Your new, favorite band that you didn’t even know about, The Deadly Syndrome, are releasing their debut album “The Ortolan.”
You take one part folk, mix in a few synthesizers, and you have a lethal combination of awesome and new. Well, that might be an over exaggeration of this Los Angeles quartet, who were on tour with Hot Hot Heat earlier this year. In the early morning hours, sometime around 9 am, the band chatted on the phone before they began their workday. “We’re normally up in the morning, because we’ve all got jobs,” said Jesse, lead singer and over all modest guy. “I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is.”
Day jobs aside, the DS have been preparing their album for the last year. The sound is something of a concern to the Los Angeles music scene, because it’s not over produced punk, glam rock, or emo. “The Ortolan” was a word on the tip of someone’s tongue, as they were describing the bird and how it is a delicacy in certain parts of the world. Now it’s the Deadly Syndrome’s debut album. The DS have generated a buzz for their live shows, what with their mascot Mustachio. Won’t you read Smashed Chair’s interview with them?
Smashed Chair: Why did you guys choose the name, the Ortolan? (Pronounced or·to·lan).
Will: Because it’s so easy to pronounce.
Smashed Chair: Am I pronouncing it correctly?
Will: It’s The Ortolan. Orchrin, Ortrin (other ways to pronounce come from the background).
Smashed Chair: Orlando, perhaps?
Will: It’s not a very exciting story, really. One of our producers, we were just eating sandwiches, he started talking about this bird that you eat, and he was looking it up on the internet. We didn’t know it was going to be the title of the record until long after.
Smashed Chair: I take it none of you are vegetarian.
Will: Yeah, one of us is a vegetarian.
Smashed Chair: You guys named one of the tracks “The Ortolan,” which is a heavy synth induced song, but it’s like totally different from the rest of the album, which is a bit more folk. Why was the last song so different?
Will: That was supposed to be a secret track. When distribution they released the whole track list, which included the secret track. It’s not listed on the album art, so after the first 3000 copies are printed, it’s not going to be listed on the track listing. The idea was that the album ends with “This Old Home” with that last track. That’s the last track on the album that we recorded. “The Ortolan,” the instrumental track, is supposed to be the weird, quarky side of us that we’re supposed to name the album after, this weird little bird. It was supposed to be like dead silence after the last song and then you would get “The Ortolan.”
Smashed Chair: Was the whole album recorded in Los Angeles?
Will: Yeah, the whole thing was recorded in L.A.
Smashed Chair: In your opinion, how is the Los Angeles music scene?
Will: That’s a tough question. We get asked that a lot. It’s great and it’s awful. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve only been here for three years and only in music heavily for one of those years. All I know bands that we’ve played with, bands that are friends and there are a handful that are amazing and there’s a lot of stuff that’s not. But there are also a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of cultures.
Mystery Guy: Yeah, that’s kind of the case everywhere.
Smashed Chair: I’m sorry, who’s talking now?
Jesse: Oh, yeah, this is Jesse.
Smashed Chair: Sorry Jesse. A lot of voices on the phone. Were you in the Whamo video? (See "Kablamo" and a few other videos the guys put together)
Jesse: Oh Kablamo! Yes, Chris, Will and I were in that video. Oh, it was awesome. It was just us making more publicity around our record. So we just figured we’d just do a bunch of films with our friends: Jason Greene, Barry Smuller and Mathew Kazinski to shoot, direct and edit the videos.
Smashed Chair: Did you guys come up with the premises yourself?
Jesse: Most of them. We came up with all of them. Then we sat down with Jason, Barry and Matt and just hashed it our and talked about what was funny and what wasn’t. And then we made a bunch of crap!
Smashed Chair: Are there anymore coming out?
Jesse: The other three are out and there are another six coming out.
Smashed Chair: You said that you wanted more publicity, what better day to release a record than on 9/11?
Jesse: That was in the plan from the day we formed the plan. We thought to ourselves “what could be the worse possible release date?” We fell into that like everything else, just like accident and chance. But then you’ve got Kanye West and 50 Cent, I feel like there are a bunch of dudes out there that are like “Yeah, September 11, yeah, that’s when I’m going to put my record out.” Oh, I’ll pick on hip-hop. If we get shot now, we won’t be able to make another record.
Smashed Chair: What was the recording process for you guys?
Jesse: It was amazing. And we got way more than we paid for. We ate a lot of sandwiches. It involved staying…well not staying, but going to this amazing house in the hills for two months and got to do what we wanted to do.
Smashed Chair: How long did it take to get everything done?
Jesse: I guess you can say it took a year, because we’ve been writing since we formed the band. But we didn’t thing we were going to record anything, and a year later, we started recording. It was two months recording, a month of mixing.
Chris: It took us a while, because we were writing while recording.
Smashed Chair: That’s very artistic. Were you guys the kids in school who studied right before the test?
Jesse: Or didn’t study at all, because of our overall excellence
Smashed Chair: Are you guys’ fans of cartoons, because you have a blob as your mascot?
Jesse: Oh, you mean Mustachio! We like animation, little silly things. That was kind of a way of incorporating physically on stage. We all laugh about something, and then we get an idea and that’s kind of where he came from.
Smashed Chair: What would the Deadly Syndrome be? A cowboy, a gypsy or an "Other?"
Jesse: I’m going to go with “Other,” because I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut.
Michael wants to be a ninja. Chris wants to be a pet food chef and Will wants to be a cowboy mixed with an acquisition.
The Deadly Syndrome are sure to kick some people as they rise to the top of the Los Angeles scene and the rest of the world. Catch their album when it comes out, the same day as 50 Cent and Kanye West.
