Ovipositor

"Ovipositor is a rock band from Oakland, California. We are not pretty, we are not young, we are not sexy, we are not charismatic, we are not hip, and we are not your friends." Upon first glance at Ovipostior's ill-mannered MySpace biography, you might think they would be a difficult group to get along with. Fortunately it turned out not to be the case with vocalist/guitarist, Colin Frangos, who was happy to share an inside perspective of their band and the musical philosophies which they ve upheld. Over the last five years, Frangos and co-founding drummer/vocalist Mark Pino have refined their sound with a revolving list of bass guitarists. Eventually the group landed Max Sidman to fill the spot permanently and haven't looked back since, rocking up and down the West Coast and working on their forthcoming third release at former Beulah bassist Eli Crews' Oakland studio.

How would you explain the band dynamics and/or songwriting process  for Ovipositor?
Anytime you re in a trio pretty much every individual member carries a lot of water in the band. The way songwriting basically works in this band is that we all brings in riffs and ideas that are half done and then we hash them out and develop them as a band.

So it sounds like it s much more of a collaborative effort than a singer/songwriter type of deal.
Yeah. If I wrote everything it would sound like shit. I'm not a drummer and I'm not a bass player. And plus it's like nobody's getting famous in this band so everyone has got to have a reason why you do it.

How have things been with the addition of Max on bass guitar?
Max is great. Max is a foundation bass player, someone there who is very much about keeping things locked down from that Jesus Lizard sort of tradition. So that's where our songs are anchored, which is interesting because as a drummer Mark has got this way of playing that is more off the melody than the rhythm. He doesn t play that kind of locked in straight ahead rhythm that most drummers are used to and in a funny way Max kind of fills that role for him because Max is very much straight ahead and on time.

So far you've released two records, Cease The Day! and Pirate Flag At Half Mast. Any other recording plans on the horizon?
Yeah, we re going to be doing some stuff at New Improved Recording, which is Eli Crews' studio. Eli was the bass player of the San Francisco band Beulah, and has this beautiful little space in Oakland. At this point we pretty much know these songs, and once we get over the jitters of being in the studio it'll be pretty easy to blast through 'em. Two weeks later we'll go back in and spend a day mixing with Eli.



You mentioned to me earlier that your goal is to record like a jazz band and nail a song in a take or two.
To me records always sound better when the band actually plays the songs. You know, I think if you listen to early Bad Seeds records they were trying to do the studio thing, breaking apart everything separately, and then they finally realized it works a lot better if you do it all in one take. It's beneficial to spend the time working on stuff before you get into the studio versus that last Metallica record where literally every drum hit was moved around while they were mixing it to make it stick to this tight rhythm.

How will this next recording session be different from your first two albums?
Well the first two records were recorded in my basement.

So this one will be more of a step up in quality?
Are you saying the other ones suck?

You can tell they were meant to sound raw.
This next one will sound raw, too. We re really focused on just trying to do the recordings as one take and when everyone's all in the same room together there's only so much cleaning up and fancying up you can do. I love a lot of cleaned up records but it doesn't sound very good for us. We might end up putting a bass cab in a separate room just to give that a little bit more isolation because that is what dominates everything when you're mixing. Getting a clear honest bass sound is definitely one of the goals.



How would you describe the music scene around the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area nowadays?
It seems like there are little niches happening but not much crossover. You'll have your three garage-rock bands all playing together or your three metal-ska bands playing together or whatever. There s not much cross pollination going on and there s not that much local music that is generally something people get excited about.

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