Interview with Art Versus Industry

I'm just gonna put it out there. I'm not much of a fan of the whole industrial, goth-like rock. There are some bands I enjoy like The Birthday Massacre, Dommin and of course, the obvious Nine Inch Nails but usually I don't seek out that type of music. Those that know me know what can be categorized as a "Sarah band": pretty much anything that makes me want to shake my money-maker or covered in so much sugar coated goodness that it makes people want to gag.

I stumbled onto Art Versus Industry when vocalist Avi Ghosh added me on Facebook. I'm very selective about who I friend on any social media (except Twitter, of course). So when I got the friend request, I was like "Who is this guy? What is he about? Why is he adding me?" And like what people normally do, I checked out his profile. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see as most of it was private, but I found a link to his band's website. I took a listen and really enjoyed what I heard. It was very industrial, however, there was something more to it.

I sat down with Avi and his bandmates before one of their shows at Elysium a while back. I stuck out as I wore a pastel pink shirt with pastel polka dots in the venue with the unofficial dark tones only dress code. This band is somewhat new to Austin but I've noticed more people are starting to take notice. With the accompany light show at their performances, it's hard not to.

Instead of rehashing their background and what they sound like in this introduction, let's just get straight to the interview. And by the way, after accepting Avi's friend request, he's turned out to be more than just a dude with a band. He and his bandmates are pretty cool and HUMBLE. That's important.

You guys are a fairly new band. You formed in March '09.

Avi: Yeah technically.

So how did this line up get together?

Avi: Long story. Ok, I'm gonna let Matt explain how he got involved with this and I'll talk about how that happened.

Matt: Ok, well Avi has been doing music for about seven or eight years.

Avi: Way too long.

Matt: Releasing albums under Defy and Avi Ghosh and I first heard him back when I was in high school. I was probably a junior. I was amazed by his music and I sent him a message and we just kept in touch. Long story short, I was finishing up school. He offered me to audition for the band and I couldn't pass it up.

Avi: And you moved all the way...

Matt: And yeah, I moved here from New York Jersey, right outside of Philadelphia.

Because of the offer?

Matt: Because of this offer. Because I was such a huge fan and his art always inspired me. It's exactly everything that I've always wanted to do with my own art so it was the perfect opportunity. I couldn't pass it up.

Avi: It was one of those things that I wanted him to finish his degree. so like "You're not fucking moving out here until you get some sort of education." And after that, I was like "Fuck it. Pack your shit." I think the day after you graduated.

Matt: Literally, the last day, my last class, the following day, I moved. I even missed out on Nine Inch Nails to come down here. That's what happened

Avi: That's commitment.

That is commitment.

Nick: So then we got together. I moved to New York after I graduated from college and to be a big drummer out there. Whatever, try to make it. Didn't work. Came back. So I've been in a couple of bands and nothing was really sticking and nobody's really committed. Nothing was new so I wrote this long thing on Craigslist and this guy responds. So that's how we found each other. On Craigslist. We got together, he was still living in Arkansas?

Avi: Well technically, I was all over the place. I wasn't living in Little Rock at the time because I was living in Little Rock, Chicago, and somewhere in New York in Queens. I was traveling all over the place so I didn't have a place to live but my girlfriend lived here. She's like "Move to Austin" and I'm like fuck, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm not going to have a band. I don't have that. I don't know what I'm going to do. So get on Craigslist, see this kid's ad and I'm like hmm, this seems interesting. So I messaged him and we go and meet in this odd sort of Hooters-type situation.

Nick: Twin Peaks. It was awesome.

Avi: And I typically wouldn't never be found in a place like that.

You don't seem like Twin Peaks kind of guys.

Nick: I am. I kinda like it. What can I say? But yeah, so became really good friends. Actually he had me join the band and hadn't even played. Haven't even heard me play. Never. It was like done.

It was just from the ad.

Avi: When you met somebody, you have that sort of love at first sight moment and one thing lead to another, met him and it just love at first sight sort of thing. It's totally heterosexual, but we got along and before you knew it, it was magic.

Matt: I think my favorite part about having Munoz in the band aside from the fact that he's Munoz and that's awesome is that his musical influences are very drastically different from me and Avi. So it was great to have a completely different viewpoint coming in on this so that's pretty great.

Yeah. I think I read in an interview of Nick's, you said the album that made you want to be a musician was Thursday's "Full Collapse."

Nick: Yes. Oh yes.

I like that album too.

Avi: I love Thursday too.

Because obviously this music isn't Thursday...

Avi: Yeah, Not at all.

How did you get from that band to this?

Nick: It was really interesting. It was all because of (Avi). I was looking for something really different. I was really tired of playing drums with that sort of genres, looking for something new. And this was really a challenge because it's so different, so it pushed me out of my comfort zone. But I feel like I've grown a lot as a musician. And yeah, he loves keyboards so it kind of took place of guitars for the most part and it's been awesome.

And for you two, are there any bands you listen to that's different from this genre that people'd be surprised you listen to?

Avi: I personally love the Bee Gees. I'm serous but I love all kinds of music. If it's Elvis or... It's so weird because most people love the electronic stuff, but I like hip hop like old NWA records. Those are probably a bigger influence on anything out there to me. Like old Dre, old Snoop Dog, love that shit but I also like Thursday. And Green Day, one of my biggest influences growing up. I know it's scary to say that nowadays but it's kind of what they do now. The Offspring, all those punk rock spirit, like Amen, so I love music all across the board.

Matt: I'm trying to think of...

Avi: Ace of Base. Always. That's a whole influence. Don't forget Ace of Base.

Matt: I'm trying to think. I'm a very picky listener as far as what I actually have on my iPod so as far as anything that's really personally influenced me, I guess you could say... I mean this isn't too big a stretch like outside of what we do but lots of 90's alternative rock and some grunge but that's still, we have elements of that in our music.

Avi: We all like Nirvana. I like Nirvana.

Matt: But I mean Early Smashing Pumpkins when they were a grunge band. It was just the stuff I was listening to growing up. I didn't actually give this kind of music until around middle school and from there on, it will more my addiction(?). I can't really think of anything really outside of the box. Maybe old David Bowie when he was just awesome David Bowie.

Avi: Awesome.

And we'll talk about the music. I know people are set in their ways when it comes to genres and this genre has always been difficult with music fans. Not like music fans in general because those are the ones like "Whatever, I'll take it all in," but it always seems like this genres like "Eh, no."

Avi: It's definitely avant garde. It's kind of like how do you categorize a band that has wierd sort of rock and roll mixed with dirty hip hop, dirty south hip hop, mixed with I don't know industrial electronic 80's pop?

Matt: I think it's always a challenge because you don't want to be pigeonholed into something. As an avid listener of industrial music myself, I do understand that it is one scene some people may have a hard time getting into it or accepting things but that's not to put anyone down. I mean, I love it but I think one thing that really excites me about this is just certain different combinations and elements musically ranging from like he said dirty hip hop and rock and electronica all mixed also with great melodies and great vocal lines that's not always so prevalent in this type of genre. So that's one thing that I think might be able to open up to more people what would typically just look at the paper to try to find something like this.

Nick: I feel like this genre, and I'm not as experienced in it, needs like a little kick in the butt maybe. Hopefully, we'll do that.

Avi: It's weird to call that any genre because right now, everybody with a laptop is a rockstar and you need to be able to do something. How do you do something that hasn't been done? How do you do something that is engaging and creative? And with a name like Art vs. Industry, you have to do something that is outside of the norm but still is tangible and has sacren(?) enough that somebody can into it. So we want to do something interesting and innovative but at the same time, we don't want to alienate people like most industrial music. Somebody that listens to Thursday might never listen to Common Christ. They're like "What's this?" But you listen to The Birthday Massacre so you understand there's that cross genre capacity. Hopefully we'll do that.

How do get people to pay attention? You know what I mean? How do you sell it? Or how has the crowd reaction been with fans who normally don't listen to this type of genre? Have you ever had that crossover or personally?

Avi: In the past I've found that people that listen to what I was doing ranged from David Bowie fans right up to Rammstein fans so I don't know. I think the amazing thing about the Internet is that it gives everyone a chance to experience something. It's one of those things like there's so much. How do you stick out from everyone else? But I feel with the amount of effort and care we are all putting into this, we don't want to be just every band that you see with a guitar, a bass and a drum set. We wanted to do something. Our approach has been so different. Our light show is all of us, all of our production together. We don't even use any guitar amps for guitars. We use computers and run guitars through them and they sound better than any guitar amp we've ever used. So our whole approach has been hopefully showing people that you can do music in an interesting, innovative manner and still reach out.

Nick: The crowd response has been really really good. Anywhere we played I feel people have been into it. We get invited back and get bigger and better shows. It's been going really, really well so far. I'm excited to see where it goes.

Matt: I think the most interesting reaction for me was the really positive reaction we got from when we played Shreveport, Louisiana because the other bands we played with we sounded very drastically different from them. They were all really great but they were more alternative.

Avi: Metal. Southern rock.

Matt: A little southern rock influence in there and I was kind of concerned to see how the people there... Good portion of them had never heard us before but I was taken a back by such the great response we got. It was interesting to see by the third or fourth song in how many people suddenly all had video cameras up and were filming it. It was just like "Wow. This is really really interesting."

I saw the video you did at Red 7 with the lighting stuff. How did you developed the whole live show vibe? When you first got the band, was it like "All right guys, this is what we're gonna do. Let's plan this out." How did that idea come about?

Avi: Well for me making music, it's like I like presenting a show. I don't want it to just be, like what I was getting at, just the average thing. I've always wanted to do something more, so my approach with it is like how do you separate people and make it entertaining and something different? Luckily, these two are fully on board with that theme so it was a collaborative sort of idea. Lot of the vision I would say is Nick who surprisingly has never done light direction but it's just odd how all of this worked together. We have input of how it looks but at the end of the day, the monster gets behind it. We develop it.

Matt: At the end of the day, it's Munoz spending hours and hours and hours programming, programming. Every once in awhile, maybe one song out of 10, I'll go and I'll be like "Maybe you should try this" and I'll be like ok. The most important thing, like Avi was saying, is presenting a show. I've always been fascinated growing up by just going to see bands that put on an amazing show whether it's either lights and visuals or bands that are super high energy jumping around going crazy, going nuts. I've gained a lot of respect for a lot of bands outside of genres that I listen to. Just be seeing them and being blown away by their live performance. So that was one thing that I wanted to make sure we're putting on. Something that even just visually. Even if people aren't maybe be in that in to the music, they're at least having a good time watching.

Then you have albums coming out. It's like a 2 part movement. (Editor's note: They have since then released the first album. I'm late in the game. Whoops.)

Avi: Our first part...we're just gonna give that away. It's kind of like a ying and yang because the first part's very... I don't know even how to describe it. It's a very artistic in your face brutal sort of experience. And the second part is a little bit softer, a little bit more gentle and being cohesively worked together. The idea is to release that first part in August and have the second part by October/November. They all work together as a cohesive record.

And you mentioned you're giving it away for free. Why the free route?

Avi: Well music is free right now. I feel like you can sit there and be like "Look, you have to pay this money and get this record," but if somebody really wants it, they'll find a way to get it for free. So you might as well give it away. Let people experience it. Hopefully will come to the shows.

Nick: Exactly. If you give them a free cd, I feel like they're more inclined to come to the next show.

Avi: As long as they're impressed.

Nick: Yeah for sure.

Avi: Of course. I think we're confident enough in our material that we're doing that. We're willing to give it away for free because we want people to come to our shows. We're very proud of our studio record but I feel like this is the arena where we really excel.

You're a live band.

Avi: Yes.

The album is just to prepare you for the live show.

Avi: Exactly, exactly. So, you have anything to say about that Matt?

Matt: Well no. I mean I agree. If you go as soon as you release something, you don't have to be the biggest band in the world, a week later, there's probably been a bittorrent somewhere of your release. So as damaging as it is, there's ways you have to work with it like he said.

Avi: I think hopefully embrace it.

Matt: Yeah, you can accept the fact that, that's what gonna happen. If you can utilize that though to get people interested and actually come out, there's other ways to keep yourself going to as a band so I don't know. It's one of those things that's always... it's kind of tough to talk about just how it is.

The state of the industry.

Avi: Yeah it is.

What else is coming up besides the releases?

Avi: It's really this. We are committing our entire lives to this for the next hopefully who knows how long and it's gonna be relentless work. Once we get this record out, we're not gonna stop and we're gonna play, play, play, play. It's just really now like you said we're kind of like a secret. Nobody knows what it is. They see the flyers. What the fuck is Art Versus Industry?

Well I didn't know about the band until you friended me on Facebook. I heard the music when I friended you. Well his music's good so I'd add him for that.

Avi: Well, that's good. It's really, like I said, it's in the hands of people like you that are tastemakers. That can hopefully get it out there to a larger audience because right now living in Austin, TX everybody's in a band. Right?

Or they work in the music industry somehow.

Avi: Exactly. It's like "Ok, you're in a band? *shrugs* All right. Well, I'm in a band. Who cares?" Hopefully because we're so proud and confident what we're doing, reaching out to people like you and playing as hard as we can and hopefully before you know it, I'm a big believer that if you do something good, people will catch on. So hopefully, I'll be proven right. We'll see.