Operator Music Band becomes one with house
Photo Credit: Sable Yong
We make house music now reads Operator Music Band’s Instagram bio. The trio, consisting of founding members Dara Hirsch and Jared Hiller, currently alongside percussionist and collaborator Daniel Siles, has released music for almost a decade. From their debut EP Puzzlephonics I through their 2022 release Deep Break, Operator Music Band created in genres such as krautrock, art-rock, and dance-punk. After years of playing with guitar and synth textures and experimenting with time signatures and tempos, the band set to do something new: make dance music. Their latest EP Four Singles, released in March, is a collection of mind-melting dance and acid-house tracks. Moving into electronic music provided them plenty of room for the improvisation and experimentation they were used to.
From the opening track “As It Goes,” the band gives into the beat, the pitched voice proclaiming “I’m a freak” as they try to make their way into the club. On “Screwhead,” Hirsch says, “Take your time/I’ll be right back,” just before the percussive elements are pushed to the forefront, taking the lead. Four Singles is just as innovative as the band’s previous work, with every repetition working its way into the listener's inner psyche. By using electronic sounds, though, Operator Music Band has achieved a new kind of expression.
In our Q&A with Hiller and Hirsch, we talk about the evolution of the band’s production process, changes in the NY indie scene, the improvisational aspects of electronic music, and more.
Congrats on Four Singles! Looking back at your discography and now your latest EP, there’s a sense of experimentation and spontaneity. What role does improvisation play in your live shows and studio recordings?
Jared: I think there has always been a bit of a battle for us between spontaneity and careful planning. It takes a lot of trust in yourself, your collaborators, and your listeners to lean into that type of creative energy, but ultimately I think that’s the direction we are heading in. The goal for our return to live performance is for the sets to be almost completely improvised dance music, freeing us from the burden of preparation and taking the audience on that journey with us. We have also just gotten better at what we do. We have been a band for almost a decade and have developed confidence in our instincts and abilities.
Dara: Yeah, it’s interesting. Our creative process has shifted over the course of our career, depending on what our end goal might be at the time. For our early records, I was focused mostly on live performance. So everything I had written for the first few albums I’d be like, ‘OK, how will this translate on stage’ or ‘What could be a really impactful bit to add here’. Then after a few albums, it was like ‘Oh, here’s a chance to really flesh out all these production ideas on a recording, let’s work with producers, let’s get deep in the MIX, figure out the live stuff later’. In our current state though, we’re writing–I almost wouldn’t even say writing–we’re programming our gear so that we can improvise an entire live show, which is a completely different zone for us creatively. We’re obviously no strangers to gear, but we’re still figuring out how it will translate to a performance.
Dara, you’ve talked about recording scratch vocals and sometimes finding meaning in OMB lyrics after a record comes out. How does the band generally tap into a creative state?
Dara: The creative states mostly happen all together in rehearsal now rather than me sitting solo in front of Ableton which is really nice. When I record scratch vocals in the songwriting stage, I’m usually just putting something down without much thought to it and I guess whatever comes out is an amalgam of what’s been going on in my world. I lean pretty heavily into demo-itis. Once a melody or arrangement is in a demo, I can’t usually un-hear it. This can be nice because I can commit to something and move on, but on the other side of things, it makes it hard to adapt as the song evolves. That’s what’s been so nice about the new stuff because it’s not as vocal-centered as much as older songs. We’re letting the melodies or hooks be taken over by a hi-hat pattern, a sample, or a bass sequence, which definitely makes it more of a collaborative effort.
You’ve talked about a shift in the New York indie scene and feeling disconnected from it, that being your motivation to move toward house music. What was it about making electronic music that you feel most drawn to?
Jared: When we started the band, the NY indie scene had a very different landscape. Most of the places we were playing were run in a DIY style, meaning they were staffed mostly by volunteers. The rooms were also smaller with less overhead. We would normally play a 50-100 cap room. We also just got older and the community naturally moved on. That’s how things go, it’s a part of the growth and progression of any scene. I think the thing about the clubs and electronic music that seemed the most appealing to me personally was the anonymity of it. Every type of performance has its own conceits. Electronic music and club music seem, to me, to be less about watching a performance and more about experiencing an environment. Everything has its pros and cons and not every performance is going to hit in the same way. We still enjoy indie shows and we have so many talented friends who exist there, but I think the club experience has allowed us to take ourselves a little less seriously, something we maybe wrestled with a bit. It’s ultimately been more about freeing our conceptions about ourselves and less about a critique of a scene or culture.
Jared, you directed the band’s most recent video for “As It Goes,” which included clips of your recovery from a serious fall. How do you approach visual elements, artwork, and music videos, into your artistic expression as a band?
Jared: The idea for the video started out of practicality. We have always put a lot of effort into implementing a visual style in our videos that felt exciting and appropriate for where we were. We worked with some amazing directors and collaborators and wanted those videos to be something striking that would last forever, reflecting back on where we were at the time. When I had my accident (20ft fall through a skylight) a year ago, I spent a lot of time observing. I was surrounded by caring friends and family, but I was somewhat of a voyeur of my own existence. Seeing the life and joy of those around me, it’s inspiring but also isolating. I watch a lot of films and think about framing a lot and I wanted to see if I could put something together that felt like life happening around me. The original concept was to focus on longer shots, I think I described it as a “slice of life” to Dara, but as I started editing I leaned more into the dynamics of the quick cuts and trying to fill frames with people and movement. It really started to come together once you put people in the frames, and I was blessed to have many wonderful ones around me.
In addition to Four Singles you released a set of remixes including collaborations with D.D. Curry, Toribio, Gabe Gurnsey, and Doctor Jeep. What was the process of working with those artists? Did you already have a set of collaborators in mind when thinking about remixers?
Dara: As we were working on these tracks, we would reach out to friends and others who were in our orbit at the time. Like with the Toribio remix, for example, we were going out to see him play all the time and are just generally huge fans. That one felt like a no-brainer to us for many reasons. One of which is that, in addition to being an absolute bonkers DJ, he’s also an incredible musician. So he had that sense of approaching a track from both standpoints. As I was finding my footing in DJing and the dance world, I learned a lot from listening to his mixes and watching him live. Asking him to remix one of our tracks felt like a natural next step (big love to you, Cesar!!).
What’s next for Operator Music Band now that Four Singles is out?
Jared: Going forward, I think we want to focus more on single releases than albums, but that doesn’t rule out an EP or LP. The top priority is getting the new live performance working and seeing how that feels in practice.
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