Midnight Juggernauts Interview @ Santos Party House

By Jaymie DeGaetano

Midnight Juggernauts recently played Santos Party House on Thursday, July 22, the first of two New York shows on the North American leg of their world tour.  Following LA-based, electro-noise quartet HEALTH who frenzied the crowd into a full-on mosh pit, Juggernauts took the stage well into the night at 1:45 AM.  Vince Vendetta provided strong lead vocals, and galactic key boards while playing a variety of other center-staged instruments, interchanged with bassist/guitarist Andy Juggernaut.  Dan Stricker contributed pounding drumbeats to match the trio’s otherworldly, psychedelic, genre bending set featuring tracks from their debut album, Dystopia and the recently released follow-up, The Crystal Axis. 

Despite the late start, Juggernauts maintained high-level energy throughout their set, keeping the crowd bouncing on their feet with tracks like the spacey “Vital Signs”, the funky “Into the Galaxy”, and dance party anthem “Shadows.” 

Paper Spaceship sat down with Andy Juggernaut and Vince Vendetta before the show to discuss touring, their latest album.

PS:  You’re playing two New York shows on this leg of your tour.  What do you plan on doing during your stay in the city?

VV:  We’ve actually been here since Monday; we flew in from Europe and have a few days off, the first in a while—we’re really glad to have them in New York.  There’s always a lot going on here, we have friends in the city so we’re always going out. 

AJ:  Today we went to Guggenheim, then Central Park and had a sleep since it was so hot out.  We’ve had a lot of good food, we heard it’s restaurant week and had a great dinner at Mercer Kitchen.  Lots of pizza too.

PS:  What can we expect from your show tonight?  Will you be using the set featured in your music video for “Vital Signs”?

VV:  No, we won’t be using the set—we’re trying to work that out for some upcoming shows but it hasn’t worked out yet.  We came with a lot of new toys, pedals and synthesizers.

PS:  Do you get along on the road?

VV:  *laughs* Most of the time, yes.

AJ:  We do get along.  Though we’re currently staying in a place that has no air conditioning, we didn’t realize how hot it would be here.  This may be the cause of our first major fight. *laughs*  We haven’t had any fighting yet though.  We’re all happy to be here, it’s nice to spend summer in a part of the world where it’s actually hot this time of the year.

PS:  After New York, you head to Cali and then back to Australia to tour up through the end of August.  Do you have any plans after the tour?

VV:  Any downtime we have is constants spent writing music.  I’ll be doing a bit of traveling and we’re planning another tour for the fall.  We’ll probably come back to North America and Europe, maybe head down to South America too.

PS:  Is there anywhere you haven’t played yet that you’d really like to?

AJ:  We’d really like to play Iceland, we haven’t gotten there yet.  Maybe someone who’s reading can give us some pointers?

PS: Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips introduced your video for “Into the Galaxy” on Myspace—is he an influence for you?  Who else influences you?

VV: Wayne Coyne is an icon.  He’s an influence in the sense that the Flaming Lips have been around for years, and they’re not going anywhere.  They’ve done a really great job creating good music in a good way.  We have a number of other influences such as Bowie and modern electro-pop acts like Daft Punk.

AJ:  Daft Punk is really great because they’re always changing their sound. 

PS:  What was the writing/recording process like for your new album The Crystal Axis? 

VV:  It was very organic and experimental.  We rented a beach house and filled it with a bunch of toys like new synthesizers, new pedals, and other new instruments and just sort of jammed out and the album grew out of it that way. 

PS:  What’s the inspiration for your lyrical influences?

VV:  As far as lyrics go, on Dystopia I liked to write about open-ended ideas and concepts. I liked leaving the meaning of the lyrics to be interpreted by the listener.  This time around, I wrote about much more concrete, distinct ideas—I wanted to be very direct and clear.

PS:  I read recently you’re working with Solange Knowles on her third studio album. 

VV:  Yes, it’s funny, she actually came to us as a fan and said she would like to work with us.  She came out all the way to Australia, flying all by herself.  We had a really good time, she’s a really sweet and talented person.  We came up with some good stuff together we’ll see where it goes.

PS:  Do you have any plans of signing other artists onto your label, Siberia Records?

AJ:  Right now we have so much going on, with the touring and writing new music that we’re just too busy to bring other artists on.  The label was really conceived for us to be able to release our own music. 

Photos below of supporting act HEALTH.

Photography by Santiago Felipe.

If you missed out on seeing Midnight Juggernauts this time around, plan on seeing them when they return stateside this fall.  Dates and venues to be determine