After Nations is a long-running Lawrence and Kansas City progressive instrumental rock/metal institution. The band released the stunning The Endless Mountain last year and had just returned from a cross-country tour at the time the interview took place. The band is currently gearing up to record their follow-up to The Endless Mountain, slated for a 2024 release.
I talked with guitarist Andrew Elliott and drummer Travis Baker about the secular Buddhist philosophy that has guided the concepts behind the band’s more recent recordings, the sacred and meditative capacity of music and music-making, and the endless subjective interpretations that instrumental music provides listeners.
Note: the interview below has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Judge Dredd: You guys never came up to Malicious Intent when I was doing this show, did you? That would have been like from 2015 to 2017. I don’t think you were in the band yet, Travis…?
Travis Baker: We did Braingea, we did Hypermortal, but we did not do After Nations.
Judge Dredd: Okay, right, gotchya. Okay, so this is [After Nation’s] first Malicious Intent-associated interview. [Andrew,] I was telling Travis that I was making my way through your discography over the last couple of days, but then I realized how much more extensive it is than I thought it was. I didn’t realize [that] for some reason. I was under the impression that your first album was in 2016, but then I saw that the band goes back to like 2012…?
Andrew Elliott: Yeah, those those roots run deep. I won’t say it’s unrecognizable, [but] there’s definitely a progression that you could trace [from] album to album that makes it coherent. But, it’s pretty different stuff. We’re just doing what we’re interested in, and I don’t take that for granted for us. I think, thankfully, everyone’s open to growing as we’ve changed as people.
Judge Dredd: In the listening that I was able to do before the interview, I noticed that with that four-year span between Consteleid and The Endless Mountain, [that] that was, I think, to my ears, the most radical shift in sound that you’ve had between two albums. What accounts for that? Just the the longer amount of time between those two albums? I know you added a second guitarist who was on that recording the most recent one?
Andrew: So we added Dave in 2018. Is that right, Travis?
Travis: That’s right.
Andrew: And the music was already written. He just hopped on so that we could better realize what we were doing on the album.
This is Consteleid [After Nation’s 2018 release – JD] as we toured it out. Because it’s pretty frustrating to have your album sound one way recorded, and then to take it out in front of people and have it feel kind of impotent…or just lacking in something. So he helped in that regard.
But I think the thing that speaks to that shift is partially time, right? Because the pandemic happened. There [was] this big fucking chunk of time to really sit and figure all kinds of things out, songwriting not necessarily chiefly among them. But then the way we’ve gone about songwriting has also just changed a lot. And I don’t know that it has to do with the pandemic necessarily. But it definitely forced us to prioritize how we spend time.
I guess to give you a brass tacks example, and Travis, flesh this out if I miss anything on this. So we used to meet weekly like most bands when we were a three-piece and writing would be [my sketching] some stuff out.
And Zach Krishtalka, the bassist at the time, and Travis would come here. It’s in Overland Park in my studio space, and we’d just try and hammer out ideas. And then I’d refine and iterate, and we’d just keep doing that. So that was like a partially live, partially reflective writing space. And then, that’s all Consteleid.
That’s all I knew of writing up to that point. And then through the pandemic, we couldn’t interact with each other, of course. We didn’t know if we were ever going to do music again. You know, there was a real moment. I’m sure people really had this existentialist moment, like…I don’t know if anything’s coming back.
And writing, of course, for me, just shifted to this space of like it’s all in a DAW [Digital Audio Workstation – JD]. It’s all just really coming to terms with what it is [and] what will be put out and having the space where you can be really, really reflexive. And, at first, that was really shitty because I loved the feedback of playing live with Travis and Zach. [But] then, over time, that became a skillset and strength and that is [what] The Endless Mountain became: something that was written in the DAW where you could sit back and you could step out of this writing role that I think a lot of writers, at least initially, I think are in. Which, is like [when] you write live, you write when you’re around other people, right? Maybe just get a couple of ideas out that you can refer to, and [then] you pitch that. [That] was what we were doing and shifting that instead of this space where I’m going to write, I’m going to try and sketch stuff out, and then I’m going to shift into this really active listening role where I’m imagining what this is actually like. And then try to decouple those two roles. That just completely transformed the way music gets written in this project.
And like, even more [with the] next album that’s written now and comes out next year. Will be like this full-blown realization of that idea. So I’m super excited for that change and I’m glad you can notice the change.
Judge Dredd: So wait…so during the pandemic, you wouldn’t have [band practices], so then were you sending files back and forth? Or was it just you kind of composing everything and then sending it to them and just saying, “Here’s a song.”
Andrew: What you just described is probably like 80 [or] 90 percent, I think. There were still parts of The Endless Mountain we wrote together [as if] we were in a live space. But then, increasingly, that album started becoming entirely this [process of writing stuff out] to where it’s almost all pre-pro-ready. Sending it to people, then meeting, and making that sort of thing happen. And that’s now 100 percent what we do, which creates a really interesting dynamic for touring with a band whose members don’t live in the same space. You know what I mean? It means we have 48 hours to go from this kind of abstract “Yeah, it works. It’s a recording. I’ve heard it. I know that it’s a song. I know it can happen” to be like, “Okay, but we all actually have to do this together embodied in the same space and we’ve never done it before”, right?
So it’s super fucking scary because you’re about to go off on this tour and be like, “I promise we know this is real. I promise.” And, thankfully, Travis, Matt, and Dave are all fucking champions and are extremely professional and on top of their shit to the point where I can take that for granted. And I think Travis can speak to what that process is like on his end more because it’s sort of a black box to me. I don’t know how Travis does what he does, to be honest with you.
Judge Dredd: Yeah, I do want to hear that perspective from Travis. [But that makes me think:] I’m playing with a band right now and I kind of started doing that same sort of process where I’m pretty much writing all of the parts just as a draft to kind of give an impression [of the song] to the other guys, and they can do whatever they want with the second guitar, the bass, and drums. But I give them a basic feel for the song, you know?
That has allowed me, as the principal songwriter, and as one of the guitarists to take a step back and say, “I’m going to let this part breathe. I don’t need to fill all the space with my guitar. So, I’m writing less riff-based music as a result and instead am more focused on song composition and structure.
Andrew: You’re describing it really aptly. It gets you into this headspace where you’re realizing there is this real distinction between what is fun to play, what you’re playing actively as a player, versus what that actually sounds like, [and] how that actually hits someone. There’s such a bias once it’s under your fingers. As opposed to never [hearing] it before…it can just hit different. It can hit very different.
Judge Dredd: Right. So Travis, how does, how does that hit for you? And how do you go about interpreting what Andrew has sketched out?
Travis: So, for The Endless Mountain, it was just going based purely on recordings with Andrew’s drum demos. Which, I’ll say that Andrew has a very good sense of drums and used to bang out drum demos on the acoustic kit. And it was pretty good for a guitar player who doesn’t play drums at all. But, you know, he has a decent sense of what works on drums, especially for his parts. But with that said, he still has the weird non-drummer sort of composition approach to the drums a little bit. I mean, that part is really cool in that I end up coming across new vocabulary and that sort of thing. But, this time around — maybe it’s just bias because new things are new — but it does seem like there’s this progression compositionally: the songs are just, just kind of continue to get more dense and crazy, at least at certain times. I’m getting MIDI tracks for the drum demos [with the new stuff for this upcoming album], so I’m able to look at it visually. And that’s a massive shortcut, for sure. And it’s the sort of thing where I’ll hear the song demo, and I’m not familiar with it at all. So it’s just like, “I can’t play that. That sounds like utter nonsense.” And then you just spend time with it, and you just figure it out. Most of it is just brain work.
And then figuring out what makes sense physically on the actual instrument and orchestrating it around because sometimes you’ll have stuff on the demo that’s impossible to play exactly. Most of it’s pretty reasonable like I said, but occasionally you get this part [where] you hit the snare, the floor tom, and the crash cymbal all at the same time. It sounds cool, but…
Judge Dredd: You don’t have a third arm, right?
Travis: Right, right. So no, it’s great. It’s really, really a good growing exercise for me every time I have to learn one of these songs. It’s awesome.
Judge Dredd: Well, going back to a little bit about how the sound has changed. I just noticed that [there is way more low end on] The Endless Mountain. It’s punchier. And I think that is just how it’s EQ’d. The bass, even I can hear in the very first track, is really much more pronounced. And I don’t remember it being [like that] in other recordings. But then also, aside from the EQ, it just seems there’s much more of a low-end [riffing] in the guitars. What accounts for that change?
Andrew: Yeah, I think there are two big pieces of that, and you mostly identified them. I’m just going to label them a little bit differently, or, at least put my own words on them. The first is just [that] it’s mixed and mastered completely differently. I mean, part of that is just [that] I haven’t known what the fuck I’m doing for so long. It’s taken me 10 years to translate what I’m conceptualizing.
Judge Dredd: It’s a complicated skill.
Andrew: Yea, and doing that competently and consistently. I think I’ve figured out a baseline. We’re at a baseline where [it’s] serviceable. And I think the energy is starting to come across. So I think that speaks to a part of it, like timbrely, that’s part of it.
And the other is compositional. [As] I’ve gotten older, I’ve played a little bit [more] guitar. I’m like a very middle-of-the-road guitarist, technically. That’s neither here nor there because I don’t know to what extent that informs this other truth of that album, and even moreso, this one that we’re getting ready to track. I’ve just gotten really comfortable sitting in a riff, sitting in space. Like presenting […] what seems like a very simple musical idea, but something that’s interesting, and allowing that idea to be introduced. And, as a listener then to sit in that and almost like meditate on it and feel how different pulses or accents in that shift and change over time and then, compositionally, progressions hitch off of that idea.
So, it’s more fractalized, if that makes sense. There’s still a lot of through-composed stuff, you know? Parts just kind of move — the composition just kind of moves in a linear fashion — however, there’s more and more [of] a recursive tendency where almost every one of the songs on this next album will reference some broader theme. Like “Vīrya”, the single that we just put out before this last tour: it’s just two ideas. There [are] just two musical ideas in there.
And I really try and state right at the beginning of a song: here’s the idea. It’s not meant to be a joke on the listener or anything, but, as it goes on, some part of me is kind of like, do you get it? I hope you do. And sometimes it’s like hitting you on the nose. Yeah, it’s that fucking idea.
But I think those two things speak to why that album sounds so fundamentally different, and why this next album will sound like the very thing you just described, [perhaps] one or ten iterations further.
Judge Dredd: Yeah, I listened to [“Vīrya”], the single you just released two months ago. My impression was that it was a little bit more straightforward than a lot of the songs you’ve produced in the past and even on the last album. So, are you consciously trying to pare it back a little bit then?
Andrew: No, that just happens to be off this next album. That is like the bridge. We sort of discussed it as a band. You know, we all sit back and like, I don’t think we really listen to our own music. I don’t think any of us really do that. Like, unless it’s this kind of conversation where like, Hey, we need to put out a single between albums. What should it be?
And I think a lot of that conversation, I think even Travis is the one that pointed this out. That’s sort of a coherent bridge between the albums. And part of that is that it sort of simplifies, you can hear some stuff that’s a little bit proggier and a little bit more melodically driven, like The Endless Mountain stuff compared to this next album, which is just like…I don’t know.
I have words for that, [but] I’m curious how Travis would describe this thing.
Travis: I mean, it definitely seems more influenced by heavy, meditative, mathy metal riffs. I know Andrew, in the last however many years, has gotten really into Meshuggah.
Judge Dredd: I definitely heard that, yeah.
Travis: Yeah, for sure. So even though it’s a pretty straightforward track structurally, there are some rhythms in there, and some of the phrasing that’s some of the weirdest stuff I’d say that we’ve done to this point, just in terms of “this phrase has this rest that’s actually three-elevenths of a rest or something.” I don’t know what’s actually happening, but it’s the sort of thing where I’m just like…I’m not going to think about that. I’ll just learn it. I don’t think about it. So, there’s some wonky rhythms, even though, structurally, it’s more meditative. And I think there may be some counter-examples of that for the other songs that are upcoming. Personally, I think that this stuff is more focused and more intentional.
And perhaps “Vīrya” is a good bridge between the two sets of material. Yeah, I’d be interested to hear what you think after you hear the rest of the songs because I don’t know if it’s more straightforward. A part of me thinks absolutely not, but I can see why you’d say that about “Vīrya”, though.
Judge Dredd: Totally. Well, so one adjective I think you both have used so far to describe the music, especially on the more recent material is “meditative”. And I know that the most recent album, The Endless Mountain, is conceptual and [I think] is about [Andrew’s] Buddhist beliefs or philosophy, [which also relates to that] little blurb that you wrote on the new single. So, [that seems] to be like indicating that the next album will also kind of be exploring a similar concept. So, first of all, is The Endless Mountain the first conceptual album you guys wrote?
Andrew: It’s the first explicitly titled [record]. I think I’ve always carried in my mind this idea. And there’s a naivety to this and I’ll speak to that. Maybe I should write this down because I don’t want to get this idea half-cocked.
Judge Dredd: Take your time.
Andrew: I think I took for granted with earlier writing, and it’s so obvious. It’s like it’s implicit in the music and there’s nothing true about that, right? Because music as a placeholder, as a symbol set, is a purely perfectly abstract symbol [that] you can project onto just about anything we have associations with, like our cultural musical upbringing, right?
So some things, [such as] minor, major, dissonant, or consonant, we can have associations with that, but there’s a lot more nuance to it than that. And you shouldn’t even take [in] that cultural context or background. Individuals can have radically different subjective experiences in music. So it’s, it was very foolish of me to be like, “This music is about like anti-capitalist, anti-hegemonic, fuck multinational [corporations]” or whatever, you know what I mean? I carry these worldview values in my mind and, for whatever reason, that’s the energy I feel in this music. So [I think] people will get it and, of course, that doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’m trying to do a little bit more intentional work, [but it’s] hard to bridge that gap, though, because I am speaking a deep fundamental truth for myself.
It’s not like I’m writing music. I’m having these secular Buddhist ideas, pulling those up, and [deciding] that’s what that sounds like. That’s not true. I’d be totally dishonest if I said that. Rather, it’s that I am sitting and exploring something that’s coming up in me, right? Not unlike a sitting practice, right?
Something is coming up. And I literally write parts like this sometimes, you know what I’m saying? You’ll sit down to write a riff or something and, fuck me if I know where some of that shit comes from, right? The longer you sit with it or, depending upon the set in the setting and the space you create for that thing, different stuff comes up. So [I’m] trying to bridge those things where there’s this process that’s happening. It’s pretty sacred. It’s me trying to figure out like, not necessarily who am I, but like, what is this? What is this energy that I’m experiencing?
How do I experience it as a phenomenon? How do other people experience that sort of thing? And then trying to give the language that I know that speaks to that process of things arising, spontaneous arising, or what is it called? It’s not mutual arising. It’s a dualistic arising or some shit like that.
And just try, it’s like, it’s like emergent sense-making, which is like the most bullshit thing I think I’ve ever heard. But there’s, but at the same time, there’s more than a modicum of truth in what I just said. So forgive me if I can’t articulate this thing. Really what’s happening is the music is musicking this idea, and I’m trying to catch up with language that makes sense.
And maybe it only makes sense to me. Maybe other people see that stuff and are like, What the fuck is this shit?
Judge Dredd: Well, I mean, for me, on a very superficial level — even just looking at the track titles, the name of the album and everything. On Bandcamp, the interludes are [titled] with different [sets of] parentheses, but on Spotify, they are Sanskrit, right?
Andrew: Yeah, fuck Spotify, man. That’s a forced hand. They don’t allow, at least our distributor does not allow, things like parenthetic titling. So I literally took the Sanskrit words for meditation and numbers and just threw them in there. Funny story, for whatever reason, the Spotify algorithm loves that shit and put us on some sleep assist playlist. One of those interstitials [is] a very popular After Nations song.
Judge Dredd: Oh, that’s hilarious. That’s funny because when I read the explanation behind the concept on Bandcamp, looked at the song titles, and I saw all of these words from different languages…[like] “Sirdis”, I think, which means “heart” in some Baltic language, right?
Andrew: In Lithuanian, yeah.
Judge Dredd: And then, “Jūra”, which means “sea”. Also Lithuanian?
Andrew: Yeah.
Judge Dredd: Okay. And then you had “Esme”, which I think is “beloved” in French.
Andrew: Oh, if it is, [then] that’s my Ignorance of French. It’s either Estonian or Lithuanian, and I believe that is…”essence”.
Judge Dredd: Okay, and then you had “Fain”, which I believe is Irish, which means “self” or “own”. Yeah.
Andrew: Look at you. What the fuck? What are you doing?
Judge Dredd: I’m, I’m using Google Translate, of course.
Andrew: Fuck yeah, man.
Judge Dredd: But, wait…so do you speak Lithuanian or how did you arrive at having Lithuanian song titles?
Andrew: No, it’s exactly like my process for songwriting. There’s an aesthetic to languages [where] occasionally something just fucking resonates with me, you know? I will search for a term, something that I think a song is fundamentally about [and] feels like that idea is sort of resonating.
[Then I] just kind of probe around languages until something sort of feels right. Sometimes, like in the past, if it’s a Latin thing, that was just a word that seemed appropriate for it. Whereas, with The Endless Mountain and definitely with [the] next album, it’s more like…I don’t know how you’d label that process. It’s emergent, for sure. I don’t know…it’s sort of like exploratory and felt.
Judge Dredd: I guess I was fascinated because I was an English language instructor for many years and I’ve always been fascinated by words or concepts that are untranslatable to other languages.
Andrew: Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah.
Judge Dredd: And so, I had this idea before I read the Bandcamp explanation of the concept, and I was also looking on Spotify first, so forgive me for that. But I was seeing all these words from different languages and then I was seeing the interludes in Sanskrit. And I was [wondering] if like the attempt here [was] to bridge [what I thought were] untranslatable words through different concepts of Buddhism, you know? And then connecting different cultures through a shared, all-encompassing Buddhist belief or philosophy. But that was what I made up in my head.
Travis: That’s dope.
Andrew: Well, that’s a projection, but that projection holds a degree of water, right? It really does. So, it’s not the intent, but it passes the litmus test of looking at it [from] a very different angle from which I’m actually coming at this because the idea is not different than writing instrumental music, right?
It’s answering this question of how you title something so that one aesthetically has some kind of handle for someone to relate this idea of a song to somebody else. And how do you keep that symbol not vacant, completely empty, but somehow associative? Prior knowledge of that. Unlikely. Really unlikely.
I mean, maybe we have a lot of Lithuanian fans, [but I] doubt that very much. I mean…I’m speculating here. I would imagine if I came across something like that, I [would do] something not dissimilar to what you’ve done. Probably not as thorough [as you did]. I wish that was our working thesis for titling stuff. That was better than anything I’ve fucking done. But it does invite a listener into a process of meaning creation, right?
Judge Dredd: Right.
Andrew: And when a listener is doing that themselves rather than being told — kind of to your point in your own language with concepts that you have a priori understanding of — when you’re handed this symbol that you are creating meaning for, you’re sort of engaging in the power of naming. You’re engaging in this really powerful process of fusing language with a really intimate musical experience. And so titling stuff in that way lends itself to that.
Judge Dredd: Right, right. Well, I saw in that, that interview that you did with Punk-O-Normal. You were talking about how when there’s a vocalist and you have lyrics, [it], by necessity, narrows the scope of what a song can be about. But maybe [that] creates a communal experience for the listeners because you’re all identifying with the themes or concepts behind the lyrics. But then, when you have instrumental music, it’s much more individualized because it’s totally open to your own subjective interpretation. You don’t have lyrics guiding you in a certain direction with a certain interpretation of the song. That made me think of the band The Police because they write these really ethereal, beautiful pop songs, but a lot of the lyrics are pretty dark in nature, [including] relationships that we would view as taboo, such as between a teacher and a student. [Or,] one of my favorite police songs [is “Wrapped Around Your Finger”], which is about [the power dynamics in an extramarital affair]. So, even if you have these chorus-effect-filled guitars and these spacious songs that are really ethereal, you’re, as a listener guided very specifically to a certain interpretation of the song because of those lyrics, even though they might clash with the nature of the music in a way. So, yeah…[what you said in that interview] really resonated with me.
Andrew: I think this other thing happens too, once instrumental music is put in a live music context, this other thing happens where it’s not necessarily an empty placeholder, but there’s the music in all of its potential meaning, [and] there are the individuals and their experiences in relationship to that.
And then when all of that comes together in a live space, I really do think you have this situation in which it’s really sacred. You have the internal subjective experience [that’s] being wedded to [the] external. I won’t call that objective. I’m not sure what I would describe that as. It’s just phenomenological stuff happening.
But it’s where that membrane comes down and without language even, it’s super linguistic. I think people can feel a shared connection without having to broach how subjectively different their meanings might be. And, this is a crazy idea, but I do think there is some truth: depending upon how actively individuals listen, and depending upon how music affects different individuals, I do think there is an idea of a truly shared experience where you’re having an inner and out-of-body shared experience. There’s a word for that…
I want to say it’s called something like a “morphic field” or some dumb shit, but it’s really powerful. And I know everyone right now has had that experience, and it’s why we do this stuff, you know what? I mean, music with lyrics does this as well. But I think instrumental stuff [can too] if people are really into it.
It happens to be a night when people’s intention and attention is focused on that. It’s fucking incredible, especially when there’s big staccato or big rested spaces, right? Where you can still feel this palpable, very attuned energy. It’s a room of people that are attuned to something. Something that is beyond words.
So it’s fucking awesome. What I’m saying is music’s fucking awesome.
Judge Dredd: Totally. So, you were just describing the live experience. And I know you guys just got back from a tour not too long ago. So, I know from listening to or reading interviews with other instrumental bands, that there’s kind of sometimes a mixed reaction or that [a welcome reception] isn’t always there [for instrumental bands in live spaces].But how has it been on tour? How has the reception been in different places around the country?
Andrew: I want Travis to talk about that.
Travis: Most of the time it’s really good. I mean, I’ve done five tours with the band, and I’ve only played a couple of shows where it seemed like people were actively ignoring [us]. We played The Railhead somewhere in Oklahoma. And it was just a bad vibe. We played our Mars Volta prog songs and they were watching TV. You could hear a pin drop between the songs. The only show I’ve played where it’s just pin-drop silence between songs.
But that’s the only real time that sticks out like that. Most of the time, it’s really good, even if it’s just a handful of people. It’s pretty energetic, exciting music. So, I think that it works well usually for the venues and the contexts that we’re playing in. We also play with a fair amount of instrumental bands, so we’re not always like the odd band out, but it does happen.
I don’t know. I personally don’t really think [about the difference] that much. Even sometimes when I’m listening to or seeing a band, it doesn’t necessarily occur to me that they don’t have a vocalist unless I think about it specifically. You know, it is something that’s a deal breaker for some people or that is experienced differently, for sure.
But yeah, I don’t feel like we get the short [end of the stick] in terms of attention. I don’t think we get bad reactions or anything because of it.
Andrew: Travis has been here [for] probably halfway through the life of this project, [from] 2016 until now, and he’s seen some pretty, pretty bad stuff. But increasingly, since like 2018 [and] 2019, we get an alright reception and a big part of that’s just planning. Booking shows and doing tour management makes sure [that] you’re in the right space. You’re not in too big or too small of a venue. You are with the right bands with like the right orientation. So, the vibe is one that’s loving, supportive, and, ideally, open. I dare say this last tour [was] hands down say our most successful tour, in terms of reception. And that’s on a night-to-night basis. You know, tours have ups and downs. We had a couple of just-okay shows. We had some exceptional shows. It’s rare that we play a completely sold-out show, but in Seattle, it must have been damn near close to it. And that shit’s fucking great. I mean, that’s fucking incredible.
Judge Dredd: It’s validating!
Andrew: Oh, tremendously. I told the crowd that. You see the entire spectrum, and I don’t think anyone keeps playing live music because they’ll get famous just doing it over and over again. But everyone in this project does it for the reasons we were just discussing, right? There’s this more sacred thing that runs timelessly. Thankfully, that is the reason for the season. And increasingly, our experience on tour is more and more lined up with that. So that feels really good.
Judge Dredd: Well, I think you mentioned booking the shows. And I know you do all of the recording and mixing and everything as well. So, is every part of the project DIY? Do you do all of the album artwork as well?
Andrew: With the exception of The Endless Mountains. I paid some artist in the Czech Republic to do that, but I’m trying to think of exceptions where that’s not the case.
Travis: Consteleid‘s album artwork was Josh Robinson.
Andrew: Yeah, Josh Robinson did the album artwork for Consteleid. But I think other than that, it’s [all DIY]. I say this with hesitation because it’s not like I love that. I mean, I don’t think anyone likes doing all of those individual things. I don’t do that stuff begrudgingly, but it’s out of necessity, you know what I mean? I think to save money and make sure shit gets done on time. A lot of that stuff is just like skill sets that you pick up and you start doing everything with those very two big exceptions that I just mentioned.
Judge Dredd: So, even though you’ve had a couple of different hands on the album artwork, I noticed that there are often recurring themes of geometrical symmetry and geometrical shapes. Does that play a part into the [conceptual themes], especially the more recent ones exploring Buddhist concepts?
Andrew: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, sacred geometry is more than a passing appeal for me because I’ve marked my body permanently with that stuff, you know what I mean? I suppose I haven’t really consciously thought about it, which might sound insane a little bit. They’re conscious aesthetic choices when they show up on an album, but they also represent things to me not unlike what we were talking about earlier in terms of the process of naming a song.
At least the way I’m orienting to that stuff. So they’re these really, really rich placeholders and they also are really rich in terms of just like their aesthetic value. They line up with so many fundamental design principles that it’s hard for me not to reach for them because they’re immutably beautiful things, you know what I mean?
Judge Dredd: Yeah, absolutely. So, you said earlier when we were talking about the songwriting process that the music comes first, and then you are drawn toward specific words that represent the music that you’ve just created. Is that right? Is that a correct summary?
Andrew: Yeah, that works. That’s serviceable.
Judge Dredd: Well, because I noticed on The Endless Mountain when I was reading through the description on the Bandcamp page, you [wrote] about how “Aon” [is] about the “awareness of the essence of unity and interconnectedness and the sound of a joyous rapturous sense and knowing.”
And to me, that was the most uplifting song on the album. So, I was just imagining that euphoria of realizing the interconnectedness of everything in the world and experiencing that through the music. So is something like that intentional or…?
Andrew: Very much in that sort of retrospective way that you described. There’s this feeling, and then it’s like, “What is that feeling?” Yeah, I associate this with, and then part of me will occasionally, [and “Aon” is a good example of this], go through my index of Buddhist phenomenology and be like, okay Is there something that actually feels like an appropriate fit here? Right?
Judge Dredd: Right.
Andrew: And then in some instances, it’s just there. It’s just there and it takes no straining.
Judge Dredd. Well, I know we’ve mentioned the upcoming album, which I think is what’s slated for next year at some point. So can you — and we’ve talked about it a little bit — but is there anything else you wanted to elaborate on in terms of what the album’s gonna sound like?
Andrew: It’s fucking heavy. It’s definitely heavier than The Endless Mountain. Is that fair, Travis? I’m pretty sure that’s fair.
Travis: I’d say it’s more metal-oriented, for sure.
Andrew: Yeah. And darker throughout, although it still has brighter, uplifting sections. I don’t think it has a song quite like “Aon”, where it’s like the whole, like you mentioned, uplifting vibe. Which is nice, I like that about “Aon”. But yeah, I’m not sure there’s an analog necessarily, although there are parts that evoke that, for sure.
Judge Dredd: Yeah, okay. Let’s see…I think we’ve covered quite a bit about what I wanted to ask. Is there anything I should be asking? That’s the question. Or is there anything else you guys want to talk about?
Andrew: It’s [just] stuff on the horizon leading up to that next album. We’re going to put out a couple of singles that anticipate the album to ease people into it. It’s not so radically different, but it is different.
We’ve been playing in D standard. [But] half of this [new] album is D standard and then [half is in] B standard. You can write a fucking heavy song in any tuning. That doesn’t mean anything. But timberly, it does have an effect when you start dropping further down in the register. You can do different things and create different sounds. So yeah, some singles are going to come out leading up to that.
We very hectically, in an insane way, recorded two music videos in the middle of this last tour just on a day we had off. [We] managed to pull that off, which is insane. But those will be coming out kind of interspersed along with those singles and a tour next year.
And I mean, other than that, just keeping at it and writing the next album. I don’t know if it’ll come out in [2025] or [2026], but [we’re] trying to write that right now.
Judge Dredd: So did you have that music video scheduled? [As in] you knew you were going to be in some town on some day and you scheduled it with someone?
Andrew: We paid a videographer to fly out from Phoenix to meet us on our day off in Portland. We had to fucking get up at the ass crack of dawn, drive from Seattle down to PDX, pick him up, and go to this fucking warehouse. It was fucking crazy, but we got it done. And thank God too. [After Nations] has been really lacking for higher quality representative media, and we’ve been trying to shore that up. But it’s a logistics issue, and it’s also an equity issue because that shit takes money.
It takes a fuck-ton of resources to put out high-quality stuff. So we want to do that and better realize all the time, attention, and energy we put into this stuff. But it just takes a lot.
I’m not going to go off on a rail here, but we’ve had just a lot of bad luck. There are literally ghost videos of this project that are floating around on the internet that we will not show to anybody.
Travis: [laughing] Don’t tell him.
Andrew: So, we’ve tried. We’ve been trying. We’ve been having bad luck. But finally, I think our luck has come up good and some quality videos will come out.
So, [we’re] excited about that.
Judge Dredd: Well, now you’ve presented a challenge to me to find these videos that are already on the internet.
Travis: There’s only one that’s the true treasure. The true reject child that we cast off the cliffside. You can find his body somewhere. The other ones we put out. We gave them our blessing and kicked them out of the house. They’re out there. They’re fine.
Judge Dredd: Were these self-produced? Or were these also hired videographers?
Andrew: I mean, the nutshell story was a guy saw us at a show, [and] he happened to be a professional videographer. His body of work is fucking awesome, so we were like, “Holy shit.” He’s like, “I love you guys. You’re the next big thing.” And he’s high as shit, talking us up and stuff.
But he offered to meet us somewhere and film at the end of our tour, years ago in 2018. We did it, and the thing he presented to us was unrecognizable from the experience we had filming with him. It was insane, and I think we made the right choice in not releasing it. However many pixels could fit into that screen, however high of a resolution it might have been, I think we made the right choice by not sharing it with anybody.
Judge Dredd: But does he have it in some digital portfolio that’s floating around?
Andrew: Yeah, he has it. If you’re really curious, I’m sure you could find it…it’s on Vimeo.
Travis: Since you’re gonna look for it anyway, he made this whole B-roll side story that he never talked to us about and that has nothing to do with anything. [The B-roll] is a guy selling drugs and threatening people. And he eats mushrooms, but they’re just button mushrooms, clearly. Then he has a trip and tries to rob someone in a drug deal. And we’re like, “Yeah, this is definitely not an After Nations vibe.” So we were like, “Sorry, dude. Not really what we thought we were asking for.”
[laughing]
Judge Dredd: Oh my god.
It created a fallout between us and this individual. We didn’t have a working relationship with him prior, but it created something that required us to de-escalate, which is fuckin insane. But sometimes that shit happens. Thankfully, we got away from that dumpster fire and the final agreement was [essentially] do not label us, don’t tag us, don’t do anything. You can use it to promote yourself but keep it away from us forever, please.
Judge Dredd: Oh my god.
Andrew: Just superimposed his own conceptual framework onto it. Oh my god. Can you imagine all that and not saying a word to somebody and sending it to them and then having either the audacity or the empty mind completely [to think] this isn’t a problem? And then being surprised when someone’s like, “Hey, can we talk about this?”
[laughing]
Judge Dredd: God, how far is his head up his own ass, you know?
Okay, so [there is a] new recording coming up. You said you’re just about to start tracking, is that right?
Andrew: We’ll start tracking in December, yes.
Judge Dredd: In December, okay. And do you know where or when approximately in the next year it might be released?
Andrew: I can tell you if nothing else, we are so fucking organized and scheduled. It comes out August 4th next year unless something goes really fucking wrong. There’s a lot of time between now and then, but more to figure out how to get in front of promoting [it] and get it to press. [All] that stuff [just requires] that we figure our schedule out now. We have to start recording in December. There’s not a choice.
Travis: It’s scheduled.
Judge Dredd: For the podcast I do, I’ve interviewed a few musicians and they’re all in the same boat where they’re like, You know, we had, uh, especially in, in, you know, post-pandemic was still a big issue. They’re like, “Oh yeah, we had this [release] scheduled for this day. And then we just had to wait another three to five months or something for the vinyl to be pressed.” So it’s just something that has not [seemed to be] resolved at all, seemingly.
Andrew: So yeah, the pipeline is really, really long, even if there weren’t like problems along that pipeline, like it kind of out of necessity. No, that’s not true. It’s not a necessity. It is a problem. It’s because there are fewer and fewer independent music spaces controlled by fewer and fewer hands, and that’s created an enormous amount of competition and holds like a weird hold monopoly.
Have you heard of shit like this? Like, pre-pandemic, you might be told your second hold [or] third hold for a date. [I’m] regularly hearing [that] in the Pacific Northwest and some other bigger markets. Your 7th hold, your 8th hold, and you know, I’m pretty confident what’s happening there is they’re just floating all of those bills, and then maybe doing a little due diligence every couple of days to see if any of them are explicitly shored up. And [then] they’re just crunching numbers just to see how many bodies are going to come through the door. That just means, if you’re unaware of that, you are competing with a shit ton of people in a non-transparent way, right?
And, in the past, you would have known in advance that that show’s not going to happen. So I’m going to start pitching elsewhere to not put all of my eggs in this basket. But that communication flow doesn’t happen that way. Everything is very hostile towards musicians. It’s all very not cool for musicians.
Judge Dredd: Right. Well, I hope things are not hostile for you in the future! And, [especially] with the new album coming out in August of 2024. I mean, it sounds like you had a really good reception on the tour. So things were not too hostile then either. So that’s good to hear!
Well, thanks a lot for taking the time, guys! I really appreciate it!
Andrew: Dude, Josh, thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us. This has been fun!
Judge Dredd: Oh, good! Yeah. Appreciate you, man. And, hopefully, if you guys play matinee shows here in Lawrence, I’ll make it out, haha.
Travis: Matinee tour kickoff would be rad, or we can do a double night matinee and evening show.
Judge Dredd: That’d be awesome! All right, guys. Well, have a good one!
Travis: Thanks, man!
Andrew: Right on.