I Will Never Leave Your Troubled Eyes: An Interview with Body of Light and a New Video

Body of Light, two brothers from Tempe, Arizona, have been making some insanely catchy dark synth pop lately. The song in this video, “Limits of Reason,” is no exception.

Here they have teamed up with Los Angeles trippy video artist Amanda Siegel for a highly textured and brightly colored visual experience, complete with cool industrial dance moves, gloves that look like they are made of leather, and a chain. “The minute I heard this song I knew we had to collaborate on a video,” says Siegel. In it, “caustic trails of other-worldly environments mutate into burned-out concentric silhouettes.”

Ascetic House, the infamous Tempe experimental label/collective/party posse that now has cells on both U.S. coasts, released the track on a cassette of the same name that was only available for purchase for one day in January 2014 (as part of AH's January Program, detailed here). It catches Alex and Andrew Jarson at their best recorded so far.

Check this video and a brief email exchange with the Jarsons. If you are in the New York area in the coming days you can see them perform live too (details after the interview).

Noisey: Tell us about this new video. What's the idea behind it? How was it made?
Alex: I once took four hits of what was really strong acid at a forest rave in France. It was thrown by some Eastern Europeans, most of them Russian I think. The whole thing was bizarre and slightly unsettling. When we got there, wooden signs were posted all over the place that read “Cops, stay out!” and all of the Russians had these big white vans they were sitting in all night with their pit bulls, girls, and booze. Everyone was either speaking French or Russian, and they would just hound you relentlessly about Arizona. When you’re tripping, you know, things like that will turn your trip into a nightmare. I ended up running into the forest, completely out of my mind. I called the police on my phone, asking them to save me, and they laughed straight into the receiver and hung up. I called my parents. It was just bad shit, you know? It was the quintessential bad acid trip. But there was this abandoned bridge that was covered in rich moss, and a moment of peace occurred when the lights turned on underneath it. It was next to this big open wheat field and the sun was setting. Euro club music started pounding in our eardrums and everyone was dancing. I wasn’t too familiar with techno and electronic music back then, and I remember dancing nervously, trying to act normal, but instead I caught a glimpse of these half naked Italian fire breathers that were wearing leather and showing off their tricks behind us. Before I knew it, I had turned around and everyone had seemed to leave the dance floor. I wasn’t sure if it was something I did or what, but the only person left was this guy who looked exactly like Rasputin, and I mean exactly like him. He had his shirt off and was sweating profusely, smiling this huge crazy smile, and rubbing his beard and stomach on the pulsating subs/speakers. He was in complete ecstasy. He was a magician. It was exhilarating watching him because I was half out of my mind too. I felt like I knew what he was getting at and suddenly felt really safe. He really gave me comfort when I was stuck in such a bizarre world, having the worst time of my life. I think we captured some of that vibe in our video.

Andrew: Our friend Amanda Siegel has been doing live video art for some of our shows for a couple years now. I think she asked us if we wanted to make a video together and of course we were down. She brought over a Super 8 camera and some VHS cameras and shot a bunch of footage. I’ve only seen a small clip of it, but what I’ve seen looks perfect. We filmed part of it in Arizona – us playing live and I think she filmed some other stuff on her own too.

What's it like being a band solely comprised of two brothers? Do you hash out any sibling rivalries?
Alex: It’s easier. Much easier than dealing with five people who all have different views on what sound you are going for. We know what we want out of this project and we know where we’re going to take it.

Andrew: Collaborating on music can be really tricky, especially electronic music. When you have other people around you, it influences your writing and performances. A lot of the time writing collaboratively can lead to a bunch of ego flexing and you can accidentally shit all over someone’s idea because it doesn’t coincide with your own. Sometimes it’s the other way around, and you get shit on. That can lead to a lot of hostility within a band and ruin your ability to write anything. In Body of Light, it’s just Alex and I, and we’ve been assholes to each other our whole lives.

What sound are you going for? How has that changed and do you foresee any new evolutions?
Andrew: I don’t think it’s a very conscious decision. We’re obviously making everything with synths and 808’s, stuff that’s not organic. I don’t really see us using guitars or anything like that, and if we did, it would be resampled and fucked up to the point where you wouldn’t recognize it. And then people would probably just assume it’s a synth or something anyway. But I always find new ideas and things I can do with my gear every day, and that leads to constant changes in how I make music. So I guess it’s constantly evolving. Maybe we have a specific sound that other people can hear, but I’m not going to just label it as dark synth pop or coldwave because I’m not really sure that’s all it is.

Alex: On the last release, we tried a lot of new things and I think we took our production to a new level. The songwriting is just getting more and more complex and I want to continue to push that while still maintaining something minimal, whatever that word means. I feel like there are two sides to the songwriting process in this project. It’s like one side of me knows exactly what sound I want and the other side wants to fuck everything up and make it completely different and wrong.

What's new with Ascetic House? For our less familiar readers can you tell us what Ascetic House is?
Alex: Ascetic House is difficult to define, as it can’t be summed up so easily. It’s constantly evolving, and involves many different people, all scattered across the globe, and it will only continue to grow until it can’t support itself any longer. But it started with a very small group of people with some insane and wild-eyed ideas. Experimentation seemed to lead us and still does - that’s very central to what it is. It started out as a small idea and through an utterance of will, it grew into a shed and a mailing list. You can follow its history from there. Everyone involved is now at the top of their game, completely dedicated to what they’re doing. If you’re not familiar, now would be a great time to start watching.

Andrew: We’re all playing a lot in Tempe when we’re not touring. There have been some pretty fun shows recently and there are a lot of new acts that are amazing. We’ve also been getting some great electronic artists coming through here. To be honest, Tempe should be boring to live in but there are a lot of people doing awesome stuff and it’s been really inspiring to be around it. And all the Ascetic House people in New York and LA are killing it too so it feels like we have a hub on each coast that we can depend on having great shows when we go on the road. And then we have great shows when we’re back. It’s nonstop. I’ve been playing so much that I’ve seriously been having dreams that I have a quarter inch input in my bellybutton. I can’t speak for my friends but I just think it’s cool that I get the chance to have four completely different creative projects at once and still have people watching/listening.

Can you give us a rundown of your releases?
Alex: In order here is our current discography:

-Follow The Current (2011/Ascetic House)
-Universal Sin (2011/Ascetic House)
-Lustre (2011/Ascetic House)
-Wayside City (2012/Ascetic House)
-Volonta Di Amore (2013/Chondritic Sound)
-Limits of Reason (2014/Ascetic House)

The first three tapes were noise collages I had made with very limited gear. I think there were like two actual songs spliced in there as well. I didn’t know how to play the synthesizer so I just recorded a bunch of stuff and cut them up in ways that made sense. Eventually I got better at what I was doing and recorded Wayside City with Volonta Di Amore following the same format. Limits of Reason I think was the next experiment and in a lot of ways it was sort of rushed to meet a deadline, so I like to think of it as a segue into our first full length, which will be out as soon as I make an effort to do the damn thing.

BODY OF LIGHT on TOUR
Oct 17 – Brooklyn, NYC @ Babycastles !
Oct 18 – Brooklyn, NYC @ Coco 66 +
Oct 22 – Manhattan, NYC @ Home Sweet Home / Nothing Changes ^

! An Ascetic House event and Tape Release Show. Playing new material as “Somali Extract”with Glochids, Copley Medal, R. Vasquez, and Saran Man.
+ with Pawns and Humanbeast
^ with Soren and Memorymann