If you had to explain your music to a stranger, what would you say? We face this problem all the time—it’s not easy. If the person seems relatively zone-oriented, we can normally get away with saying that we play “drone/noise improv with synthesizers” and leave it at that. If we’re explaining it to one of our aunts or an older co-worker or whatever, we go with something like “spacey abstract music, kind of like New Age…like…music you’d hear in a movie,” omitting the fact that our music could very well terrify them. In situations where we know the people asking have no frame of reference at all, like the waitstaff at the Cracker Barrel, Doug tells them that we’re the Black Keys.

How has your music developed within the past year? We’re working at branching out into new sound sources, or refining our old ones—Natalie is using the Korg MS20, Max is using his Electribe synth/drum machine, and Doug is playing more guitar (all in addition to the usual synths and electronics we’ve used since the beginning). We try to mine all of our gear for as many different sounds and textures as we can—so each new addition to our rigs causes major changes in our sound. We’re also working at incorporating more overtly composed sections into our improvised work, or structuring sessions in a way that more directly identifies the band member in the lead capacity and the others in the support capacity. One of our newest pieces, for example, begins and ends with a passage that operates much like a head in jazz, and each of us has a section designated as our solo. Whatever structures we develop while at home always evolve and grow a lot when we’re on tour, playing every night, so we’ll see how these ideas crystallize.

What is your ideal recording/studio situation? We’ve recorded all of our albums live in the basement studio of our home, Randall, in which Doug and Max live. Doug is the engineer and handles all of the mixing. The basement setting is ideal for a few reasons: maximum comfort, no outsiders getting in the way of our improv, a nice homey sound, and full control over all recording parameters. If we had a drummer, we’d have to record elsewhere, but we’re not looking to record at a studio any time soon—though of course there’s something to be said for having an outside perspective on the engineering and post-production side of things.

Natalie channels the likes of Björk, Sade, and Aaliyah in terms of front-woman confidence/dominance, while tending to orbit in an emotionally rich, bittersweet harmonic territory similar to Aphex Twin’s ambient works. She also has been exploring the incorporation of noise and atypical instrumentation into our sessions a la Xiu Xiu’s damaged pop. Doug has been digging deeper into the Grateful Dead than ever before, and draws inspiration from their eternal reservoir of leads and melodies, along with their interplay as a unit. Max is on a strict Sun Ra regimen at the moment, with enough material out there to pretty much never stop.

We worship The Residents and derive inspiration from them on a daily basis, in terms of both musical unpredictability and general life practices. Lifer noise units like Wolf Eyes and Hair Police set the bar high for the maxed-out potential of unhinged improv vs. cohesive group performance. We’ve always loved the more exploratory strains of jazz, like Miles Davis’s fusion era, Alice Coltrane, the aforementioned Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and more. The influence of all these artists doesn’t necessarily manifest in the exact tones and instruments we use, but rather in the ideas that shape our sessions and the spirit with which we approach improv.

Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your music? We played a show in Arcata, CA in summer 2012, deep within what they call the Emerald Triangle in Humboldt County. The night ranks among some of our haziest, most bizarre evenings on tour ever. We played in a garage/barn behind a house venue called Mex N Wow, with some actual chickens in attendance, plus many cats, and one of our buds we made there told us he fell into an overwhelming reverie flashback during our set. He saw a vivid scene from his own childhood, in which he met another boy on the beach and they built a sandcastle together. He described it as a post-lingual event, where they were communicating with gestures and “raw emotions,” or falling into long silences—because the other boy only spoke Spanish, and he only spoke English. He said that he had entirely forgotten about that day. So, yeah: unearthing buried memories of primal childhood events, definitely a great reaction.

Any upcoming shows or tours we should know about? We’re currently on an east coast tour with one of our best friends, Mike Sugarman, who performs music under the name Sugarm. We’re linking up on bills with tons of friends’ projects, and some musicians we love but haven’t spent much time with in person. Here are the remaining dates: