US alt.rock band Elemantra are preparing to announce themselves to the UK alternative scene with the release of their album To Know Better, out now.
Taking cues from the alternative rock era comprising iconic bands ranging from Sense Field, The Appleseed Cast and Sunny Day Real Estate to Hum and The Smashing Pumpkins, Elemantra have concocted a sound with nods to the past but very much aimed at a contemporary audience.
Showcasing a sonic delicateness Elemantra have expertly combined nuanced, melodic soundscapes with a dynamic, heavy edge; creating an emotive yet forceful sound. This is no more apparent than on tracks like ‘Low Dose Of Irony’, complete with chiming guitar segments that envelope your ear drums as Justin Woodmancy’s (vocals, guitar, keyboards) vocals sore. While ‘Next Man Up’ undulates back and forth, as playful time changes offer a stop/start, loud/quiet feel before descending into an effecting guitar solo, flanked by heart-wrenching screaming vocal harmonies. Title track ‘To Know Better’, an album highlight among many, illustrates everything that is good about Elemantra; raging guitar riffs, a pulsating rhythm section and ethereal, shoegaze-like vocals.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Justin Woodmancy of Elemantra about the latest release, motivations, challenges and much more.
Full Q&A along with links and streams below.
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
Initially what attracted me to rock and metal music was the guitar playing, but with me being a guitar player that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Hearing guitarists like Billy Corgan, Tom Morello, Kim Thayil, J Mascis, Jus Oborn, Matt Pike, and Josh Homme was so eye opening to me. Those guys are truly in leagues of their own. To hear them for the first time playing things that are so individual and unique to them, was like going into other worlds that I never knew could exist when I was 13 or so.
But, once I got past, or rather I saw past, my obsession with tone, prowess, and the overall ‘wow’ factor, I started to appreciate the subtleties of songwriting. This lead me to notice sonic textures, atmosphere, and the art of pop hooks. The Smashing Pumpkins and The Cure specifically really influenced me early on in these aspects, and still continue to do so.
The overwhelming beauty and grandiose watery feeling of The Cure’s “Disintegration” blew my mind. So too did the tremendous variety and effortless ability to blend sheer anger and density with the delicateness of a butterfly on The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie & The infinite Sadness”.
The fact that both records are able to achieve all of that while still remaining incredibly catchy and memorable lamented my love and adoration for alternative rock/dream pop/post punk or what have you. Currently, with Elemantra, those are the feelings and sounds we hope to achieve.
What led you into this journey with music? And further, what drives you to push it out to the public?
Growing up, I only listened to music that was readily available to me. At a young age I became familiar with the music my mother would play in the house while she was cleaning or cooking, and to what the radio stations she’d listen to in the car would play. Usually artists like Fleetwood Mac, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Queen, and Tom Petty. I had no problem with that as a kid, and I still listen to Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty frequently.
There was also the music my older brother brought around the house as well. Two artists that come to mind are Limp Bizkit and Rise Against. Before hearing them, as juvenile as they are, I never knew music could have so much aggression and emotion in it. It was truly eye opening to me. But these artists never influenced me to pick up a guitar because they weren’t mine, I had no connection to them. They were my Mom’s and my Brother’s music, not my own.
It wasn’t until a friend of mine came over to my house and played some music off of his iPod through my iHome while we played Halo 3 (right when it had come out. These were simpler, better times) that I discovered music can be more than something you just put on. He played for me Audioslave, Queens of the Stone Age, and Soundgarden. This was music like I had never heard. It had purpose, direction, obscurity, and was mysterious to me. Immediately I asked him who the artists were and he agreed to let me borrow his Audioslave CDs, to burn onto my computer of course.
From there I delved into similar artists, and music has dominated my life ever since. If the music that someone just decided to make one day can have such an impact on me and my life, who is to say anyone can’t just pick up a guitar and write songs? That’s what Nick, Brent and myself did in 2012 or so and it has just evolved since then. What drives me is knowing I can write whatever I want and whenever I want and it makes me happy. I’d be miserable without some sort of artistic expression and creation in my life. And I’m a terrible drawer and painter, so I guess it has to be music!
Who or what influences your creativity? Have your tastes in music changed over time?
When I first started playing guitar and writing, I suppose I was more attracted to the heavier and more dense side of things. Songs from Sleep, Electric Wizard, Kyuss, Eyehategod, and High On Fire were some of the first songs I ever learned to play. But over time, I began to appreciate the nuances of rock music and was no longer satisfied with only playing crushing riffs and screaming. Not that I still don’t absolutely love disgustingly heavy music, I just realized I wanted to make people feel things other than anger.
From a musical standpoint, there are truly too many artists to list that influence me and us as a band, but if I had to list a few of the most prominent influences on Elemantra’s sound I’d say: The Smashing Pumpkins, Sunny Day Real Estate, Hum, The Cure, Dinosaur Jr, The Chameleons, Jets To Brazil, Built To Spill, Guided By Voices, Dredg, Pinback, Prince, and The Appleseed Cast.
I think too what has an impact on our creativity is where we live and where we are from. We are from the only city in the USA which is on a Native American Reservation, The Seneca Allegany Territory in Salamanca, NY. There really isn’t much to do here and in a myriad ways it is very dated and archaic here. Being a proud Seneca and living on territory, I’m sure that this effects my outlook on life and sneaks its way into our music. The same can be said with the “midwest sound” with bands like Modest Mouse or Built To Spill. It’s pretty desolate out there and the music reflects that. But despite that, or maybe because of that, the artists have an appreciation or adoration of their places of origin. We certainly do.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
Overall it was to get things out of my mind, or off of my chest. To lay the past to rest and put it behind me. The record as a whole is about learning from life and accepting that you really don’t have as much control as you want to make yourself believe.
“To Know Better” is about getting up and mentally dusting yourself off, so the next time around you’re ready and more prepared to face life’s inevitabilities. Musically we wanted to create the best music we have to date, obviously. In the past we had sort of rushed out music and wrote songs in rapid succession. With this album, every single idea was fleshed out completely and painstakingly to ensure we all agreed on every note and transition as an ensemble. We really wanted to put together a release we are all utterly satisfied with and where everything is in its right place.
Not to say we weren’t with previous releases, we just really emphasized the fact that we should take our time with this one. We wanted every song to sound full and complete, where each song contributes to an overall piece accurately and uniquely. Something I should note too, on previous releases, our sound may have been a bit scattered as far as genre blending went. Which, to me is not a bad thing at all, but at times it would force the overall sound to maybe not seem as cohesive as it could have.
For “To Know Better”, we needed to stay true to our sound that incorporates styles outside of the traditional alt rock/shoegaze fare, all the while without sounding too all over the place. I think we definitely achieved that better than we ever had on this record. It is varied and never sits down and gets too comfortable on one genre or style, whilst maintaining a singular atmosphere and mood that runs throughout the duration of the record.
What was the last song you listened to?
777 – 9311 by The Time
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I want to say I prefer vinyl because I love physical items from Artists. Just holding it in your hands and looking at the enlarged artwork is worth it enough for me to buy vinyl. You can’t truly and completely connect with an album if you just downloaded it off Spotify or Apple Music.
Having said that, the vast majority of the time I listen to music, its on MP3. It’s just so convenient in today’s world. I do a ton of driving and while my car has a CD player and I have a pretty huge CD collection, it just makes more sense to use your phone with Spotify and download any album you could ever want. I do think a CD has more bass response than Bluetooth and it sounds a bit more clear overall, but to have a bunch of CDs in your car for variety just causes unnecessary clutter in your vehicle.
So I guess my answer is this: Romantically I prefer vinyl, realistically I prefer MP3.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
I (regretfully) have an iPhone and got 3 months of Apple Music free so I signed up for it.
I can’t say I prefer it over Spotify, aren’t they essentially the same thing?
Also, I can’t really consider Bandcamp to be a substitute for either platform. To me, Bandcamp is used to find smaller independent acts, or something you use to listen to a local band’s tunes before you go see them in a basement or at the bar down the street. Or, of course you can use it to buy your favorite independent band’s merch (you should).
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what is the biggest challenge you face when trying to connect with or find new fans?
I think it’s the same complaints that everyone has. Facebook sacks all band’s posts so hardly anyone sees them, unless of course you throw money at the wall and promote your posts. Which, sure if you have a really important post like an album release, go ahead and promote it. But if you just want to make a standard status update, say a show announcement, you don’t really want to promote that. If you promote each post, what’s special about the posts, ya know?
And, like you said, there is just so much content and shit out there, its hard to make yourself really stand out or to make people care. I mean honestly, how many times have you seen a bands post, a band you don’t know of, and just scrolled right past it? I know I have and who knows, maybe I, or you, would have loved their music. You just know you can always scroll down and there will be something new and stupid for you to look at that doesn’t take as much effort, like a picture of Papa John naked or something.
It’s not just Facebook, it is all forms of social media and promotion. There is just so much of everything out there, if you aren’t already invested in something, why would you click or tap on something you don’t know about? Today, you only matter if someone who matters says you matter.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more music?
We post a lot off the wall and dumb nonsense on our Instagram, we think we are funny. We post all of our updates on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook but each platform gets its own posts and whatnot because we aren’t organized at all. It’s best you just follow us on all three, huh?
All of our music goes up on our Bandcamp and onto all streaming platforms (Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon). Here is all of our links/handles if you are interested, which you should be:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Elemantra/
- Twitter: @elemantraband
- Instagram: @elemantra
- Bandcamp: https://elemantraband.bandcamp.com/
Anything else you’d like to add before signing off?
Thanks for letting me aimlessly ramble on about myself and our music! I hope I didn’t bore you too much and I also hope I made sense at least half of the time.
At any rate, “To Know Better” comes out August 17th on all streaming platforms, it’ll be free on our Bandcamp too, and we will have CDs and tapes you can order, perhaps even vinyls! That is something we have always wanted, to get our music pressed onto vinyl.
A boy can dream…. Either way, we’ll ship any item of merch anywhere in the world. I sincerely hope you like our tunes and if you have made it this far, thank you for reading. Come see us play live!
