Meet Floor Overhead

This family loves some good post rock noise (well, most of us), and I’m sure you do too. Because who doesn’t enjoy being lulled into a semi-depressive stupor by droning electric textures?

Enter New York’s Floor Overhead — a real neat project that will do just that. Their recent release, In the Era of Excess is a stunning delivery of meditative, minimalist, and dark ambient tones. It loops (and loops and loops) in the best way. 

Below, we discuss ideal massage chairs, the realization of being numb,  and the desire to keep making “warm caves”. 

Climb in and curl up — get to reading!

BICYCLE RIDING, A Mad-Lib by, Floor Overhead.

Most doctors agree that bicycle SCREAMING is a QUICK form of exercise that benefits KIDNEYS of all ages. Riding a bicycle enables you to develop your KIDNEY muscles as well as DEPRECATINGLY increase the rate of your PELVIS beat. Bicycle riding is also a BLIND means of BICYCLE MAN. More PELVISES  around the world JAUNT bicycles than drive DUODENUMS. No matter what kind of PARTY you ride, always be sure to wear ATMOSPHERE on your head and have reflectors on your DUODENUM, especially if you SCREECH at night.

Would You Rather

your favorite restaurant be modified to have massage chairs that are on at all times, or there is a clown in there doing clown things at all times? Please explain why.

Massage chairs no doubt. If possible, can the chairs be like this? My vision would be that I would enter some sort of Greek God fantasy world where my favorite restaurant would feed me -- but in reality, they would probably provide tray tables I would spill food all over myself.

Some Questions with Floor Overhead

Where are you when you come up with your songs? In the shower? On the train?

Mostly in front of a guitar, 2 looping pedals, a laptop or a desktop computer, and I start working out parts. Sometimes though, there will be this overwhelming force that there is an idea brewing latently, usually some broader idea like a rhythm or a way I should try to layer counterpointing loops or something like that.

These ideas can sneak in during the most banal days when I’m not in front of anything to record or when I bike into the office. Biking is a great way for your mind to be everywhere and nowhere all at once -- you’re overwhelmed and bored at the same. 15 minutes into the ride, you’ll realize there is this oppressive white noise of the city that makes your mind hungry to carve out a sound bubble for yourself to be heard above these sounds.

How do you translate your sound to a live performance?

I haven’t been performing live recently because I’ve been working on new material -- My most recent performance was for Daniel Klag’s Dense Liquid in 2018 which I performed mostly some of my more processed guitar work from back in 2016 -- My performance back then was to use a laptop to sample guitars and sledgehammer them into arrangements with other processing with synths and dozens of other guitar samples as needed to create the properly seasoned wall of sound.

I have since been working on new material that will take a different format to hopefully feature live guitar playing, but working a full time job and finding time for creative pursuits which means being the composer, the audio engineer, and the equipment tech -- is super time consuming. I’ll have more details on what this live format should look like so stay tuned on this front.

What does it mean to be in an era of excess?

I think we have entered into an era of information overload that pushes us closer and closer towards complete numbness to the meaning of information. What may be actually useful information for us is lost because we are constantly inundated with what may or may not be useful information, for example: Hot Take A warrants Hot Take Response A, B, and C -- It is Infotainment disguised as journalism, etc and so on -- it’s this endless short sighted pursuit of Content, all further aggravated by social media and the Internet’s personalization algorithms. It is the timing of this information devaluation that make this all tragic. We are in an era of ecological collapse and major global destabilization, and that in and of itself is an era of excess yet we can’t reliably comprehend or communicate the magnitude of these events due to the information devaluation. The end result for me is dual outrage and numbness. Outrage at what is happening, numbness to the pace with which it is happening and the uncertainty of it all. This album was intended to be a long, violent sigh for an exhaustion of these worrisome times.

Who are your favorite musicians active in NYC right now?

A few I really love Battle Trance, Jon Porras, Daniel Klag, Jenn Grossman, Ian Epps, Marateck, and Alan Licht.

Was there a concert or song that inspired you to want to make music?

Some very wonderful/horrible nu-metal bands growing up made me want to make music because I was like 12. I really wanted to be a “pro” guitarist like the KoRn guitarists and totally nerded out, looking up the gear they used to get their sound.

But more relevant to what I play now as an adult: Seeing math rock shows in San Diego with bands like Sleeping People and Japandi was probably the most impactful for me growing up, just really changed how I thought about music and wanted to make music. The first time I heard Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works’ Vol II, specifically “Rhubarb” really just changed the way I thought about making music.

The following songs/albums also helped narrow my focus as I plunged into the rabbit-hole of minimalism, ambient, and noise: Steve Reich’s Piano Phases, Philip Glass’s Music With Changing Parts and Music In Twelve Parts, Kevin Drumm’s Imperial Distortion and Sheer Hellish Miasma, and William Basinski’s Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive.

What was your most memorable performance, and why?

I’ve had some awesome shows and have loved all of them, but a far more interesting story is the time I hiked into a meadow in the middle of these huge Redwoods in Humboldt County, CA like 5 years ago with my laptop and some headphones to do some editing through some recordings. Being surrounded by lush green Redwoods while working on music seemed surreal and added a whole other element to the stuff I was working on, I still dream about that ways to recreate that. Unfortunately, the music I was working on ended up being trashed cuz it sucked, but the process was fun.

Where would be your dream space to perform your music live?

Ha, relevant to my Humboldt experience, I have in my head some imaginary venue with floor to ceiling windows that is somehow acoustically treated and in the middle of a beautiful natural landscape -- why isn’t this real? This must be real. Alternatively, I would also accept an old brutalist Soviet church.

Are you a dog person or a cat person? Neither?

Dogs, sorry ;(

Who did the photo collage on your 2019 album cover “In the Era of Excess”? What was the intention behind the artwork?

This collage is an ultrasound of my pelvis area and kidneys. I thought nothing would be more fitting for the era of excess by uploading my one of own ultrasounds and my own patient health info onto the internet as excessive info no one really needed.

Where do you place yourself on the spectrum of Ambient music?

Man, so hard to answer this. There’s so many ways you could cut this -- but for the sake of this, I’m going to say that I see that on one end of Ambient you have someone like Lawrence English who does big processed drones which are thickly layered and beautiful, but the source of those drones is rarely revealed. On the other end, you have someone like Kali Malone with her most recent work, The Sacrificial Code, which I actually cannot stop listening to, which is just raw organ and the most beautiful thing. 

I think I’ve varied over each album I’ve released. Some albums have been more towards a big processed drone sound while others you can hear the noises of guitar strings and plucks. 

However -- I’ve been pushing myself to find new vehicles for ambient/drone. Currently, I’m working on minimal guitar music with like 3 guitars playing the same riff but in 3 different time signatures which leaves just a fun wall of drone/delay, but it’s texture and arrangement is so much more hypnotic and entrancing, so it’s an interesting blend of the two, I’d argue.

Regardless of which end I’m at, my goal is to compose warm caves I don’t want to crawl out of.  

What is the last book you read?

Don’t remember the last, but I am currently in the middle of Robert Bolano’s 2666 and have been reading it way too slowly.

What is your process when composing a song? Is it more organic or planned out?

Uses For Pavement and In the Era of Excess were more organic and “just let things go where they land.” Right now the material I am working on is super planned.

How many legs are too many legs?

I would like to see 10,000 legs move in the exact same direction at around roughly the same speed, but slightly off from one another. 10,001 would be too many legs.

If you were an onomatopoeia which one would you be?

pppssstttttttt!

Do you see a relationship between tempo and emotion? Does this affect the way you write music?

Not absolutely, but generally I can see slower tempo being associated with low energy and higher tempos being associated with high energy. I am a super anxious person, I tend to find my composing is just naturally much faster and much more busy probably to reflect anxieties.

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)

No, Sean, but thanks for this opportunity!