9+1 Q&A with Ruderals

What inspired you to first start making music? And how did you come to be in your current incarnation? Or if you prefer, a brief bio about you.

Ben Olson and Kyle Rogers, the two guitar/bass switching frontmen, met each other at an open mic in Astoria, Queens, playing their unique interpretations of folk punk and really hit it off. Ben and Keith Malonis (drums) knew each other from playing in the notable Astoria alt rock band The Greenstreets, and really wanted to form a Post Punk band together. Ben had the idea to get us all together into a weird collective with the wonderful Blues guitarist Matt Loguidice. Matt wound up moving on to focus on honing his blues skills, but Ben Keith and Kyle had a fierce chemistry and started developing the original folk punk sound towards the more ambitious Art Rock/Post Punk with avant garde aspirations band that we are today.

Provide us with some info about your latest release…

Growth, the first of a series of 3 conceptual EPs, a mix of Punk, Folk, Noise and spoken word. All three EPs will come together to paint a picture of the history of our band over the few years we’ve been together.

Which ones would you consider your main influences both music-wise & non-music-wise?

We’re all over the place musically, Ben and Keith bond over Hardcore, Keith and Kyle over Jazz, Ben and Kyle over Arty and Avante Garde stuff (and of course They Might Be Giants) Overall though the Alt Rock/Grunge/Punk bands of the late 80s and 90s are the glue that holds our diverse range of influences together.

On the non-musical side we like kicking back with some Gansetts, joking around and being silly, or waxing philosophical and trying to understand this crazy world. And you know… talking music. We like music. It’s good stuff.

In what way does your sound differ from the rest genre-related artists/bands and why should we listen to your music? In other words, how would you describe your sound?

We love trashy guitars, wild drums and big melodic bass lines. We have a focus on lyrics that are personal, poetic, philosophical, with a lot of fun and humor mixed in. We can’t help but push ourselves towards new levels of intensity, playing with familiar forms and making them our own until you’d never know where they came from.

Please name your 3 desert islands albums, movies & books…

o Albums

▪ Kyle
● Lincoln – They Might Be Giants
● The Ascension – Glenn Branca
● Popular Songs – Yo La Tengo

▪ Ben
● Thrak – King Crimson
● In Rainbows – Radiohead
● Fantasy Black Channel – Late of the Pier

▪ Keith
● Regatta de Blanc – The Police
● Random Access Memories – Daft Punk
● Start Today – The Gorilla Biscuits

o Movies

▪ Kyle
● Old Boy
● Harry Potter
● Rocky Horror Picture Show

▪ Ben
● Bonnie and Clyde
● Baraka
● Paris, Texas

▪ Keith
● Goodfellas
● Dazed and Confused
● Get Out

o Books

▪ Kyle
● Earthsea – Ursula Le Guin
● Discworld – Terry Pratchett
● If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino

▪ Ben
● Nature and Madness – Paul Shepard
● Original Wisdom – Robert Wolff
● Becoming Animal – David Abram

▪ Keith
● Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig
● Dharma bums – Jack Kerouac
● Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

Do you prefer studio or performing live and why?

Since Kyle is an audio engineer, one of his great joys in life is pointing microphones at things and seeing what happens, and then mangling them until they hit him deep down. Ruderals is definitely a live band at heart though, you never know what’s going to happen when we get up on that stage and start loosening up and rocking out; crazy noise, frantic drums and desperate screams, losing ourselves in the walls of sound. We have plenty of small pockets in our songs to give way to improvisation, so every show winds up being a unique and intense labor of love.

Is there any funny-unique story you would like to share with us, always in relation to your music ‘career’?

Of all of my favorite moments playing music in this crazy city, there was one moment in particular that stood out. During an extended version of Turn New Leafs, as we were losing ourselves in the ending jam and getting wild, a member of the audience came up to us as close as he could and started doing push ups to the beat, going on for minutes and minutes, eventually it seemed like he was able to ride the wave we were building better than we could and we had to call it, but man was it fun, I think we’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.

Which track of your own would you point out as the most unique and why?

While it’s certainly not the star single of the album, Dancing on Broken Glass really captures what we’re all about when we’re just cutting loose and having fun. We’re really jammy for a Punk band, and that jam was just an organic moment during a practice, we happened to have some mics thrown up at the time, and we just really liked what we did, so that track is really an authentic and intimate Ruderals experience.

Would you like to share with our readers your future plans?

We just released our second EP of the series, Wither, on July 20th, and are working on finishing up the final EP, Decay. Kyle Rogers is also going to be releasing his next solo album, Lost Days, in October, with a solo release by Ben Olson, and another Ruderals album coming soon after them! You can find Wither on bandcamp here https://ruderals.bandcamp.com/album/wither.

Free question!!! (Ask yourself a question) you wish to answer and haven’t been given the opportunity…

A few weeks back, a few of us were meeting our fellow Captives Collective artist Sam Rasiotis (of the Assasssination Plot who, just released their debut album Death of the Party Scene, recorded by Kyle) to meet his newborn son for the first time. His wife posited an interesting question, musing on what we thought of the concept of being born (as opposed to the everyday contemplations on mortality you would normally talk about among friends), and basically just wondering how you feel about the fact that you are alive. I think for all of us, when we stop and think about it, all of this, in those terms, it does bring about this very visceral sensation that comes around the very thought of existence at all, to the point where it almost feels like we need to live in denial about our existence. I think this line of thinking really aligns with what we’re all about, in some ways it’s almost like we’re a bit angry at having to exist at all, but also in many ways we’re really grateful, we get to make all this cool music and do all these fun things, meet all these wonderful people, on some level I think that duality really flows through us. When you consider Ruderals, the plants that grow best in disturbed soil, that’s what we’re all about, thriving in places that want to hold us down, taking in that sweet sunshine while we can. We’re not sure if we really want to be here, but hey it sure is weird to look at it.

Photo credits: Sage Cotignola

Curated by: Christos Doukakis

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