The Octopus Project
The Octopus Project's Toto Miranda talks visual music, the Austin music scene and 'Lost.'
The Octopus Project is a mostly instru mental, always catchy indie-electronic band out of Austin, Texas. The fou r-piece can sometimes sound like eight as they groove analog, digital and electronic sounds to create a happy-go-lucky atmosphere that is as layered as an onion. Recently we gave band member Toto Miranda a jingle to discuss what makes The Octopus Project tick.
HEAVEmedia: In 2006 you had a random fan sign you up for a contest and you end up opening up Coachella. Did you buy this person pizza or anything?
Toto Miranda: (laughs) We actually had no idea who they were. We ended up meeting them at the festival. It was so completely anonymous. It was a huge deal and we were thrilled to get to do it.
HEAVEmedia: Golden Beds is out and is a mixture of unreleased stuff and other things that you guys wanted to redo. However, it also came with some videos. What is your favorite video you’ve done?
Toto Miranda: It’s really hard to pick a favorite. Our video process overall has presented a lot of opportunities to work with people who we know whose work we’ve really liked. In a lot of cases we collaborate with them but mostly let them do their thing. Each one has been really exciting and that’s what makes it so hard to pick a favorite. It’s just been really cool to work with everybody that’s done a video for us.
HEAVEmedia: So you guys just put a lot of trust into the creators?
Toto Miranda: We put a lot of trust in them, definitely. Sometimes they will ask for our input. Like in the video for “Truck.” The concept was there, but they asked us to do some illustrations so they could superimpose the animated heads onto the footage that they shot. So that one was a little more collaborative.
HEAVEmedia: All of your albums get pretty stellar reviews from the critics. Does that put pressure on you to keep it up?
Toto Miranda: I think the pressure is more self-imposed – that we are always excited about what we are doing and that we are always trying to get to the next level. It’s something we put so much time and energy into, so we want to make sure we are doing it justice. We want to make the most of opportunity we have and live up to the expectations we have for ourselves when we release it to the world.
HEAVEmedia: What kind of expectations for yourself?
Toto Miranda:To keep things exciting and fresh. Make sure we are totally engaged in what we are doing. It always seems intimidating before we do it, but with each release we are always pleased with the progress we are making and it seems we make music that we get more and more excited about.
HEAVEmedia: You guys are working on new material. When can we expect a full length?
Toto Miranda: Speaking completely hypothetically – next year. The general idea is to start focusing on brand new material when we finish with this tour, which lasts about another month. In a perfect world we would get things written in the fall and record it early next year and then get it out there. Who knows how reality is going to work, but that would be ideal.
HEAVEmedia: Your music is pretty layered. How does the beginning theme of a song start?
Toto Miranda: That is hard to say - Our songs start a lot of different ways. The idea never really comes from a grand vision of a song. It just kind of comes out picking up an instrument or working with a piece of software or something. We just kind of let things develop. We introduce some randomness into the process and react to the things we hear - things kind of build up from there.
HEAVEmedia: What is this visual music stuff I’ve heard talked about with your live show?
Toto Miranda: That, capital V capital M, is specifically referring to a set we put together to perform at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. They contacted us about doing a live score for film. Alamo Drafthouse is a movie theatre in Austin that does a lot of cool live events – they have presentations and have collections and sometimes invite musicians to perform and they invited us. We ended up choosing nine short films we really liked and ended up writing new music that acted as soundtracks for those nine films. We performed while they screened the film. It went really, really well – so we are hoping to take that show to other places in the future. So far we’ve only done one other show out of Austin, but it’s something we are hoping to pursue.
HEAVEmedia: Live music is everywhere in Austin. How do you think the almost over saturation of music helped develop the Octopus Project’s sound?
Toto Miranda:Well it’s weird because that all seemed pretty normal. It was part of the atmosphere of growing up there. A lot of it, to be perfectly honest, wasn’t great. Since it was such a big scene only a certain amount of it would catch your ear – it really had to be something that you were personally excited about. But because it was so big, the slice you liked was a little bit bigger than other places. There was a lot of exciting stuff going on.
I think everyone being such a big part of it in the city made it easier for us to go out and get started when we did. We are all into hearing as many sounds as possible, so it was great to be around a place where so many sounds were going on.
HEAVEmedia: You have to form a new band right now. What do they sound like?
Toto Miranda: The Octopus Project – but everyone has a cowbell.
HEAVEmedia: You guys are big fans of Lost. What are your predictions for Season 6?
Toto Miranda: Oh man, that would take days.
HEAVEmedia: All right – who dies?
Toto Miranda: Oh, everybody dies.
HEAVEmedia: Fair enough.
Posted by Wes Soltis on Jul 28, 2009 @ 8:00 am