Happy Thursday music fans,
Today we’re giving you another rising band in Asheville—and tomorrow we’ve got a surprise. Stay tuned.
In the day and age of streaming, the art of the album is missing. In fact, some go to argue that vinyl is better as it forces you to jam from start to finish.
But listen to Fantømex’s Consent Agenda and you’ll see that they’re the exception to the new rule.
Fantømex, a group of four featuring Edwin Mericle at drums, Isaac Crouch at guitar, Abigail Taylor at vocals, and Max Miller at bass are based between Asheville and Morganton, North Carolina.
It is no secret that they are — even in a pandemic — making moves in our crazy times. Consent Agenda was released in April and they’ve been featured on the Holy Crap Records podcast.
We talked to Fantømex to learn more about their journey as rising musicians.
The Riff: How did Fantømex start?
Edwin: Isaac and I went to high school together, where we formed out first band — an instrumental prog group called Pax Imperia. We’ve been close since then, touring with the band Israel Darling during college and jamming together just the two of us occasionally. I’ve played in numerous bands since I moved to Asheville in 2007 but none of them were really ‘my band’. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed everything I ever did, but I wanted something more, something that wasn’t ‘someone else’s band.’
So I called up Isaac and said, ‘lets do something.’ We started writing songs together and practicing. I think knowing each other for so long and having similar musical tastes made writing really easy.
Isaac kept mentioning that he thought his girlfriend, Abigail’s singing, would fit really well with what we were doing. She had a jazz and folk background but Isaac believed she could really stretch and sing something heavier. I remember he did a test of her vocals with our song Morning Glory. He sent it to me and I was blown away. I don’t know what idea I had for a vocalist was at the time but Abby surpassed those expectations immediately.
As far as bass, we started playing a buddy of mine from work, Schuyler, but he moved to Durham, NC to go back to school at work. Isaac then got his friend Matt to come in and play bass; they had been in a previous band together. Matt was awesome! He picked up our stuff fine and was a lot of fun to play with. We played with Matt for about a year before he had to move for employment. Matt is on the album we just put out, Consent Agenda.
We then put a few ads out looking for a bass player and Max hit us up. He came to one of our shows and we got along swimmingly. Max sent us recordings of him absolutely raging over the material we had sent him — and we knew this was the guy. Max had previously been in a mathy/prog group in Asheville, called Galena as a guitarist. Bringing on Max changed our band for the better, Max has so many creative juices in him, he really makes writing new songs more fun and easier.
Since then we’ve been playing shows around Western North Carolina (until COVID) and working on finishing our album, which came out on April 20th.
Isaac: I’ll second the general feeling of wanting to write and play music that truly excited us, after years of playing in other bands. Not to say anything bad about those bands, I had a whole lot of fun, but it was refreshing to create something that scratched a more energetic itch that those other bands weren’t able reach for me personally. We kind of both went through a similar musical puberty together in high school which I think gave us very close alignment on what we like to listen to and what kind of music we want to create.
I actually met Abby at a show of her other band that plays folk/americana — Sycamore Bones — and was always curious of what her voice might sound over some more distortion-driven, heavier music. I didn’t realize how well it would end up fitting with the music and adding an extra dimension to it that didn’t exist before.
Abigail: When Isaac and Edwin asked me to join as the vocalist and lyricist, I was both really excited and super nervous. Writing and singing for this type of music is like nothing I’d ever done before, and I think I had this kind of narrow view of who I was supposed to be or could be as an artist. So I felt awkward at first as I was figuring out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to sound, and how to make it fit with the intricate math rock that they were pumping out. But it was an intriguing challenge and it didn’t take long to feel like it was a natural fit…especially when we started playing live. Performing these songs and dancing around and falling on the floor and singing pretty one minute and screaming the next is honestly all I have ever wanted to do.
The Riff: I like how you narrate this ‘musical puberty’ that you went through. Can you tell me more about what changed between high school to today regarding your musical tastes and influences?
Isaac: I think we both, along with our wider friend circle in high school, really got into the indie rock/post-hardcore scene of the 2000's which provided a lot of inspiration for playing music and starting a band. Groups like At The Drive-In/Mars Volta, Radiohead, mewithoutYou, Blood Brothers, Minus the Bear, These Arms Are Snakes, and Explosions in the Sky formed a basis for our tastes in music.
For me at least, my tastes have broadened significantly — I fucking love 50's doo-wop pop music and Motown now, and I went through a big 70's prog phase. But those influences still form the basis of my songwriting influences when I sit down and play guitar. So Edwin and I experiencing a lot of the same music during those years made it so when we got back together more recently, we were on the same page.
Edwin: I don’t think my tastes have really changed a whole lot, from the list of bands Isaac mentioned, as far as influencing our music. They might have, like Isaac said, broadened some.
I really got into Queens of the Stone Age in college and I love a good Viking metal band and have found classical music, especially Beethoven, to be incredibly influential. I got my bachelor’s degree in jazz percussion at UNC Asheville. I don’t listen to jazz a whole lot but learning the techniques in college have definitely enhanced the way I play and think about music. I think overall, the biggest difference in playing with Isaac now and playing together back in high school is that we are simply much better and mature musicians now. We actually have the chops and mindset to play our favorite kind of music now.
I think the catalyst band, of those Isaac listed, that set a standard for influence is The Mars Volta. They changed the way I thought that music could be played, especially for drums. Things can be creative and prog-y and chaotic and still sound beautiful. Jon Theodore, TMV’s first drummer, to this day still holds the bar for me as far as striving to be as good as someone.
The Riff: With a lot of influences and techniques in mind, how do you go about creating a song? Does it start from a specific instrument, or even the lyrics?
Isaac: Most of the time they start on guitar, although every now and then we’ll start with a drum beat Edwin comes up with. The verses of Two-Face started like this, he had an idea for a beat that has three measures of 7 counts and then one of 5 counts and we went from there.
At first it was just me coming up with parts on my own and taking them to Edwin and we’d arrange the song together. Sometimes we’ll come take a part from an improv jam and use it in a song, although that’s kind of rare. We used to do that a lot in high school but I really enjoy a more intentional writing process with more structured songs. Vocals usually come last — we’ll record a demo and Abby will do her thing, and once she’s got something we’ll see if there’s any room for some harmonies or background vocals. Usually my singing parts only come about when she gets stuck.
I’m excited about the newer stuff we’ve been writing because Max has brought a lot of his ideas to the table as well. Since he’s joined we’ve been doing a lot more writing on the spot, during a practice. One of us will bring a verse or a chorus, or multiple parts, in and we’ll work on the arrangement and adding other parts to it together.
Edwin: We also don’t live in the same city, Isaac and Abby live about an hour from me and Max is in-between us. It is not always as easy to throw in more practices than the ones we have scheduled. So we try to record everything we can and put it up on Google Drive. Not always good recordings but good enough so that we can remember the progress we’ve made on a song and/or work on adding ideas to parts or riffs that need work, on our own time.
There’s a lot of sending riffs and ideas out online to help drive the next practice forward in writing new material.
I’m also a sucker for odd times and weird structures. I want the music to be fun and challenging. Something that well keep my chops up and my mind sharp.
Abigail: I mainly write poetry, and rarely write melodies or songs of my own. So that somehow helped me when I started writing lyrics for the stuff Isaac and Edwin were creating. It’s like I start with a blank slate and each song feels like a brand new little puzzle I’ve got to figure out, and that’s such a fun way to write a song to me. When I listen to our songs on Consent Agenda, it’s fun to see how the writing process has evolved in certain ways since we’ve been playing together.
Personally, I can follow the growth of my confidence as a writer and performer from the first song we wrote to the more recent ones. The moments in which I just let loose, get weird, and scream are currently my favorites because I didn’t even imagine I could do that before I joined the band.
It has also been so freeing that the guys are like, ‘Here’s a song…have fun.’ And I do.
Max: While being relatively new to the band it’s essentially what everyone else described. Someone plays a riff, we all agree that riff fucking rocks, we build around that riff creating a loose song structure, and make a shitty recording of it and meditate on it.
After that it’s cherry picking the best parts to refine them to create a whole new bridge or chorus or verse. Re-record that, send it to Abby where she ties a bow on it.
The Riff: What are the unique differences between the fan bases in Asheville and in Morganton [where part of the band lives]?
Edwin: All in all, Asheville is just bigger. There is a huge art scene here, whether it is music or art or crafts or food or film, Asheville has a lot of culture. There is such a variety of bands to play with here and different places to play.
Growing up, Morganton was super boring and really had nothing going on. Now it is an up-and-coming part of Western North Carolina. The same crowd of people that are our age, who come to the Morganton shows are the same type of people who come to the Asheville shows. In Morganton, for now at least, there are just not as many people to play with or as many places to play. I feel like it is something that just comes with having a bigger city. More people, more options, more varieties.
Because Morganton is smaller, our shows there are a little more intimate, maybe. Most of the time we play there, we know almost every guy and gal at the show and in a way that changes the show experience. Those people know who we are and are there for us…and we know them and that close relationship with the crowd can really make a show great. Not that we don’t get that in Asheville, and we are way more likely have new people discover our music by coming to an Asheville show — which is amazing in its own way. But with a bigger city and so many other musical opportunities for people to choose from, the chance of having a good crowd isn’t always guaranteed.
The Riff: Let’s talk about Consent Agenda. One thing I noticed is that the album order is very on point, as in going from Martha’s Favorite Colour to Starbenderwas well placed. How do you go about the organization of the album?
Isaac: That’s one of those things I really notice about my favorite albums, so it’s awesome to hear you say that!
I think we started with the boundary conditions, the first and the last track, and thought about how we wanted to introduce folks to our music and then what that last impression would be. Then we filled in from there. We had a tentative track list going early on during recording that we only made a few major changes to. For instance, we ending up not using one of the songs, then going back in and recording Martha’s Favorite Colour later in the process, so that led to a small revision in ordering. We initially thought the interlude track would be a shorter part before the final solo in Two-Face, but it ended up not really fitting so we were going to put it as an unlisted secret track, then it found a home right in the middle as kind of a breathing point.
After we did that the overall beginning, middle and ending, and how each individual track’s ending transitioned to the beginning of the next, felt right. A lot of it is that sixth sense or whatever you use when it comes to music in general, you just kind go with what feels good to you.
Also Edwin and I wrote the main gist of Yesterday is Dead a few years before we started the band, so that probably had something to do with it being the opener as well.
Edwin: I know that, at least during the end of the recording process, I just listened to the songs over and over, trying to see how songs fit together, making suggestions to the group, really trying to find the right feel and disbursement of dynamics within the songs. Like Isaac said, order is important. We wanted the album to flow just right, and I think we found that.
This interview was edited for concision and clarity.
Photo of Fantømex at The Mothlight by Geddi Monroe.
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