Faded Paper Figures

A conversation with R. John Williams, Kael Alden and Heather Alden

(June 2009)

Interview by Amber Henson

I consume albums the same way I consume food.  In the winter of ’07, I couldn’t stop eating New England clam chowder.  Every other night for dinner, I was souping it up.  Last summer, I ate a daily avocado.  Currently I’m into Funyuns.  But it’ll be like all the others.  I eat it constantly, and then I’m pretty well done with it within a month or two.  In this manner I consumed Mates of States, MGMT, and The Virgins.

But with Faded Paper Figures I have tried desperately to be careful.  After a couple listens, I realized that this was no mere indie electronica album.  It was something that deserved much more than a month of my time.

I had’t been able to put my finger on exactly what is so brilliant about their album, Dynamo.  Was it the awesome beats?  The soft, enticing vocals?  The beautiful melodies?  Well, yes, but I don’t think I’d given enough credit to the lyrics until I met their creator, R. John Williams.  I very much enjoyed the words, and occasionally pondered what exactly they meant.  But after talking to John and realizing he was a seriously smart cookie, things began to fall into place.

That’s not to downplay the contributions of the other two band members, Kael and Heather Alden.  Heather’s sweet back up vocals and instrumentation, and Kael’s music writing and manipulating have created a band that is the first in ’09 that I’m really excited about.

Faded Paper Figures actually started in early ’07, when they met at party of a mutual friend.  After some bantering about their band experience (Kael has a company, Robot Repair, creating background tracks, along with music for TV and movies, and John had been in “bad high school bands” – “You won’t get the names out of him” Heather noted, smiling), John showed up at the Alden house, just to futz around, make a song with the equipment that was there for Kael’s job.  The next night John came back, and listened to what Kael had done to the song, which was “Speeches”, the eleventh track on Dynamo.

“It wasn’t the same song,” Kael admits.  “Well, no, but it was amazing,” John added.  “I decided that as long as I would be working with a genius, I’m gonna do this, I’ll be in a band again.”

The whole band is intellectual.  John teaches literature and film at UC Irvine, and will be pursuing his PhD at an Ivy League this fall.  Heather is attending medical school, possibly in New York.  All this moving around and engaging in other things besides music seriously concerns me, but at least they’ve promised an EP before the end of the summer.  The sound, according to John, will be “bigger, more like the live stuff.”  This interview took place after their set at the Dakota Lounge in Santa Monica, and was one show of only a handful that they’ve put on so far.  The sounds that the three spent months recording and that Kael spent months manipulating are only able to come across on a guitar, bass, keyboard, glock, and, recently, a Moog.  “I feel like there’s a disconnect between our album and our live show, so I’d like to start bridging that gap and give us a bigger sound.  We’ll be incorporating rock.”  Heather added, “There’s talk of getting some live drums on the album.”

So clearly there’s a lot of communication involved in how their albums come together, but what else could they tell me about how the process for writing songs?  “I’ll come with chords and lyrics,” John started.  “Or I’ll come up with a melody, and John will put words on top of it,” Kael continued. 

And where does the inspiration for these words come from?  “An academic place.  The words will reflect things that I’ve been reading or writing.  There’s a lot of theory going on.  A lot about experiments, looking inside the structure, and, I guess, esoteric things.”  “There’s a lot of it I don’t get,” Kael laughed.  “It is a bit syllabus referential,” John admitted.  “And so I have to ask him to bring it down,” Kael finished.

Luckily, you don’t have to have gone to graduate school to figure out what the lyrics are about. The band’s website had the most convenient links to sites that will explain what it is they’re talking about (http://fadedpaperfigures.com/lyrics.html).  Some of it, I think, may be having fun with their fans, but it’s helpful if you’re not sure what the Omnicom Group is, which is brought up in “The Persuaded”.

So what are their favorite songs to play live?  “I love to play ‘Logos’ live, since I get to wail on the bass,” answered Kael. I laughed at this since I had, in fact, noticed how hard core he had gone on that song during the seven song set.  Heather paused when I looked at her.  “Well, this isn’t necessarily my favorite song on the album, because I think sometimes they’re different entities, but I love playing 'Metropolis'.”  John agreed with her on both counts.  “Yes, that’s my favorite to play too, but 'North By North' is my favorite song from Dynamo.”  How about any of these new songs?  Will they start playing those songs at upcoming concerts?  “Sadly, no,” John answered.  “People bring camcorders to our shows, and then it will wind up on the Internet.  I’d rather have us release it first.”  Heather added, “That way, they can’t say we’ve screwed it up!”

This band has become huge in Japan, and even has a label there, despite their lack of one Stateside.  Rallye, their Japanese label, also represents The Klaxons and offered FPF a deal a year before their album came out.  “We were like ‘sure!’.” Heather laughed.  There has even been talk of a tour in Japan.

How about music videos are any of those on the horizon?  “Yes, one for 'Metropolis', and one for a new song, 'New Medium',” John answered.  “We are super excited for both,” Heather beamed, “'Metropolis' will be done for us, by a friend of ours.”  “I shot the other one, and I’m editing it,” Kael went on, “It’s very DIY.  I’m learning Final Cut Pro for some of it, and some of it we shot on eight millimeter film.  It’s taken me about a month.  We shot it in the library.”  Heather added to her husband’s story: “There are library cards, and microfilm that we had to cut up.  We figured we looked suspicious.”  “We brought in our own materials,” John continued, “but we still tried to not let people see that we were cutting up books.”

Kael’s day job at Robot Repair is all about matching songs to images, so this video is clearly going to be in good hands.  A lot of people discovered Faded Paper Figures because of a song that Kael wrote for a Lexus commercial.  People would hear the song, want more, do research, and find the band.  But since that song is owned by Lexus now, fans won’t hear it at any shows.  I asked if the band itself would be involved in any commercials.  They all balked.  Fair enough.  I suppose their track “The Persauded”, which is about the dangers of advertising, should have answered that for me.

Before I left the band, I asked them a guilty pleasure question.  I’ve learned that singers don’t often like to reveal information about their lyrics, but I couldn’t help myself.  “What’s up with the line ‘Urban trash crustaceans’ in the song 'Metropolis'?”  John smiled wide.  “Originally the line was ‘urban trash gas stations.”  There was a laugh around the table.  “But the line makes sense to me,” Kael added, “The song’s about LA and I’ve always pictured, like, growths, appendages that grab at passersby.”   “Metropolis is about a duel fascination and loathing of LA” John explained, “It’s complicated, full of machinery.”  “Dirty,” Kael put in.  “And it’s evil, but it’s an ambivalent relationship with its populations.  So these trash crustaceans, it just adds to the surreal,” John finished.

The vibe of FPF and their intellectual sense of humor set this band apart.  Although still clearly a new band when playing live, there’s something very compelling about them.  And just listening to a few of the lines from any song gives someone not only something to get stuck in their head, but something for their brain to really chew on.  I can’t wait to watch this band continue their success.  They completely deserve it.