Interview Constellations return with “90’s Wildlife” 

Constellations got its start as a danceable post-punk outfit, dropping the commendable Sistering EP and garnering plenty of positive critical attention. Later they added Cory Brown on synthesizers, morphing briefly into something weirder and more electronic with the followup EP, Necrogeister, then disintegrating quietly shortly thereafter. This April they returned as a “nationwide collective” (current live personnel: Cory Brown, Mark Weaver, Mark Shusterman, and Brian Marcus, with additional collaborators Zak Brown, Dave Hart, and Brandon Weaver) after a several-year hiatus, with the intriguing Ladycoast EP and promises to release additional, weirder material—a promise that’s now been fulfilled with the release of “90’s Wildlife,” a twisty, complex electronic spasm of a track (embedded below) that recalls some of the more fucked up (and thus finest) work of Autechre or Aphex Twin. The A.V. Club caught up with leader Cory Brown to talk about the group’s evolution, new direction, and future plans.

The A.V. Club: You called this current incarnation of Constellations a “nationwide collective.” What exactly does that mean, and how did it come to be?

Cory Brown: When we broke up, like four years ago or so, I started doing Widowers with Mike Marchant. I like Mike and love his music, but I didn’t feel like it was fulfilling my potential aesthetically. We had a bunch of stuff we’d recorded just sitting on a hard drive and we decided to do something with it. Zak’s in New York and Dave’s in Chicago now, and both of them have contributed to the releases in one form or another. A lot of [who does what] is ambiguous, and I want it to be ambiguous—the ambiguity in who’s doing what is intentional. I don’t think it matters who does what. I don’t think that we consider any of us leading it. In terms of producing it maybe, I am orchestrating it, putting it all together. We are all working towards a singular vision.

AVC: The act’s come a long way from where it started, in terms of sound and style.

CB: Yes, it evolved. It’s a lot less about genre to us. The best way I can describe it is manifesting really bizarre emotions that aren’t normally felt: weird combinations of emotion, like being angry and horny at the same time. [It’s about] weird juxtapositions of dials and sounds to find something new, to explore new sounds. It’s very visual too, how we think about our music.

AVC: It seems heavily influenced by some of the more out-there electronic music acts, especially Authechre.

CB: Absolutely. Autechre changed my whole view of what could be done with sound, not even just with music. Listening to their albums repeatedly—which I think is essential with that music because it takes your brain a long time to process—changed the way I think about music. It’s like Westerners can’t enjoy gamelan music [at first] because it takes them so long to get used to the timbres and pitches used. It reprograms your brain. Now it’s all about the sounds. That’s really all I’m concerned with—psychedelic elements and electronic elements. There are elements of pop music in there, but it’s usually really camouflaged.

AVC: Bring us up to speed on the the band’s recent releases and what’s coming up next.

CB: We released the Ladycoast EP, that was two tracks and two remixes, and now there’s “90’s Wildlife.” We set up on Bandcamp, they’re both on there. That’s where we’ll be putting most of our releases until we can get the money to do some vinyl. We’re trying to get money together to press a record. We’re talking about doing a split [with Hollagramz]. We’ll probably do one more release after this that’s two tracks and two remixes. The next one is called Savage Orb. It’s almost done, we’re waiting for the remixes and figuring out what’s going on with the Hollagramz deal.

We’re also going to start playing live shows again. We want to play on New Year’s Eve and we’ve been putting together a live set with all of our new material. We’re having fun with it and making it a really face-melting live experience. It’s fun to put it out there, but really I just want to focus on making music that conjures or invokes peculiar feelings or even visages of something supernatural.

AVC: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

CB: I feel like Denver, the rock scene in Denver, a large part of it is very stale, or even dead. People are just rolling around in this husk of dead indie rock and Americana. It’s a bore, man.  I think electronic music, at least in the indie rock scene, it’s starting to weave its way in. I feel like if we were trying to do what we’re doing now when we initially wrote it, it wouldn’t have been as easy for us to get people to accept it. Now I think it’s going to be easier to get people into it. There’s always been dance music and dance music communities, but I feel like there’s more of a blur [between the indie and dance scenes] now in the local scene.

You can download the Ladycoast EP and “90’s Wildlife” from the Constellations Bandcamp site. Until the New Year’s Eve show, you can catch Cory Brown in his DJ guise at Real Is A Feeling, Nov. 26 at the Meadowlark (2701 Larimer St., 303-293-0251).