SXSW Interviews: Violens

Here’s another one of our great SXSW interviews with Violens, who’ve already had a good year with the release of Amoral. Get to know the band below.

ATH: Several members of the band are known for being part of Lansing-Dreiden, who were sort of known for having this shroud of mystery behind them, and their performances.  You guys seem pretty open nowadays? What prompted the move in that sort of direction? Was it the music you are making? Or a conscious decision beforehand?

Violens: At a certain point Lansing – Dreiden decided to turn the music production part of the company more towards a natural creative pace. In other words, not the pace of the music industry. I personally had a bunch of song ideas stacking up and it made sense to form Violens.  

ATH: LD was always labeled as an art-project, and it almost seemed that was more important, at times, than the music.  How is Violens moving away from that? Does it share any similarities?

Violens: L-D never thought of one medium or the other as more or less important, it was all about communicating a central story. In terms of what it seemed like, we had/have no control over that. Violens is not like Lansing – Dreiden because we don’t make visual art as a band, aside from album covers/packaging and videos. We are not a multimedia brand, we’re just a band. 

ATH: You guys have released several mixtapes prior to the release of Amoral.  Everyone is into mixtape nowadays, but if you’re going to make the perfect mixtape that shows the influences, current or past, for the band…what are the first five tracks?

Violens: That answer’s gonna have to wait until we release the next mixtape but it would probably involve the band Pablo Picasso, Xeno & Oaklander, a song off the new Burzum record and the audio from “Creed shreds 4”. 

ATH: It seems that the band was riding this wave of slowly building publicity prior to the release of Amoral.  How do you feel the press has responded since the release of the album?  How do you feel your audience has been affected by the publicity? Or, do you even care?

Violens: It definitely helps. Press response has been cool, but we still feel like not many people know about our music. We’re not really too involved on that end of things. Our short-term goal is to create and perform our stuff full time, so we’re always working towards that. In the end, people are either into what we do or not, affected by press opinions or not. We don’t get into the bulk of music that a lot of people seem to really love, so wouldn’t be too surprising if our stuff isn’t heard or understood. 

ATH: Seeing as you were part of LD, did you ever play SXSW during any of those crazy Kemado/Vice parties?

Violens: Lansing – Dreiden played a pretty fun Kemado party with Block Party and The Go Team, I think (he’s correct-ed.), but no Violens members were on stage.  

ATH: Is there anything you’re looking forward to as you head into Austin this March? Venues, bands, food, beer, people, etc?

Violens: Yeah definitely, we’d like to hit up some good BBQ and see bands we are into. We’ll just mark up the performance schedule and see what we can make it to. 

ATH: What are the plans for Violens in the near future?  You’ve always seemed to have something going on musically? Can we expect anything new from you this year?

Yes, we plan to be releasing more music all year. If you go to www.violens.net now you can see the very beginnings of what will be our next record. We’re releasing the songs one by one as we produce them, and including fragments of the album artwork with each mp3 as they are put out. The song “When to Let Go” is up there right now, more to come by SXSW time. A guy named T.J. who works at a karaoke bar in MN already did a sing-along midi version which is pretty phenomenal and also featured on our site.