On the heels of his recent gig at the Guggenheim, I caught up with multi-instrumentalist Jesse Cohen to talk about music, life and his new band, Restless People.

What bands have you played with in the last 3 weeks?
We did a bunch of shows in October with both Tanlines and our other project, Restless People, as well as playing in Glasser while she was in New York. We played with a lot of really good acts in the last three weeks: Delorean, Washed Out, Ted Leo, MNDR, and many more. Tanlines also played with Yeasayer in the middle of the Guggenheim Museum, which was a really special opportunity.

What's your favorite thing about the radio?
There are a lot of things that I love about my radio specifically, but one of them is that there is a place on the dial where if it's set to FM it's on Hot 97 and if it's on AM it's on NPR.  The dial almost always stays in that place.  I think Mike Bell-Smith (from Restless People) used to talk about an imaginary radio that just went back and forth between those two stations, I should tell him that I basically have  that.

What culture makes you feel most like an outsider?
I dunno, probably people who are into fan fiction for a movie that I never saw.

When people ask you what kind of music you play...
A couple genres that I've made up to describe our music are: Crossover, Experimental Pop, Seltzer. Sometimes I'll say that it sounds like pop music from a country that doesn't actually exist. or just "new music".

What makes a great remix?
Our approach to remixes has always been to rework the song so that it sounds like it was written by a fictional band that we would be really into.  We usually do this by keeping only the vocals and their structure, keeping them intact, not cutting them up at all, and then rewriting the music around them.  So, I think, in general, a really good remix is one that the casual listener cannot identify as a remix.

Strangest sound that you've sampled recently?
Really really wanted to sample our drums in the middle of an empty Guggenheim because they sounded absolutely crazy, but we didn't get a chance.  On our very first remix, for "Chromes on It", we used the sound that your cellphone makes when you leave it on top of a radio or something and it starts to feedback a little bit, which I guess was a little goofy, but it happened while we were doing the song in the studio and we just decided to incorporate it.

Favorite festival and why?
Transmusicales in Rennes, France, because it was in an unused airplane hanger in the countryside in Brittany, the food was fantastic, and they genuinely seemed interested in booking new acts.  When we were there, the group that was easily the most talked about was being described as "the Romanian Amy Winehouse".

Tell us more about Restless People.
Restless People is a brand new project featuring members of Tanlines and Professor Murder.  We just started playing shows last month, and I'm really psyched about the live setup and show.  I think the vibe is kinda Operation Ivy 2010, watered down youth crew vocals over sped up bedroom dancehall beats.  I think you can sing along to pretty much every song the first time you hear it.  We plan on releasing a record of these songs as soon as possible.

Posted by Wills Glasspiegel
wills@greenowl.com