Interview

MJ: Do you have a favorite moment of your career so far?

Tyler: I thought I was going to explode at our release show for our first album “Coast”. It was the perfect venue, perfect line up, and the crowd was as much if not more inebriated than we were, making for a very exciting interaction when we got on stage. On the other hand, the time off stage while touring is always my favorite to remember. Spending four days wandering Manhattan during the summer, showing in waterfalls, and marveling at all the different landscapes across America are the kind of moments i’m incredibly grateful Sun Hotel has allowed us to have.

MJ: You’ve been known to play house parties and have made quite a few quality free releases.  Is this part of your band’s personal philosophy? Are these things you will have to eventually say goodbye to as Sun Hotel inevitably gets bigger?

Tyler: if anything, i’d like to see Sun Hotel’s releases in the future get free-er! and maybe we can move from house parties to backyards or pubic parks for shows… Our philosophy is basically that there’s nothing less alienating from a crowd than playing on the floor instead of on a stage, and maybe with a little creativity, and just little bit of love, we won’t ever have to give up that kind of connection.

MJ: What inspires or fuels you on a daily basis? What do you write songs about?

Tyler: I am completely fueled and completely inspired by people. I try to write about experiences and feelings, hopefully universal ones, big and small, like living in a house, getting along with someone, or Panopticism.

MJ: From your free glo-fi version of your album Coast, it seems like Sun Hotel is a band that can do a lot with a little.  Do you think so? Are you guys gear nerds at all? Are there any pieces of gear that are essential to your sound in recording or playing live?

Tyler: We love minimalism, but we also love walls and walls of sound. I think between the four of us we have something like fourteen delays pedals, whatever it is, the ratio of delay to people is often times frightening. I’d have to do some serious soul-searching if I ever parted ways with my Roland RE-20 Space Echo pedal, sometimes I’ll find myself leaving it on for the whole set without noticing, it puts a little space in our set.

MJ: Sun Hotel seems to be a fairly prolific band. Walk me through the process of creating a Sun Hotel song.

Tyler: Typically, I’ll begin by writing a skeleton of what that song is going to involve, usually a few minutes long. I’ll record a cassette demo for the band, who get their hands on it and turn into something you could hardly recognize. Once we have all the music worked out, we go home and work on harmonies in the living room and then we begin playing it live. Then while we tour and play new songs over and over they change the most, until we get home and record the finished product.

MJ: Tell me about your new EP.  Do you see it as a departure from your sound in Coast or Team Spirit at all?

Tyler: We all subconsciously recorded in ways that is making Gifts sound gigantic. Alex had the impulse to record all his guitar tracks through three terrifying amplifiers, I went ahead and doubled tracked all of mine and John played what sounded more like a violin than a bass by the time his tones made it through his great wall of pedals.