06:29:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T12:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=1959"},"modified":"2020-11-23T06:33:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T12:33:22","slug":"monster-rally-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/monster-rally-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Castaway to an Imaginary Vacation: Ted Feighan on Monster Rally and his Creative Process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In both his striking visual art and his eclectic music, Ted Feighan engages in a collage making process. In the former, he does this by surrounding the natural beauty of exotic birds and flowers with vibrant colors and, occasionally, man-made objects like couches, cars, or buildings. In addition to their own artistic merit, they also serve as wonderful album art. His recordings – primarily issued under the name Monster Rally – similarly sample sounds from decades past and fuses them into a whole that is difficult to place in both locale and time. Due to Monster Rally’s aesthetics, some may mistakenly apply the label “exotica” or, due to his method, “instrumental hip hop.” And while influences of both are present, it is erroneous to box his sound into either, as it draws from both and many other concepts. Instead, he sees his sound as essentially forming a soundtrack for a vacation the listener has never taken. Even the Monster Rally name suggests something out of the normal, having been derived from a book by Charles Addams featuring his Addams Family characters. We had an opportunity to sit down with Ted to discuss his creative process, his inspirations, and Castaways Vol. 1<\/em> (Gold Robot Records, 2020), a collection of works that were not previously released on vinyl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PostGenre<\/strong>: 2020 marks your 10th year as Monster Rally. What do you feel like you’ve learned the most from the past decade in terms of music? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ted Feighan: <\/strong>What I’ve learned the most is how long it takes to reach new people for an audience. In the beginning, I was working under the mindset that you have only a set period of time during which you must find success in your career as an artist or that you never would. I remember when I started down this path, I read a lot about Brian Wilson and how he made such great music when he was 21. Since I started at age 22, I knew that was never going to be my story [laughing]. Early on, I thought that I\u2019d have either blown up big career-wise or just be done with making music professionally because there was no way the life cycle of music would take more than years. But ten years into Monster Rally, things just keep getting better in terms of listenership and all that sort of stuff. Every year is better than the one before. The truth is that sometimes the cycle does take that long. And even then, you\u2019re lucky if it does.  It also just takes longer, in general, for most musicians than it used to. Now, I am very happy to be able to be continuing to make my music and that people are interested in listening. I’m really excited for the next decade. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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PG: <\/strong>As far as your music, what can you tell us about your process? Some of your works have clear a narrative. Do you craft that story beforehand and then tie pieces together to fit it, or do you come up with the sound first and form the story around it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 TF: <\/strong>I\u2019ve done both. But usually, I have a narrative in mind and then make tracks that were informed by that.  Generally, my music-making process is focused on discovering sounds. <\/p>

I will sometimes just find an album at a record store or thrift shop or even in my own collection from something I may have overlooked. To be honest, this part has been more difficult since I moved to Cleveland. When I lived in LA, I used to go to Amoeba Records and dive into the world music section, then the easy listening section, really anywhere in that store. Each would have a dollar album area. I would go in and buy like 50 World Music albums for $50. Then I would go home and go after anything I bought that looked interesting. There were some real gems in some of those discount recordings. It’s just funny because the fact it was discounted might suggest that people didn\u2019t want or maybe forgot about those albums, but there was some really incredible stuff in there. And, sometimes in this process, you would find something that most people just forgot about and you can put a new life into it by presenting it differently than before, even if you are only using a few seconds of it.<\/p>

I will find these sounds that are interesting to me- new or intriguing sounds mostly \u2013 and begin recording those and piecing them together in a way that makes sense for the narrative arc of what I was thinking about. Sometimes I add transitions in between them to make them flow better, but not always.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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PG: <\/strong>How do you determine ahead of time whether recordings would work well together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TF: <\/strong>A lot of it is just being in the moment. My setup is very simple, I just have two samplers, a handful of percussion instruments, and a few other things that I’ll use. Usually, my music-making is largely a cut and paste process with different things I have collected. Sometimes I’ll be working on something and might like how the two samples sound together, but feel like they won\u2019t necessarily otherwise fit in the same song. On another set maybe it makes sense to have those two samples together. There have also been a lot of times where I liked something in the moment but then once I listened to it, even though I enjoyed the moment of making it, it just didn\u2019t click.  <\/p>

One thing that happens to me all the time is that people ask what specific samples I\u2019ve used in a particular piece. But most of the time, I don’t remember where they’re from originally because of my process. I\u2019ll put them on the sampler and by the time I go to use them, I often don\u2019t remember where they originally came from. I mean there are definitely some I remember. The song \u201cIn the Valleys\u201d from Mystery Cove<\/em> (Gold Robot Records, 2016) samples a specific Don Ho recording, for instance. But a lot of the time my memory isn\u2019t as great. I am more likely to remember who it is if it is someone that was an inspiration of mine and that I look up to.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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