Mark Hoppus just stopped by our studio and announced the name of his new EP! Watch and read the full interview below!
We have some very exciting news that came out this week. And so we're here to talk all about simple creatures, right? It's you and Alex from all time low?
It is. We've obviously known each other for quite some time. When did this whole band thing or this project become a thing. About a year and a half ago, blink was done touring, and we were at the end of the California album cycle. And it was great. It was better than anybody had ever hoped or dreamed to be. And for some reason, I got home from tour and I fell into this really awful depression really bad to the point where my wife was like, are you okay? Like, what's wrong? And I was just, I don't know, I'm, I'm just in this weird funk and I can't shake it. And she said, You have to do what makes you happy. And I said, making music and she said, Go and get in the studio, go do something, go with your friends and go to the studio. So I had this idea that I would make a record with a bunch of my friends all the people along the way like you see it a show. I got in the studio with Alex and he was the first one that I called and we wrote a song that I loved. Then he came back the next day we wrote another song and we wrote another song and, and he was really great in the studio and has been a friend forever. And we've always talked about making music together. And I never called anybody else. And we ended up making this batch of songs that we love. And so we were like, Oh, well, damn, let's, uh, what do we do with this? Let's make it a thing. It seems like it came pretty quick and easy based on what you just said. Like you guys obviously known each other for a while. So the relationship was there. But as far as creatively it seemed like it just kind of clicked. In a way it was it was awesome. And then it was like with no expectation of anything. Just let's go get weird in the studio. And I really liked what we created. It's all drug was the first song that we got earlier this week was that the first song you guys wrote together? It was one of the first ones that we wrote. It was very early on in the process. And I love it because it doesn't sound like either of our bands. It sounds like something totally different. Which is really important to me. Because as a fan of music and a fan of bands, when somebody especially a singer goes off and does something outside of their normal band. And it sounds just like the band that came from me. Like why didn't you do that with your normal band? Sure. Sure. Sure. So we really wanted to sound different.
I was curious, can you put in your words why you think it sounds different?
The main differences that I enjoy in this is it's it's based not around picking up an acoustic guitar and writing a song acoustic guitar and and putting it on electric guitar. It's a lot more like like a ratty, dirty, trashy synth noises some some songs have guitar some don't. All the jobs are programmed. There's no live instrumentation that way. So it's just a different left of field soundscape.
Was there a moment during the writing process? Or was there a specific song where you said to Alex, you're like I think that we have like a thing here and we're not just messing around in the studio.
Yeah, pretty early on because Alex just come on like oh yeah, right. So we have a great are all pretty early on in the process. I asked him to go out to breakfast. And I was like, Hey, I think I think this is cool. I think we should do something with us, you know, and I told him what my plan was to do what was important to me as far as respecting the band that I come from and not wanting to not want to interfere with Blink and make sure that like this is something I do outside of that and he totally wanted to do that with his own band. So we were of a like mind cool. Where you guys are obviously are the way it's been presented so far.
The core of this band you both have a lot of friends was anybody else kind of included in the process was was John Feldmann involved the Travis play on any of it or anybody else?
We worked with our friend Zack, who is a producer songwriter who worked on the last record. We also work with a guy named Dylan who plays a band called floor we also work with Tom Powers from making famous cool on some of this stuff. So we worked with different producers songwriters as well.
We know EP, one is coming in March. How many songs?
Six songs.
Is that the title of it "6 songs"
This is the first time that I'll say it. It's called "Strange love".
Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. And is those six songs like Is that it? is there other stuff?
In the case of lots of other stuff in the Can we have a second EP that's ready to go in the summer sometime, depending on when all time low, have their record come out or blink, have their record come out. We'll kind of weave it in between those two.
How about live it'll be the next question. I think for everybody.
Yeah, it's going to go out and do this live. Yes, absolutely. We definitely want to take it everywhere alive. We don't want to do the normal go play a small club thing so I think that will try and do like warehouse parties or events or I don't know if someone called up and said you know they're having a whatever Fashion Week party in Paris next week we you guys go play it we will go play it cool fine fine
Is this a priority for 2019 for you? Is this the thing that kind of takes the front seat above everything else?
So blinks still a priority for 2019 okay I'm in the studio every day with blank was there yesterday I'm going to be there today was there the day before next week we're full steam ahead with the blink recording and and I've tried to get that record out either this spring or the Summer.
Exciting times from our campus we are super stoked on symbol creatures and again the EP is going to be out in March with the name of it again strange love. Strange love absolutely and drugs name of the song that we have right now you can listen to that over at ALT 98.7