At the Ruins bar in Dallas, TX
(part 1 is the band’s natal charts; scroll for everything else)
HANIA: Because Reid and Blaze are twins, their charts are gonna be basically the same.
REID: Oh, yeah. Are they different at all?
H: They are different.. If you look at the MC, it’s like a little bit closer with the sun.
BLAZE: Oh yeah that’s true.
H: It’s like the only difference.
R: Wow.
B: Does that have a lot of implications?
H: It means literally nothing. I’m kind of surprised—you’re one minute, so you were probably c-sections, then?
R: Yep.
H: How much do you know about astrology, if anything?
All: Very little.
William: I know Aries can be assholes. And that is what I am.
R: All I know is that me and Blaze are apparently on the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius. I don’t really know a lot about what that means.
B: Yeah that’s about my knowledge too.
William’s Chart:
H: When people ask “What sign are you?” they’re asking about your sun sign. It’s like your main identity; it’s supposed to kind of rule what is ‘you’ in a nutshell. Aries is very action-oriented. It’s a fire sign; They kind of just like doing things. They’re generally very confident, but they’re also prone to fighting and a little bit of aggression, sometimes.
W: Hmmmm.
H: It’s like a rebellious kind of spirit.
W: Is that automatically your sun, if you’re born under Aries?
H: Yeah, your sun is going to be Aries… But you have a bunch of other stuff. For example, your rising sign is Leo, which is also a fire sign.
B: Oooh.
R: Ah, a bad boy.
H: It’s kind of a theatrical thing…
W: Yeah, start some shit!
H: Would you consider yourself a performer?
W: Absolutely.
H: Are you in a band or anything?
W: Something like that.
H: They tend to have a commanding presence, so, that’s Leo. Your rising is sort the direction you’re headed in life and what people’s first impression of you is. Your moon is about your emotional state—yours is in Gemini, which is about communication, so that might mean you have to do a lot of communicating about your feelings to process them. It’s kind of a logical thing for you. Generally, moon in Gemini and moon in Aquarius (which Reid & Blaze have) are usually pretty smart, so, good job.
W: Wooh.
H: If you’re introverted, it might mean you always have to be learning to feel stable or safe, or if you’re extroverted, you might have to be communicating to feel stable or safe. I don’t know if any of that is… accurate for you.
W: It’s accurate… enough, yeah.
Blaze & Reid’s Charts:
H: For y’all two, your suns are in Capricorn, on the cusp with Aquarius. Capricorn is about long-term plans. It’s an earth sign, about setting long-term things in motion and an assiduous work ethic.
B: Yeah, that checks out for sure.
H: Your mascot is the sea goat.
R: Sick!
H: You can climb mountains and swim seas, is the logic behind that.
B/R: The sea goat.
R: I’ve never heard that.
B: So I guess no obstacles then.
H: No—you can’t fly.
R/B: Ah, yes.
H: Mostly no obstacles, yeah. And your rising sign—your ascendant—is in Taurus, which is also an earth sign. That’s also about creating things and using the tools at your disposal to make stuff. It’s more concerned with aesthetics.
R: Okay… Interesting.
H: And your moon is gonna be Aquarius. They’re usually really smart and independent, and they kind of create their sense of security by detaching and logically sorting things out. You might tend to put your own feelings on the backburner if you feel like they’re not ‘valid’ enough, and you may have to sort through that. Generally, you can be perceived as moody, so it’s like a lot of brooding artist energy.
B: Hah, that checks out.
H: Y’all’s Saturn* is kind of wacky—it’s in the 8th house, which is concerned with death, and Saturn deals with restrictions, rules, and structure. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard that people with their Saturn in 8th have a hard time trusting people.
*William’s Saturn is in the 5th house (pleasure); generally is serious and has difficulty enjoying things
All Three
H: All of you have Venus in Pisces. Your Venus represents sentiments, pleasure, and your romantic and artistic sides. Pisces is supposed to be really dreamy and creative, and kind of escapist. So if your artistic side is in Pisces, that’s like a typical artist’s chart.
W: [nods] Okay.
H: It might look like you guys immersing yourself in your art, which is like how I’ve heard you removed yourselves from Brooklyn to record this new album.
R: Yeah it was definitely immersive, very immersive way of making art.
B: Yeah:
R: So it makes sense, it makes sense.
H: Because your moons (Gemini and Aquarius) are all air signs, you’re all focused on emotionally communicating well. You’re kind of on the same wavelength, and it helps facilitate really easy communication for all of you. I don’t know if you’d say that’s…
R: Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
W: Yeah, definitely.
R: I have a question—the only difference between me and Blaze is the MC being one notch over?
H: So your MC is supposed to be where you’re going in life (there are multiple bodies that influence that). You’re both already on the cusp… There’s that, and the axis by your north node is a little off. So Blaze is slightly more cusped with Aries and Reid is more deep into Pisces. So if I had to say, that might look like Reid being more pensive than Blaze.
Actual Questions about Bambara
H: I was wondering, is the band named after Toni Cade Bambara, the author?
R: No, it’s way less scholarly. It’s named after this character in this animated tv show that was on MTV in the 90’s called Æon Flux.
H: I’m sorry, I’m too young.
R: Yeah no this is way back.
B: This is like ’92. It’s amazing though, it’s a really cool cartoon.
R: But there’s this like villain in one episode called Bambara, and we just like the way it sounded… That’s probably all there is to it.
B: I recommend checking it out, though.
H: Can you talk to me a little bit about your music videos? What your favorite one has been so far, if any?
B: Well, for this album we were supposed to have directors for each one, and…
R: Every single one.
B: Every single one fell through like a week before, so we just had to do it ourselves, every time.
W: Every single video.
R: All of them have been…
H: But, they’re good, considering you’re doing the actual music and also the video for the music.
B: Yeah we have a friend who shoots everything for us, he has a great eye.
W: Yeah.
B: But as far as the concept, we’ve had to come up with that. Our music is very visual anyway, so I think that helps a lot.
R: It kind of lends to it.
B: But I think as far as a favorite, I really like the way “Sing Me to the Street” turned out.
R: Yeah I liked that one a lot.
H: Throughout a lot of your songs, there are themes of morbidity and ugliness, but they’re also really beautiful. So, what impact do you want to leave your listeners with? Or what do you want them to take away from it?
R: Well it’s hard to say… I guess what we really aim for is to put someone in an environment or a place, and sort of populate it with people to invest your time in with their stories, their descriptions and stuff like that. As far as beauty and ugliness go, you need both if anything’s going to be believable, you know. If you’re actually gonna be able to feel anything about something, you need both. If you lean too far on one side or the other, it’s really hard to make any sort of connection, I think. And to come away feeling like you’ve experienced something real… Even if it does have a surrealist sort of tinge to it, it needs to feel real. You need about 50-50 of both. And there is a lot of beauty in ugly, too. Ugliness, there is beauty in that.
B: Yeah, I mean, two sides of the same coin, really.
R: Can’t have one without the other.
H: Songs that you’ve cried to? Or would consider crying to?
R: “Would consider crying to!” I think that list is a lot longer than for what I’ve actually cried to.
B: I feel like one fucked me up the other day, what was it…?
R: I remember the first time I cried to a song was “Earth Angel,” when I was a fucking baby.
B: Doo wop song.
R: Doo wop song—something about it. The doo wop progression, you know? It’s melancholy and always made me feel… sad, in a way that made me feel like I had lost something and I was reflecting on it, even though I was, fucking three years old or something.
B: I think, as cliché as it is, “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley.
W: Kind of in the same vein, I would say “Bad Magic” by Weyes Blood.
R: Oh yeah, that’s a good one.
W: It’ll rip your heart out.
B: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. That’s a great one.
H: Straight for the jugular.
B: What about you?
H: Me? Uh… I haven’t cried in like two years.
B: Damn.
H: I don’t like the way it feels.
W: Hot streak.
B: I like the way it feels.
H: “Silent Partner” by Weed was pretty good [for crying & feeling alone].
R: Ah, okay.
H: I’m just kind of like ‘aaa’
W: ‘I don’t like thinking about it!’
H: In the Vice interview that came out the other day, you mentioned a place called… Johnny’s?
R: Johnny’s Hideaway, yeah.
H: Where cougars will go there to pick up younger guys…
B: Yeah.
H: Is that kind of what you had in mind when writing “Death Croons”?
R: Well that is a place that we just… genuinely enjoy. The characters and stuff in that place have probably left an impact in a way that’s always floating around in my head somewhere. And you know, those types of people are all over the place. I’ve been a bartender all over New York, weird spots in Manhattan and then in Bushwick, other places in Brooklyn… And the people you meet kind of stick with you. I think there’s a lot of people like [from Johnny’s Hideaway]. And I guess I’ve always been attracted to that sort of relationship that people have with bars.
H: How has it been so far, touring in the middle of the Corona virus?
R: Terrible.
B: It’s been fucking crazy. Each day gets worse.
W: It started off like, no big deal, no one cares—and then we started hearing about how many people weren’t showing up to concerts, even if they’d bought tickets, and what percentage didn’t show up at all… And now it sounds like everyone’s tour in the world is getting cancelled right now.
B: Yeah, we’re still on the fence, waiting to hear about some things we have coming up.
H: Yeah Williamsburg, right?
B: Yeah we still don’t know what the deal is with that one yet… I’m sure we’ll know in the next 24 hours. And then we have a tour in Europe in May… It’s like right on the cusp of when they’re ending the bans for gatherings, but… We’ll see. They’ll probably extend it, given our luck.
H: You interact a lot with the crowd and people touch you; do you have to sanitize like after every night?
R: I mean, I should… we sanitize the mics and stuff. Yeah, a lot of contact, so I try to stay good about it.
H: This is for William.
[retrieves bottle of Pesci Paste, a hair product created by Denzel Pesci from The Blaze and Alex Show]
W: Oh.……… Oh wow.
B: !! Ahahahaha
W: Nice.
B: Oh my God..
R: Deep cut, damn.
B: I thought I was having a stroke when I saw that.
R: I thought he went out of business, I didn’t know he was still selling it.
B: Yeah where’d you get this? That’s hilarious.
W: Thought he went up in smoke…
R: Yeah really, I thought he exploded.
H: Literally went up in smoke!
W: That is a deep cut. Uh yeah, Pesci Paste. What else can I say?
B: Ahahahahahaha
W: It’s a hair product… [sniffs] Yeah, still got that smell.
B: Lemme see… Got that smell, yep. Yeah, I’ve actually wanted to go back and watch that video recently. It’s been a long time.
R: [to William] Do you think you could even access that character right now, if you had to?
W: …I don’t know.
R: Think he’s still in you somewhere?
B: It was so long ago.
W: I haven’t seen The Blaze and Alex Show in a really long time.
H: It’s very Aries—Denzel Pesci is extremely Aries.
W: Yeah, domineering.
R: It seems like all that shit you were describing, yeah.
B: Pffft… Denzel Pesci.
W: Man, Alex is gonna lose it over this.
B: Yeah, I’ve gotta send him that.
W: How did you find The Blaze and Alex Show?
B: [wistfully] Denzel Pesci…
H: I was reading this interview y’all did recently with Alt Citizen, and Blaze, you said that you were in an Amanda Bynes commercial.
B: Oh yeah, yeah.
H: So I tried looking for it, but I couldn’t find it…
B: It’s so hard to find.
H: So I just… typed your name into IMDb.
R: ¿ ¿That’s on there??
B: Yeah, Alex added it to give it some credibility.
W: How many episodes did you watch?
H: I watched all of them, and then I watched the Downtimes.
R: You watched the Downtimes? Damn.
W: Dang.
H: They were actually really good!
B: Thanks! That was a huge, important part of my life for a long time.
H: They’re so high production.
B: Yeah we pulled a lot of favors for that. They got really intense as they went on. It started off just one camera in the basement, then…
H: I don’t think you were even in the first episode.
W: Hah!
B: Yeah, the first Blaze and Alex I wasn’t in. Damn, I gotta watch that.
H: William, did you actually cut your hair for the season finale?
W: No, that was just editing around the fact that I had gotten a haricut. It was just fake hair sprinkled on the ground.
B: Oh that’s right, that’s what happened! We took continuity very seriously.
H: It looked real…
B: Yeah that was part of your cleansing, before you…
W: Just getting ready to kill a man.
H: Can you talk about your experience being a hot band?
R: Hm.
H: How has your music been impacted like, sonically, by just fucking slicing passersby with your jawlines?
B/R: Ahaha
R: How has that impacted the music sonically, let’s see… That’s really, I dunno about that…
W: You mean ‘hot’ like attractive? Like physically attractive?
H: Like have you had any issues completing tracks due to complications from being offensively attractive?
B: Not yet.
R: Not yet, we’ll see.
W: Maybe sometimes Drew forgot to press record ‘cause he was just gawking at Blaze or something.
B: I was gawking at Drew. You should see the guy who recorded the album. He’s like a gazelle.
W: Talk about jawlines. Yeah no, not yet, no problems.
B: We’ve known each other since we were kids, so I think… We’ve seen each other grow.
H: You’re basically brothers at this point, yeah?
All: Yeah, totally.
