Char2D2 Interview. January 11th 2010

CHAR2D2 Interview by Julie Matson, for "With Gay Abandon" on CJLO, January 11 2009

J: 'kay we are here with the lovely Char2D2 who just has a new EP release out, and uh so Char2D2, are you going to tell us about that?
C: yes Julie, i'd love to tell you about that.
J: It was a self-release, can we say that?
C: yes it was. It was, um, I released it myself. Um. Just it was something I worked on in late spring/early summer, and got things together and it was out in the summer. It's fairly new, I just sent it out to your wonderful radio station this fall. Um. I'm quite excited about it. Um, yeah.
J: So you previously were with Bella, and how was the uh the process of recording on your own to recording with a band?
C: Um... it was good. It's, it's... uh.. My time with Bella was really good in that I learned kind of the basics of everything but it can be a lot easier when there's less people involved, it's just more simple and y'know um..  um there's less debating going on. Sometimes. Sometimes I have debates with myself in my head (laughs) but um on the most part it went quite smoothly and I was lucky to have been working with people who had done this before too and um it was quite well organized. With Bella, we were just kind of learning about the recording process. Plus we all wrote, and we all had different ideas for the um the songs and where we were going but um...
J: So you recorded, you had two producers on your Char2D2 release?
C: Nope. Well uh... I co-produced but the uh producer, it was produced by Tegan Quin from Tegan and Sarah, and it was her first project uh acting as a producer, so it was cool. She was very well organi ed. She's a virgo, and so she had booklets all planned out and binders and lyric sheets written for everybody, and um it was good and inspiring, and I picked up a lot of good approaches for the next time I record. Um and yeah...
J: So what were your inspirations for songwriting?
C: Ummmmm.... I'm saying "um" a lot.
J: It's okay, it's all good. (laughs)
C: (laughs) Are you gonna use this all...
J: No, I'm gonna use it all.
C: ... or should I make it fun for you editing? I'll just randomly start talking about little green elves right now and I'm like "hey Julie, remember that time when I had a little green elf living under my bed, you remember that?"
J: ... I don't know... (laughing)
C: I'm just kidding, now you can learn how to edit, or not... (laughing)
J: I know how to edit, thank you very much. (laughing)
C: But you've never used this application...
J: It's true.
C: ...how do you know how to edit it?
J: We're gonna use this all because it'll be more interesting.
S: Hey I have a question, are you sure the quality is good enough?
J: Well let's try, this is our test.
C: No. We can check... okay let's check now.
J: Hey no! Let's finish this interview! (laughing)
C: Oh! (laughing)
J: Tell us about your inspirations!
C: Oh yeah!
J: How did you come up with writing these songs?
C; Um like I was telling you, this little green elf under my bed...
(both laughing)
C: While I'm sleeping he whispers in my ear songs about rainbows and golden coins.
J: Oh yeah? And small vampires?
C: Yeah. Oh actually...! (laughs)
J: (laughs) Here's the real story...
C: I'm not gonna tell you the real story, but um if you listen closely, you'll hear the little elf singing on some of the songs. It's actually, if you play the CD backwards, you can hear "I love golden coins". (laughs)
J: Okay we'll do that. (laughs) We'll definitely do that. Should we play the title track off your album?
C: Yes.
J: Do you want to introduce it?
C: (laughs) Please play the title track.
J: Why don't you introduce it?
(both laughing)
C: Well, the EP is called "The Small Vampires EP", and it's not about the kind of vampires like um Dracula. It's not about Dracula.
J: It's not about "Twilight"?
C: No, it's not about "Twilight".
J: True Blood?
C: It's actually about Dracula's long-lost cousin nobody knows about named Irmgard.... No, just kidding. (laughs)
J: (laughs)
C: It's not really about vampires like that kind of vampires. I'll let you think about what other kind of vampires could exist. Um.
J: Small ones.
C: Yeah, small ones. It's about things that suck the life out of you at times. So, I mean it could be a vampire if, um, your name is Sookie and you live in the Midwest somewhere, but for other people it's like a mosquito, or like an ex-girlfriend or something like that. So anyways, the title track is sort-of called "You are a Small Vampire", which is not the name of the EP but it's pretty close cos the name of the EP is "Small Vampires", so um yeah.
J: And here it is, Char2D2, live on CJLO.