Dan Boeckner is a multi-talented musician and singer who originally hails from British Columbia. After forming a short-lived band called Atlas Strategic on the west coast, Boeckner eventually moved to Montreal where he co-founded the esteemed and popular bands, Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, both of which garnered loyal audiences before ceasing to exist. Boeckner subsequently lived in California for a spell and formed Divine Fits with members of Spoon and New Bomb Turks, garnering strong reviews for their 2012 debut album, A Thing Called Divine Fits. His current focus is an excellent, electronic-based rock band called Operators, who have released EP1 and a single called “Ecstasy in My House” in recent months. Both records are available now via Last Gang, Operators have been touring across North America and here, Dan and I discuss finding a place in Montreal and BBQ, Sam Brown the drummer, landlords and landladies and musicians, switching from audio to video, being a loner and starting a buncha new bands/relationships, obsessing over Eastern Europe, living in an atomic strike zone during the Cold War, Bulgaria and Russia, the Serbian punk band Malfunction, NoMeansNo, Unwound, Nation of Ulysses, playing for the New Pornographers’ audience, re-establishing your artistic self in a whole new band, how people don’t always care about music made by the same people in a band they love, making new fans, analog and electro music, getting into Sonic Youth as a kid, name dropping good bands, M Blanket, Frankie Sparo, Witchies, Dan’s early band Say Uncle, contemplating the 1990s, recording upwards of 15 Operators songs at Hotel2Tango last year, duking it out on the road, hooks, loud louder loudest and pop songs, “Eye in the Sky” and other weirdly dark, minor key songs, what’s going on with Wolf Parade, the not-as-fast-as-it-seemed ascent of Wolf Parade, turning down The Late Show with David Letterman three times, Divine Fits will be back, the song “Start Again,” and that was it.
Related links: operatorsmusic.com lastgangentertainment.com vishkhanna.com
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