Body Language at Bowery Ballroom

TLC had the chance to catch up with local band, Body Language, when they opened for Passion Pit at Bowery Ballroom a few weeks ago.  The Brooklyn based group has been gaining speed in NYC with their infectious, eclectic mix of soul, pop, jazz and electro tunes and a bouncy live show equipped with accompanying graphics and visuals. Matt, Grant, Angelica and Ian talked to us about the recent release of their debut EP, Speaks, working on an album and the electro-soul scene in NYC. Be sure to catch them on a Brooklyn rooftop near you this summer as they are bound for big things this year.

> Is this your first time playing The Bowery?
Grant: Yes it is!

> Are you super excited? I bet you guys have seen a lot of shows here.
Grant: Actually We’ve only ever seen one show here. We went to see Plaid play here a really long time ago.

> You guys are based in Brooklyn now. Are you all from different places? How did you meet?
Matt: The farthest is Ian. He’s from Hong Kong originally. I’m from Oklahoma, Grant’s from Worcester, Mass and Angie’s from Perth Amboy, NJ.
Grant: But the three of us, apart from Ian, met in Hartford, CT when we went to the University of Hartford and we moved here a couple years after we graduated. Matt and I just did a lot of production together. That’s how our little trio formed.

> Did you get together because of similar tastes and interests or because you were musicians…?
Matt: I think we all had a similar end aesthetic in mind as to what we were going for – dance music, visceral music in general.
Grant: We started spinning a lot of dance music in the area and originally we were doing a lot more contemporary art music, IDM [intelligent dance music] and electronic music. Once we started spinning a lot of sets in town, we started to have a hankering for writing dance tracks, doing remixes of dance tunes. Eventually it formed into an actual project of original compositions.

> Why did you decide to move to Brooklyn?
Matt: NYC was the closest major metropolis and we thought about Chicago and some places in California, but really our network only extended this far so it would’ve been a stretch to move anywhere else. We knew a lot of people like Machinedrum and Theophilus London. If you want to make a serious start in music, you generally move to New York.
Grant: There were a lot of parties where there were other bands we knew that kind of drew us down here like the Cassette parties and Percussion Lab that were thrown in Brooklyn mostly that we got invited to. We found ourselves going out to shows in New York more than in Hartford so we thought “we’ve gotta get out of Hartford”, there’s no point in just driving down here so much.
Ian: Have you played any shows in Hartford since you moved down to New York?
Grant: One! We played at a weird diner.

> Did they have a homecoming party for you?
*All laugh*
Grant: Hardly! Nah, they hadn’t missed us yet. They were like “you’re back here already?”

> How long have you been in New York City?
Matt: Since March 15^th, 2008.

> Impressive memory!
Matt: Well that was our first rent date so it stands out.

> So have you made friends with other bands locally?
Matt: There’s  a whole crowd of people we know like Machinedrum and Theophilis London and MeLo-X and Jesse Boykins. It’s a bunch of people that we mainly have a rapport with. The main reason we moved down was that we wanted to be a part of a scene and around people doing the same sort of thing.

> You’ve got an EP out. Are you thinking about an album?
Matt: Our EP just came out and we’re working on an album right now. It should be done within a year and then we have to do everything that goes into post-production so who knows at this point when it will actually come out.
Angelica: Right now we’re just focusing on playing more shows and getting our name out and doing more remixes.

> What have you got lined up for the summer?
Grant: Lots of production actually. The majority of our shows have been in the last two months leading up to the EP release. We currently don’t have anything booked for the summer. We’re gonna do some rooftop shows and stuff like that. We’re gonna take a little vacation actually after this week cause we’ve been playing a show about every three days.

> Listening to your sound, I hear influences like Stereolab, Hot Chip and obviously you fit into the Passion Pit scene. What do you think sets you apart?
Matt: I think our musical background is really different. We took a pretty different path from all the artists you mentioned, except for maybe Stereolab since I don’t know a whole lot about them. Grant and I started out when we were 22 not too long ago, we were big into jazz and didn’t listen to anything else. Before that I was only listening to IDM, so we were really into very esoteric things and we took this parabolic path to where we are now. Our influences are all over the place which creates a really different end result.

> How does your live show differ from what you sound like on record?
Angelica: Drums!
Grant: I think we take it up a notch as far as the energy goes. The drums sonically fill in a lot.
Angelica: singing together…
Grant: Yeah all the harmonies. We add a lot of parts to songs that don’t really appear on the album, extend a few parts here and there.

> Have you been noticing some of the same people coming out to your shows?
Angelica: Yeah, most of our friends that support us have come to a lot of our recent shows.

> The trend has been over the past 8 years or so that if a band from NYC is really good, they’ll get really popular in the UK first.
Grant: We’ve actually already been asked to come out there and I think it’ll happen eventually in good time.

> What are your goals for the next 6 months to a year?
Matt: We definitely want to get our album out and start playing more places in New York and expand.
Grant: We’re going grassroots right now but we want to sort of build a demand outside of New York eventually. We’re establishing ourselves at this point.. Eventually the hope is that people can just recognize us and the word can spread out from one location. I think we have a good little home here.

MP3: Body Language – Huffy Ten Speed or Zshare
MP3: Marina & The Diamonds – Obsessions (Body Language Remix) or Zshare