Pitchfork

It's official-- Dave Allen is back in the picture. As previously reported, the bassist is heading out to London next week to set the ball rolling on a new Gang of Four record, the first with the band's original lineup since 1981's Solid Gold (barring last year's Return the Gift re-recordings work).

But recapturing the post-punk movement isn't all Allen's been up to. On Tuesday, he spoke with Pitchfork about Portland, Oregon trio Wet Confetti. In addition to producing the group's sophomore record alongside former Shriekback bandmate Mike Cozzi, Allen contributed bass to the track "Sorry Dinosaur", which is available as an exclusive download below.

The album, titled Laughing, Gasping, will be released February 6 on Allen's Pampelmoose label (/management company/blog extravaganza).

So why, after all this time, is Allen back to helping out other musicians? "I was running my own label in L.A., World Domination, [and] I ended up running eMusic.com when it first came out. So I was doing that 'Hey, wow, aren't we great pioneers?' thing, distributing music over the Internet," Allen explained.

"It became such a huge pile of music all the time, and it just seemed to me that rock music especially had kind of disappeared; it just wasn't holding up its end of the game. I felt like hip-hop and electronic music especially sort of took over from rock music as...what people are listening to the most.

"So for me it was, 'What the hell has happened to rock music?'...One of the reasons we [Gang of Four] got back together was, shit, we're a really good live alternative rock band. And I suppose when Wet Confetti turned up here in Portland...and I just kept seeing them at shows...I just thought there was something about them; they're so young and so clean, and they just do something very different. I have to say I disregarded it for a while, but when I heard the demos for their album, I said, 'You've come a long way in a very short time and I'd like to help you get off the ground a bit.'

"I suppose what it is, is that every now and again, along comes a band that you feel there's something important about what they're doing...I like the three people in the band a lot, and the chemistry is important. So it just felt like a really worthwhile project...And working in the studio [Portland's Type Foundry] was really easy, and hey, they even let me play some bass."

Allen actually played on more tracks than the just aforementioned "Sorry Dinosaur", but his riffs were cut so as not to overshadow Wet Confetti frontwoman Alberta Poon's basslines.

On Wet Confetti's sound, Allen commented, "Their aesthetic is very punk rock, although the music isn't necessarily so, because it's a bit jerky and, what do they call Gang of Four? Jerky funky punky? [Laughs] That's it right there. I wouldn't know what genre to put them in. They've been compared to Blonde Redhead and I think people like that, but we'll see. The world will have to decide."

At the moment, Wet Confetti have but two live dates confirmed, both scheduled in their hometown. The first is set to take place November 4 at Satyricon with Swan Island, Twin, and Plasmic Stallion, and the second January 5 for at "some warehouse in SE Portland." Further touring plans are in the works, Allen said.

"There is talk of sending them [Wet Confetti] out on the road with what we call the 'Web in the Box'...It's basically a turnkey solution; it's like a computer in a little rack-mounted device. But it can broadcast live to the Internet, so you can do interviews in the studio." The company in charge of this "Web in the Box" gadget (its official name is Audibot), Tables Turned, is considering a college tour with Wet Confetti. The band "could play at night in town or on campus, and during the day they demo this 'Web in the Box' outfit. If they pull that together, I think I'll...go out on the road with them, because I've been DJing a lot lately, so we could have fun out there on the road with those guys."

And as for reuniting with the now Seattle-based Cozzi? Co-production went off without a hitch. "I've been hanging out with him a lot," Allen explained. "He's got a similar sort of warehouse [in Seattle] to the studio space in Portland, so it was easy to transfer everything up there to do overdubs and mixing. This was sort of a first for he and I to work together again and try turning that studio of his from being just a home studio into a more professional outfit where we can turn out more work. Because we intend to keep working together and producing more projects, actually."

Allen also touched on Faux-Hoax (pronounced "folks"), the previously reported three-piece outfit featuring himself, Menomena's Danny Seim, and Tracker's John Askew. So far, the band has posted two demos online, the "tongue in cheek"-titled "Hippies", and "Your Friends Will Carry You Home". Faux-Hoax are in the process of wrapping up the recording of their currently untitled debut, which is tentatively slated for a late winter/early spring 2007 release. And as for a record label to call home? Not yet. Allen elaborated, "That can be worked out at the end. We're just having fun making a record. And if it came down to it, John's got his label, FilmGuerro, and I've got mine. I think we could manage.

"Faux-Hoax has been something that John and I and Danny from Menomena have just been desperately doing for quite a while," Allen continued. "You may have heard, before Gang of Four got back together, the same people were in a band called Squall. And we promised ourselves that we'd get an album done, but we sort of played around the Northwest here, and obviously mainly in Portland, and we were drawing some big crowds and it was fun, and then it all fizzled, which was really my fault because Gang of Four took off and I've been seriously busy with them for two years. But now it's calmed down a bit, and we just decided, 'Okay let's get this Squall album, and while we're at it, we don't like that name.'"

"Your Friends Will Carry You Home" features songwriter Adam Gnade. "He's a cool guy and he did a great job with that sort of spoken word thing that he does," said Allen. And more guests are on the way. "The singer from 31 Knots, he's supposed to be doing some stuff with us...We're going to have to pin somebody down to come on the road with us. So what we're looking for there is whoever is going to be a singer...we need them to be a multi-instrumentalist, somebody who can do more than just sing...But Danny will probably take on some of the duties. On 'Hippies', Danny sings and he sounds great. Just like he does with Menomena, he sits behind the kit and sings. It's cool."

After a singing, touring multi-instrumentalist is tracked down, Faux-Hoax plan to take their show on the road. "We've got to get the damn record finished. But on the other hand, though, I was talking to John the other day, and I said, 'Well we don't need to finish the album before we start, perhaps, go out and do a West Coast tour so we can feel our way into the music more.' I'm quite a proponent of road-testing songs before you record them. Because things change."

Laughing, Gasping Tracklist:

01 Touch It
02 Dazzle of Dynamite
03 False Alarm
04 Sorry Dinosaur
05 Donuts and Old People
06 Laughing, Gasping
07 Make an Offer
08 I Can't Refuse
09 Take My Advice
10 Marine Show