At your myspace you list "Atlantic, Pacific, melting glaciers, panoramas, llamas, bananas." amongst your influences.  Why Llamas?

Stats (Mike): Well, as Aristotle may have said, "The gods too are fond of a joke." But I think he really meant that Llamas are beloved by the gods.

 Why not farmers, say? Or Pajamas? You don't have anything specific against farming?

Chris: Well, I love corn on the cob and chickens always do funny things.

Stats: No. In fact, most of us grew up in areas near dairy farms, which makes it somewhat hard to take a side in the eternal "farmer versus rancher" thing, although we'd have to say that milk certainly can probably do a body good.

Chris: Well, except give me two kidney stones.

Pick three words that best describe the music of LOA.

Chris: On the Map?

How would you describe the music of LOA? What would you say is the intended effect? What are you striving to achieve - heartbreak or optimism?

Stats: Sometimes we come up with something that sounds hopeful or redeeming, but it's usually more of the "the clouds break halfway" type of feeling, rather than something that is entirely happy. Actually, it's not positivity or negativity that we are aiming at, really, but more a certain type of these emotions, which can be positive or negative, where one sort of gets lost and almost drowns. One battle we are always fighting is "does this merely sound cool, or is there genuinely something that makes us connect emotionally with it?" A lot of music that we make and listen to sort of just sounds cool, you know, and there is nothing wrong with that, but we know we have something special when it makes us feel emotionally connected to the music. Regarding this connection, Garmonia really manifests a particular period in time (4 months) where a lot of things were happening to me and Chris, but Tanks tells more of a gradual story, is more of an ambiguous record because it has snapshots from the past 4 years. We try to connect emotionally, even if it is just a subtle mood that we are traversing.

I'm curious about the name LOA – is that lifted from literature? How did you settle on that?

Chris: Years ago I was reading an article on system failure and power outages in parts of Asia. This was back in the "millennium takeover". It basically ended by saying that if A B and C happened then those Asian countries are fucked. Then it ended by saying “lights out, Asia.” I was laughing really hard because I didn’t believe in the “the world is going to go black” scenario. So I really liked how that sounded.

So no great desire to plunge the far East into darkness?

Stats: Certainly not. A lot of our gear was made in the far East, and there are some damn fine people and places out there!

Rushmore: We'd like to keep the plunging to a minimum.

Can you recall any other options for band names? Anything amusing?

Stats: I think "Tank Statistics" was batted around. Also, "Horse Destroyer."

You never considered 'The Pajama Farmers' then?

Mike: No. With a name like that, you'd need to be much more raw than we are. You'd need to bleed on stage, break strings, and such.

Lets do a little background check because I know you were all in groups before. Two of you were in Aurore Rien together, weren't you? I suspect some of us know very little about Aurore Rien. Can you tell us a little about that project?

Chris: Stats and I were in Aurore Rien. It was a band that only survived a few years. It was a great band and a lot of fun. The door was closed on the band because the other two members had other plans to pursue college out of state and that left no room for AR. Which was okay. Aurore Rien opened a lot of doors for Stats and I to work together. Everything happens for a reason and I’m very happy with that. Aurore Rien left behind two pieces of its history which are the full length album “Sedative for the Celestial Blue” and an EP, “Telesthesia”.

Rushmore: Actually, Stats and I were in a band called Lucia back then, and we played some shows with Aurore Rien in Milwaukee, and that's how we all met. Chris was in both Aurore Rien and Lucia for awhile, as was Stats. Chris and I were in The Self-Destruct Sequence after Aurore Rien and Lucia broke up, and eventually Stats and Chris formed Lights Out Asia and asked me to join shortly after.

Stats: Yeah, it was a long and complicated history but we're all in the right place now.

Garmonia was a laptop album wasn't it? Very DIY. But you all had previous recording experience. How was the making of Garmonia? Did you feel as though you were stepping into the unknown in any way?

Mike: Yeah, definitely. The first song we recorded was "Hail Russia" which, technically, was done with a Boss digital 8-Track before we used laptops. This was two keyboards, a delay box, a drum machine, and one guitar track. One take, written and recorded over the span of two hours. Although, a lot of what is characteristic of our music was there: the atmosphere, the fixation on foreign places, lots of delay, etc.

We really had no idea what this band was going to sound like when we started working on Garmonia, which was quite a bit after we wrote "Hail Russia." We started working with laptops and keyboards, and we didn't have a proper studio at all. But things fell together. I had been working on tons of beats, loops, sounds, etc.. and Chris had a million guitar riffs, and they all just kind of collided into the first few tracks on Garmonia. Part of why that album happened so quickly was because we both had a lot of unused material and unexplored ideas, and each of us was sort of enabled by the other to explore this territory that slowly became our sound. So, it was unknown at the time, but I think our ideas of what the band should ultimately evoke were very similar, even at the beginning. Which isn't to say that there weren't massive, bloody disagreements about nearly every small detail along the way, but I think we both would characteristically agree when something sounded right.

Are you all full-time on LOA or do you have other employment?

Chris: Stats is in grad school, Rushmore is a high-school art teacher, and I of course am an astronaut.

What's your attitude to genre terminology such as space rock and electronica? Where do you see yourselves fitting in?

Chris: Genres are alright. You have to have some way of looking up music that you are interested in.

Stats: I really don't know where we fit in. I think genre names can be helpful, but they are a double-edged sword sometimes. I think we have elements of a lot of different styles... but it's not like we are trying to be an amalgam of all these styles. We just make music. Of course it's going to have some similarity to styles that have influenced us. We are not making a statement by borrowing from all these genres, in any way. They're just part of the available palette of styles for a musican working with modern tools. Perhaps we're too broad in our influences, but I guess you could put us in a couple camps without ruffling feathers. It's not our concern.

Are you fans of, say Ulrich Schnauss and/or the Morr 'Blue skied and clear' Slowdive-inspired compilation? Or indeed Slowdive themselves?

Stats: Yeah, we love Ulrich Schnauss, absolutely love Slowdive, and we all really like that Morr compilation. Some of that Morr stuff really set the bar very high for people who are influenced by rock and electronic music. Very influential. Slowdive was a crucial band, of course.

Rushmore: I'm a huge fan of shoegazer music, I still listen to all those bands, it never gets old. I met Rachel Goswell once and it made my year.

Stats: I've seen his 90's fuzzy guitar CD collection, it takes up the whole hallway.

Chris: Is Enya shoegaze?

(Brett) Eye-glaze, I think.  On a serious note I know Rachel Goswell has been suffering ill-health of late and we would all like to wish her well. Now, I wonder, and you aren't compelled to answer this, but do you guys use any chemical assistance in the writing process?

Chris: That’s a very bold question. Let’s just say that there are quite a few Carlsberg’s and Stella Artois downloaded into the system.

Rushmore: And lots of chocolate milk.

Chris: Yeah, he's not kidding either.

Rushmore: But no kidney stones for me as of yet.

Stats: For me, it's caffeine. Multiple formats.

You take LOA on the road don't you? Am I correct in thinking you toured with Mogwai and Papa M at early stages? How was that experience?

Chris: Touring is pretty hard with all of our professions. We have to battle with school schedules and space flight training. We do try to play as much as we can though. It’s tricky here in Wisconsin to find bands that will compliment each other in shows. We have played with punk and rock bands before but that's always a mixed bag for us.

Stats: We've played some really memorable shows, such as playing with French electro-samba band Antena in their first North American show in 20 years, which was great. That was in Milwaukee. We played a couple of experimental and electronic showcases in the midwest which were a lot of fun for us, doing video and live drums, and also our shows with Ariel, A Whisper in the Noise and Timonium in Minneapolis, were particularly highlights.

Chris: The Mogwai thing is a little incorrect because we have never toured with them. Although we have played some shows with Mogwai here in Milwaukee and a few times in Chicago. Its always a great time with them. They are great friends. Also, they put on the loudest fuckin’ show I have ever heard. It’s always worth it.

Yeah, no disagreement from me. Okay so Garmonia was 2003 - now cut to the present day and Tanks. Why such a long time between releases?

Stats: You know, that's a long story that I'm not sure we can fully capture. Some of it had to do with our ambitions to really perfect our live set, some of it came down to the challenge of working a third member into the creative flow of things, and some of it was just the pressure and difficulty of putting out a second album.

Chris: A lot happened within that time. Stats (Mike Ystad) got married. I also got married. Some of us had career and location changes. We had to reconfigure the studio for a new space, and also we went through a label change. The only thing that didn’t happen is that the Hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon still hasn’t been fixed. We will probably have to disintegrate C-3PO.

Stats: Chris isn't a Star Wars geek. Not at all.

Rushmore: It was different joining after they had written "Garmonia" because even though we had all spent many hours together writing music, they had a new approach that was far more intricate and revolved less around our collective space rock jams. Things evolved. I initially joined to play bass and drums and ended up playing guitar on almost every track.

And was that delay a difficult time?

Chris: Of course. We had so many ups and downs. There were times that we thought that it wasn’t going to happen. Really, the love of creating and writing held us in there. Plus, since we are all best friends, it gave us another reason to get together. If there was no sign of an album we would still be doing music.

Stats: Well, in retrospect there were things we know we could have done differently to speed things along. But the period was actually quite rich in terms of songwriting and learning to play live together.

Rushmore: Even though Tanks is just the second album, we wrote and recorded many, many songs during that period. Some of them may see the light of day at some point. The songs on Tanks just seemed to fit together nicely as a chapter, I suppose. We're very proud of that record, as well as the other material we haven't yet released.

What prompted your move to n5MD?

Stats: We began talking with Mike from n5MD about the prospect of putting out a record, and we discussed things as a band and concluded that n5MD was a label on which we would fit in very well. More than that, however, we liked the direction Mike was taking the label, we had much respect for what he had done so far in terms of releases and the stellar reputation he has as a businessman and artist, and we really saw the opportunity as being something we had to move on. So we did.

Without wishing to put words into your mouths, was there ever a sense of concern that the genre was becoming saturated by the time 'Tanks' could be released? By which I mean, when Garmonia came out there was little in the way of peer activity. Manual perhaps? Lali Puna? You guys were pretty hot news at the time.

Stats: We don't worry very much about that stuff.

Rushmore: We don't really think of the genre as saturated. We're just glad there are a lot of people making really cool music and we get excited about it.

Stats: We are always happy when people say that we remind them of really great bands. But there have been so many disparate associations, people saying we remind them of Talk Talk, New Order, Edward Shearmur, Boards of Canada, Pink Floyd, Marillion (seriously), Vangelis, etc...

Yeah, I know. I think I even mentioned The Cure to you myself (about Four Square.) Marillion though????

Stats: We take all those as complimentary. We still don't know where we fit, from an outside perspective. We aren't very genre-conscious. If people think we belong in the "shoegazing with laptops" scene, then fine. Our next album might not sound very shoegazing at all, but I think it would still sound like us. Maybe that sounds kind of pretentious. I hope I didn't just say that we transcend genre. This isn't going in the interview, is it?

Is there a LOA masterplan? e.g. Stadium concerts with U2 as your supporting act by______ World domination by_______

Stats: We're going hip-hop, Brett. Strictly hip-hop. And I mean, strictly hip-hop straight out of 1991. Seriously, not really a master plan. We have another album in the works to follow up Tanks.

Chris: I would love to play in Japan. I’m not sure how that’s going to happen but that would be a great highlight in my life.

Rushmore: And, more importantly, we have two new dry erase boards in the studio, so we have lots of space for planning.

Why Japan Chris? Not the ‘Lost in Translation’ factor, is it?

Chris:  Japan is just this Amazing mystery to me.  Yes, Lost In Translation just made it an even more desirable country to visit and yes, that soundtrack was a great one. 

Brett: It is.

Chris: Every story that I've heard about performing over there is that the people seem to be more excited, than the average person, about rock shows and the energy is ridiculously out of control.  To play Japan would be a great reward.   I also want to have just one day to empty my bank account and buy all sorts of crazy toys and electronic things.

Final thoughts? Plans?

Chris: Besides playing Japan? Just being able to get our music available to as many listeners as possible.

Stats: I don't know, maybe another few albums. Seems reasonable. It's early, but the feedback we are getting from Tanks makes the wait worthwhile. We have a ton of new material, and we just recently upgraded the studio and some of the gear at LOA headquarters. We are going to play a few shows to support the release of the CD and then continue working on the next release for a while. The writing and production sessions have become very fresh again. We are inspired. We think the next release will be our best by far.

The Silent Ballet would like to thank Lights Out Asia for the interview. Visit them on the internet here.