On a cold March day our small team of five went to see KNTLR play a gig in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We wanted to find out what made this band so special. Unfortunately, what we found was a very polite, but large bouncer telling us that we were too young to get inside the club. If you didn’t know, it sucks being twenty years old in New York City! Luckily, we got in contact with Mike, the vocalist and he let us in a nearby studio for a little interview.
We decided to conduct a group interview for the duo. Something we haven’t done before. At first I was against it, but I couldn’t help the curiosity of my eager team. Nervous, I asked the first question many rookie interviewers ask.
“How did you come up with your name?”
The duo replied “There were so many shows that we would f**kin’ play and of course they were loud and people were drinking and a girl asked, “Oh what’s the name of your band?” And when we responded, “The Press”. She said, “Depressed”. And we thought, “Oh f*ck! This is the worst…”
KNTRLR: No one wants to rock to depressed tunes.
Gabrielle Amani: So what exactly was the name? The Press?
KNTRLR: The Press. Yeah. Which is the worst thing to have as a name…
Gabrielle Amani: Yeah that’s a hard name to go by.
KNTRLR: You could put quotes around it and everything, but you might as well not do that.
Gabrielle Amani: How long did you use that name?
KNTRLR: We stopped around 2010.
Gabrielle Amani: So why did you guys change the name to the current band name?
KNTRLR: Because the other band name was so f*cking hard to find I wanted something that was new and didn’t exist. So I had seen someone take the vowels out and sh*t and then “CNT” that gets a little weird, you know?
Gabrielle Amani: True. So what does it all stand for?
KNTRLR: Controller.
Gabrielle Amani: Ohhhhhhh, but doesn’t controller start with C?
KNTRLR: Yeah, but then you get close to the other C word.
Gabrielle Amani: What’s the other C-word?
Then Justine, our videographer shouts “CUNT”!
KNTRLR: People have asked us, “Are you guys Cunt rulers?”
Everyone : *laughs*
Gabrielle Amani: That would be a great name as well.
KNTRLR: It’d be a different genre. A lot more edgy. We would definitely have to re-brand.
Gabrielle Amani: Speaking of re-branding, you guys are experimenting with a new sound. What made you guys want to change your sound up in the first place?
KNTRLR: So, the record we put out a while ago, we started it in 2011. The last song on the record is now 4 years old. There were other songs that were also finished last February. It’s more electronic stuff because we used to play in rock bands and we didn’t really know how to make the music we wanted to make.
Gabrielle Amani: So, you guys always wanted to do electronic?
KNTRLR:
Mike: I did. We grew up playing guitar and drums and we always wanted to make f*cking dance music, beats, and all that. Anything I do is f*cking terrible, so it’s really just trying to relearn how to use all those things now so we can kind of use it.’
Gabrielle Amani: So, what type of sound would you say you want to sound like? Who do you guys listen to that you draw your electronic inspiration from?
KNTRLR:
Mike: If I could make any I would just copy Boys Noize, have you ever heard of that guy?
Gabrielle Amani: Yeah! What is it about his sound that you guys like?
KNTRLR: There is so much f*cking good sh*t, it’s hard to say, but a lot of it gets kind of gross and it’s kind of lame. The vocals are always…….. wack. I mean, it’s always cheesy, but it’s dance music and dance music doesn’t really take on complex issues, you know.
Gabrielle Amani: Yeah, I guess you could put some serious lyrics in there.
KNTRLR: I think that was kind of the idea as well. Where so much of that music is dancing group base, we are trying to also include song writing elements as well and have it infused in because we still like “lyrics.”Although it’s fun to go big shows with lights, I would like some of that stuff as well.
Gabrielle Amani: Do you guys want to stray away from the traditional guitar, drums like garage metal rock or do you not want to be associated with that anymore?
KNTRLR:
Mike: I’m pretty sure some cool seventeen year old kid is cool with that but I just don’t want to hear those sounds anymore. They’re kind of old. If you hear old swing music, you hear those instruments and stuff and it just feels dated. I hear the guitar now and I just feel older than I am.
Chuck: People have done so many great things with it that it’s hard to take it to somewhere new. It’s more exciting to mess around with electronic sounds and just new stuff.Even if you play the guitar you can end up taking it to the computer and chopping it up in different ways. The computer is infinite.
Mike: There’s so much cool young guys producing hip-hop tracks now, like it’s f*cking awesome, with whole bunch of different textures coming from all these different places its just infinitely more interesting than guitar and rock. There’s so much cool stuff and with SoundCloud & YouTube , a new sound comes up and everyone just fucking eats it and in three months you have so much sub genres and things like that.
Gabrielle Amani: So when you guys do make music, what is the process like? Who do you listen to, what do you do, where do you go, do you exercise?
KNTRLR:
Mike: I definitely don’t exercise, please don’t let me talk about my insecurities.
Gabrielle Amani: No, you’re good.
(laughter)
KNTRLR: It starts a with… I mean it’s still song base, at least the stuff on this record, its starts with a beat or sound. I think it’s all the same in different medium – if you were to write a story or do a painting, it’s that one little kernel that you get excited about and you built everything off of that. Maybe its different for other people. Maybe people sit down like veno who sits down and write a sad song about a dog
Gabrielle Amani: When you guys were younger, who did you guys listen to? What songs or artists got you excited?
Chuck: That’s a tough question because you have different chapters in your life and different things that have different meanings. My junior high teenage years were like Led Zepplin and Jimi Hendrix, then my angst teenage years were like punk and angry music. I’m a drummer and always have been a drummer, so I like a lot of groove based stuff like dance music, but even dance music can go back to when James brown was considered dance music. I think at some point the two of us have played in so many different bands we just wanted to try something different. We didn’t know sh*t about how electronic music works and we still probably don’t. But we just figured we’d f*cking forced ourselves to figure out how to do something and we’ll figure it out at some point. I don’t know if we have yet but it’s a process.
Gabrielle Amani: How long have you guys known each other? You both played in different bands, so how did you meet? Was it love at first sight? (laughs)
KNTRLR:
Chuck: About 8 years. We were friends. And it was (laughs) yes—we bonded over our love for early 90’s R&B. SWV, Real Mccoy, –Those cheesy early 90’s music. That’s where we first realized we liked the same things musically and felt passionately about it.
Mike: We loved the shit out of it.
Our Favorite
KNTRLR:
Mike: I give up (laughs). I hit rock bottom and then I come back up. It’s like a pain mechanism. It’s so unpleasant to not be doing it that you just keep doing it.
Chuck: I never apply giving up to music, just to other things: a job or New York is so tough – but the music, I can’t even fathom the though of giving that up. It’s just a given like ‘Nope, it’s not going away.’
At the end of the interview, what we learned was surprisingly how passionately they felt about their art and the length someone would go to be able to pursue their dreams. When you think of Lawyers you wouldn’t think that they would be in a rock band playing live instruments. Well this new age musical duo isn’t your ordinary alternative rock musicians. That is why Charlie, the drummer, and Mike, the vocalist from KNTRLR are one of our favorite new obsessions.
Keep up with KNTRLR on Twitter and Facebook @KNTRLR
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @MEFeater
Subscribe to our mailing list