LadyJFemme for Frank151: Body Language (Interview)

No genre, no labels, just one language. One that happens to translate an essence of sound and movement at just the right BPMs to get dance floors painted by the soles of eager feet everywhere. Spawning out of the DIY hub that is today’s Brooklyn, Body Language brings us a synth-vocoder-glockenspiel-percussion-vocal combo that churns out delightful rhythms rooted in an understanding for all to ‘get down’ and enjoy life a little.

Besides staying busy experimenting and performing with a massive range of sounds, Body Language has also toured, collaborated and performed across the genre gamut with the likes artists such as Zero 7, Passion Pit, La Roux, Theophilus London, Toro y Moi, just to name a few. After their initial five track EP titled, “Speaks,” they’ve recently released their “Social Studies” EP and are already busy at work on their next project. Can you dig it?...If not, I suggest you let your body talk for you on this one. Let the dance dance revolution ensue!!

Who is Body Language?

Matt: There’s four of us, me, Matt Young, Grant Wheeler, Ian Chang, and Angelica Bess, who unfortunately couldn’t make it today.

I guess besides just who is Body Language as far as your individual selves…

Grant: What is it?

Exactly. We all know what ‘body language’ is when…

Grant: It’s four people that share a common love for both electronic music and soul music and tropicalia and all sorts of stuff.

Matt: Positive music…

Grant: Yes, done positively, and we want to take that optimism and deliver to you usually in a live setting and make sure we bring you body language ourselves in hopes that you also will get down and have some fun.

And emit some, ‘body language’ haha.

Matt: Yes, exactly.

Grant: Reciprocate that ‘body language.’

Circle of life?

Matt: Telthon of sorts…

Circle of life…body movements, body language. I dig it. I used to dance so in that sense I definitely appreciate the music. (Lol) Actually, I know you said that you all are a culmination of a bunch of different musical influences and genres of music, which creates a really unique sound. Did you already have similar styles apart from each other and happen to come together or do you, (Grant), maybe have more of an electronic background, and Angelica have more of a soul background, and so on?

Matt: We started out writing electronic music way back in the days and writing music together since 2002.

Grant: We, Matt and I, as producers of the project share a pretty deep rooted interest in writing electronic and dance music…But we all share just a common love for all those other influences and kind of just incorporate the two. There’s no niches I would say, between all of us.

Matt: We all listen to everything. I know a lot of people say that but we really listen to everything.

I completely understand what you’re saying. People say that and then you play something different than the norm and they’re like “Uhhhh, what’s that?” It’s where you get your inspiration.

Matt: Exactly, yes.

I dig it. So with that, the last project you guys had out was the ‘Speaks’ EP that definitely showcases a variety of sounds. It’s crazy since you have some of the stuff that’s more like disco house, or more funky, and then you have some tracks that are more down-tempo, or something totally different. How did all of those sounds and the Speaks EP come about?

Grant: Those were the inklings of the project. We were just getting started. A lot of it was written really just when we started. We weren’t even called Body Language at the time that we had actually written most of those songs. It was literally an exploration for us as far as what we wanted to do with a dance project. We hadn’t done any dance music or written officially in that genre generally, so it was just…for us it was just…what can we do, what can we make. Let’s try out some things. It was very a taste tester sort of thing.

Sounds like fun. 

Grant: Yeah, I mean. You’ll hear a track on there, “Huffy Ten Speed” which is like Dan Deacon meets I don’t even know.

Matt: It’s totally out there. The track did really well, but there was no way we could follow that up and continue on a project that’s only ‘Huffy Ten Speed’ songs. One thing, you’d just run out of subjects to write about (Lol)…Skateboards…

Random inatimate objects?

Matt: Right, exactly, sandwiches…oh wait we have the track, ‘Sandwiches’ hahaha…

There we go…(Lol)…

 Ian: It sorta reminds me of that Ducksauce song, what is it, ‘Barbara Streisand’?

I love that song.

Matt & Grant: It’s so good.

Grant: It really is so great (Lol)…but yeah, that was us just kind of getting a footing. We just didn’t know what we wanted to do yet, so we kinda just used that to set the footing and start playing some shows and actually just get feedback in a way. And that’s what ‘Social Studies’ is doing even more so. And we’re slowly but surely getting feedback from everybody and feeling out this scope, ya know? Like where the project is going. I mean, we write what we love, but it also has a lot to do with how people love back. How they receive a song when it’s played live, or how it’s recorded, it helps us to know where we can take it. What works and what doesn’t.

I can imagine that it definitely helps to make music when people show that the like the stuff, I’m guessing it’s kind of encouraging (Lol).

Matt: Exaclty, but we don’t only base our opinions on other peoples stuff. A lot of it is finding out what is totally us. What is the crux of it, the whole project. That’s kind of what we’ve been figuring out. And a lot of the last two records that we’ve released are kind like archetypes of all these different genres. And now on the LP we’re gonna release sometime next year, we’ve really formulated a sound. Like I really feel like it’s a homogenous sort of sound at this point.

You kind of have your own defining Body Language essence.

Matt: Yeah, it’s our ‘language’. (Lol)…

Grant: It’s more so a collection of songs where someone can actually go, “I can label this, I actually call it something.” Like this is indie, umm soul…

Matt: I dunno.

Grant: I’m not gonna…I still can’t (Lol)

Matt: I still don’t’ know yet, haha...

I’m not gonna touch that one then. (Lol)

I know you guys came out with ‘Speaks’ around June 09 and that was around the same time that you came to Brooklyn?

Grant: Actually, it was a year before that, March ’08, is when we moved to BK.

Body Language "Sandwiches" Live at LPR from Primus Luta on Vimeo.

Where from originally?

Grant: Hartford, CT

Everyone?

Matt: Three of us. That’s where we met but we’re not from there. I’m from Tulsa, OK, he’s (Grant’s) from Worcester, MA, Ian’s from Hong Kong and Ang is from Perth Amboy, NJ. We met in Connecticut in college, kind of formulated the project up there. Then we met Ian down here when we were in the backing band for Theophilus London.

And then you came to Brooklyn, why Brooklyn? It’s kind of like a musical hub right now, the DIY hub.

Matt: We were thinking we could go to Boston, or we could go to Brooklyn or we could go to Chicago or LA.

Ian: Pretty much anywhere but Hartford.

Grant: We got drawn down here, we have some friends here like Machinedrum, who at the time was throwing CassetteParties…He had us down to play one of the parties for a different project we were doing and we fell in love with the whole thing. I thought we had some good roots here as far as friends go and was kind of just a good jumping off point. When we moved down here we got invited to play one rooftop party and it literally kind of created a little bit of a snowball effect as far as getting shows and getting our name out there. It’s like one show led to the next show, which led to the next show, which led to the next one and by the time we got into the CMJs of that year it was like, now we have a foundation where we can get gigs. So that was just basically how it started, we had one group of friends.

That works, it’s always good to have friends.

Besides just Brooklyn, New York in itself is great for performance opportunities and the like; which brings me to my next question. If you could see one performer of the past perform today, who would it be and why?

Grant: Mmmmm. Could I see a performer of the past perform their set in the past?

Whatever you like.

Grant: Ok, then I’d wanna see Daft Punk in '94. Not like modern Daft Punk with like a stadium, I’m talking about seeing them in Paris in like a warehouse. Him playing a 909 and 303.

Matt: Yeah, When he was doing his original stuff.

Well, actually let me rephrase that, a deceased performer, someone who’s not around anymore.

Matt: Well, I would say then either Beach Boys, Otis Redding or Sam Cooke.

Those are good, those are good.

Matt: Just cause that was back when people could sing man. Especially Beach Boys, cause their harmonies were so amazing. Although later on he released his rap album.

That happened?

Matt: That did happen. He released a rap album. It’s pretty…crazy. It’s insane.

I don’t know how I feel about that.

Grant: He sampled himself and put a beat on it.

That’s genius, save so much money.

Matt: Exactly.

And he’s epically known.  Sure why not?

Grant: If you hear the song though, it’s a shaking your head moment…like, “How did this haaappen?”

Matt: It’s like the silliest, whitest rapping…sorry, tangent.

That’s intense, I understand.

Well, basically you answered my lovely performance question. So, with that, as far as performance from you guys, I know Body Language has a couple of shows coming up. Not just performances but projects. So what’s next? You have a lot of remixes and things you all are always busy with. More of that? More touring?...

Grant: Lots, lots of everything.

Matt: Our next three months are gonna be pretty crazy. All the way up until SXSW we’re pretty much booked.

That’s awesome.

Matt: We’re finishing up the demo for our next record, and getting that out the door…

How many tracks?

Grant: We’ve written like 27 tracks in the last four months. We have to finish 10. We just did a live performance thing that’s video and audio of new songs and the track ‘You Can’, so we did it live, no backing tracks, new arrangements, new instruments, and it’s a complete live four-part harmony. We did a video and it’s being put together right now and we’re also doing a record for Starting Line. The lead singer Kenny Visoli is starting up a project, so we’re producing his album right now. And we’re actually not doing any remixes at the moment, but we are going to do a collabo with this guy out of Denton, Texas, goes under the name ‘Fur’ and shit is like amazing. I just stumbled on it just a couple of days ago and was just like ‘wow’. It’s kind of like this whole post dub-step thing that’s going on right now. But it’s like future funk, dub-step stuff.

Ian: Really funky stuff.

Matt: So I’ve been shooting emails back and forth with him. Today actually I just got in touch with him and we might drop some vocals on the next record he’s doing and try and remix it for this album.

Busy, busy, busy.

Matt: Yeah, we try and stay busy.

Grant: And we’re also doing a Monday residency at Brooklyn Bowl and those are free parties, so ya can’t really go wrong with them.

It’s cool because a lot of times people think of Brooklyn now, Williamsburg specifically, and there’s a certain type of stereotypical ‘indie’ rock band that comes to mind...

Grant: Yeah, we don’t like to pigeon whole ourselves really.

Matt: We don’t have any guitarists, so a lot of people are like, ‘What’s up with that?..No guitars?”

What kind of band are you, you’re not a real band. (Lol)

Matt: We’ve actually gotten that comment after shows like, “Man, I’ve never seen a band play without guitars, that was pretty cool.” It’s like you’re not really a band unless you have guitars apparently.

Ian: Those comments are nice though, because then you realize that you can still reach sort of that different audience. I remember the sound guy at Southpaw who definitely came from the rock world came up to us at sound check and was like “Yeah man, sometimes we have these like bullshit electronic acts come through here and I hate that shit, but you guys actually play songs and I really like it.” And I was like, “All right, cool.”

Matt: Yeah, you never really get compliments from the sound guys, they’re usually just like, “Off the stage”…”Cleanin’ up this shit.”

Ian: It was just like oh ok, he’s coming from a different place, but it still translates to a certain degree.

Grant: For us it’s just, we can squeeze into a couple of different categories and be able to put on shows that vary a whole lot. The Brooklyn Bowl residency is very indicative of that. It’s like electronic music first week, indie music next week, hip hop third week. So it kind of runs the gamut. And the shows with Melo X, he’ll probably also be doing a lot of house. But yeah, that’s pretty much what we’ve been working on right now.

Very cool… So what we’ve learned today is that A) You can be a REAL band even without guitars B) Body Language has a defining sound that has no defining words to match…hence the name Body Language C) Friends are great to have and D) There’s a whole bunch more to musically look forward to from Body Language!