INTERVIEW: EXTREME ANIMALS
RAINBOW ROCK LEGENDS TELL ALL
Before Myspace Tom changed the internet, before Dan Deacon was bestowed with Pitchfork’s “Best New Music” honorarium for his album Spiderman of the Rings, long before 100 Gecs, Extreme Animals were doing a hypercolor take on electronic music that combined the abrasion of noise with the uplifting energy of rave. And do you know what’s crazy? Over 20 years later, Extreme Animals are still here.
Those of a certain age might remember the duo of Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman (also known as DJ George Costanza) from their involvement with Paper Rad, the influential East Coast art collective that unleashed a singular brand of dayglo multimedia chaos onto an unsuspecting generation of millennial hipsters. Paper Rad were part of a larger 2000s underground continuum that, in broad strokes, started with the Providence space Fort Thunder, which incubated both the noise rock band Lightning Bolt and the art collective Forcefield, and reached peak visibility with Dan Deacon and the Baltimore collective Wham City. All of these entities shared an interest in a sort of freaked-out pop-psychedelica, one that was equally for the eyes and the ears. It was a scene that existed both in New York art galleries and Midwest noise warehouses. A lot of neon and stupid haircuts. Twig Harper of the band Nautical Almanac came up with a name for the musical end of it: rainbow rock.
It might be hard for some to unbundle Extreme Animals from Paper Rad, but the collective dissolved around 2008, making it only a part of the band’s story. The rest of the Extreme Animals run has been filled with restless genre-hopping and experimentation. Around 2011, their style morphed from rainbow rock to a portentous hybrid of nü-metal and Southern rap; at the same time, the band’s video component started to gain weight. All of these eras synthesize and distill on the duo’s new CD/DVD combo, Musical Television, out now on Wightman’s new label Contrapposto Records and Tapes. It’s ten maximal minutes of music and video and it is pure Extreme Animals. In celebration of this achievement, I hit the band’s line and asked them some important questions.
Could you define rainbow rock for me? Can you remember the first time you heard that term?
Jacob: David, you start because I definitely remember what it was for me.
David: I think somebody told me Twig Harper coined the term.
Jacob: Do you remember thinking anything about it?
David: At the time I thought it was funny, but accurate.
Jacob: But it was many years later until we embraced it. Our most rainbow rock CD is the one on Vicious Pop. But I don't think we would have called that rainbow rock at the time.
David: Actually, that Vicious Pop CD was released in 2008 and it has “Rainbow Rock Anthem” on it. So that means we probably wrote that at least two years before it came out.
Jacob: So scrap that, we were down with the terminology from the beginning.
Well, it might’ve been a joke.
Jacob: I mean, everything is a joke at first. So, my first memory of it was in Baltimore, at some kind of a festival, we were set up to play in a gallery. Dr. Doo was playing, which was [Paper Rad member] Ben Jones's band, and Twig had told us about rainbow rock already, I guess, his concept of it. And then Ben had somehow, within the hours that he had heard of the term, made a new video intro to his set about rainbow rock.
I think that video played at the Paper Rad at MoMA performance in 2007. I remember there was a line that went something like, “Throw out your White Stripes records because rainbow rock is here.” To me, rainbow rock peaked that summer. In that two- or three-month period, if somebody would have written a piece for Vice or something that tied together you with Dan Deacon and Lightning Bolt, then it would have inspired another wave.
Jacob: It's a good point. For me, the sound is associated with Lightning Bolt. But I think the trend became more about the secondary bands, the ones like that were doing slightly different things, that were the second wave, you know, like Parts and Labor, Dan Friel, Baltimore bands like Videohippos, or I don't know, David was in San Diego at the time. David, would you say there were any West Coast Rainbow Rock acts?
David: Deathbomb Arc, some of the bands on that label. Hella, Pink and Brown.
Early on in the band, you were trying to combine this sort of Providence-style noise rock with Eurotrance. It seems like the commonality between those two modes is the use of arpeggios. Would you say that defines rainbow rock, musically at least?
David: I wouldn't say the arpeggios, but the harmonies need to work a certain way, a lot of major chords with suspensions and satisfying resolutions. When you start a rock band, it's really easy to play pentatonic or modal riffs. You have to make a concerted effort to actually play major types of harmonies, or something. It's not exactly the natural thing.
Taking it completely out of a blues zone?
Jacob: Yeah. And in fact, not to dwell too much on The White Stripes, but that's a blues-based approach, and rainbow rock is major key, uplifting trance chords or Van Halen solos. I mean, that was the big breakthrough that Lightning Bolt had, when they switched from being maybe more inspired by Japanese noise bands to Brian Gibson doing, just major key, major chord progressions. At least that was the huge lightbulb that went off in my head when I heard that particular Lightning Bolt record. I was like, Okay, this is now a new thing. This sounds spiritual rather than angry.
My friend Alex made a rainbow rock playlist called Rainbow O’Riley. It goes from Terry Riley to “Baba O'Riley” by The Who to “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC to Lightning Bolt and Extreme Animals and Dan Deacon. It’s kind of connecting them all through the use of arpeggios.
Jacob: I was gonna say Terry Riley, too, because both me and David were aware of him by that point, I know Dan Deacon was as well. Who knows if Brian Gibson was, but I have never talked to Brian Gibson about how he developed his style. Didn't he have a weird tuning on his bass guitar, David?
David: Yeah, I think he had a banjo string on the top string or something. I think with the arpeggios, it’s kind of maximal and about taking up as much space as possible, which is a very rainbow rock aesthetic of just going all out.
Yeah, you combine that music with a neon color palette and then you're really painting a full lifestyle picture.
Jacob: Yeah. Communal, heavily DIY informed, there was a prepubescent boy element to the aesthetic—the influence of 8-bit video games, neon BMX bikes, Jams shorts, craft-based art practices, Dungeons and Dragons.
Unlike emo or something, where it went through all of these different developments, rainbow rock kind of hit a point and then died.
Jacob: Yeah, it was even smaller than New York no wave. I'm trying to contextualize it with other art rock things. It was very weird, because at the same time as feeling small, it was also everywhere we went, everyone dressed the same, everyone knew about each other—not only just in the US but in Europe, too.
Was it just missing one other force to take it to another level?
Jacob: This is so weird, but I always assumed that either Lightning Bolt or Dan Deacon was going to perform on Fallon or something.
Dan Deacon eventually performed on Jimmy Kimmel, I believe.
Jacob: Okay, but the thought was that they would play on the floor and the cameras would be up above with a massive crowd of people flipping out. It would be like when I saw Odd Future on Fallon—a “game over, culture has completely changed” moment for youth culture. I thought there would be a moment like that for rainbow rock but you're right, it never happened.
Another way to look at the whole rainbow rock thing was that a lot of these bands were connected by the fact that they existed between a lot of different styles.
David: I remember thinking, Oh we should play noise pancakes in San Francisco or something, which, like, we shouldn't. I mean, we never did, and it was really good we didn't. There was this whole other noise scene that we were trying to play shows with, and it was kind of fun when we would get on these weird harsh noise shows, but also, at this point in my life, I don't really want to rock the boat in a way that makes everybody miserable.
Jacob: We were like, Okay, so we don't really fit in with the noise stuff. Then we discovered Eats Tapes, and we were hanging out with them, and they were like, Oh you should try and connect with Kid 606 and Tigerbeat6, but we realized we were way too noisy and messy and sloppy and goofy for that. And then we got flown out to London by this booker, and this was during the new rave kind of moment, and he was like, Okay, Extreme Animals is a new rave band. But immediately we realized, again, we weren't polished, there was this rock and roll swagger to that scene that we never had.
David: There was also this thing where you had to play a 60-minute set or something, there were these rules that we were never going to be able to meet. All this being said, I think we were aware from the beginning that we wanted to do something that was combining different things and that was a little bit hard.
Jacob: Yeah, it’s easy to combine two cool genres, like electro mixed with garage rock, to come up with a cool new third genre, like electroclash. It’s much harder to combine two uncool genres together to come up with a new third genre that somehow resonates with the writers at Pitchfork. We weren't too tortured by the fact that we knew we were shooting ourselves in the foot, professionally speaking, by constantly dancing around various contexts and not fitting into any. I think that we ultimately knew that was exciting and fun for us. That again comes from the ethos that I learned from Fort Thunder—you make the art you make, you show it where you want to show it, but you don't compromise according to career agendas.
You also kept changing. I’m thinking about your pivot to nü-metal informed aesthetics in, like, 2011.
David: Yeah, I mean I feel like I've done that with a bunch of things in my life.
Jacob: That's a very George Costanza approach to life. Like, Where am I? What am I interested in? What am I excited about?
David: Jacob, though, with the band, you've always been very much like, I want to keep it exciting, to the point where only recently have we thought about really structuring things. In the past, it's been basically as chaotic as possible.
Jacob: No rules.
You've been making music together for over 20 years. I've had the thought that Extreme Animals might have found a different level of success if at one point you had really, truly made the band your life. You’ve always toured. You’ve always had a steady output. But there was never a time where you were like, Okay, we're going to play 150 shows this year, we're going to pause everything else. Maybe that would have reaped some rewards, but also, you might not still be making music together. What do you think?
Jacob: That might have killed the friendship or the band. Maybe we prioritize our friendship over the career of the band, I've never had to say that out loud, but yeah, if you don't make it the only thing you have in your life, then you have more of a chance to sustain it, weirdly.
David: I think with both Jacob and I, music is just part of who we are. And there's all these other parts. And that creates a different kind of band and a different kind of music. I've only kind of realized that recently about myself. The band has been part of a larger art project, not to make it sound too pretentious.
Jacob: Yeah, I think so. I think we're realizing more and more that it’s maybe more of an art project than a band.
It was always sort of like that, especially in the Paper Rad era. You were sort of the flagship band of Paper Rad.
Jacob: Yeah, for sure. We would play art openings and stuff.
So, the band is as much of a way of keeping up a friendship as it is a creative outlet?
Jacob: Yeah. I think they're one and the same, almost.
David: Yeah. It’s so much easier to keep an adult friendship going when you have a project you're working on together. I think the band helps that happen.
Jacob: Yeah, it's fucking amazing. Neither me or David are great at keeping in touch with friends that we've met over the years. So to have this weekly, no excuses kind of Zoom on Sundays at 1 p.m. is pretty fulfilling. You know, I don't do that with anybody else. I've always heard about these dudes who are like, “When I was in my forties, I just started going to the basketball courts and playing basketball with the same guys. And those are some of my best friendships.” This is the only thing I have like that, where it's project based. We talk about personal stuff, obviously. And then we’re always like, let's get back to work.
You know, a certain kind of male friendship.
Jacob: I think so.
For better or worse.
Jacob: Dudes. We fix cars together or something.
Some fix cars. Some make an exciting blend of rainbow rock and nü-metal.
Jacob: Yeah.
Which brings me to the new CD, DVD, combo.
Jacob: Yeah.
Musical Television, which is a good name.
Jacob: Yeah, we're pretty excited about that name and the concept. How many minutes is it, David, the DVD?
David: Like, just under 10 minutes.
Jacob: It's all of these songs that were released to YouTube and Spotify in 2023, compiled with some found footage between them, which really glues the whole thing together. So basically, it's these really short songs that we made, specifically for this working method that we had in 2023, where we met every single week and tried to get a new song done every two or three weeks. We made all these songs and then we realized we wanted to compile them both as videos as well as an album. But it's really short. That's the thing that's new. It didn't take us very long to make, unlike our other recent releases that were two- or three-year projects each.
This new release is sort of addressing this trend of music becoming shorter and shorter as a result of social media and Spotify, etc. So each song is only like a minute or two long. And the other weird thing we did—some of the songs are slightly longer for Spotify, but the Instagram, TikTok versions were all like 30 seconds to a minute.
The video edit. I mean, they used to do that.
Jacob: And that's why it's called Musical Television, because it's like, yes, we're grappling with all of this contemporary context for music, but we're also aware of the history of the relationship between music and TV, or music and video, and how funny and strange it's been, how it's changed over our lives. For me, at least, music's always been tied to video and in particular experimental video because of music videos, so to watch it go from MTV to, I guess, TikTok—they're still tied, it's a different format, but it's related. Us as a band, we've always been tied to video.
David: Going back to the band, and this release, there's a lot about the contradictions between music and video and our experience of playing live. Sometimes we're rocking out and then people are just looking behind us at the video. And that was an unexpected consequence that we're still navigating. I don't even really know what our feelings are about it. The way our band kind of does too much to a detrimental point. And this release is like a manifestation of that. Like, it has a DVD and a CD, but each one is under 10 minutes.
Jacob: The poster insert is a list of fake musical genres. So it kind of has this maximalist thing of like, maybe if we calmed down and pared it down and made it easier for people to understand, we'd be in a different situation, but.
David: And I think each of the songs on the CD is a different side of Extreme Animals.
Yeah, I hear the rainbow rock Extreme Animals and the rap metal Extreme Animals. It’s all that coexisting.
Jacob: Yeah. I think about that a lot, and how what we're trying to do with the rainbow rock ones, for me at least, is make them better sounding. I listen to a lot of our early rainbow rock CD-Rs and I'm like, If only we'd recorded it slightly differently or whatever. So that's one reason that I think I'm excited to reintroduce those styles.
It sort of feels like pop music is in a bad place right now. The music at Dunkin’ Donuts just doesn't excite me as much as it would have 10 or 15 years ago. I don't know if you agree with me, but I'm curious, since appropriation and an interest in Top 40 music has always been a big part of what you have been doing.
Jacob: There was a little bit of a golden era, with the problematic producer Dr. Luke and Max Martin. With that era, you had Kesha, third-wave Britney Spears or whatever, Kelly Clarkson. Katy Perry. I mean, we were so obsessed with all that. That was really inspiring for a lot of reasons—it wasn't just the songs themselves, it was what it meant at the time or something. Tween culture was the zeitgeist. Now pop music means something really different. I can't put my finger on what it is. I'm not driving around as much in my car listening to the radio, so I listen to Spotify, which means I'm picking what I listen to, which ends up being a lot of drum and bass and jungle or, I don't know, rap. I don't want to answer this for you, David, because you're still doing these genre mixes. Now your DJ mixes almost feel like they're about different radio stations.
Yeah, David, you made these chopped and screwed trance mixes, then you made a country rap mix, a pop punk mix. There's all these anchor points in your career where you were so ahead of culture that what you were doing wasn’t legible. You have been the canary in the coal mine. Like, that pop punk mix—at the time it was so conceptual that DIS Magazine put it out, but then years later there’s all these emo nights around the country.
David: Well, thanks for saying that. I’m honored to hear you put it that way. I’m happy to have been that canary. What can I say? I do what seems right in the moment. And continuing to follow that instinct continues to excite me.
Jacob, you said the new Costanza mix is almost, like, active rock?
Jacob: Puddle Of Mudd might be like the centerpoint.
Shinedown.
David: Yeah, like Fuel.
It’s called active rock. That's the radio format.
David: I was going to call it Monster Rock.
Jacob: So, I think David is still definitely very interested in playing with the context of various kind of uncool genres, amidst the pop landscape. It's usually a style that's created by corporate radio to try and appeal to a certain age group and demographic that is not necessarily in the zeitgeist.
So, what about your rock band? Are you going on tour? Is anything like that happening?
Jacob: No, but David, I was thinking we could do a 10-minute listening party somewhere, because it's literally a 10-minute album.
That’s a good idea, actually. You shepherd people in, you make them wait 30 minutes, then you put on the 10-minute record and immediately corral them out.
Jacob: Yeah. David was like, Maybe I'll set up a projector in the public library.
David: I thought it would be cool to do, like, Saturday at 3 p.m., do a screening in a meeting room at the library. But it turns out it's kind of hard to do that.
Jacob: Again, these are beautiful conceptual ideas, but there would be like six people there. It’s a terrible idea from a PR perspective but a genius idea from a conceptual art perspective.
You could just throw a party and just have the record looping for two hours. That would be pretty funny, too.
Jacob: Yeah, drive people crazy.
Musical Television is out now. Extreme Animals on Bandcamp. Jacob Ciocci on Instagram. DJ George Costanza on Instagram.