Last week was a good week to be Krill. A new single and a slot on Boston Calling’s May lineup? It’s been almost three years since the trio put out Alam No Hris, and we have been counting our lucky stars that this band is still together today. Bob Records sat down with Krill’s Jonah Furman to talk about writing, how many times the band could have ended, and how everybody won’t stop talking about that damn ball of mozzarella.

Bob Records: What was the expectation when you descended into your Somerville basement to record Alam No Hris? Were these the first songs that Krill ever recorded for public consumption?

Jonah Furman: Well the first stuff we ever recorded was in summer 2010, and we put a couple of EPs up on Bandcamp and Myspace (for real). I don’t know what our expectations/ideas were. That feels like a lifetime ago… Like, we didn’t even really realize that bands went on tour. I mean, like, Weezer did. And a couple friends had done it, but just like 3 shows in 10 days, mostly just road tripping and stuff like that. It took us a long time to understand the basic infrastructure of being a band. So no, I don’t think we had any motives or visions about what would happen with the songs or recordings or any of that. That didn’t come until like, I don’t know, 2 or 2.5 years ago, when we really started playing shows w/ any regularity.

BR: What was the writing process for the songs on Lucky Leaves like? Did it differ from how the songs on Alam No Hris were constructed? Were there new goals with these newer songs or was the mindset similar to the previous recording? Why did you decide to record this outside of the basement and with outside help?

JF: Writing process is a tricky thing to answer… I mean, it basically always starts with a phrase and/or a riff and then gets built out from there… that essential process hasn’t changed. Alam No Hris was songs written over a couple years, and Lucky Leaves were written a lot closer together, mostly over, say, 9 months, with one or two exceptions.

There were still no goals, really. It wasn’t until the thing was done that we even considered doing anything other than just posting it on the internet. And in terms of like “craft,” the themes were more cohesive and together, the songs having been written generally closer together & thus more interconnected in some ways…. but no, we weren’t “setting out” to do anything like that. And the band was just still so new…. we were really only then solidifying what Krill even sounded like, how we write, how we play, all that. I don’t think Aaron even bought his first distortion pedal until after we recorded and released Lucky Leaves.

BR: When did the relationship with Exploding in Sound begin? Prior to them releasing Lucky Leaves on vinyl, what format had that album been available through before?

JF: We knew of EIS through Speedy Ortiz, who were friends of ours — our first drummer, Luke, actually introduced Sadie (Speedy singer/guitarist) to Darl (Speedy bassist), and our first album came out on the same day as their first full-band thing, I believe… I think I was at Matt Robidoux’s first show with Speedy. Anyhow, point being, we go back with them, and they put their thing out on [EIS]. Dan I think wanted to release Lucky Leaves on [EIS] but the whole thing about “Krill forever” was that we were going to break up once the album was out, since Luke was moving to London.

So anyway, my friend Mike loaned us $2,000 instead and we pressed it up ourselves. The record plant sent us 500 jackets but only 350 records, so we sold CD’s in the big record sleeves as a gag. Also “USB stick in mozzarella ball” which was a joke that people never really got over. I thought it was funny! It’s weird how in the age of basically free, streaming digital music, we have to re-corporealize things & re-commodify things that, against all of history, managed to undo their commodification. This is kind of going off on a tangent but it’s also funny how people feel the need to reinvent this “audiophile” label to justify their consumerism/affinity for artifacts (language directly lifted from Magic: The Gathering).

So I guess we were kind of railing against that. There’s a lot of stupid conventions in the “being a band” world. I guess being outside of the mainstream/”necessary” economy/culture reveals just how made-up all this stuff is. Anyway. Exploding in Sound has been a huge part of our identity, and once we told Dan we weren’t breaking up after all he immediately offered to release whatever next things we worked on, including re-pressing Lucky Leaves. I remember telling him in a Facebook chat conversation I was thinking about writing a concept EP about Pile and he immediately was like “Cool! When do you wanna release it?” I was like “Dude, I haven’t even thought of like any riffs or lyrics yet”

BR: How many songs were recorded in the Steve Hears Pile in Malden and Bursts into Tears sessions? At this point, did you know that Luke would be leaving? What was the state of the band and the mindset going into these sessions?

JF: Yeah, we knew Luke would be leaving I think right around the time Lucky Leaves was recorded. That was I think early Feb of 2013. Then Steve… was recorded in August of that year, six months later. I think the mindset was kind of “one last hoorah,” and sort of a farewell. There was a brutal song we never recorded, barely even wrote fully, about the band breaking up, but once Ian agreed to join, we sort of shifted, thinking about the continuation rather than the demise of Krill. I don’t know if that’s an answer.

BR: Having just finished a new record scheduled for release in early 2015, what can you say was most different about the recording process compared to past releases? This being the first record to feature Ian on drums, did you notice any major differing approaches from one drummer to the other?

SF: Oh yeah, I mean, Ian and Luke are just totally different drummers, different people, different writers, different performers. Both awesome, obviously, and both have shaped Krill. A lot of it probably came in the writing, and I’m sure Ian and Luke and other drummers could tell you what about the playing styles were different, but it’s hard for me to talk/think about. I just know they sound different and write very different kinds of parts. About the process generally, this was the first time we didn’t work with friends (though we became tight with Justin over the course of the sessions), and he was just a consummate pro… He had an amazing way of understanding what we were talking about with our muddled descriptions, and he both moved us along and made sure we got it all done & took the time to indulge & clarify our ambitions for the thing. Dude rules. Cheesetique.

BR: Looking back upon all 4 releases, what is something you’ll continue to practice in recording your 5th? Has there been a large learning curve from the first album to this one?

JF: Lord Jesus, our 5th. Who knows. Always want it to be a progression… Getting to the 5th thing seems like we’ll be squarely in the territory of churning shit out, which makes me pretty wary… When the production cycle just becomes a way to prop up a lifestyle, things get tricky, the songs & records become means rather than ends, which is the source of all shittiness. But as for just how to make the songs, I think we all know way better “what this is”. We have gotten increasingly ambitious, and I don’t think that’s going to change. Hopefully no bullshit external factors fuck with our motivations or whatever and we can still do the universe-creating that I think we have always tried for.

Krill forever.

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