Aljera.com's Yu Miyagawa with The Octopus Project

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Yu: First off, I would like to say thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions. The first few questions I have are about your live shows. I've been to two of them, and an important part of the show was obviously the films that play in the background. Can you tell me why you decided to show images during your live shows and how you think this affects the audience's response to your music?

TOP: At shows, we're interested in getting the audience as enveloped into what's happening on stage as we can, and projections are an exciting way for us to do this. Most of our songs are wordless, so we're always looking for new ways to engage the audience, and flashing lights, colors and weird images seem to work pretty well.


Toto and I studied film in college, so I'm glad we get a chance to explore that arena. We also, in general, approach the band as an extended art project where anything goes. Any excuse to make something is welcomed!


Hopefully, the videos and everything we do onstage add up to some greater entity that people enjoy.


Yu: How do you decide what film to show? Who are your favorite filmmakers?

TOP: Only a third or so of the films we show are made by other people. Most of the videos were made by us, so it's a pretty easy decision - we just make it. But, the ones that we've acquired from other folks come from different places. We like stuff that's colorful, weird and can tell a story without words. Most of the time it's pretty abstract. We also don't want the videos to detract too much from what we're doing. It has to all work together and be a cohesive unit.


My all-time favorites are Werner Herzog, Charles and Ray Eames, and Michel Gondry.

Yu: There's a great quote from Neutral Milk Hotel about music that I'll always remember, and Jeff Mangum says that he sees a film strip moving around his mind whenever he writes music. And it seems that you've taken that literally. How do moving images influence the songs you write?

TOP: We've certainly applied the filmmaking approach that we learned in school to making other things in life as well. With a film, you have a beginning, a middle, an end, and a whole bunch of ups and downs in between. Ideally, you'd like to take the viewer on a little trip outside of their normal world for a period of time, and have them come out on the other end feeling differently than they did when they started. Maybe it's happy, sad, confused, or whatever. But, I think of our songs as tiny little mini-movies that have stories and arches that hopefully convey certain feelings to people. I also think that since most of our songs don't have words, the audience is in a sense allowed to make up their own stories and fill in the blanks themselves.


Yu: Now that I've asked a little bit about the live shows, with all the layering and instruments you use in the creation of your music, do you see yourselves as headphone music?

TOP: I think of us as a band for all different occasions. I can only hope that people like listening to our music cranked on a million while jumping around their house, and also while lying in bed with headphones. Every song we do is pretty layered, but we try keep a good balance of hot melodies, crazy noise and sparkly background stuff for maximum enjoyment.


Yu: There's been an increasing popularity in the instrumental genre in the last couple years. I remember in high school, it was Godspeed You Black Emperor, in freshman year of college, it was Explosions in the Sky, and now, there's other amazing bands like The Grails, This Will Destroy You, who are coming up with these forward thinking ideas, which is fantastic. What was it that drew your band to create this type of music?

TOP: We never really talked about it. We formed the band as an outlet to make crazy sounds, and didn't consciously think about whether or not we were going to sing. It just never really came up. I don't put any sort of distinction between music with singing and music without singing, so it felt natural. However, we're interested in exploring whatever avenue we can musically, and have recently started singing on a few songs. The last song on our newest record has singing on it, as well as two new songs that we're going to release as a single in the UK in April.


Yu: This is a three part question. Obviously, instrumental music has been around for thousands of years, way before anything with lyrics. As a result, do you think the audience's response to your music is more intuitive? For example, people love certain bands because of the lyrics. Let's take a fan that loves your band because of the way you incorporate and build on several melodies at a time, but also loves someone like Iron and Wine because he writes good lyrics. How differently do you think the fan is approaching your music as opposed to someone with great lyrics, or is it different at all? And lastly, how different do you think your song writing process would be if you were writing songs that had lyrics?

TOP: This goes back to what I mentioned in the previous answer, but I don't think there is any distinction between music with singing and music without singing for me. I don't know how other people feel about it, but I don't separate things out in my mind like that. In general, I think that many people aren't as excited about music without lyrics because they're used to singing, and having some words to relate to, and that's totally fine. But, if someone is a fan of our music, I don't think they're making that distinction either. I'm hoping that something in our music has connected with them on a gut level, and they can just enjoy it without worrying about what we're trying to say.


The songs that we've written with lyrics are written slightly differently. Only in the sense that we are adding lyrics, and our actual voices to the recordings. At this point, we've only written 3 songs with vocals, but each one started as the complete song (including the vocal melody), and we added the words and singing later. I think the songs could hold up without us singing on them and playing the melody on another instrument instead, but we chose to add singing because it felt right.


Yu: I've heard your band described as anything ranging from post-rock, to "indietronica", courtesy of Wikipedia. How do you reconcile all your influences into one cohesive sound? And do you ever feel that having too many sounds or influences can paralyze your songwriting?s

TOP: We never really think about ourselves in any style of music. We just throw together what we think sounds good and move on. It's definitely not a conscious effort to fit into any category. We're influenced by so many things that it's hard to grab a couple of things and say, "Well, I like Daft Punk, and I like Sonic Youth. How can I make these fit together?" It's more of a natural thing, where if it feels right, it will come out the way it needs to.


Yu: This is the last question, and again, thank you for your time. This kind of relates to the question above. You use a lot of different electronic and digital instruments in creating your music, and you combine that with the more traditional instrument of the guitar. How has this wide range of sounds influenced the songs you write?

TOP: The world is full of sound, and no one has come even close to exploring every sound or combination of sounds, and it's our goal to be some of the ones doing the exploring. We all grew up playing guitar, so we have a tendency to use that a lot (plus it's such a cathartic instrument to play live!), but using electronics is incredibly exciting! You're only limited to your imagination. In general, we're aiming towards creating something we've (and hopefully no one else) never created before with each new song, and having an infinite range of sounds to draw from is inspiring. I think the influence is in the freedom to create whatever we want, so we are normally attracted to something that sounds new to us.

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