We Have a Technical

Not long ago, Sleepy Eyes of Death couldn’t seem to get through a
show without suffering crippling technical difficulties. At the Showbox
Sodo’s lounge, they blew a fuse three times in one set, killing
everything but drums and guitar each time. At the Vera Project, their
fog machines set off a fire alarm, forcing the venue to be evacuated
until the fire marshal arrived to give the all clear. At King Cobra,
during the 2008 Capitol Hill Block Party, they played for 30 minutes
before the sound guy was even able to get their synthesizers dialed
into the mix.

“It was just too much,” says Keith Negley (drums, keyboards), of the
Block Party incident. “Too much gear and not enough time [to set up and
sound-check]. Apparently we had more gear than they had actual lines,
so they couldn’t even run all of our setup.”

Not bad for a band that started in 2004 with longtime friends Andrew
Toms (keyboards, guitar) and Joel Harmon (drums, keyboards) toying
around on just a couple of keyboards and one drum machine, making music
that Harmon describes as “a little on the poppy side.” The group
expanded to include Negley and guitarist Cassidy Gonzales (live, the
band are also assisted by Brandon Lanich on colored lights and fog),
and the solidified quartet began steadily amassing an alarming array of
electronic equipment.

“At one point, it was just insane,” says Negley. “We had like seven
or eight synths synched up with MIDI. It was so much work to plug all
those keyboards in together onstage in the dark. Half the time you
didn’t know if you set it up right before you started playing, so you
start the show and just hope everything is plugged in properly, ’cause
you don’t find out until later, when a certain keyboard is supposed to
come in but doesn’t.”

Still, Sleepy Eyes have always tried not to be too much of a
headache for sound guys. “We understand that we’re a burden,” says
Negley, “and we try really hard to be extra diligent about that.” And
since the Block Party incident, the band members have endeavored to
greatly simplify their live setup, eliminating several synthesizers and
much of the MIDI synching, and using far fewer effects pedals.

“It seemed like a lot of it goes over people’s heads live,” says
Negley. “People respond to energy, stage energy, the drums, and the
tones—they’re not going to notice, like, if it’s an analog reverb
or a digital reverb.”

Wisely, Sleepy Eyes now save their most meticulous sound design for
the studio, where they most recently completed their new EP, Dark
Signals, (out January 20 on mass.mvmnt/Sleep Capsule) with veteran
local producer Matt Bayles. Like their 2007 full-length, Street
Lights for a Ribcage, the EP’s six songs are largely instrumental,
layering precisely arpeggiating analog keyboards, sweeping synth pads,
vocoded vocals, alternately blurry washes and sharp stabs of guitar,
and both programmed beats and pounding live drums. The songs range from
the aggressive autobahn night-drive of “Shattered Limbs” to the
suspenseful stalking of “Pierce the Air” to the breathtaking final
liftoff of “Crushed by Stars.” It all sounds rather like an M83 record
with just the vocal pop songs sucked out.

Indeed, the most recognizable lyrics on Dark Signals come via
“Final Heart Beats Black,” whose dozen or so words are vocoded into
what may as well be Hopelandic, the consonants clipped by the synth
treatment, the vowels stretched out untethered into space. I’m pretty
sure I heard “final… no more… only,” and I may have heard the words
“parking,” “begging,” and/or “sleep”—it’s hard to say. (The few
snatches of vocals on the slow-swirling song “Metastatic” are much the
same.) In any case, though all band members contribute lyrics, they
approach vocals as just one more instrument in the mix. Their processed
singing is meant more for mood and texture than textual meaning, and
its trembling, melancholy tone comes through clear enough.

The band aren’t aiming to make a pop record anyway, and Negley, who
recorded much of Dark Signals himself before taking the tracks
to Bayles for polishing, is totally satisfied with the record. “This EP
is probably the first time where it actually sounds like it’s supposed
to sound,” he says. “Before, we were letting the technology, like, run
us, but now we have a better grasp on how sound works.”

The band, whose name comes from a samurai film series (Toms and
Lanich both work at the U-District’s beloved Scarecrow Video), take
their inspiration from such film-score legends as Tangerine Dream,
Goblin, Vangelis, and John Carpenter (the Dark Signals album
art, created by Negley, was inspired by Tron). But they’re quick
to dismiss the idea of them as strictly soundtrack buffs or synth nerds
or, worse, vintage M83 clones (a band who also wear their cinematic
loves on their sleeve).

“I still take a lot of influence from old post-rock bands,” says
Negley, “like Mogwai, to name one. [Guitarist Gonzales, absent from
this interview, is a big fan of Isis.] It’s almost less about whether
it’s keyboard versus guitar, and more about how to layer tones, how to
layer melody and harmony, structuring—things like that.”

Live, their rockier tendencies can be felt in the band’s
hard-hitting drums and heavy bass (though they have no bass player,
they get plenty of bowel-rumbling low end out of their synths), as well
as in their adept transitions from delicate quiet to big, crushing
crescendos. All of which, along with the band’s much-discussed light
show, helps make the lack of a lead singer seem like no great loss.

“We do take into consideration how people see us live,” says Negley.
“And that is an issue—that we completely negate that element
that’s supposed to traditionally connect with the audience. But we try
to be as engaging as possible without having that person right up
front, you know, pointing and looking at people and grinning.”

In fact, Sleepy Eyes of Death are overwhelming enough without a lead
singer or an overly complicated stage setup, and they’re bound to have
plenty of people right up front at their show, looking and
grinning—the ones in the audience.