REPTAR: Funky but geek

By Jim Testa

The art-punk-dance band Reptar hails from Georgia’s college hub (Atlanta/Asheville/Athens)and would like you to think they all have awesome rockstar names like Gingerbear, Mr. Senor Love Daddy, and Grandma. In reality, they are Andrew McFarland, Ryan Engleberger, Graham Ulicny, and William Kennedy, who have been described as “Southern-fried electronic Afro-poppers.” They like analog synthesizers, Herbie Hancock, African tribal rhythms, fine chocolate, Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch, 7-inch vinyl singles, Prince, the Talking Heads, and the Jackson 5. Those influences add up to a funky and very danceable fusion of indie, punk, soul, and worldbeat influences which, according to the band’s presskit, “can topple small buildings, smaltzy restaurants, and shmuppy next-door-neighbors with their devastating wall of synthesizers and samples.” Reptar has released one 7-inch with another on the way this month, and will be releasing their debut full-length Oblange Fizz Y'all in July.

The band is currently on tour with the cheeky U.K. art-damaged punk band Art Brut and uber-poppy Brooklynites Matt & Kim, and will be wreaking their audio devastation at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on Tuesday, June 21. Click here for ticket information.

Q: Briefly introduce the members of the band and pretend that you all met at X-Men Academy instead of your actual high school. What mutant powers does each member bring to the group?

Gingerbear: I bring the power of the Hulk to get bigger and clumsier without all the power and anger associated with it.

Mister Senor Love Daddy: Being the harbringer of 4th dimensional graphics, I bring the invisible force necessary to facilitate the neurological exchange of photoreceptors. Electronic party juice.

Grandma: Superhuman ability to give and receive uncomfortable eye contact.

Andrew: Ability to sustain intense drunken pleasure, coupled with the
Ultra-vomit cannon.

Q: You may have had some success getting college students in Athens to dance to your music, but you will soon be facing Hoboken and Brooklyn hipsters, who are notoriously hard to impress and who never dance to anything except LCD Soundsystem. How are you preparing for this challenge?

We love all kinds of people! Hipkats, loserdoods, collegeheads, sheepheadies. Genres of people are kinda like genres of music, you know? They are silly! I don’t think it’s any different having kids wearing skinny jeans vs kids not wearing any pants at all.

Q: Your use of African polyrhythms will invariably bring comparisons to Vampire Weekend. Other than the fact that they're effete Ivy League dorks, how would you differentiate the two bands?

We actually do have an effete Ivy League dork in this band, but only
one.

Q: I understand you all attend different colleges. How difficult does that make rehearsals and gigging during the school year? Are you all majoring in really easy subjects so you can blow off as many classes as possible to do the band?

We were doing that more or less for a while. We tried practicing at night using collective consciousness and lucid dreaming which was surprisingly effective but that got old after a while. Now, we are all on hiatus from school to devote our full energies, conscious and otherwise, to creating the thing that is Reptar.

Q: One of the most impressive aspects of your music is the complicated vocal arrangements. How do you usually go about creating a new song? Does one person usually come up with the melody/lyrics and then everyone contributes to layering the different parts?

While the process changes from song to song, most of the songs we play come from very complete song structures that Graham brings to the group. Graham comes up with all the vocal melodies he sings. The rest of us change different interpretations of parts Graham has already written and also add our own parts, and help arrange or rearrange what he has already brought. Sometimes that includes Andrew or Gingerbear adding different vocal parts, either harmonies or countermelodies. There have also been songs where we write every part of it all together in a room at once. It’s a range, for sure.

Q: You list Marky Mark as one of your biggest influences. Who in the band is most likely to remove the most clothing during a show? And does this involve a lot of physical training to prepare?

Zumdar is our spiritual advisor and patron saint. He keeps us all in line. Does Marky mark like to get naked? Who doesn’t really? Zumdar would probably remove the most clothing during the show, the show is a cleansing ritual.

Q: You've released two 7inch records. Do you think the resurgence of vinyl is for real, or is it all just a handful of nerd collectors and everyone else just waits for the mp3's?

If it’s only for nerd collectors, does that make it not real? I do think that the more sound quality is degraded in formats like mp3, the easier it is for people to tell how different and more complete listening to music on vinyl can be, which means more and more people appreciate spending the money on it. Especially when you can get almost any music you want for free on your computer; if you’re gonna spend money, you might as well go big.

Q: You're scheduled to play Lollapalooza this summer, where it's likely most attendees will not have heard your music yet. How do you win over a massive crowd sweltering in hot, sticky, humid weather? And what acts are you looking forward to seeing there?

HELL YEAH! We are going flipping our poopoonuggets we are so excited to be playing ‘lolla’!! Its definitely gonna be the biggest crowd we have ever played in front of. But we are gonna keep our heads, we thrive in really hot sticky situations (house shows, used bookstore shows, squat houses, side of the highway shows). We are gonna throw down just like we always do, we have added a touring member so he will be triggering the succulent lazer tag music as well as helping us start a water balloon fight and giant mudslide that leads directly to Wrigley field!

http://www.myspace.com/reptarathens