by Brad Rose

Erich Breimhurst: Parents' records, Beatles, Simon and Garfunkle, The Monkees. I picked up the guitar in high school and played many classic rock-styled songs. Then I heard Syd Barrett's solo stuff, and Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask" and went nuts from there.

Jeff Carpineta: Led Zepplin all the way, and Hendrix "Axis Bold as Love", plus my dad has a wedding band. I took his ‘76 Jazzbass out from under his bed and hit it. I have a bass cabinet that’s vagina-shaped, and I used to stick my head inside and love low-E distortion feedback until my hair stood up on end. And then came the Casio SK1.

Norm Fetter: My uncle Joey, who had a band in the ‘70s called "Moot Point" gave me a really horrible hand-me-down acoustic guitar when I was about 10 years old, with the worst action ever. I mean the strings were about 3/4 of an inch off of the fretboard. I fought with that guitar, not knowing that the strings should be much, much closer to the neck, continually slicing my fingers open, really bleeding all over the damn thing. Later I picked up a Peavy Stratocaster knock-off with a killer little Rage amp that I still use occasionally. Big early bands were whatever my parents had in their massive collection, all the usual ‘60s and ‘70s stuff. My dad had scuffed copies of Freak Out! and Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and I played them both until the grooves died. Then the ‘90s happened, and I discovered the indie scene and realized that there was so much more music being made than what was available to us at suburban outlets like Sam Goody.

NF: Jeff and I had always talked about playing together since we met in college at Penn State. Erich and I went to high school together where we were in equally shitty rival bands His was called Couch Trip, and mine was Nine Days' Wonder, totally unaware of the German band of the same name. All three of us have always done bedroom, four-track recordings of our own experiments, but it wasn't until '04 that we came together collectively.

Fast Forward, and Jeff and I were experimenting with an electronic improv duo with SK1s, samplers sound effects records, when we started spending more time with Erich after he moved back to Pennsylvania after a jaunt in San Fran. The three of us, plus Jenn got together in March of '04 for a heavy session in the Honeymoon Studio. That first night became our first album, Barrel Vault.

NF: Contrary to what some have said, the name has nothing to do with my initials. The name Niagara Falls came along with the formation of our label, Honeymoon Music. We had recorded together as a band for the first time, and knew we wanted that to be the label's first release. We're all less water kids and more forest, but Niagara Falls as an image or force seemed to capture some of our sound and structure, or non-structure.

NF: 98.6% is improvised. We have had discussions about how to start a set, moods that we want to work through during a performance, or images to use a jumping off point, but that's as far as it goes. We've tried to make a diagram once while listening back to a recording in order to duplicate it live. It was a complete disaster. The calculation felt forced and false. Sure, we could've worked them into good songs, but the little magick and coincidence wouldn't be there.
The highs are when it seems to really hit; when we're thinking and moving as one collective organism. But that doesn't always happen, and sometimes it's shitty shit.

EB: You can enter another realm of music spirit unbound by traditional pop structure.

JC: Improv is amazing to me because I can access and deliver a feeling on the fly that probably wouldn't have been built into a song. It also makes us listen to each other. Improv's weird like that, you have to tune in close and then you stop thinking altogether after a bit. It's just a whole sound, a gestalt, and sometimes I can't remember a thing after or I lose track of who did what.

JC: Some of the best things in life are the fruit of tension and release.... We gather tension, twist it and roll it, new sounds appear. We expose fury and wickedness then move to light.

NF: That's perfect, Jeff. Tension only exists in relation to the release. Tension without release leaves us and an audience feeling unfullfilled, constipated. But mad joyous release after periods of tensions can be totally fucking orgasmic.

NF: Ah, the drone. The basis of all sound. For us, the drone is the basis of everything. It is both the most ancient of sounds and the most futuristic, but more importantly, it is the Now. The drone encompasses all these times, and is therefore timeless. We aim to exist in the Now, to acknowledge the present and draw it out. Finding the intricacies of the Now Drone and blowing them up, microscopically, is a current quest of ours. We want to draw out momentary existence infinitely.

Psychedelia is mired down in history and has been bastardized. Just go onto Myspace or Pitchfork and do a search for "psychedelic". It's as overly used as "freak-folk". The original definition was "mind manifesting", but it was quickly turned into a marketing term which is where most of this confusion comes from. For us, transcendence is key over psychedelia. By transcendence, I mean crafting an atmosphere within which people can experience total freedom. This is tied in closely with the Now Drone. When we are totally involved and focused on the Now, there's no room for questioning the war, work, rent, sickness; all there is is you and your immediate environment. It's not escapist though, because taking these moments of Now imbue us with energy and focus during the rest of our day. This isn't anything new; Buddhist monks and others have been doing this for centuries. We're just doing it as three white dudes using electricity, and piecing together our instrumentation from the detritus of culture.

NF: Two big ones that I always come back to are Journey in Satchidananda, by Alice Coltrane, and In Den Gärten Pharaos, by Popol Vuh. I discovered them both at roughly the same time years ago, but they've continued to open up to me in countless magical ways with each listen. Both have a certain weightlessness that simultaneously draws you into itself but also allows for listener introspection.

You can't deny the spirit and spirituality inherent in both album, and although Niagara Falls definitely accesses a spiritual realm, we wouldn't define ourselves as a spiritual band. We are, in the sense that Walter Benjamin describes, in a constant state of "awakening". Slipping between sleep and wake, including various degrees of waking, sometimes having vivid memory of events and scenes, other times being totally oblivious to what we experienced. This can be a smooth easy transition, or it can be a crashing, jolting one.

During a recent basement show of ours, we experienced an example of the crashing, jolting transition. We were about 10-15 minutes into the set, and we were just working into a steady groove of electronic loops mixed with other acoustic rhythms, when the electricity was suddenly tripped. Not only did all the lights in the place go out, but the loops and electronic components of our set up were viciously silenced. What was left was the pure acoustic sounds of the drum, the shakers and other percussion. After some time, for my perception it could have been five minutes as easily as one hour, the electricity came back on, and we were unexpectedly joined by the electronic aspects of our past. The path is the key, and it's never straight.

NF: I primarily play bass and occasionally synth and other noisemakers in Golden Ball. Personally it creates an essential musical balance. Niagara brings the formless, and Golden Ball brings the form. I've always worked in both minds, and have found it extremely fruitful to have Niagara and Golden Ball play off of each other. David (of Golden Ball) is also an incredible songwriter, and it's been so so great to work with him and the rest of the band. The new Golden Ball album, The Antique Barking Swirls of Dawn, will drop in early March, and we're really excited for it. Look for Golden Ball to hit the road shortly, and continue touring through the summer.

NF: Kevin and Nathaniel, who run the great Deep Water Acres, are good friends of ours, and early supporters of Niagara and all things Honeymoon Music. We were really jazzed when they asked us to share some disc space with them. The Clear Spots track Roach Beef Sandwich will rip your face off!

NF: I'm resolving to nurture the friendships, especially the musical ones, all around me, as well as learning to live with better balance.

NF: The beautiful death of the music industry!!! It truly kicked the bucket this year, and more and more people are recognizing that we can create alternate musical universes that upset the big boys. Sure, many of us have been doing this for years already, but it's beginning to break into the popular consciousness, and having farther-reaching effects. It's really a magical time to be creating music and living on the planet.

NF: Be kind to each other, and the planet, and listen to Fursaxa. Best wishes Brad, and Happy Year of the Pig!