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Upcoming Shows
Roadside Graves
w/Bart Budwig
FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 9PM
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Stereopathic on Hypem
Feb
15
The Helio Sequence
Filed Under Updates
Brandon Summers, vocal and guitar, and Benjamin Weikel, on keyboard and drum, are the twosome that form the dynamic alternative rock duo of The Helio Sequence. After Brandon sustained a serious voice injury a couple of years ago, the pair is now back to producing their own brand of textured indie and are on the road. They kindly gave me their answers to life’s great questions: answers are below.
Be sure to make their show at 8:00, Sat., 28th of Feb. 2009, at the Nuart Theatre (516 S. Main Street, Moscow). Tickets are $6 in advance or $8 at the door. Pullman’s very own beloved Yarn Owl is opening.
Basic intro to Brandon and Benjamin…
Benjamin and I met when we were teenagers growing up in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland. Like a lot of suburbs the “culture” wasn’t very colorful or varied and the feeling was very insular and restricting…just a lot of malls, televisions, box stores and cars. I was really restless growing up there, thirsty for more than sit com entertainment and hanging out at malls. Music was really an escape and salvation for me.
When Benjamin and I met we realized that we both loved music of all sorts. There was a really strong local scene in Portland in those days..bands like Hazel, Thirty Ought Six, Pond, Heatmiser (Elliott Smith’s first band.) We’d go downtown to watch shows and it was inspiring to be a part of things. We really began branching out and exploring new types of music and we were always excited to share new bands that we’d “discovered” with each other.
The evolution of Helio Sequence
Well, it all began with a family picnic when I was 16. Without my knowledge I had been “booked” by my mother to play at a big family get together at a very strange, campy amusement park outside of Portland…kind of the Coney Island of Portland. The only problem was that I didn’t have a band and I had less than a week to write songs and to get one together! I was talking to Benjamin about it and he had a great, and at that time, eccentric idea of making a band with sequenced keyboards. He had been working on a keyboard project for most of the year and wanted to try mixing some of those ideas with a real band. So along with his younger brother Paul we sat down and wrote three long instrumentals clocking in at over 10 minutes or so each and played the picnic. We all agreed that we had really hit upon something different. A mix of Organic and electronic elements…a different angle. And that’s how Helio Sequence began…almost as an accident…a happy accident.
It all evolved from there really. We spent the next few years writing songs and basically beginning to add vocals into the mix. It was all a whirlwind of influence because we were learning about a whole world of music so quickly and ingesting so many new ideas. The more spacey rock or English bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Lush were really inspiring. And also American bands like Bowery Electric, Labradford, King Black Acid. Old sixties rock like the Kinks and Beatles. It wasn’t until 1999 that we pulled it all together and put out our first EP “Accelerated Slow Motion Cinema.”
Our sound has evolved over time from the more “wall of sound” approach of our early stuff to a more “songwriting” approach, but there’s something at root about how we’re both fascinated by the texture and the feel of sound that has remained constant. The visceral experience of sound is as important as the song itself.
I know that Brandon has had trouble with his voice: any comments about the recovery? How is it doing now?
I’ve come out of the experience of losing my voice as a stronger singer than I would ever have been otherwise. When I lost my voice it was really rock bottom…a really bleak and vulnerable time with so much self-doubt. It was much more than a simple physical loss of my voice. Everything was called into question, the future and the past. But working back up from nothing allowed me to see things in a different light, to leave behind old habits that had constrained me, and work on new things that open up the possibility of songs. It was a new beginning. I look more deeply at a lyric now and listen to all music with a different ear than before losing my voice.
Brandon, I hear you did a lot of reading during your recovery. What is your favorite book? Did anything change your life?
Looking back, the book that probably had the biggest effect on me was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays.In High School we were assigned to read “Self Reliance” and it blew my mind. I read all of the rest of his essays religiously.
There were so many amazing books that I came across in the time when I was getting my voice back. Reading is a path for me that I continually walk down. One book always leads to another somehow whether directly referenced, recommended to me, given to me as a gift, or stumbled upon by chance. I wouldn’t say there was one book that changed my life but they all and up and change the way I see things I stumbled upon the poetry of Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov, French philosopher Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Cornel West’s Democracy Matters and many more.
Recently Cormac McCarthy’s The Road really blew my mind and I’m reading Philip Roth’s novella Goodbye, Columbus right now and it’s really amazing. Also, my wife and I just had a baby girl 5 and a half months ago and for some reason the day she was born I had the inclination to read War and Peace. I don’t know what the motivation was but I just felt “it’s time.” Sounds funny, I know but I’m sort of slowly making my way through it about 250 pages into it so far…a dent really.
Who and what is the inspiration for Helio Sequence?
The love of music. It’s an endless world.
How would you define your music?
An ever evolving idea.
Do you have any particular goals for your music?
I have a simple hope that the songs and sounds find their way into people’s lives.
Distinctly thoughtful and thought-provoking, yes? As is their music. Thank you, Brandon and Benjamin. Come soon and let your music find a way into the hearts and lives of Moscow!
~xox, molly miltenberger
Molly is a freelance journalist and a senior at New St. Andrew’s College with a special interest in music, postcards, and goldfish. She is an intern at The Loop 21 and keeps the blog A New Amsterdam.
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