If you’ve heard or seen Ghostland Observatory before, chances are you did not forget them. And as the Austin, Texas duo’s Thomas Turner himself has stated, it’s often a love-hate relationship. But that’s alright, because that’s just what Ghostland Observatory set out to do in the first place. Their unique melting pot sound of soulful, electro dance rock has spawned four albums since 2005. In late October, the duo released Codename: Rondo on their own Trashy Moped Recordings. A quick Google search of the album’s reviews will attest to the divisive nature of the record. However, another quick look at any of their laser and strobe light, dance-crazed demonstrates that those who do love Ghostland, really love Ghostland. Before upcoming shows in Spokane, Boise and Missoula, producer and beat-maker Thomas Turner spoke to us about the new album, the laser show mechanics and Tron.

Apes on Tape: You’ve built quite the niche with the unique style of music you’ve forged. On your side of things, what were some of your bigger influences coming in to Ghostland?

Thomas Turner: My big influences were mostly electronic based, experimental. And also older rock, The Animals or Velvet Underground. On the electronic side, I liked Detroit techno and stuff like that.

AOT: Was there a weird phase where you and Aaron had to work out a common ground?

TT: From the beginning we were pretty opposite as far as what we were into musically. But it kind of balanced out in a weird way. And also the main goal, the only goal, was to create and put out something different. So we were both in agreement on that.

AOT: How does the songwriting process work with the two of you? Do you just start with beat and production then he hops on?

TT: On previous records, that’s been the case a lot of times. But on this one, we just worked together. We’d go in at the same time and start working on a track. Then it came together, and then if not we moved on to another [track]. We tried really hard on this one to go back to how we did it on the first record, where we were just together all the time and putting in a lot of hours.

AOT: Do you write for the live setting, always keeping in mind how it will translate in a show?

TT: I think we just write and then make stuff that we like. Then after it’s completed or we think it’s going to work then we look at which one’s would fit into the live set. I guess in your mind, you’re always wondering “how will this work live?” So it’s probably in there somewhere always.

AOT: I’ve often heard you haven’t really listened to Ghostland or gotten the real experience without going to the live show. You agree with that?

TT: Well, yeah. I mean it’s all good to listen to the record, but when you go to the live show there’s a fully choreographed laser show in tune with the music, the energy of the people around you, and plus speakers way louder than anything you’d listen to in your car or your home.

AOT: There’s been a lot of “love-it-or-hate-it” talk about this  new album. I read earlier that you actually were really happy to see such polar, emotional responses. Did you write this album with that intention?

TT: We tried to write this record and pretend we were writing our first record. We tried to make believe we’d never written a record before. Because you write out your first record, and you’re just trying to have fun, put something down that you can listen to our show a friend. You’re not worried about what the whole world is going to think or if it’s going to fit into certain playlists or current trends of that particular time. It’s a lot of fun at that point. Then you start putting out other records and people critique them. You have a fan base and you pull yourself into “are our fans going to like this?” or “is it better than our last record?” or “are people going to love it, or hate it?”. When we wrote our first record, we just wanted to be different. Period. At that time, there weren’t that many electronic-rock acts. It wasn’t like we were trying to do something to fit it. We were trying to be as different as possible. So with this record, we were just trying to get back into that frame of mind to where experimentation was encouraged and we didn’t apply any pressure. Instead, we just wanted to have fun doing it and that’s what we did. From the beginning, if you make something different, most people will either love it or hate it. If you make something that just fits in, or is middle of the road, or doesn’t provoke you either way, you’re just making safe music. And we never want to do that. We wanted to make music that people either absolutely loved or hated. Just like our live show. You can’t go to our live show and say, “Eh, it was just okay. There were millions of lasers flying around, strobe lights, a guy dancing around all over the place and another guy wearing a cape.” You either like that sort of thing or you hate it and never go back. That’s how we wanted to do this record. As long as it’s just not a mediocre reaction.

AOT: I wanted to talk about the lasers. You’ve got like 16 lasers on board, right? Explain that setup a bit and what goes into it.

TT: There’s ten blue lasers, four colors and two golds. Jessie Parker, our laser tech, has been with us for three years. There’s another guy, Derek Abbott, that’s on board. And George, the owner of the laser light company. They all really want to put us on the road with a really spectacular laser show. So they spent a lot of time putting this together. And they flew in early for some rehearsals before the tour started and putting everything together, and now it’s super tight.

AOT: In terms of coordinating all that, are you practicing in a garage messing around to get it to where you want? Or are they just super experienced and can match to your sound? How did you sync that up to the choreographed final product?

TT: Well Jessie and George have been with us since the beginning, since we first started using lasers. So some of the songs were already choreographed and there was some tweaking and fine tuning. But with the new songs and the new setlist, they just dial it on song-by-song and match everything. And plus, we’ve been on the road since August. And the tighter the set gets, the tighter they get with cues and knowing what we do, where we improve and all that. So it just gets tighter as time goes by.

AOT: Considering the affinity for lasers and electronic music, are you looking forward to the new Tron film?

TT: Yeah I think everyone on tour is.

AOT: Have you listened to Daft Punk’s new work for the soundtrack?

TT: [Laughs] Yeah yeah, everybody’s waiting for it. The laser dudes are actually doing something for the premiere. I can’t really disclose what it is, but it should be really sick and cool.

Stream Ghostland Observatory’s “Glitter”
“Glitter” Ghostland Observatory

Download Ghostland Observatory’s new album Codename: Rondo [Trashy Moped]