{"id":1704,"date":"2014-02-27T05:50:41","date_gmt":"2014-02-27T05:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.modernfix.com.php72-4.lan3-1.websitetestlink.com\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2014-02-27T05:50:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T05:50:41","slug":"hella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernfix.com\/interviews-2\/hella\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Hella"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(this interview originally appeared as the cover feature for issue #40 of Modern Fix Magazine in 2004).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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interview by gordon downs<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days there are way too many muthafucking drum and guitar duos to even name check in this piece. Some are good, and some are of course really fucking horrible wastes of space. With Tascam making smaller and much more affordable 4-track recording machines available, and the sudden public awareness of how an amplified guitar and some added percussion can create a varied musical raucous; the current musical landscape seems to have new two-piece rock combos popping up weekly. May it be sweet bubble gum pop, or sexy (and often sensible) blues-rock, the drum and guitar duos making music right now are either ridiculously famous (e.g. White Stripes. *note to editor, Meg White has a great rack.) or exist within a much more obscure realm of stardom, (e.g. The Black Keys, Quasi, Lighting Bolt). And yes, while all the bands mentioned above certainly create their own unique brand of music, no two-piece guitar and drum duo can match, or even compete with the originality that is formed by the Sacramento duo known as Hella.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Their unique style can loftily be compared to the free jazz movement of the 1950\u2019s – only it\u2019s punk: 2004. Imagine Art Blakey peaking on white blotter, and a frenzied guitar-playing menace accompanying him with frenetic and thrashing guitar licks. Yes, Hella is indeed a tough band to describe. Not even Hella themselves can really explain how they came to be such a highly regarded name inside the realm of punk\/indie-rock. Adored by hardcore fans (punks) and praised by highbrow critics (pricks) Hella is definitely a name on the rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI met Zach [Hill] when I was sixteen.\u201d explains guitarist Spencer Seim. \u201cWe played together for a little while in this four-piece band for like a year and a half or two years. Then that [band] broke up and we kind of did our thing for a couple of years, and then we started doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the early and formative stages of Hella, the duo had sought out a bassist to fill in the lower ends, which apparently was not an easy task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt was kind of a hard thing.\u201d Seim explains of the bands incarnation. \u201cOriginally, our first band broke up and we had a couple of years where we were kind of doing our own thing. Then Zach and I wanted to start playing again, because we always had a lot of fun playing together. So we started playing, just hoping we could find some other people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living in such a fertile and musically diverse area of California, you would think being able to find someone who could handle a boom stick would be somewhat easy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe kind of looked around and talked to some people and stuff,\u201d explains Seim, \u201cbut there was nobody in Sacramento or even San Francisco that we could think of or knew, or thought that would work, or even necessarily wanted to make that kind of music. It was a hard thing. I guess we never auditioned anybody? So we kept writing songs as the two of us, and got asked to play a show one time. And from then on we just kept booking shows and getting more and more songs. It just kind of became a two-man deal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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