Published
Part 1
Name: EBT Brass Band
Members: Robby Gaar (modular synthesizer), Nils Johnson (polysynths, samples, effects), Michael James (telecaster, piano, vocals, mellotron), Andrew Vine (modular synthesizer, mellotron)
Nationality: Swedish (Nils) American (the others)
Recent release: EBT Brass Band's new album I Hate the Sun is out now.
Hometown Recommendations:
MICHAEL: The Dream House on 275 Church Street in NYC.
ROBBY: The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana is a fantastic non profit art house theater that’s definitely worth a visit.
NILS: In Seattle, go to the San Juan islands! They are magical. If you find yourself in Stockholm, grab a bike and get out there. The paths are incredibly beautiful, and they go everywhere.
ANDY: Leach Botanical Garden in Portland is a go-to for me. It’s far out on the east side where most tourists won’t venture. Just a beautiful space run by welcoming folks. Great location to sit and stare up into the branches of a western red cedar and daydream.
If you enjoyed this EBT Brass Band interview and would like to find out more about the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, and bandcamp.
Why do you like playing in a band rather than making music on your own?
NILS: I enjoy both, certainly. But with this group specifically, the way we mesh and bounce off each other creates a certain factor in our process that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I find my own creativity enhanced by letting my mind swim within everyone else's ideas and experiences. They make me think of things I would want to do or try that I never would have thought of on my own - or at least it would take me much longer to discover myself.
It's good to take the time in the woodshed to work on things solo to find what you like (and how you like to make it). But I work with these people because I love them all, it's genuinely fun, and they make me a better musician and a better person through the things they show me.
MICHAEL: For me, other than the camaraderie, it's the element of chance. It’s been nearly a decade now since I read John Cage’s “Silence”, but the way I make & enjoy music can be decisively split into a pre “Silence” and post “Silence.”
Those essays expanded not only my definition of music, but my appreciation for the many ways it can be made. While modules and effects pedals can produce random parameters and fun surprises, nothing ever replaces the interaction of humans in a room.
This whole record was improvised or arranged collectively, it wouldn’t be what it was without Robby, Andy, Nils and I. That all comes down to our chance interactions on that boat in October of 2025.
ROBBY: In all honesty, I love doing things by myself. I try to spend a lot of time alone. It’s where I do a lot of great thinking and where my creative spirit thrives.
That being said, while solitude may be my place of comfort, I like to challenge the way I create and interact with art. Creating, writing, and performing with other people brings unique obstacles and inspirations.
Each member leaves a unique fingerprint on the music. It becomes an additive effect that pushes the art further with each person’s touch. Nothing will turn out the way you imagined it, and that’s both frustrating and exciting.
It’s a bit like being in love. If you’ve felt it, you’ll know.
ANDY: Similar to Robby, I don’t like playing in a band more than making music on my own. Not normally. I work best in the solitude of darkened rooms, where no one has to know about those million takes and mistakes I’ll edit out. I think that’s the writer in me.
But EBT is different. This band feels less like I’m stepping out into the exposure of harsh sunlight, and more like a few other likeminded souls (who happen to be some of my oldest and best friends) have hunkered down with me in that introspective space, and the art is safe in there with us, free to develop itself without judgement.
In some ways maybe I’m judging myself less as a result, and that’s probably a thing worth preferring. Plus, let’s face it, I love these guys.
How did the band come together?
MICHAEL: EBT Brass Band technically started 10 years ago when I had a season-long touring break and was very depressed all winter, on food stamps, recording experimental EPs with an iPhone. The hope, however, was to make it collaborative.
Andy and I used to live together, we became musical collaborators in 2011 within the first 20 seconds of meeting each other. I had moved into a house in Eugene, OR and this guy, Rutger, who I was supposed to live with decided to drop out of school and move to New York.
One day I woke up and his friend Andy was on the couch, recording a song. He’d taken over Rutger’s spot on the lease. Andy said hi, asked if I sung harmony, and then we laid down two verses of vocals before I had to run off late to class. I’ve been making music with him ever since. He was the best man at my wedding.
Robby and I met in 2018 in Huntington Beach, CA when I did sound for this cover band he was subbing in. He became a fast friend and guitarist for my old band Delving.
Nils and I met not long after Andy moved in. Nils also played keys on the first Delving record (my indie-rock band) but for the most part we’ve been friends entirely outside of the world of music. Nils married me and my wife actually. As in, he was the officiant. Nils has his own wife.
But EBT becoming a quartet was almost an accident. The four of us have been friends for so long, and are deeply affected by the transformation our country and culture are going through. We wanted to convene, in person, to make music as a counterweight to all the terror and destruction lurching through America at this moment.
We had no real plan — only a friend’s boat and a few wheelbarrows of gear — but by the end of that three day recording session we knew it was going to be more than a one-off venture. The ambient nature of the record made it a perfect fit for the EBT Brass Band name, and now it’s finally become what I had always hoped for — a solid band.
What were some of the reasons, do you think, that you wanted to play in this constellation?
ANDY: Really since my son was born, we started running sound machines all day and night in the house, sometimes not realizing we’d left them going because they became so integrated with our aural environment. Through that I think I started to understand why ambient music was important. Not only for me as a new parent, but as a broader form of musical homeostasis for the immense overstimulation of the digital world, if that makes sense.
So really since that time I’d been sinking deeper into the world of ambient, the world of sleep music, the development of an ambient workflow for my own meditative purposes. Maybe that’s more an answer about how I came to the broader space, rather than this specific constellation within it.
Of course once you’re in a space, it’s natural to look around for signs that you’re not alone. I’m lucky that I have three of the best musicians I know sitting in a group chat on my phone, and it turns out they’re equally infatuated with this space. Us developing this constellation together is not a surprise to me, but it means more to me now than I thought it would.
In fact it’s probably the musical project I’m most grateful for; it’s a living extension of that understanding I came to in a time of deep growth and change. That makes it super personal.
MICHAEL: It’s hanging out with these dudes — that’s the draw. Even though we’ve guested on each other's records, we’ve never been a band unto ourselves until now. This is a band of best friends, it means the music-making experience is as honest and deep as it could be. That affects everything.
How do your different characters add up to the band's sound and in which way is the end result – including live performances – different from the sum of its pieces?
ANDY: Well there’s not only our musical characters and playing styles, but I think our individual personalities and workflows have a lot to do with how the final result comes together.
MICHAEL: Spot on. For example, Andy is our resident modular guru. He’s only a few years into it, but that expertise formed the basis for a lot of the songs on our record, especially the intro “Half Mast.”
He came up with the main part as soon as we set up on the boat. Then we added our elements around it — my intro and outro loops, Robby’s live moog bass line, and Nils’ background samples and pitch drops.
Andy is also just one of my favourite musicians. He’s recorded incredible punk, hip-hop, funk, country, soul, electronic, ambient, and folk music his entire life. Unfortunately nearly all of it died with an old MacBook a decade ago.
So the fact that he is fluent in so many traditions is also an incredible asset to the band, it allows him to innovate or imitate depending on what the situation calls for.
ROBBY: Andy really creates these lush soundscapes that always end up inspiring everyone and becomes the bed upon which so much of everything is built. He’s a wicked smart modular synthesist. I remember answering his first questions about eurorack, and within a few months he understood it better than me.
ANDY: Robby is like the ultimate gear-head, technical guy with an encyclopedic knowledge and incredible recall. He knows what he wants a sound to sound like and most of the time knows how to get to it in a way that’s entirely unexpected, and I think just being in proximity to a workflow like his is extremely influential.
Sitting next to him in the creation of I Hate The Sun was an inspiring thing for me, because he’s brilliant in so many ways. Robby is the reason I first got into modular synthesis—I’ve never met anyone who can demonstrate a complex musical idea or explain a technical concept as thoroughly and succinctly, right off the dome, as Robby.
ROBBY: If I had to summarize myself, I’m very interested in process and exploration. Whether it’s eurorack or granular synthesis, I’m always interested in pushing the boundaries of my knowledge to further my exploration of timbre.
“Dread Pirate Robert” is a perfect example of that exploration of process.
That track was born out of me learning to patch Maths up as a frequency modulated oscillator and I ended up in this really dark and interesting sonic space. Andy and I locked in immediately as he took over the sub frequencies, Nils brought in incredible texture, and Mike improvised really delicate guitar over top.
ANDY: In a lot of ways, I feel Nils is a kindred spirit for all ambient lovers; he’s content sitting and twiddling knobs in the quietude of an evening after the kids have gone to bed, diving deep into samples, sound collage, obscure firmware and the labyrinthine routing of so many patch cables. It’s all so idiosyncratic.
It creates a space for audio interplay that unfolds outwards into the room and I think, especially for this project, that created a lot of foundational elements of the sound.
ROBBY: Nils is incredibly creative and hears music in everything. He’ll bring out a sample of something like a car engine and you’ll think “there’s no way to make that musical,” but he will run it through his modular pedalboard and create these otherworldly textures.
MICHAEL: Also, this is Nils’ first real band. I think having his beginner’s energy is our superpower. He came up with the idea of making I Hate The Sun as an antidote to the world forming around us. He is responsible for nearly all the art direction. On top of that the dude made a beautiful 52 minute visualizer for the album that we’ll be dropping on our Youtube soon.
As for myself, I get a lot out of having something to react to musically. I love being around talented musicians with expertise and traditions outside of mine.
ANDY: Michael is the type of musical personality that is extremely disciplined, and it’s an infectious discipline; he inspires you to play your best and create into the space he leaves, it’s very inviting. He’ll also surprise you with his talent sometimes.
For example, he’s a guitarist at heart, but you take a piece like “Golden Park Piano” and realize Mike put that down completely cold, just trusting his musical instincts and improvising - it’s a real asset and hugely inspiring.
ROBBY: Mike is a genius when it comes to improvisation. He feels and reacts to things so quickly and expressively. You could just be playing around with some ridiculous idea and he will just start playing something that contextualizes it and transforms it into a real piece.
Is there a group consciousness, do you feel? How do you experience it?
MICHAEL: Yes. One of hope and openness. And a deep appreciation for creativity and art. And wicked senses of humour.
ROBBY: Yeah, I think it's equal parts lunacy and devotion. We all really care about this project, but we’re all a bit mad as well. It’s incredibly fun.
