Passion Pit Interview

Passion Pit- by definition is a hot and heated back seat session, at the back of the line at a drive in movie theater.
Michael Angelakos learned this term in an early century of sorts class in school.
His passion pit is what drove him to create his first collection of music.  He wanted to do something special for the woman in his life at the time…and this is what created Passion Pit.
The other boys in the band Ian Hultquist, Ayad Al Adhamy ,Jeff Apruzzese and Nate Donmoyer came together to create this new music sensation.
They started playing in local eateries in Boston, NY. and after only a handful of shows they were voted Best New Act in the The Boston Phoenix’s Best Music Poll.  They were later signed to the New York City-based French Kiss Records.
The bands first EP ‘Chunk of Change’ was released in September of 2008.
The band’s first full-length studio album ‘Manners’ was released on May 18, 2009 in the UK and May 19, 2009 in the United States and Canada.

In celebration, the band played their record release party in New York City on a Rocks Off boat cruise.

I was lucky enough to speak with Nate from Passion Pit.
He is their talented spunky funky rockn drummer.
This is his story…

How did all you guys meet?
We all went to school in Boston.  Boston is kind of a small town and you get to know alot of people.

Were you guy all going to the same music school?
A few of us did..but not all of us.
Jeff and I were in a band together in Boston and one of our bands names was Hanging with Winnie Cooper!  Believe it or not. So I got really excited when I saw this was the interview I was doing today.

How did the name Passion Pit come to be?
Mike was in a class that was sort of a 1960s slang vocabulary class, and one of his terms was Passion Pit.  Which means the back row of a drive in movie theater, where everyone makes out or whatever.  And we started using it as a joke and stuff.

Who do you look to for influences?
For songs-the Beatles, Beachboys, anything that is pop music.  The structure and the form of pop music is probably our biggest influence.
Electronically anything from modern dance music to old fashioned rock and roll and anything in between.

Any bands in particular?
I think Capsule was a big influence in the production of the album.  We listened to their album alot.
They just have this huge sound to them that we wanted to emmulate.

The last sick show you have seen?
Prodigy in Holland.  Jeff and I snuck off and saw Prodigy front row.  Ive never seen that many people freak out like that.  I have never heard bass that loud in my life.  I was like plugging my ears and there was this massive bass shaking my internal organs.

Your CD release show was on a boat…any interesting stories?
When the boat was docked it rocked alot more when it was out on the river. So sound checking was kinda rough.  We were losing our balance alot.  I actually started to get seasick and had to run off the boat for a second.  But once it was out on the river it was really smooth.  There was one point when we turned around to go back to the dock and we hit a wave and the entire crowd shifted like four feet.

I noticed on twitter that you guys are looking for tattoo artists to give you tattoos in exchange for merchandise or tickets.
Have you had any luck with that?
Yea, well Mike, Ian and I dont really want tattoos.
Jeff and Ayad are the ones that put out that post.  They had like 19 replies already.  But the first one they went to follow up on. It wasnt the actual tattoo artist that replied but the girlfriend of the tattoo artist and he wasnt filled in that it was supposed to be in exchange for tickets. And he was not into it and he kinda turned them away.

Apparently you are terrified of condiments.  Can you explain this fear?
I just think theyre disgusting and pointless and they ruin flavor.  I dont know how to explain it.  They are just terrible and they ruin the cuisine and they smell terrible. And I dont get the point of them.  I dont know they just scare the shit of me.

So if someone had like mayonnaise in their hand and tried to smear it on your face would you lose your mind?
I would probably kill them.

No ketchup?
No way!  Seriously…I would freak out.
I’m not a violent person but the only times Ive come close to violence is when someone puts condiments near me to try to taunt me.

I also discovered the Passion Pit vs. the Bee video in which you have an incident with a bee while touring in the car.  Can you share any other interesting experiences that have happened while you have been on tour?
Oooh man.  Ian is too good with imovie.
Somehow our label found out that Ian documents everything.  He has like 45 photos of all of us sleeping…umm which is awkward.  So they gave him 2 video cameras like little hand held videos. And told him to video everything and post it on the internet…which isn’t cool.  So there was a huge wasp I dont know if you could tell by the youtube video but it was huge and dangerous…could have probably killed someone.  We had been driving for a really long time so I was a little bit mental and thats what you saw was me freaking out to the bee.  It was a terrible event so I dont want to have to tell this story again.  And he put flight of the bumblebees in the background which didn’t make it any better.

I also heard something happened to your luggage when you were in Manchester…
(laughs) We have been really really really lucky overall this past year. I dont know if we deserve everything we’ve gotten.  We’ve had to pay for everything in mishaps.  Thats how we feel about it.  Karma comes back to us.  WE had two engines catch on fire that tour, we had a flat tire, we had our spare tire stolen, we had an entire tank of gasoline cyphined and then in Manchester to top it off someone shat on our luggage.  And we just had to laugh, because we have been really f*cken lucky with this entire experience.

When did you discover that someone shat on your lugguage?
We were loading into the venue and the Van smelled so bad! We figured it was us because we had been on tour for awhile. And we were walking in and someone was like ‘whats that on your bag it looks like dog shit’…and someone put their nose up to smell it and it was shit.  Everyone started laughing so hard.  So we put our luggage into a garbage bag.  It actually made our tour manager cry laughing.  It had just gotten to a ridiculous point of What the hell!

Most memorable gig?
For me personally it was the Oxygen festival in Ireland.  Its about an hour south west of Dublin.  This was the first time an entire crown jumped up and down during sleepyhead.  And being Irish it was really wicked being in Ireland for the first time.  It was an emotional experience.

Is there anyone you guys would love to collaborate with?
I think Pheonix is on all of our minds right now. We played two shows with them in New York recently.  We are all really huge fans of them and we think that their new album is incredible.

Any common misconceptions that you think people have about Passion Pit?
I think that the biggest misconception is that we were pre-meditated in that this is what we wanted to do.  There is alot of life left in us hopefully.  And I think the biggest misconception is that this is us…that our live show is us.

Unfortunately Passion Pit had to cancel their Vancouver show due to illness.
Keep an ear out for these musical feens…they’ve just started and it looks like its gonna be a good one.

Interview and write up by:
Crystal Wesolowski

Gotye – Learnalilgivinanlovin’ (Passion Pit Remix)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll (Passion Pit Remix)

Phoenix – Love Like A Sunset (Passion Pit Shuttle Remix)

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