roomdoom: funny wee songs about food and art

Out of a mutual desire to have fun, make people dance and eat
sandwiches, roomdoom was born. The band is barely five months old, but
in that time, they’ve played at least 10 shows, including house
parties, galleries (inside a fabric dome at the Khyber ICA), at the
recent Obey Convention and two very different shows last weekend—one
with Hamburg experimental musician/artist Felix Kubin at the North
Street Church and another at One Life Surf School’s summer kick-off
party.

The busy roomdoom band members, Patrick Ryan (bass), Stacy Brown
(synthesizer/vocals) and Adam O’Reilly (drums/vocals), come from
different backgrounds: Ryan played keyboards in Truro’s ZAAT (roomdoom
is the first band he’s played guitar in), O’Reilly played drums with
Fall Horsie and Brown is a folk singer. Sometimes enlisting their pals
for special performances—Nathan Cameron on trombone, Aaron Mangle on
drums—roomdoom blends art and dance music with fluidity.

“When we first started we were playing noisier stuff—very loose
and punk,” says O’Reilly. “It’s a fine line. If we played a little
sloppier and a little more distorted it would be kind of like fast
punk, potentially…but when it’s slowed down, it’s harder. It’s a
great challenge.” Citing Devo, Eno, dub reggae, Vangelis, Philip Glass,
Lightning Bolt and ’70s rock as some of their influences, roomdoom adds
their own sense of humour.

“We’re really good at keeping a straight face, some of the songs are
like jokes,” says O’Reilly. “It’s like surrealist humour, but we take
the songs seriously.”

“I think it’s fun when people don’t really know how to take it,”
says Brown. “It’s really fun when people don’t know how to respond.”
“When we practise, it’s often joke time,” adds O’Reilly. “It’s kind of
an excuse for us to hang out. Sometimes the jams are like the
Fraggle Rock theme for half an hour.” “I think the moment one of
us does start to get a little serious, the others start making fun,”
says Brown. “I’ve often tried to raise a serious opinion and it’s
immediately shot down with sarcasm, which keeps the project fun.”

Humour isn’t the only thing that bonds the band. If you don’t leave
a show craving pizza or a sandwich, you’d better have a closer listen.
“Food is definitely a theme,” says O’Reilly. “Stacy’s a chef, and we
talk about food a lot and what we like to eat, especially if we’re
practising and we’re hungry.” “We have a song about all the pizza
places in Halifax,” says Ryan. “We’re a hungry trio.”

The group aims to be present instead of passive, even when
performing for hundreds of sweaty and drunk partiers. Engaging the
audience and bringing about some kind of social awareness isn’t
necessarily high on many bands’ lists, but roomdoom keeps it in mind:
There’s one song about not being able to afford “a sandwich in my
neighbourhood.” “Even the pizza song…it’s kind of silly, it’s about
pizza,” says O’Reilly. “But it’s also about community and that people
should be aware about where they are, where they live.”

Providing a soundtrack to crazy dance parties while creating a
lasting artistic experience for the crowd is important to roomdoom.
They are willing to do away with traditional stage set-ups (for
instance, drummer in the back—O’Reilly plays right up front) and
become true entertainers. They cite Mitchell Wiebe and Soaking Up
Jagged as a major influence; Wiebe’s mixture of performance art and
music match well with roomdoom’s aesthetics. Artist Jason Johnson
recently collaborated with roomdoom at the Obey Convention in a project
involving an animal costume and lots of fake blood (see a video at
thecoast.ca). “I’m interested in
performance art because I’m a performance artist, but I do think of the
two differently,” says O’Reilly. “Although I do like the idea of
becoming a character when you go on stage.”

“I wore a cape a couple times,” says Brown. “Remember when you
brought a single rose into the audience?” asks O’Reilly.

“Yeah, and they destroyed it!”

The trio’s energy is infectious; despite never headlining a show to
date, they’ve moved straight to tour planning. See for yourself, July
10 at the Paragon. “We have high aspirations, we aspire to put out a
full-length record on vinyl and do a massive Canadian tour,” says
Brown, provoking some incredulous laughs from the group. “Maybe a live
DVD?” suggests Brown. “Maybe stuffed animals as merchandise or little
hockey figures of us or something?”

This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2009.