Q&A: Chanpan On Their Latest EP, ‘endlessly’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY CHLOE GONZALES ☆
Photo by Dillon Matthew
“This record is an expression of ourselves over the past year — sonically, emotionally, and lyrically connected.” Chanpan’s expression on their latest EP endlessly hones in on the trio’s willingness to share intimate experiences with their audiences alongside worldly concerns. Genres such as D&B and jazz meld on this record to create a unique listening experience for Chanpan’s audience. The trio, Grace, Matthew, and Lance, sat down with the Luna Collective to discuss the inner workings of the EP and more.
LUNA: I just wanted to open up with a little icebreaker - I don’t know if you collect physical media, but if you do, what’s your favorite record from your collection? And if you don’t, then your recent 10 out of 10 album!
GRACE: I actually don’t collect physical media! I know, devastating. Recent 10 out of 10 album… I really like Willow’s new album. I also revisited BØRNS’ album Dopamine.
MATTHEW: I remember the CD era. I used to go into the Barnes N Noble back room to look through them. I think what came to mind was I had bought a double disc thing of Rush, like the Greatest Hits Compilation and it had very cool packaging.
LANCE: I bought a lot of CDs and downloaded them onto my computer and then iPod or phone or whatever. But I think the first one I bought was Beatles’ Love, which I didn’t know was their songs mashed into a Cirque du Soleil performance. But I have every Beatles record on CD and it opened my mind so much, so I think my favorite physical one is probably Revolver by The Beatles. I think that’s a great record.
LUNA: A publication said that you were like the coolest rock band and so I came into your newest EP expecting some rock, like Sonic Youth vibes. I listen to it and hear drum & bass (D&B), electronic, jazzy stuff, being like, “Woah, this is so cool!” I was wondering, how did you guys pick up your sound?
GRACE: Thank you, that means a lot! I think we really want to try to keep everything super unexpected and all over the place. We just each have really different music tastes. Every song starts with one of us putting something down, and someone else adds their taste to it, and then another person adds their taste to it. So the final product is just a mishmash of everything that the band is interested in.
LANCE: We’re always happy that people are actually listening to stuff we’re making. I think definitely what Grace said, that we are all different people with different music tastes, but we overlap and work really beautifully together. For the D&B, I think we all like D&B and jungle, and PinkPanthress. Some of those more specific instrumental break and freaky, crazy sh*t you hear–back when I was buying CDs as a teenager, I was super into drummers like Jojo Mayer, who their whole thing is playing D&B and jungle, like those crazy chopped up produced drum breaks, that are samples, but playing them on real drums with their hands. So I think some of that sonic spirit you hear in our music is kind of that mishmash of trying to take what might have originated electronically into the organic and then back vice versa. I think that has actually grown to be a big part of our sound throughout all of our records.
Photo by Dillon Matthew
LUNA: Also when I was listening to y’all, I listened to your older stuff like “air ride” and it felt more poppy. And then listening to your EP, it felt darker, and more ambient. So I’m curious about how that evolution came in your discography.
GRACE: Yeah, “air ride” and “❥attack” were like the third and fourth songs we ever put out. And our first song ever was “jungle,” which had a darker energy to it. And we felt really good about that. And I think for “air ride” and “❥attack,” we were still figuring out what we wanted to do, and figuring out the collaborators we had. And, you know, working with producers and just navigating what people were thinking our sound was. But when those came out, they’re awesome songs, but performing them live, it didn’t feel as connected, not just topically, but that upbeatness. So I think with this EP coming out, we definitely did have a conversation, let’s try to go back to that darker sound that we feel really comfortable in, and that seems to be what we like to play live, too. So I think we have a good balance of it now, touching into that pop sparkly sound here and there, but topically and aestheticallyand the dongs we’re proud of are in that darker world.
LUNA: And when you began writing this new EP, endlessly, you described it as “recognizing despair and building the hope to save ourselves from it.” I was wondering how you start turning that emotional journey into music?
GRACE: I think as a band we’re very open with our feelings these days. And while we were making this EP, obviously everything in the world was seemingly on fire, and it was really weighing on our minds, and that would always come up in conversation. But Matthew and Lance are really hope-pilled people. They did a really good job of telling me that hope is a discipline, we always go back to that, and that shows in the music. I think that the beginning of the EP starts in a place where you’re recognizing all the things that went wrong in this world, and addressing them and talking about how that makes you feel. And then the end is like, let’s have a good life and the world and life is good and everything can be okay, and we have to work towards that. So it kind of just happened over the course of making these songs, just our general sentiment towards life changed and shifted and then organizing this EP was pretty easy from there, just following that path and deciding that’s the message we want to share in this moment of time.
LUNA: Was there a particular political moment that kind of started it all or was it more of the general political atmosphere?
GRACE: The atmosphere in general. I don’t think we go in being like, “What are we going to write about?” but “luigi’s mansione” was totally about Luigi Mangione and him being identified. We wrote that song that day that he was identified because it had happened right before we got into the studio, and that’s all we could think and talk about. So apart from that, it was kind of the general feeling like everything builds up and everything’s connected. So having that knowledge and emotion weigh heavily on us was the catalyst for everything. We wanted to stay true to what we were feeling and go down that path.
LUNA: Did you structure the track list with a beginning, middle, end in mind, or did stuff fall into place more organically?
MATTHEW: We wrote every song individually, and there wasn’t any moment where it was like, “Oh this project needs XYZ song.” I think we all had slightly different loose ideas of what the sequencing should be after making these songs individually, and then it happened to overlap like 80%. Certain songs like “liquid iron” felt like an opening song to a project. And I think the kind of emotional arc that Grace was talking about, “:D,” the funk one that ends the record, is that natural resolution. It’s a weird thing where we obviously didn’t write these songs thinking that they would fit next to each other during the songwriting processes but I suppose the three of us are very close and talk all the time, and were more or less on the same page. So in that sense, our music and this record is an expression of ourselves over the past year and is cohesive and coherent and everything is sonically, emotionally, and lyrically connected.
LUNA: When writing about politics, does it ever feel overwhelming because there’s so much to address and have a voice on? How do you navigate that without feeling a paralysis of how it should be captured?
MATTHEW: I feel like everybody feels that, right? It’s this crushing weight of all the awful stuff happening in the world and it’s like, what can I do about it? For me, I think it’s never really too much of a pressure or problem to think about in terms of Chanpan and our music, because the band is very much an expression of who we are, what we do, our actions, what we say, and when we speak about certain things. But, at the same time, I don’t think there’s a need for us to be any kind of voice or hold any responsibility to place on ourselves to speak out on things happening in the world more than we would being asked about it. I think it’s important that everybody has a personal political practice, even if it’s a small thing. I don’t think Chanpan tries to be an authoritative voice or source for analysis or how to talk or think about this or that thing politically. But hopefully, if we do talk about and think about these things out loud when we’re on the mic or at an event, then we hope other people would listen and find something they can relate to as well.
GRACE: I don’t really go into the music writing process being like, “I need to write about this or about that.” I kind of start with what words come into mind and what things are on the forefront of my mind. What does the instrumental melody of this song make me feel? I think it’s a slippery slope to put that pressure on myself. I don’t think I ever want to feel that pressure. That would just kind of be a speed bump onto the writing process. I just had this interview with people from my ethnic community and we have been part of the longest ongoing civil war. One of the questions that people brought up is like, “Why haven’t you written a song in our language? Why haven’t you ventured into that world?” That was a weird question for me to answer, because I grew up here, so I don’t really think or write in my native language as much. I feel like if I was moved to, in the moment of songwriting, write something in my native tongue, that’d be great. But any pressure, any parameters or boundaries that I have going into it wouldn't be helpful.
MATTHEW: We’re not a political band. We don’t try to or am to be a political band, it's more that we just don’t filter ourselves or shy away from saying things.
LUNA: I wanted to comment on your tour with Post Animal. I thought it was so interesting that they are more of an indie rock vibe while you explore many genres. How did you guys feel about discovering that you guys were going to go on tour with them?
LANCE: Their music is super cool and I really love all the songs they’ve been putting out recently. We always struggle defining our own sounds and finding adjectives for it – that always comes from other people when they listen to it. The vision for our first EP, a super long time ago, is we wanted to make a compilation of songs and each song was in a different genre. And in a way, we kind of did that. I think for us, playing live, you’re right. Their music is more in the rock world. The first tour we went on, they were also a very different sound, but for us, that’s a really, really, fun challenge because we enjoy the process and challenge of playing to an audience and trying to win them over. That’s how we started on the street, playing for strangers, and they walk by, and you just have this little moment to try and get their attention. So we like tailoring our set list, vibe, and energy from the order of songs, like trying to close out with a higher energy one or something more mellow that we think the audience would like. So I like to think that our sound lends itself to a lot of different audiences, and it’s a matter of like, what kind of voice are we putting out there during that night?
LUNA: How does being on the road affect your relationship with the songs you’ve written, especially playing them live?
GRACE: We haven’t gone on the road with this EP yet, but I’m excited. It’s been really nice to perform these live. Each of the songs has a really different energy live, and I feel like I can put a little more attitude on it and connect with the audience more.
LANCE: I feel like playing the songs from the EP here in NY and LA thus far is interesting because certain songs I feel like in this day and age are made for TikTok or Spotify, like there are going to be clips. Sometimes it’s like if an artist wants to make some kind of moody R&B track, and they’ll know that it can land easily in a certain playlist, then it may do really well on streaming, but it may translate differently live, and the opposite is true. So I feel like for me it’s really fun seeing certain songs on the EP that maybe are not streamed as much as other ones are actually the highlight and the star of the show for the audience when we’re playing live.
