• Chad Radford

"Another Language"

Chad Radford: Tell me your names and what you play.

My name is Catherine Quesenberry. I sing, if you want to count that as an instrument. I also play synthesizer.

Mike Netland and I play the computer, or the computer plays me. I just kind of hit play on the computer. Everything that I do is electronic, and I used to play drums for a long time — seven years. Before I went to college. I transferred all of that over to electronic production. So mostly I do stuff in FruityLoops, which then gets put into my sampler. I do play keyboard, but not as good as this girl…

Do you (Catherine) have some musical training in your background?

CQ I had some piano lessons in second grade, but I quit because I was too lazy. My parents have always regretted it. But I did Atlanta young singers of Callanwolde from the summer of my 5th grade all the way through my senior year in high school. So I’ve had a lot of professional choral vocal training, which is very different from the way that I sing now, but some of the basics of projection hold true in performance.

When I first came to college I was in a folk band called Autovine and I played accordion, xylophone, guitar and piano, and would make three-minute songs. Catchy, structured songs in C. We played a lot of gigs on Tech campus — it was with some friends that I met at the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech.

MN: That’s pretty much my deal. I took piano lessons for a while because my parents were forcing me to, but I didn’t want to do it. When I hit middle school I started listening to a lot of hip-hop, which was my way of rebelling against my parents. Then I started getting into the production. I was playing drums as well. So that’s how I got into the electronic side of things.

What were some of the records that really piqued your interests when you were getting into production?

MN:This is embarrassing, but when my parents found out that I was into hip-hop they wouldn’t let me buy unedited albums — they made me get the edited versions. The first album that my mom bought for me was by the Baja Men.

The “Who Let the Dogs Out” group?

MN: That’s the one. So I guess that was my first hip-hop record. But my first choice was Dr. Dre’s 2001, and that got me really into the hip-hop. From there I got into Young Jeezy and 50 Cent. Trap rap. But I slowly came back around. Kanye West’s College Dropout changed my whole outlook on hip-hop and that's when I started getting into J Dilla, Madlib, Flying Lotus. I’m a huge MF Doom fan and I think he influences me more than anyone else. Do you know MF Doom?

For sure. I don’t know him personally, but I talked with him a long time ago, when Operation Doomsday came out.

MN: Are you MF Doom?

Not at the moment, but MF Doom is whoever is wearing the mask at the time.

MN: Right, I know all about that, and all about his trickery with the imposters, which makes me scared to go to his shows. I don’t want to go see a false Doom. But I love that whole approach to making music and the fake character.

It’s interesting to hear you talk about all of these hip-hop influences because now I can totally see it in the songs on your album, Planet Plant. I haven’t spent as much time listening to the older EP.

MN: That was when we were first getting into the album and had a few ideas for songs, so we just kind of put that out as out first release.

Like a mixtape…

CQ: Yeah, but we still play like two or three of those songs live all the time because people really like them.

MN: But the EP wasn’t as thought through as Planet Plant. At the time we were working on that record I was listening to Animal Collective and kind of cut off everything else. That was like my only musical intake, that and Toro Y Moi. But at the time Animal Collective really inspired me to make the kind of music that we’re doing now. Before I heard them I was just making beats.

Which Animal Collective record really set you off?

CQ: Fall Be Kind.

MN: For me it was Feels on up through that Fall Be Kind era.

CQ: A lot of our willingness to experiment comes from the fact that Mike’s solo stuff using samples is pretty structured. In Autovine I was writing songs in like 2 minutes and they worked. But we both really liked exploring the nuances of sounds that we could create. A lot of the songs on Planet Plant came to what they are because we kept trying to capture a certain environment to a T, which was hard because we never agree on anything. He’ll show me something that he really likes and I say, “no.” Then we argue. “You don’t like that?” "No, I don’t!” And vice versa.

MN: It’s usually over small details, which is even more frustrating, because it’s something that’s not even important to the song, but it becomes a big deal.

Have you learned to anticipate how the other person will react to something?

CQ: Yes. Mike has been pretty straightforward with the songs that we’ve been working on lately, almost playing a producer’s role, saying, “No, sing this way!” And I’ll be just as forward and say, “No, I don’t like that.” It’s nice to be nit picky because we end up with something that we both like.

MN: With a lot of bands the positions are kind of equal. But with us it’s more like a producer/artist interaction. She has all of the musical background and I just listen to a lot of music and know how to put things together. So it’s basically like me trying to express my ideas by having her pull them out of me.

CQ: It’s funny how we talk about it to, “You know that air sound right there…” It’s really funny we’ll describe something to each other, and we’re both like “what?” We usually figure it out by visual means.

Is there a song on Planet Plant that really resonates with?

MN: I’m going to say something that she’s going to disagree with. My true favorite is “Aurora.” It’s an 11-minute track that she pretty much put together by herself. It’s haunting and it gets me every time I hear it. My favorite in terms of a collaboration is “River Run.”

CQ: It was really scary when we did that song because we figured out something different on the Korg. Both of the synthesizers are still kind of new to us so maybe it sounds so unique because we were learning as we went.

MN: We found a way to run an external audio source into the Korg and put effects on it. So we hooked a radio up to it and ran it through an arpeggiator. Now we don’t even know what song it is. Then it went into some sort of talk radio thing, so you can hear the voice in there. We got really excited about that one.

What’s the reaction from listeners been like?

MN: We didn’t get an explosion of comments, but it has generally been positive.

CQ: My sister gives me a lot of solid critiques, mostly about performance. She’s an accomplished pianist. I’m really into making textures with the vocals. It gets mushy, but I like the mush. So she’ll tell me to do it a certain way, but I know that it will be really boring to watch. I looked at a mention about one our shows in Flagpole one time and someone had typed a comment that said, “Went to the show. Didn’t smoke enough before. Almost fell asleep.” At first I thought damn. But then I thought if you can fall asleep to some music without turning it off, that’s a good thing.

MN: We were just talking with someone from BeATLanta the other day about how newer bands like Reptar and Wowser Bowser are really bouncy and exciting. They’ve made it harder to play stuff that’s not easily accessible live.

Well, what you do is good for when you have to use your head. Reptar and Wowser Bowser are good for going out and partying, which is what crowds do when they go to bars. They drink, blow off steam and have fun.

MN: Yeah... I’ve gotten to the point were I want to eliminate the slower songs from the live set altogether. I don’t think that people want to see that. I try to take a strategic approach with everything we do.

Any plans for a physical release for Plant Plant?

MN: No. We don’t have the budget.

CQ: Our friends in Reptar have been talking about maybe helping us out with a 7-inch, and that’s really cool.

You must be pretty close friends with those guys.

CQ: Yeah, the drummer was my very first boyfriend, and he was in the choir at Callanwolde that I was telling you about.

Is there a narrative going on throughout Planet Plant?

CQ: We made it a point to make a narrative. There’s a narrative behind a narrative behind a narrative. Can I just say it?

MN: Go ahead.

CQ: It's built around a story about these aliens — as in from another planet — who move forward in time. They’re on a mission to visit this planet and their ship lands in the ocean and goes all the way to the bottom of the Mariana trench. That’s “Mariana.” Then it moves back up to space again and there are sections that follow along.

MN: The first three songs are water, then there’s an interlude. Then earth songs, an interlude and then space and sky songs.

CQ: We went really big with the story telling. So we get back into space but the water theme returns because it’s “Shipyards,” which could mean spaceship yards. Through this whole exploration we realize that it’s the same planet that we came from, but back in time. And planet plant is actually planet earth when it still had plant life on it. In the future, where our aliens came from, the planet is completely taken over by technology. But they don’t realize that they had crash-landed on their own planet. We tried to forward that narrative a little bit too. For our first two shows we came out in alien costumes with choreographed entries. People loved it too. The first show was at WonderRoot and the second one was at Under the Couch.

MN: For the new album we’re looking to having some sort of language motif.

Tell me about the song called “Another Language” which is posted with this interview.

MN: It’s the first recording form the new thing that we’re working on.

CQ: The first time we got together, not this past summer but the summer before, I came to him and said, “We should really use a sample from the song, “Pet Sounds.” So we made this really interesting sample where we chopped it up and created this really long file but it just didn’t sound right.

CQ: We moved away from it really quickly, but revisited it for the first time a few months ago.

MN: We started working on it again and now it’s one of my favorite songs that we’ve done.

CQ: We have the beginnings for four or five songs together for the new album. This is the only one that’s totally done.

MN: I’d say that we have two songs that are done.

CQ: I disagree with the second one. We still need to talk about that (laughs).