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I t's no longer enough to be a musician.
Music is officially a cheaper commodity
than water; first-world citizens gener
ally have unlimited access to both,
except we get a bill for water. Since all music
is essentially free, and the glut of available
digital ephemera is overwhelming, sawier
creative types have been exploring new ways
to jostle for the listening public's hearts and
minds. In the struggle to be known and rel
evant as a musician, you have to give far more
of yourself than just the time and effort it
takes to do something as frivolous as write or
record songs. We're talking blood sacrifice.
Los Angeles' color-coded quartet HEALTH
knows this. To wit, the band has included
actual golden tickets enclosed in copies of its
latest album, Get Color. The prizes include any
thing from opportunities to conference crank-
call "a prominent indie musician" with the
band, a lock of a bandmember's hair or, yes, '
autographs penned in the band's blood. What
sort of honor will be bestowed upon the big
winner? Being flown out to the West Coast and
taken to Six Flags by the band. "We have the
golden ticket winner," confirms bassist John
Famiglietti, communicating from somewhere
in Europe. "Once this tour is over, we're flying
him over to party and rollercoast. However,
there are still a ton of Color Tickets out there!"
Of all the various pungencies emanat
ing from Los Angeles DIY space The Smell,
HEALTH'S has the boldest complexity. Their
furor of distortion, dissonance and disrup
tive rhythms is offset by disarmingly deadpan
vocal delivery. The glassy-eyed influence of
Italian disco somehow fits in perfectly with
the band's jarring mix of noise and pop. What
one might think is an avalanche of digital
synth blargh are, in actuality, highly pro
cessed guitars. How integral are the pedals?
"Totally integral. Without our pedals we can't
play," says Famiglietti. "For me, personally,
Lightning Bolt was what got me extremely
excited about running my bass through as
many pedals as possible." There will be no
HEALTH UNPLUGGED, then. But it's just as
well, since HEALTH'S jarring volume and inten
sity are where its powers truly lie. The whole
thing is bolstered by drummer-behemoth BJ
Miller, whose Melvins-strength brute force
keeps the ballast honest.
In the post-Animal Collective landscape,
it almost makes sense that a band inspired
by Lightning Bolt could be playing to arena
sized audiences. Almost. And, yet, it was so:
Trent Reznor deemed HEALTH suitable to open
a leg of one of Nine Inch Nails' last tours in
the band's extended march towards retirement
(a slot shared alternately by Atlanta's own
Deerhunter). "The tour was awesome and a
great experience," says Famiglietti. "Totally
made us re-examine our music and music in
general when making the translation to hockey
arenas. The best part was getting an amazing,
gigantic LED screen lightshow behind us. The
worst was the sometimes infuriated NIN fans
(though that was pretty codl, too). And the
strangest was mingling with insane superfans
who were looking to Trent for guidance on
how to protect their children in the coming
sci-fi delusion future."
It's fitting that HEALTH'S transition to
playing to (and confusing) mainstream rock
fans would be simultaneous with the end of
Nine Inch Nails' career—you could look at
it as a passing of the torch, sure. After all,
Reznor, in one of his numerous farewell mis
sives to the world via his beloved Web 2.0,
gave a little bit (okay, a lot) of parting advice
to up-and-coming bands: "Offer a variety of
premium packages for sale and make them
limited editions/ scarce goods. Make the
packages special—make them by hand, sign
them, make them unique, make them some
thing YOU would want to have as a fan." (This
advice is doubly interesting if you imagine it
sung/screamed in Trent's "angst" voice.) But
HEALTH was up on the Prince of Darkness' .
concept of hyper-accessorizing long before
Reznor was tweeting his black little heart out.
In 2007, in conjunction with its self-titled
debut, the band issued the very successful
HEALTH//DISCO album, a collection of remixes
including a college-radio hit in collaboration
with the notorious Crystal Castles. The group
also considers its merch to be a brand unto
itself, HEALTH//FASHION. This will continue in
an ever-extrapolating mode, says Famiglietti:
"There will be a DISC02 in early 2010. Also,
there might be a new category: HEALTH//
DRONE [will come out] at the same time in
2010, featuring drone and ambient remixes.
We are expanding HEALTH//FASHION as well.
Expect our spring collection in early 2010,
dresses, leggings, shorts, jewelry, human-hair
bracelets (ours) and of course new t-shirts.
Expanding everything is more work and more
stress, but ultimately it's fulfilling."
Jeff Tobias
WHO: HEALTH, Chrissakes,
Abandon the Earth Mission
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Wednesday, Nov. 4
HOW MUCH: $10 (adv.)
v _ J
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