{"id":9194,"date":"2014-07-03T17:57:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T17:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9194"},"modified":"2014-07-03T17:57:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T17:57:58","slug":"pop-crimes-loud-as-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/07\/03\/pop-crimes-loud-as-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Pop Crimes :: Loud as hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"67-03-Arts-F-PopCrimes1-web_720_482_80\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Kaitlyn Emslie Farrell<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guitarist and vocalist Stefan Braun of four piece noise group Pop Crimes sat down with<\/em> Stylus to lay down the deets of their band and shenanigans. Also starring Aaron Johnston, Ken Prue and Kevin Strang Pop Crimes are getting ready to hit the stage on July 3rd<\/sup> for a 7\u201d release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Stylus: Let\u2019s start with some Pop Crimes history.
\nStefan Braun:<\/strong> At this point me and the guitar player are the only two that started it. We\u2019ve had three drummers and two bass players. There was a lot of back tracking to get to a performable level because we had to keep re-training the members. So we would have something, we\u2019d be getting somewhere then we\u2019d fire the drummer, then we\u2019d be getting somewhere and the bass player would leave. So it was just a bit of a headache for a long time. Now at this point we\u2019ve had these four guys for exactly a year I think. I feel the point we really became a band was when this current drummer joined the band about three years ago.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Did the genre of the music change at all?
\nSB:<\/strong> Definitely. It was a lot softer, a lot more melodic. We didn\u2019t have real instruments.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What do you mean by \u201creal instruments?\u201d
\nSB:<\/strong> We played what ever garbage guitars we could find and plugged into crappy digital amps with built in effects that you just toggle away with. We didn\u2019t have microphones or anything. We were essentially an instrumental group, but that\u2019s just because we didn\u2019t have anything.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Where did the name come from?
\nSB:<\/strong> It\u2019s a Rowland S. Howard album. Rowland S. Howard is the guitar player from The Birthday Party, which was Nick Cave\u2019s second band. He put out two solo albums with Teenage Snuff Film, and then there was Pop Crimes<\/em>. Right when that album came out we were just starting to get together and then he died. And we decided that we should just take that name before anyone else does, cause it\u2019s a great name. We figured since he\u2019s dead someone\u2019s gotta take it, might as well be us.<\/p>\n

Stylus: How was tour? It was your first big one eh?
\nSB:<\/strong> It was our first time in the States. We did two and half weeks last summer to Vancouver and back. Before then we did little stints to Saskatoon and Edmonton and stuff like that. But this was our first time out East. Just the longest time in a van together really. It went great. We had good responses in the places that mattered. We had obviously some crappy shows cause it\u2019s tour. You can\u2019t play 40 dates and all of them be good unless you\u2019re Propagandhi or KEN Mode or something like that. But yeah, it went really well. We made a lot of good connections that\u2019ll make things easier next time. All the places I was afraid to play were all some of the best shows.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What\u2019s it like for you being a musician in Winnipeg?
\nSB:<\/strong> I love being part of this scene. I don\u2019t particularly enjoy playing in Winnipeg. It\u2019s fun but it\u2019s always kind of awkward playing in front of your friends. I would much rather play in front of a packed house of people I\u2019ve never seen before than a packed house full of friends. But the scene\u2019s really great. I\u2018d say there\u2019s two bands in the city that would play our genre of music, which is kind of nice that it\u2019s growing slowly. But it\u2019s really interesting because you can play with bands that aren\u2019t in your genre but it still works. We played a show with Boats last year which was huge. There were tons of people there and it was great but if you put our album beside Boats\u2019 nobody would think that\u2019s a thing. The scene\u2019s so tight here that everybody knows each other, everybody\u2019s friends and everybody supports each other, and that\u2019s all that matters.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What can someone expect from a show?
\nSB:<\/strong> Ear plugs. People have told us we\u2019re too loud often. A lot of noise. My favorite shows are when we\u2019re in a space that\u2019s small enough and comfortable enough that we can get that sound that\u2019s all encompassing. Obviously you can hear the songs but you\u2019re feeling it in your body, you\u2019re not feeling it in your head, the whole thing is just pressed up against you.<\/p>\n

Stylus: What\u2019s in the future for Pop Crimes?
\nSB:<\/strong> We just got back on Sunday and now that we\u2019ve had a week to not talk to each other we\u2019re going to start working on our full length. So ideally sometime next spring or summer we\u2019ll put out a record.<\/p>\n

Stylus: Story time!
\nSB:<\/strong> We once played in Edmonton probably two years ago. This guy walks in, full gold suit head to toe, giant rabbit hat, missing all of his teeth. Turns out its Chi Pig from SNFU. He goes on to basically lay the moves on our bass player as hard as he possibily could all the while bascially telling us about all of his man ass eating experiences in Stanley Park. And then we were just about to get on stage and he was like \u201cNo! I\u2019m playing a song first.\u201d And then he sat down and sang Hurt, the cover that Johnny Cash does of the Nine Inch Nails song. And then afterwards he gave the guitar back and was like \u201cok fine, you can play now.\u201d Then the whole time we were playing he was up right against the microphone with a beer can deep throating this beer can right in my face. It\u2019s an interesting story but as far as I know if you play Wunderbar it\u2019s not really an odd occurance for him to show up and do that.<\/p>\n

Catch Pop Crimes at the HMS Arlington as they release their latest 7″, a split single with Halifax’s Willower, on Thursday July 3.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kaitlyn Emslie Farrell Guitarist and vocalist Stefan Braun of four piece noise group Pop Crimes sat down with Stylus to lay down the deets of their band and shenanigans. Also starring Aaron Johnston, Ken Prue and Kevin Strang Pop Crimes are getting ready to hit the stage on July 3rd for a 7\u201d release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[563],"class_list":["post-9194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}