Despite being unable to see every single band that played the Noise Pop Festival (which was pretty impossible), from what I witnessed, Tempo No Tempo seemed the best candidate for what Noise Pop represents: the perfect blend between the two words (and worlds). As a companion piece to the Dizzy Balloon interview — a band which represented a very different sound, more towards the pop end of the spectrum — I interviewed TNT outside Slim’s our first night there, just to get some insight to the songwriting of the band and the brains behind it.

I always get hung up on that latter part, so what stuck out with these guys was how they’d they’d studied a variety of subjects such as English, Mathematics, and Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley, and how such seemingly trivial details make so much sense when you hear the music:  sporadic time signatures, a chaotic and dissonant tone so prevalent in the band’s hooks and riffs mixed with a songwriting process that to many bands might just seem nuts.

About the name — when I was listening to you guys earlier today, It seemed more like an answer to a question.

Tyler McCauley (singer): We used to be four members. Back them it was more of an idea wed flesh out. But when we lost him, it was more about improvised jmming. We’d go back and find the parts we’d liked and use those. This way it was more collaborative, which worked a lot better than sitting down and doing pen-to-paper songwriting.

Your name seems to sum you up pretty well. I listen to a lot of great bands that have really long names that just lose me.

Alex Kaiser (drummer): Yeah. It’s like a sentence missing a bunch of parts.

So one instrument would sort of come in and start the jam, and the rest would join in?

Tyler: We’d usually start the band off with some random thing play for a half hour, go back in the next few days and decide which to make into a song.

Jason Wexler (bassist, keyboards): Sometimes it’d be within the first ten seconds. There’s be strange little moments, where we’d say to each other: check out 2o minutes and 25 seconds in; there’s two bars that are great!”

But it sounds like that’s the only way to do it with jam sessions like that.

Tyler: We basically wired up our practice space so it records everything and automatically sends it to our email, where we listen to it and send each other’s feedback. That became the thing.

It sounds like you’d spend more time digging through tapes then actually practicing.

Tyler: But a lot of the time the idea would be enough where we could go, ‘Okay, that’s enough, that’s good. That’s what we’re doing.” You’ll be running through tape, and you know when interesting things start to happen.

Jason: A lot of the time I’ll just be at my computer typing, and listen to it over and over again.

Maybe you guys should do a box set before you release your second CD.

Jason: No one would WANT that box set, trust me. There’s stuff that’s not on the record for a reason.

But there’s always the prog fans, and then the Phish heads and stuff, who love the epic kinds of jams and would probably love it, right?

Jason: Yeah, I can’t handle that.

Alex: That’s why it’s all just rhythm and not so much soloing.

Tyler: A lot of it is just trying to lock in and get it down. Not even be creative, but just communicate on finding something and hammering it down. We spend a lot of time listening to James Brown and old jazz and stuff.

So you guys have a homemade video for “Repetition”, which seemed to turn out pretty great, considering you were using just hand-held, basic video camcorders.

Tyler: There’s a local musician who was looking to make the video. He wanted to do it. We weren’t really that interested, but he was like “I’ll do it for free.” So we just said why not, and he did it. It took about a day and turned out pretty great. That one kinda happened is, the guy came in and said “this is what I want,” and it happened. The next time we’re gonna work it work where it’s more like a vision of the song.

Jason: There’s a company called French Press Films we’ll be working with for our next video, which we’re pretty excited about.

Tyler: We started playing about 6 years ago.

Alex: Nah, 5 1/2.

Jason: Yeah, 5 1/2.

Tyler: But you weren’t even around then.

Jason: Even still, it was 5 1/2.

Tyler: Wait, about 2004! We all got together while were students at UC Berkeley together. That was a way more amorphous sound and we had kind of a more Mogwai-sounding group. This incarnation of (Tempo No Tempo) had its first show in February of last year. So it’s something we’ve been working on forever and now it’s just a whole new thing. And we’ve totally changed the way we play. Alex changed the way he plays drums, same with Jason and I. We changed the way the vocals sound. We didn’t change the name, we stuck with it. We wanted to show people how we’ve changed, like “Oh yeah? Well check this out!”

Jason: We already had a bit of a name around town and even outside of town.

What happened to your last guy? You said you used to be a four piece.

Tyler: He left. He went back to law school to become a lawyer.

Tyler: He’s gonna make a great lawyer.

He helped us focus our aesthetic. But hen he left it helped us focus on what we wanted to do even more, and what was missing from the old band. At first it was like, “He’s gone! Do we still want to be a band?” We were  all living together and kind of got tired of not playing, then just started jamming together. And we did, and now it’s changed and this is what we’ve come up with.

Tyler: We really just taped the tracks live, as they were, and let it go from there. We threw in vocals and maybe a couple of guitar parts, but we didn’t want it to be layers and layers.

Jason: The songs are always changing. We always add different improvisations. We don’t change the structure, but we’re always adding different fills.

Tyler: And arguing about the parts. There’s slight shifts until we find something we look.

Spontaneously, on stage ever? How does that work? You just kind of know where to go.

Alex: It’s like throwing a basketball at each other. Being ready to react and change spontaneously. You know the basic structure, when the big changes are coming. But when somebody lays something a little differently, maybe I want to watch that and play drums a little differently. As soon as I start doing it, then everyone else starts doing it and jumps in. It just turns into a big dialogue.

Tyler: Like if I throw in a vocal part, it’ll be immediately apparent. Like “oh, shit!” and then we all react. I’ve been in bands where you just practuce the song, and replicate it and get it down. But every time we play together, it’s all up for grabs. You can’t be afraid to kind of blow it, though. On the last tour, we’d improvise and it would be one of those things where you do it once, and you never want to do it again. But if you like it, you’ll keep it. Little parts will change and we do it again.

Spontaneously, on stage ever? Does the crowd ever notice any of the little jams that don’t work?

Probably. But the little conversations are having. But no one will notice your snare drum is adjusted differently, but they still hear it. People know if you’re a strong player.

Sometimes when you see a cult film, and you’re the only one who got it, but you loved it so much that you follow it, keep updated on who made it.

Jason: No one really follows us around or anything. But yeah, we’re starting to gain a following.

Words by Jeff Nau, Photos by Glenn Williams