Deastro

First things first: Deastro and I have a bit of history.

Randolph Chabot Jr., the ultra-talented experimental pop-mastermind behind the moniker, once played at a house show I set up back in Ann Arbor, Michigan — ah, the college days… We’ve kept in loose contact ever since. When my editor Matt Conner asked me about interviewing Deastro, my first reaction: Awesome. We’ve talked before and I already have his phone number — easiest interview ever.

It didn’t take long before I realized the foolishness in this thinking. The safe, anonymous distance between an interviewer and an interviewee that commonly exists had been breeched. We already knew each other’s first names. Thus, my greatest fear was the premise in which a forced, awkward and “okay, it’s conversation time” interview would not only be likely but inevitable.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Very wrong.

Be it Deastro (pronounced “DESTROW”) or backseat project Our Brother the Megazord, Chabot takes questions on with the same personal temperament demonstrated in his music: grace, humility and a tangle of fanaticism for disparate influences. Perhaps it’s trite to compare one’s music to one’s conversation, but in Chabot’s case, it’s also particularly apt.

As revealed within the interview, the ominous questions in life (chaos, meaning, coincidence, spiritual reality) are actually (Ah!) “real monsters” to be confronted in the mind of Chabot. And as any listener will immediately note, there’s something triumphant to be found in Deastro’s music. Even if these “monsters” can’t be completely conquered, by golly, that shouldn’t stop the pure of heart from drawing their swords of spirit from belts of truth. Attack!

But I digress.

Of course, it’s difficult not getting carried away when it comes to the music of Deastro — the bright, multi-versed and prolific 22-year-old is already on album number three with Moondagger to be released this year on Ann Arbor-born Ghostly International. To speak to an artist as friendly and culturally enthused as Chabot isn’t just to partake in a rare treat, it’s to experience contagious enthusiasm.

So, instead of total awkwardness, what results is an intimate, relaxed and frequently comical glimpse into art, spirituality, Detroit community, Space Ghost, Steve Reich, artistic courage and a pointillist game of connect the dots in between. As Deastro’s work reminds us, after all, isn’t each of us a superhero in our own comic book?

SSv: I wanted to ask you about your identity as Deastro. When we did that little house show in Ann Arbor, I remember you asking me ‘Which performance did you want? Was it going to be Our Brother the Megazord or Deastro?’ I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know there was more than one choice!’ I wonder if you could talk a little about the origin of those identities. How did they come to pass?

Randy: Well, I’m the biggest fan-boy ever, when it comes down to it. I’ve loved music since I was very young. What Bradford Cox said in an interview, he used to make demos of albums that were going to come out and stuff like that…

SSv: Yeah, I’ve heard of that.

Randy: Any artist that I loved growing up, I tried to become that band. The different projects are different genres of music that I think are amazing. Just wanting to be a part of them — wanting to make something … Woody Allen — I forget which movie it was but [in it] he’s having this religious struggle and he’s thinking about committing suicide and he goes to the movie theater and watches Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times — I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of Chaplin movie. They’re playing [the scene] where people have pots on their heads and people are pulling on them. He says, ‘Y’know, even if God didn’t exist, wouldn’t you want to be a part of this?’ This really ‘great dance’ — I think that’s really it for me. I just wanted to be a part of ‘the dance,’ y’know?

SSv: That’s deep. I really like that. I definitely can relate to the experience of admiring artists to the point of wanting to become a favorite band. Who were some the artists, early on, that made you say ‘I want to make this record — again?’

Randy: I was really obsessed with this Christian artist, Joy Electric. I was like really obsessed with him — [Laughs]. With my stuff, you can definitely hear Joy Electric in there, y’know?

SSv: Sure.

Randy: I loved that stuff. I loved Bach and Claude Debussy. I’ve always been obsessed with playing these short little phrases on piano and transferring them to synths and speeding them up. Y’know? I feel like Joy Electric does that too in some parts. He has this album called Void, it reminds of like Moog-classical music. I loved him and I loved Starflyer [59].

SSv: Yeah!

Randy: I think those two combined — take both of those guys and you get shoe-gaze and synth-pop, which are two of my main influences.

SSv: Totally. I was going to mention Starflyer if you didn’t say something about them being brothers. I was more in the Starflyer camp, but one of my oldest friends was crazy about both. We would always joke around about what it must be like when those guys get together and talk about music. We wondered if they ever ragged on each other. I suppose Joy Electric applies to this too, but I always thought Starflyer was pretty far ahead of its time, in my opinion. When I listen to songs like “I Drive a Lot” and “No New Kind of Story” compared to contemporary artists, I’m like ‘Shit, this guy was doing this stuff over ten years ago.’

Randy: They came up with such good songs. I feel like Starflyer [Jason Martin] is such a good song-writer, y’know? Amazing, amazing guy. I think definitely ahead of his time. And at the same time, reaching back to other things, y’know? I love the production on his albums. It reminds me of Rumours a lot — the way the drums are recorded. You can hear some older influences in it too.

SSv: I know you were talking about “little phrases” and stuff, there’s a synth-line in “I Drive a Lot” that’s the exact same synth-line, or keyboard-line, in “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths. I remember hearing “I Drive a Lot” and thinking, what is that from? I could be presumptuous to assume that’s exactly where it’s from but if you listen to it back to back, you can tell he was into the history of that stuff.

Randy: Yeah.

SSv: I’ve heard your writing process is something that you do daily, part of your everyday routine — in addition to that, you’re playing shows constantly. Was there a point growing up where you realized this was going to be your main thing?

Randy: Um, well, I still don’t know if this going to be my “main thing”!

SSv: [Laughs]

Randy: [Laughs] If there’s any point that I feel I’m not at the best place I can be with my time here on earth then I would do something different. I’m a little bit existentialist in that point, y’know? I’m really obsessed with the time we have here. I think it’s important to look at it and not be afraid of it, y’know?

I just freaked out — I don’t know what happened! This one day — I mean, I’ve always written and whatnot — it was probably like when I was 19 when I really first … I mean, I wrote for the period of when I was like eighteen and nineteen a lot, y’know? I tried to star this band Velociraptor —

SSv: That’s a sweet name.

Randy: But it never clicked, y’know? It was actually a spiritual experience that really set me off. I was still somewhat of a Christian at 19. I was praying because I felt a little bit worthless at this point — especially when it came to songwriting. I was praying in this closet that I recorded vocals in — [it was] in this extended housing when I was living in Arkansas. I just locked myself in there. I don’t know, I think there’s something to to praying and meditating still. You’re being very honest with yourself, y’know what I mean? When you sit still for a minute and try and figure out what you want with your life and what’s important to you, y’know? Or if there really is something where you’re communicating with another reality or… I don’t know what happens, but something happened.

I had this experience where I didn’t stop hearing music continuously for a couple hours, y’know? This beautiful organ music. After that, I just felt like this was the closest thing ever to — I wouldn’t call it like “a calling,” y’know? I wouldn’t say like this is “my calling” or anything like that but I felt like it’s what fit. I felt that, at least for a time, it’s what I had to do. Somebody asked me the other day ‘Why is the performance so important to you? Why do you perform so much?’ I’m sick of seeing people afraid of each other, y’know? There’s this growing thing in our society where people just … I really like Wendell Berry’s “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” In that poem there’s a line, if I can condense it, it says ‘Never go outside, never know your neighbors, and die alone.’

SSv: Geez.

Randy: I want community to happen — especially where I’m at, here in Detroit. That’s the only reason that I write music and that I write fanatically. I want to make songs someday that can be, maybe, an anthem for that. Maybe just [for] one kid, y’know? “Light Powered” plays on Cartoon Network right now and I get bile in my throat every time I think about it because I’m so glad we’re on there! I mean, that’s how I got into music as a kid, y’know what I mean? Like watching Anime on Toonami and hearing drum and bass music and stuff. It’s really inspiring.

Hopefully, another kid will hear “Light Powered” or something like that and be inspired to make his own music. I’ve come to experience that music really is a giant community, y’know? Especially in your local music scene. To me, they’re family — almost, here. That’s why I write every day. That’s just part of the family I’m in, I guess.

SSv: That’s beautiful. For me, when I was living in Michigan, there’d be a lot of my friends that would go to Detroit just for shows exclusively. Then you’d get out as fast as you could because, basically, we didn’t know anything about the city other than it wasn’t a good place to be after dark, in our minds. I guess I rarely hear a positive take on Detroit. But since you have a unique perspective and live there, do you feel the Detroit community is starting to grow?

Randy: Yeah, I mean, you’ll never have as much facial recognition as in Detroit. [Laughs]. Which is good, y’know? [Residents] recognize [their] moms and [faces] light up. Everywhere I go in Detroit, you’re just like ‘Hey!’ ‘Hey!’ and ‘Hey!’ all day long! You’re seeing people that you know and they’ll introduce you to more people. I don’t know, there’s something about Detroit that feels … If David Lynch could make like, I don’t know, a happy movie! [Laughs]

SSv: [Laughs]

Randy: I don’t know, it feels very much like that — where there’s all these coincidences that feel like they can’t be just chance, y’know? Everyday. Everyone here, the friendships that I’ve made by living in Detroit, are … I don’t know. It can only be in recognition of the spirit that’s going on inside of the people because of some kind of unanimous belief about the place where they’re at, y’know? I don’t know! [Laughs].

SSv: No, that’s beautiful! I’d really like to see that movie, actually, if it ever gets made. A happy movie by David Lynch would be a nice change of pace for sure.

Randy: I mean, I think he’s a happy person in general.

SSv: Exactly. He’s really into meditation, too.

Randy: My friend Aly from School of Seven Bells was asking ‘What does a good performance look like for you?’ So, I was like ‘Well, I feel like if my intestines fell out during the performance, that’d be really good.’ She was like, ‘But it’s not something demented because you would think that’s funny.’

SSv: [Laughs]

Randy: [Laughs] I was like, “Yes, that would be funny.”

SSv: That’s good.

Randy: I think David Lynch sees the world the same way, y’know? In some ways.

SSv: You mentioned how you had a song featured on Cartoon Network. Was that for Ghostly Swim? Is that how you got in touch with the guys from Ghostly International?

Randy: With Ghostly?

SSv: Yeah, was it through Adult Swim initially?

Randy: Well, Ghostly set it up. They had just seen me play around town here in Detroit, y’know, from being in Ann Arbor. Jeff saw me a couple of times and he thought that I sucked! [Laughs]. Then he saw me again a couple months later and he really liked it. We started talking, y’know, about it and they weren’t necessarily ready to just sign me yet. So, they were like, “Well, y’know, let’s just do this and we’ll see how it goes.” So they put “Light Powered” on the Ghostly Swim Count.

SSv: That’s pretty neat. I was curious, are you a fan of the Adult Swim shows? Have you ever watched Xavier: Renegade Angel or any of that stuff?

Randy: I was a huge Space Ghost, Aqua Teen [fan]. I love the new one. I’ve only seen it a couple times. It’s really, really visual. It will all of a sudden go to like crazy, almost like acid-trips out of nowhere where everything’s like … y’know what I’m talking about!?

SSv: You’re talking about the new show?

Randy: Yeah, I can’t remember what form it is. I’ve seen it like three or four times.

SSv: Because the one I’m thinking of is called Xavier and the main guy has like a snake for a hand and a banana-looking nose. It’s done in what looks like Second Life or the Sims. That’s the one you’re talking about?

Randy: Yeah.

SSv: Yeah, it’s very out. I remember seeing some of those episodes and I was really excited about it. It’s definitely like this Fantasy/Dark Comedy — definitely surrealist. I think it’s the same guys that did this really bizarre show called Wonder Showzen. That one’s even more demented than this show.

Randy: [Laughs]

SSv: Some of the tangents we’ve been going on, I was curious to see if you’d ever checked that out. Since fantasy is a big part of what you do.

Randy: Yeah, I would definitely be interested in it. I’ve haven’t been watching TV lately. Yeah, I loved Adult Swim — all the shows that are on there are really creative and have this pretty innocent fun at the same time, which I like about them. The whole thing, going all the way back to Space Ghost until now, there hasn’t been a show that I utterly hated.

I think they’re all amazing. I thought the Brack Show was really great — I loved the dad in that show. I think he’s hilarious. I love the episode where Brack has to feed his neighbor’s goldfish and he says “Feed him three grams — THREE GRAMS — of fishfood.” And Brack thinks he says “three hams.”

SSv: [Laughs]

Randy: [Laughs] It’s just ridiculous.

SSv: That’s good stuff. You described yourself as being a fanboy of comics and cartoons. I know in a lot of your songs you have characters — are there any recurring characters in your material? Who stands out?

Randy: Yeah. When Deastro started, Deastro was and he is like a character. He’s the experiencer of a lot of songs. The first thing I did was a double disc, Deastro/The Young Planets. Then Our Brother the Megazord/Time the Teenage Twister. But right before that, though, I was bringing around this EP with me that I just drew and handed out to people and stuff. It was Deastro the Dawn Treader.

On the cover of it was a map of all the different encounters that Deastro had. If you look at Young Planets there’s the encounter with the CD men, y’know? It’s Deastro coming to terms with the possibility that life is just chaos. How that’s effecting him. His initial reaction to it as something being very scary coming from a very Christian background where everything is injected with meaning: There’s a meaning behind everything even in the smallest things in life. It’s a battle between those two ideas.

There’s other stuff like that. The first thing I did was kind of a map of him traveling around the world and fighting these different monsters. Monsters that are real to me, especially, y’know? I think there are reappearing characters for sure. There’s definitely the Prince of Darkness. At least in the imagery that I see when I’m writing songs. It’s not like a thing like the Devil, it’s more like this murky other side to the main character. It’s almost like the antithesis — someone said one time, “If hell ever exists, humans will create it.” Kind of that idea is what he is.

SSv: The artwork for the albums, flyers and posters, you do a lot of that yourself — the graphic design stuff. Being integrated in those things, do you feel that gives you a broader identity as an artist? The reason I ask is because I always hear people saying, “You should only do just one thing — just do the music and don’t do the other stuff.” But lately, I’ve been thinking about musicians and philosophers from the 1600s and a lot of those guys were constantly juggling a great variety of professions. Do you feel the graphic design is just as big a part of your identity?

Randy: I think there’s no way to separate the music from the art. Paul Klee. He was a surrealist painter and his father was a musician, he said that “music and art are sister-arts.” For a while I was only trying to learn how to write music from [a] visual [standpoint]. Like, what would this object sound like if I could make it into musical notes? You know what I mean? Like, what could embody this object? What could embody this place in time? And that’s the same as painting — capturing that. In music it’s the same way: capturing the feeling, capturing an image. It’s the same thing even if the template’s different.

I think it’s important for me, anyways — I don’t know if this is for everybody — but I think it’s important for me to study as many arts as I can. I, at least, feel that I’ll become a better artist through the wider understanding of just life, y’know? It doesn’t even have to be art. I’m afraid to get to the point where I just make art.

I think that’s what I loved about the Beats — it’s that they were such experiencers of life. What made their art amazing is that their lives were lived. They were bare and they were taking these inspirations from real life and turning them into something else. Even though a lot of their writing is fantastic, at the same time … if you look at Burroughs, his writing was fantastic but I heard this thing about him with Allen Ginsberg. I think he was speaking at Harvard and he was talking about how in the room, at the time, he was counting tiles and making mental notes of everything in his reality around him. At all times. [Laughs].

SSv: You mentioned your early influences being, besides Joy Electric, Bach and listening to Debussy. Recently, I remember talking to you at your show in Nashville and you told me you did a cover of the Steve Reich piece “Different Trains.” From what I understand, it’s a piece about the Shoah — or the Holocaust — as well as 1940s urban American life. Why did you choose that piece in particular?

Randy: I think it’s just that I really love the music and everything about Steve Reich … and John Adams and those guys … and [Terry] Riley. I’m obsessed with them. I’m a huge fan and I’m just trying to learn how to make music like that! [Laughs] Like, I can’t wait to see what Steve Reich is going to do next. I heard [him], when we played with High Places in New York, and Steve Reich was playing in the basement of the venue that we played at. It was with, like, a smaller orchestra. There were women singing through laptops that were like turning their voices into these violins and stuff like that. It was amazing. I just feel like those composers have no fear.

Steve Reich, more than anybody, has influenced modern music so much. You look at bands like … Sufjan Stevens is the perfect example.

SSv: Sure.

Randy: His phrasing like … [Singing: "Bum, baduuum. Bum, baduuum. Badabumda-Badabumda"] Like the Steve Reich-thing, y’know? But that definitely sounds like Sufjan. Y’know: [Singing: "Bum, baduuum. Bum, baduuum."]

SSv: [Laughs]

Randy: [Laughs]

SSv: Yeah. Well, even in terms of meter and repetition. Like, 7/4 is sort of not that big of a deal now — which I think is pretty sweet. There was an interesting interview with Thurston Moore interviewing Steve Reich and basically they talked about some of the stuff that was going on in New York at the time of Sonic Youth’s beginnings. As an early inspiration, Moore talked about repetition and the audacity to try out different sounds that were unconventional but were also new and interesting sounds. You don’t really connect the dots between Steve Reich and Sonic Youth until you think about the deep history found in New York — similar sounds coming out of the amplifiers that were being presented in concert halls.

But I agree he’s an important contemporary composer — he’s getting older now. I got to see him for his 70th birthday performance at Carnegie Hall. It was pretty amazing. But he’s still doing it from what I hear from you.

Randy: Yeah, when I saw him he looked in really great shape. [Laughs]. I don’t know … That band Battles and … all owe so much to Steve Reich too, y’know. I’ve just heard the albums. I like Battles a lot. When I heard [it] I was like, this sounds like if there was a band making dance Steve Reich music, y’know?

SSv: We talked a little bit about past artists that have been important to you, is there a contemporary band in particular that you’re really excited about? Besides Steve Reich.

Randy: [Laughs] One of my favorite artists lately is — I love Four Tet. I love his music and I’m always excited about whatever he does. I’ve really been into Tim Hecker lately. He’s like an ambient/noise — it’s beautiful music. As bands go, I’m a huge Grizzly Bear fan. From Yellow House — I thought that was one of the greatest albums made so far of our generation. It’s really beautiful and really simple. Really great. I love Nico Moley, I’m obsessed with him. He’s great.

SSv: As far as ambient/noise stuff goes, have you ever checked out this band from Cleveland called Emeralds?

Randy: Yeah, they just played in Detroit. They played with Wolf Eyes and it was on the same night as Blowout here in Detroit. And I really wanted to see it so bad but we were playing at the same time.

SSv: I’m sort of a newcomer to them but it’s also exciting for me since I grew up in Ohio. So, hearing new artists from Ohio — Times New Viking is another good example — making really good art is unexpectedly exciting.

Randy: I really like the band that’s joining Animal Collective right now, Grouper. I really love her music. I’ve been really into that right now. Her music’s so pretty, it’s like … The opening of the second track to Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill is just gorgeous. It’s really classical guitar/noisy/ambient/choral music is what it reminded me of — with a little bit of singer-songwriter in there.

SSv: Have you ever heard of this band Extra Life from Brooklyn?

Randy: Yeah, we were supposed to play with them here at Merl Cab in Detroit and the show fell through.

SSv: They’re a really great band.

Randy: They got a new director at Merl Cab. It wasn’t a show we could get together that short of notice. We tried to do it at Scrummage after that and Scrummage is working on a new space right now so it just wasn’t ready, y’know? I like them a lot. I got into them because of Nat Baldwin.

SSv: Yeah, the bassist. Really awesome.

Randy: Yeah, from Dirty Projectors. I loved MVP, I thought it was such a good album. I really like Extra Life’s music a lot. Ah, I really like LyVynne right now. That victim’s really, really good. … What was that one thing I heard that blew me away? … Gosh. I’m really into Gang Gang Dance right now. I kind of rediscovered them. I went and bought everything I could find from them on vinyl. I like their music a lot. I saw them live at CMJ and I was really, really impressed.

The ideas are like crazy. Every song, you’ll hear a part that should be like, a hit song. Every song. They’re like twenty parts like that! And I just love how spastic it is.