Ganglians' Invasion

Sacramento youngsters Ganglians blasted out two records on the Woodsist label last year: the self-titled 12” was all West Coast trashed garage pop, whilst the full length Monster Head Room was lucid and pastoral, way up a different psych mountain and frankly mind blowing in it’s clarity. Out on Souterrain Transmissions in the UK, it’s a whole other side to acid-drenched psych, coming off more like the darker side of The Beach Boys than scuffed-up contemporaries like Wet Hair or Times New Viking. Dazed Digital spoke to singer Ryan Grubbs ahead of a UK tour about these lo-fi/hi-fi changes, drugs, a new release on Night People Records and his New Age interest.

Dazed Digital: What made you ditch the super scuffed up vibes from stuff like "Rats Man" on Monster Head Room?
Ryan Grubbs: I like the clear and lucid dream-style production on the newer one. Both of the albums were kinda going on at the same time, Monster Head Room was our first diligent attempt at creating something along the lines of what we would want to listen to, like a relic of introspective headphone songs where as our debut was all about in the moment live and spontaneous songs, some from my days making bedroom recordings and some from the seat of our pants as a full band.

DD: How did the recording happen?
Ryan Grubbs: Our friend Andy offered to record us over a week where the roommates were gone and we jumped at the opportunity to really pow wow down at our house and make something special and dense that would grow on the listener if they were in tune with what we had to say and the kind of sonics we were interested in at the time, which was primarily 60's studio bands that never really played live, for example The Millenium, Joe Meek, and echos of lucid dreams, all of which were high-fi not because of super amazing equipment (although at the time it was) but because if you turned up the volume on your stereo you could hear creeping things under the surface in what you thought were lulls in the songs before, but if you tune into the void (to not be and to be confused with our song of that title) you can always hear faint echos of things, and that's why your brain is always one step ahead or behind your ears. At the same time, none of us had done anything like this before and only knew how to work a four track so it came out charming from a thoughtful stand point I think.

DD: In terms of those psych-garbage sonics that can cover up a lot of garage pop and Californian pop these days, do you ever feel an urge to do stuff way differently?
Ryan Grubbs: Not that you wouldn't just do what comes to you naturally, just wondering if you get effected by that outside influence. Everyone's influenced by everyone these days but we're definitely not trying to be like anyone else. Eat Skull were one of the first bands we played with and they saw something akin to them in us and vice versa. There's just a brutal honesty about them and it made it okay for us just to embrace what we were already doing. We're not trying to be the life of the party, we're trying to make a song about everyone at the party and at home crying. If you don't worry about being different you just end up being different but that doesn’t mean we won't write a song about wanting to fit in and sucking at it.

DD: I talked to Rob from Eat Skull heaps in an interview about the sun and Portland being way too rainy. Those guys seemed to get mega affected by the weather, does it have a big palpable effect on yr songs?
Ryan Grubbs: Oh yeah, I feel like I get a lot more done when the weather's nice. I eat up sunshine like I eat food. Kyle on the other hand has a thing for rain, I don’t get it, he's generally more brooding to, but he definitely agrees that the sun has a big place in our music. Rob I think is allot like me in the respect that the weather really does effect your being and mood and what comes out of you in the song writing process. I think a move to a different climate would change the sound of our band, but you still write songs out of longing to and those have they're own uniqueness because of the irony of it.
 
DD: What is Sacramento like compared to the rest of California?
Ryan Grubbs: Sacramento is like a mash up between Mississippi, San Francisco, Oakland, and the town in The Music Man with Matthew Broderick in pinstripe.
 
DD: Do you guys do Ayahuasca very much these days?
Ryan Grubbs: We would if we could get our hands on it. Most urban shaman these days work at video stores and are too creepy and weird to be trusty guides.  

Do you drink kombucha very much?
Ryan Grubbs: Hahah, yes. We all drink Kombucha, even Kyle who doesn't believe in the organic/whole foods hype. We're winning him over though. I like the Super Fruit one but I used to like the green one cause I thought because it tasted worse it was healthier.  

DD: How do you feel you respond or react to mainstream culture? I have personally felt that trashy sonics from you guys, Eat Skull and The Hospitals is super relevant re: living in the city, the fact there is shitty stuff in the world but also that there is heaps of rad stuff so it's like carving joy out of the garbage.
Ryan Grubbs: Exactly, our practice room is like the trash compacter in Star Wars it's so cluttered and there's no space so it's very confrontational, but we're all naturally very euphoric and relaxed so there's a good mixture. Sacramento is beautiful in parts because of all the trees and Victorians but it's also a vapid ghost town at night with huge clubs that rarely live up to all they're expensive lighting and valet parking. I use an acoustic guitar with a giant crack in it from when someone fell on it at the beach, it still has sand in it. Alex just got a new drum set but his old one was literally held together by tape. Kyle and Adrian have pieced together equipment. We never bought equipment to be in a band, we literally are a garage band in every way except we started in an attic instead of a garage, where we found most of our gear. But we like beauty in our songs so it has it's own quality.
 
DD: I'm real excited to hear yr stuff on Night People; what is that gonna be like? It seems like a perfect match, I like how insular and bedroomy it is on there.
Ryan Grubbs: The Night People stuff when we get around to rounding it out will be very different. It will definitely be very bedroom oriented and be built around interesting cheap keyboards and stuff, very akin to our self titled.

Do you feel yourselves being pulled in any other musical directions?
Ryan Grubbs: I feel like we're really starting to come into ourselves now, we really understand each other as a band and how everyone else thinks. We've started working on a new album and all I can say it's going to be a big step up in songwriting. We for awhile dabbled in harder darker territory and now are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and just documenting everything along the way for an album. It's going to be all over the place, there's more R'n'B, and hip hop influence as well as love, loss, confusion, and meloncholy, and of course once we actually get around to recording it will really take on it's own life.

DD: Have you heard Fotheringay? Weird 60s psych folk band that Monster Head Room reminds me of. Super amazing baroque cover art.
Ryan Grubbs: I checked it out and fell in love with the Ballad of Ned Kelly, it's a very beautiful ballad that we can all appreciate. It's funny because around the time I was writing allot of Monster Head Room I was listening to quite a bit of Sandy Denny bands like Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and even an offshoot band she did called Trader Horne which I highly recommend seeking out. I definitely see how it's influence seeped into the album.

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