Spirit Furnace create a blend of infectious experimental, psych and noise rock sounds on their debut self titled E.P.
I sat down with Vocalist/Guitarist Max Engleman and drummer Zach Babat to talk about their earliest musical experiences, how they met and formed the band and the making of the E.P. which you can get here.
CMM: What was the first music that really made an impact on the two of you growing up and what artists and bands did you all enjoy the most?
ZB: I grew up listening to a lot of Jack White’s stuff, and it turns out the White Stripes are I think a not-straightforward influence on the music I play with Max, or perhaps more accurately, Jack and Meg White’s music. I think watching Jack and Meg’s live performances on the internet in high school ended up being pretty formative – seeing what the two of them were able to convey and watching Meg do so much with so little. She was one of the first people who showed me what a drummer could be in a band, even if I wasn’t fully conscious of that at the time, and in hindsight I think I owe a lot to seeing her as a role model for how to be an interlocutor and not just a timekeeping device. And of course, having a two-piece band as one of my childhood favorites gave me a ton of pride and confidence in what Max and I could do by ourselves when we were just getting started.
ME: A big early milestone for me was discovering Led Zeppelin. I became addicted, and the consequences of that addiction are marked in Spirit Furnace, I imagine. Another later obsession was with the prog rock trio Egg. They basically introduced elements of 20th century classical music into the context of psychedelic rock in a way I don’t think anyone else did. Listening to them had me go on to explore Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, and so on, which in turn became big influences in their own right.
CMM:When did the two of you first start playing instruments and eventually start playing in your own bands and how did you two meet and start Spirit Furnace?
ZB: I started playing drums when I was 5, but I didn’t get too much of a chance to play with others until college. And around the same time, the big step forward for me was switching from rock-oriented lessons to jazz lessons, which totally changed my personal relationship to the drums. Getting exposure to that idiom, listening to guys like Elvin Jones and Art Blakey and Jack DeJohnette gave me a roadmap for how to express myself on the drums in ways that I think I had always wanted and wasn’t really sure how to attempt.
So that’s where I was when I came to Philadelphia after college, and Max and I actually just met over the internet about a month after I moved. He posted in some facebook group something to the effect of, “band wanted… do you like Alice Coltrane, Frank Zappa, and Sonic Youth?” and I just said “yep” and then he was in my basement a week later.
ME: Yup! I started off on bass guitar when I was around 13, because I thought pretending to play guitar through Guitar Hero was fun. Growing up in southern Indiana at the time, everyone wanted to be in hardcore bands, so I tried that out for a bit but it never felt like my thing. So before Spirit Furnace, most of my musical experience came from playing with local/school orchestras/jazz bands – where I either played guitar or bassoon or bass. Spirit Furnace really is my first serious band; I’m so lucky I met Zach.
CMM: The group recently released an impressive 4 song E.P. What was you all’s approach when writing and recording this batch of songs?
ZB: Writing this music with Max was, from my perspective, surprisingly easy – from the first practice I thought we just matched well. He came in with a bunch of ideas that I think he’d been marinating on for years in some cases, sometimes he’d already know like a half-dozen places where he wanted a song to go, like with “Glistening Firmament.” So I just had this treat where some lanky dude showed up at my house with some music that I sincerely thought was beautiful, and I got to just come back at him with the drums, and then he’d come in the next week with some changes or a new direction for the song, and we went back and forth like that for a year or so. Max made a joke somewhere along the line that we make “ecstatic rock,” and as silly as that is it also feels very true – the stuff he showed up with on day one legitimately made me think, “oh this is the type of music I’ve always wanted to make, and now I get to figure out what I want to say as part of it.” And then we laid down all the drums in one 13-hour session back in October which was nuts, Max plays everything else you hear on the record and my roommate Alex Fichera did a killer job producing the whole thing.
ME: Yeah, I forgot Glistening Firmament was something I brought to you nearly from the start! Some of our ideas grow out of spontaneous improvisation, too. There’s bits in Glistening Firmament that I made up on the spot in the recording studio, and we’re trying to cultivate some stuff out of improv sessions, too.
CMM:If the band could compose a score for any film director who would it be and what would the film be about?
ME: Oh man, I used to want to be a film composer, and I often think of music in a visual way, so this is a fun question for me (you can see me try to pair Spirit Furnace with existing film on our instagram). I guess if Ari Aster directed a Lovecraftian space invaders sorta thing, I’d love for Spirit Furnace to score it.
CMM: What do you have coming up next? Any new recordings/shows?
ME: We’re going to try to record a few more things we’ve been performing relatively soon, since we only have Zach for another month or so before he moves away for grad school. I think these new recordings will more fully represent the direction our sound has gone. Hopefully we’ll book a going away show before then. We’re also looking forward to collaborating with our Brooklyn-based buddies Tunnel Speeches next month. Our new guitarist, Zach Paulus, will be joining us for this and future gigs.
ZB: I also want to get it on the record that I’m so proud of the EP we put out back in January. I feel incredibly lucky to have met up with Max, who I think is just such a perfect partner in terms of what he values both in the process of making music and the music itself. Spirit Furnace is going to exist after me but I’m so happy that I’m leaving Philadelphia with a record of what we got to make together.
