Photo of cistern with Brooklyn Billinghurst (center, CJSW).

cistern performed during Sled Island on Friday, June 19th at Palomino (Main Floor) & Saturday, June 20th at Pin-Bar.

Interview Audio:

Interview Transcript:

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Hi, my name is Brooklyn Billinghurst, I’m here with CJSW 90.9FM for our Sled Island interviews. I have the pleasure of sitting down with the group Cistern. Please introduce yourselves.

McKinley
Hello, I’m McKinley.

Chris
I’m Chris.

Noah W.
Hi, I’m Noah one.

Noah V.
I’m Noah Varley.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
One is not your last name.

Noah W.
Noah Wilson.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, how did you guys all meet?

McKinley
Noah Wilson and Chris and myself have known each other living in Squamish for like 10 years. Noah Wilson and myself grew up together in Squamish, but we were separated a couple years and didn’t know each other until like after high school when Chris and Noah had a band with a couple of my other friends, and then known them for a long time, and then Noah Varley had moved to Squamish, yeah, three or four years ago for rock climbing and yada yada, and my partner saw them at the skate park, and like, and invited them over to my house for dinner one night, and then found out they played music, Noah does, and dragged him into our jam space, which he was a bit reluctant to at first, because he was like, “Oh, I don’t know how it’s gonna go, and he hadn’t played music in a, in a little while, but then we started playing, and it went well, and yada yada yada…

Brooklyn (CJSW)
And the rest is history, as they say. Um, so you three are from Squamish, and you moved to Squamish. Um, what could you guys tell me about, like, the scene there, making music up there? What could you tell me about that.

Noah V.
There’s some passionate people in the Squamish music scene, for sure. It’s just not really a scene that’s focused on the style of music we make, so I’d say we’re kind of left out from whatever you could call a scene in Squamish. It’s really heavily predominated by electronic music and raves and stuff going on- there’s only like three venues in Squamish.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, wow.

Noah V.
One’s a bar, one’s a nightclub, and one is like a really big old art gallery. It’s really cool building called the Brackendale Art Gallery, but I guess it’s not a big place, and so people’s tastes tend to be tailored to like broader appeal, because you know, the less people you have, kind of, when you’re in a city, you can explore more things, and then, yeah, Squamish is just, it’s really an outdoor town, and there’s a lot of tourism and hospitality supporting that industry. Musics, like, not, you know, it’s like expecting a small town to have a scene like Vancouver or Montreal, it’s just never gonna be very similar.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, of course.

Noah V.
But it’s still a cool place.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, yeah. Do you find a lot of people then like move to Vancouver for more musical opportunities, or like what’s that kind of exchange like?

Noah V.
I actually think people from Vancouver move to Montreal.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Really?

Noah V.
I feel like Vancouver has lots of music I like, and is cool to see, but if I try to compare it objectively to other cities in the world, I’m like, I feel as if there’s just less happening, and you could probably just directly blame that on the housing market.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, interesting.

Noah V.
Yeah, I would just say it’s too unaffordable as a gigging musician for the opportunities there. Yeah, that’d be a part-time musician, but then it’s yeah, housing in Vancouver is just so crazy that I just feel like people move to somewhere else.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah.

Chris
Just saying you need a day job, yeah, absolutely, can’t be a full-time musician.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
And is that possible in Squamish to be a full-time musician, or do you still need, like, a side gig as well?

Chris
We all have jobs, not possible, yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, nice. They’re all employed. That’s good.

McKinley
Yeah, when we’re done mixing songs, we.. I’m mixing ‘crete, you know, concrete.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, really? Can I actually ask all of you what your day jobs are?

Chris
I’m a civil technologist.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Wow, okay. That’s so cool. That’s like sounds so professional. That’s awesome.

McKinley
I’m like a laborer, like shoveler, framer, carpenter kind of guy.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Nice.

Noah W.
I do half construction, half cooking. I’ve been cooking a lot more recently, but I used to do construction.

Noah V.
I’m a mechanical engineer.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Wow, okay. Big brain, good for you. So, if there wasn’t a huge, like, scene for your kind of music in Squamish, how did you get inspired to make the kind of music you are making? Like, were you just kind of filling a hole? Were you just doing whatever you wanted? Like, what was your inspiration for that?

McKinley
Yeah, we’re kind of in our own bubble, and in a sense, we just.. I don’t think we’re taking a lot of influence from outside, or at least not like local, local artists.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah.

McKinley
But I guess we just have similar taste, similar enough taste, where we kind of have found our niche. Found like something that is our own sound.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
So then where do you take inspiration from?

Noah V.
I think probably all of us would say different things, but like personally, recently I’ve been inspired by like Tears for Fears.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Cool.

Noah V.
And Prefab Sprout and The Cure, yeah, just like a lot of 80s music.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Awesome.

Noah V.
That’s what I’ve been listening to.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Very good picks.

Noah W.
I don’t think my answer is gonna make very much sense, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Skrillex.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Really, like Bangarang or like what?

Noah W.
Yeah I really like his new music… no, he’s a, he’s like a just an electronic artist now. He makes dubsteps, still. Still that iconic thing people hate. But-

Brooklyn (CJSW)
No, hey, he’s on the Wreck-It Ralph soundtrack, don’t knock him.

Noah W.
But, well, people love to hate it. It’s like an anti-hero thing. You kind of gotta want to do that to be like, like LMFAO. I don’t know, like, you got to be a bit ironic, you have to, and you have to know it. And then you do, do it while holding it. But he also just makes crazy bangers now. Like there’s a lot of like Latin house or techno, very, very different style electronic music he’s making now, and I think people be really surprised, just like how capable and crazy good he is at making music, and that, yeah, the dubstep is just one thing he did, maybe he did it a lot, but he makes a lot of other cool shit.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Cool.

Noah W.
And then inspirations, yeah, I’ve been listening to a lot of 80s stuff to try and lock in the drumming for the new stuff we’re making.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, cool.

McKinley
I kind of grew up on, like, you know, Led Zeppelin, and Rolling Stones, Police CDs, Bob Marley. More, more recently, I’d say, like, this is my first band, and through this, I’ve, like, gotten exposed to, like, a lot of different other music that I didn’t really know about before, and I think the kind of like people out there making music right now, I don’t know, influence me or us, like Mock Media, Smoke Eaters, Bluffing, Eye of Newt.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Cool. I saw Eye of Newt last night, they’re awesome.

McKinley
Eye of Newt is awesome. Yes, I love that band.

Chris
Yeah, there’s.. I think there’s a lot of bands, but likewise I’m definitely inspired by friends and other people in local scene that keep it going.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Cool.

Chris
Specifically, Green Auto is a DIY venue, Vancouver.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah.

Chris
And they’re always willing to put on shows for everyone, and yeah, the owner’s awesome. They have a recording studio on the other block too, and three stages.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Wow. Yeah, so Still Depths is a Calgary band that plays Green Auto like all the time, that’s how I know about it. Yeah, Green Auto is cool, yeah, nice. Um, so I want to talk about your latest album, Rhizome. Am I saying that right?

McKinley
Yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay. Great. Um, every track.. I was listening to it this morning. Great album, by the way. Not just saying that, like, I really, really enjoyed it.

McKinley
Thank you.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Um, there’s like a different flavour to every track, like some are more like math-y, some are more like shoegaze, some are more like grunge. So then, what does your songwriting process look like when, like, I mean, you all just had four different influences. What does your songwriting process look like when you’re ready to make a record? Noah is doing a smashing, a smooshing motion with his hands.

McKinley
We usually have a couple heated debates along the way, and then end up with something we’re pretty happy with.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, awesome.

McKinley
There’s a lot of like different ideas, I think that’s why some of the songs sound different.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Right.

McKinley
But then at the end the day it’s the same four guys in a band, so there’s still just the sound of the band coming through.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, it’s still like awesomely cohesive, like it all still sounds like you, right? It’s not like you’re trying to sound like Prince one minute and then like Prefab Sprout the next, right?

McKinley
We just have, I guess, like three and a half songwriters in our band.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah.

Noah W.
I’ve written like two songs.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, okay. Is one of you like really like they cut you in half or something?

Noah W.
I’m perfectly normal.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay.

Noah W.
Everyone who can’t see me on the radio,

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah.

McKinley
Rhizome, as well as Head Full of Questions, they were kind of like mosaics of like, like Noah had some songs, I had some songs, Noah had some songs, Chris has some songs, and then like we kind of compiled them after the fact, that like Rhizome wasn’t so much of one unified idea that we started with and then saw to the end, and it kind of relates into the name of Rhizome. It kind of speaks a little bit to that of like all these different parts that are all connected in some way.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Mm-hmm. For those of us who aren’t mechanical engineers, what is a rhizome?

McKinley
Rhizome is a direct reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of a rhizome, which was just like a non-hierarchical organization of things, like, like typical Western thought is like absolute objective truth, like this is this, that is that. A lot of gender ideology is like, oh, well, it’s men and women. Yeah, that’s one direct reference with this lens. You would just look at, like, there are qualities, you know, which belong to men. There are qualities which belong to women. Those qualities exist above and beyond men and women as categories, so to organize them by male and female, you’re kind of just like applying a binary to something that just exists.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Right.

McKinley
And so you could also look at it like, you know, there’s this genus, there’s family of like all these animals, there are all these categorizations we apply to things, it’s really just the way of organizing things. That animal is that animal, whether you put a name on it or not, and you objectively count how many atoms are in it, or something.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay.

McKinley
So the rhizome is just non-hierarchical thinking.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
That’s so fascinating. I thought it was like a cell part.

Noah V.
It is, yeah, like I was gonna say, it’s an..

McKinley
It’s a literal reference to a plant.

Noah V.
That idea is an analogy from a biological concept of a rhizome. A rhizome is like a, it’s sort of like a root, but not exactly. Yeah, and connect to the other parts of the rhizome, like a ginger. What you get, ginger is a rhizome.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
So like root. Okay, I knew high school biology was like tickling the back of my brain somewhere, like you’ve heard this word before.

Noah V.
Roots are hierarchical, rhizomes are non-

Noah V.
Yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh wow, okay, it’s all coming together that’s great guys.

McKinley
Horizontal planes of existence.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
So then, how did you want to apply that to your music then?

McKinley
I just came up with the word and I thought it fit because I just like those writers. I like their thoughts. I think they’re good for the world that they existed. And then I thought the idea applied to our songwriting like practice, like we do just write things in that way, where someone will bring something to the table and it’s a starting off point, and then it could honestly undergo so much work by another person that it would really almost be more their project now, but we just don’t, you know, it’s not like mine or his or his just becomes all of ours. We all work on it. They’ll tell me what they would like on the drums, I’ll ask for something on guitar. We all share ideas.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
For sure. Cool. What is like the most conducive setting to writing music? Do you all do it in the same room together? Do you all come up with ideas and then bring them together?

Noah W.
I think we maybe have individual differences in how we like writing, but I think the best song writing is like we just go to the jam space and start trying stuff. And if someone has a kind of complete idea already, it’s kind of good to do homework first. But like when we’re all just in the room, someone has like one guitar riff and we go from there, like I feel like that’s kind of the easiest and like best feeling.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, definitely.

McKinley
Yeah, we come up with some stuff, like organically, as, as the four of us, a lot of the time, too. Noah Varley is just like a machine at his home studio, coming up with demos, and then he’ll bring us another song, and it’s like all the parts.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Awesome.

McKinley
And then, and then-

Noah V.
For me, the easiest songwriting process now, also because I don’t live in Squamish, so I spend a lot of time just making demos where I just make the whole song, I just MIDI the drums and play all the parts and do all the singing, and then, but usually after that, then everybody like takes their parts and makes them their own, and then I think that’s the best, best version of the songs, once everybody gets to like digest them and like reinterpret what was in the demo, kind of, that’s that’s been the most recent songwriting process.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Nice. So we’re here at Sled Island Music Festival, it’s a big festival in Calgary, takes over downtown for like five days. I was doing some research on Squamish, because I’ve never been there before. And you guys used to have the Squamish Music Festival that ended in like 2015 that had like Drake, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, like rest in peace. That sounds like amazing.

McKinley
It was so sick, like my friends too lived on like the barns, kind of just like off the way from the the festival grounds, and it was a huge festival, and we were in like high school and stuff, when we just get like wasted and go see there’s so many cool bands there that it was, it was a massive festival, the thing, the Squamish population at the time was like around 20,000 and then like 60,000 people would come for the festival, and just like cram everything, and but it was, it was really cool, and so much fun, and I remember seeing that, seeing shows there as a kid, and being like, oh my god, this is so cool, this would be so fun to do.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, absolutely, like that sounds like the most beautiful setting, like the mountains, and like the fresh air.

McKinley
I remember Arcade Fire was playing, and me and my friends were running to the stage, and they had all these lanterns. It was sunset, like golden hour light, and they were releasing these like lanterns up into the sky, and Arcade Fire was starting their set, and they were playing that song. It’s like, wake up, yeah, and we’re all like, oh my god, oh my god, that starts going ohhhh- ahh, I get like shivers thinking about it still.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Full body chills, that sounds amazing. So, okay, unfortunately, that’s discontinued. Yeah, you just painted a beautiful picture. Yes, if you could start your own festival, like Cistern Fest, who’d be on the lineup for that?

McKinley
Oh my goodness,

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Would it be in Squamish? You can also choose a cool place to put it.

McKinley
Gosh, maybe in Squamish.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
No, you can choose. They can be dead. It doesn’t matter.

McKinley
I don’t know. Well, couple, that’s that’s tough. Surf Hats, a band from Squamish. They’re our friends. They’d be out there with us, friggin Mock Media, yeah, Smoke Eaters, Noah do you wanna..

Noah W.
I don’t know, I would say B.A. Johnston.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
He comes here, all the time – he was just here.

Noah W.
He’s played in Squamish, too. Performance art, stand-up, music, very worthwhile.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Very worthwhile. I love him.

Noah V.
I’ll drop some names, I think, just like the.. I would try to have Canadian artists that we like.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
For sure.

Noah V.
Like, I don’t know, I’ve always been a fan of Preoccupations and Women, that’s like, goes way back for me, and I think it’s big influences.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, Preocc’s tour last year was so good.

Noah V.
Yeah, Heaven For Real too.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, absolutely.

Noah W.
I would just like.. I don’t know, I would love to meet Zach Hill and Nate Smith, who are two drummers, so I would put their bands.

Noah W.
Put Hella, and I would put I think, Nate Sm- Nate Smith plays with a bunch of people. I mostly just like his work.

McKinley
I would want Deerhoof, that’s like the number one band for me.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Last year, when I interviewed Motherhood, I asked them something similar, and all of them were like Deerhoof, Deerhoof, Deerhoof, for like, who’s your inspiration? Like, it was them, yeah,

Noah W.
Speaking of B.A. Johnston, we had a show in Squamish on Sunday, and there was also Sam Tudors, which is another artist that would be there, I would hope. And then B.A. Johnston was playing around the corner from us, and we were in the club, and B.A. Johnston was in the bar, and it was Sunday night in Squamish with three good shows to go see, so it was like kind of tough. We went over to the to The Chieftain, the bar to try and get some people to come to our show, and we walk in, B.A. Johnston’s shirtless, pouring fireball in everyone’s mouths, and we’re like, “Oh, we can’t compete with this.”

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, no, he just played at The Ship & Anchor, and one of my friends is like the photographer there, and she’ll post pictures, and I’m like, what goes on at this? Like, he’s like half naked, like dabbing people, like it’s so funny.

Noah W.
He has like seven hoodies on, and they’re all the same one. He keeps taking them off.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
I think he went into the bathroom and started performing from the bathroom at one of his shows.

Noah W.
Yeah, he’ll do that.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, he’s wild.

Noah W.
The Ship & Anchor, there’s like maybe like half the people are there for the show, and half the people are just like there.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
People at the back are like, can I get my wings or what?

Noah W.
Can you imagine like not knowing who B.A. Johnston is at all? And then like there’s like some crazy shirtless bearded guy.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Like the Jack Black of like Canada, like just kind of doing his own thing.

Noah W.
What is it? We’re all going to jail, except Kyle. He’s gonna die.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, Tenacious D should be at Cistern Fest, actually, add that to the lineup.

Noah V.
Yeah, School of Rock is my favorite movie all time. It’s like big inspiration for me that movie. I think I could quote like the whole movie, probably.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Is it The Ballad of the Rent?

Noah V.
Yeah, it’s way, way past due,

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Way past due. I love that movie too. Um, so you guys played tonight at PinBar at 10pm What is something you hope audiences get out of your cistern performance? Is this your first time in Calgary?

Noah V.
No, we played Sled two years ago.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
You’ve graced our stages before okay.

Noah V.
We played East Town the year before that, maybe same year, yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, cool. So, what’s.. what do you hope people get out of this new record? Then, because it’d be your first time playing Rhizome here in Calgary.

Noah V.
Yes. Funny enough.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, it’s not?

Noah V.
We’re probably our set now, probably is all new songs.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, okay.

Noah V.
So there’s maybe two songs that we’re playing that we’ve just put out on Bandcamp.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, so cool.

Noah V.
So there’s.. we’re playing those two new ones, and then the rest of our set is also all new songs, unreleased songs.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Why did you choose to do it that way instead of playing from Rhizome?

Noah V.
I think we just love playing new music, and it’s hard to keep playing the same songs for a long time.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Absolutely, yeah,

Noah W.
Rhizome is like relatively new, I think it’s been out for like, I don’t know, since October, but like for us, a lot of those songs are like three years old already, and we’ve played them like a ton, and we’re just, we like to play like the stuff that we’re like super excited about, and it’s, it’s this new stuff we’re gonna, and we’re hammering it.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Yeah, awesome.

Noah V.
I think maybe the Rhizome songs, there’s like more chill songs on that record, and I feel like we’re just in this pattern of like making our live show more and more energetic and fast,

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Oh, okay, so I was about to say next, like, what, what makes a signature cistern show? It sounds like it’s getting more and more intense?

Noah V.
Yeah, right now it’s like pretty- a lot of energy, and like more dancy, and there’s like a couple songs that are almost more like have some like Latin kind of groove to the songs.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
That’s cool.

Noah V.
Or like some Calypso beats, which, yeah, mixing with post punk, yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, cool.

Noah V.
Yeah, it’s starting to kind of come back to that. My, it’s like in my core, I can’t shake that songwriting.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
And why should you?

Noah V.
Yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Why should you?

Noah V.
Yeah.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
All right. I think I kind of know what you guys are gonna say, but what can we expect next from cistern?

Noah V.
We’re probably just gonna try to record all the songs that are in our current live set right now, and we’re kind of unsure what we’re doing with releasing it. Honestly, we’ve been having conversations about it, but maybe an EP, or maybe we’ll just save it all up into an album, and we’ve also been making some videos too. We just working on a couple music videos for some songs. I think we’re gonna just continue doing that. I wanted, we wanted to do like just make almost every song as a single and have a video with it, that would be that’s kind of our goal,

Brooklyn (CJSW)
That’s a great goal to have. Well, anything else to add, cistern, before we wrap up?

McKinley
First, thanks for having us.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
You’re welcome. Thank you for giving me your time.

Noah W.
It’s been awesome to come back to Sled. This festival is so much fun. Our show last night was the best, like we had the most fun playing in like a while last night, or at least me personally, though.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
That makes me really happy to hear.

Noah W.
It was awesome. I loved it, and yeah…

Noah V.
Yeah, just Sled Island’s, like the best music festival in Canada, in my opinion, and I’ll always come play Sled Island. It’s like my favorite, favorite festival. It’s 10 years since my first sled, which is crazy.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Do you remember who you saw perform?

Noah V.
I don’t really remember that, like, see, it feels so long ago, trying to think who would have played the in 2016 but yeah, that was like my, that was my first real band when we, we toured across Canada, we played Sled Island.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
That’s awesome.

McKinley
Yeah, yeah, we want to do Sled every year, so please bring us back, but also…

Brooklyn (CJSW)
I’ll put in a good word, don’t worry.

McKinley
The last either last year, the last time we played two of my, like, favorite artists were at Sled, and I missed both of them. It was Makaya McCraven and Jeff Parker, who are just, like, absolute.. I don’t know, the stuff they do, usually, like, blows me away. And I didn’t get to see them. So you should bring them back next year when you bring us back, so I can see them.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Okay, yeah. Thank you Noah. I’ll actually send that to Mr. Island, Mr. Sled Island.

McKinley
Thank you, Mr. Island, I appreciate it.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
I got that in the works for you, man.

McKinley
John Island.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
John Island. Noah Isl- Noah Island. There’s a third one, Noah Island.

Noah W.
Yeah, thanks for having us, Sled Island rips, love being here. Especially in the summer.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
With this beautiful weather we’re having.

McKinley
Yeah, yeah, my brother also, he made us a website recently. We got cistern.ca where we’ll probably be like putting up these videos and like other kind of stuff there, and that’s a way to like keep track of what we’re doing. And then our Instagram @cistern_band, we’ve got a YouTube channel @Cistern_band, probably I think is the name.

Noah W.
If anyone ever films our sets, we love bootlegs. Please send us any bootlegs or any pictures if you ever decide to take them.

Brooklyn (CJSW)
Great, you guys know where to find them, cistern band, thank you so much for joining me on CJSW 90.9FM.