Culture
Ted Feighan of Monster Rally discusses blending visual and musical art, creating a musical world, and sharing ambitious plans for the project’s future
By: Nicholas Kobe
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CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOUB) – Monster Rally is the brainchild of Ohio native Ted Feighan.
The ambient, tropical-themed music is merged with Feighan’s collage-like artwork to create a very aesthetically cohesive project informed by exotica and the kind of imagery it inspires. Monster Rally has released 11 albums, a remix album, and 6 EPs since 2011. While the project has evolved with time, the original vision of musical escapism to a warm summer-y utopia remains the same.
Nicholas Kobe spoke with Ted Feighan ahead of Monster Rally’s performance supporting TV Girl at the House of Blues tonight. Feighan opens for TV Girl again tomorrow night at KEMBA Live! in Columbus.
Read a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
If you had to describe it in one sentence, what is Monster Rally?
Ted Feighan:
Monster Rally is a project that encompasses both music and artwork that are sort of tropical and exotica-tinged.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah, I think that is a pretty good way to put it. But obviously, as an Ohio native, as we both know, we’re pretty far away from the tropics. So how are you –
Ted Feighan:
Inspired?
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah, how are you inspired to take your music and your art in that direction?
Ted Feighan:
It’s funny, a lot of people have asked me that, and I think it’s because of how far away we are [in Ohio] and how different our world and environment and climate are from the places that I’m sort of creating in the music and the artwork and everything. When you spend so long with the overcast winters here and everything’s so cold, you just start to kind of daydream and fantasize about being in other places. So I think that was a big influence for me. When I started the project, I was just sort of getting really into old exotica records and basically anything that has kind of tropical imagery on it and getting into trying to create my own space for that. So it’s not even necessarily a specific place that existed.
It’s not specifically Hawaii or South America or something. It’s just this kind of imaginary place that encompasses all those things, all the environments, all the places from all over the world kind of in one spot.
Nicholas Kobe:
So since starting the project, have you gotten to visit any of those places you were daydreaming about?
Ted Feighan :
I have. It’s been cool because I’ve been able to do some record shopping in a lot of them and just sort of check out local music. But it’s funny because when you go someplace, it’s never exactly how you imagine it. In your mind, especially when you’re creating anything, whether it’s music or artwork or whatever, you have an idea about something in its purest form. Then when you go experience something related to that, it almost always is not what you had in mind. You might go to Hawaii and you get to Hawaii and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is beautiful,’ and you’ve got to seek out the things that you really want to feel there, but half of it is just driving; and there’s a Costco ;and then you’re at a resort with a million other people and there’s a weird kind of party vibe. It’s tough to match the mental fantasy with the actual reality. That’s not to say that I haven’t had really incredible experiences in a lot of the places I’ve been to. In my mind, the Monster Rally musical universe is not a real place, it only exists in your head.
Nicholas Kobe:
Definitely. So considering that you have this, as you said in the beginning, this visual art aspect of Monster Rally and then you have the musical art aspect of Monsters Rally, how did those inform each other?
Ted Feighan:
I think just because they sort of started at the same time, they kind of became forever connected. So when I started first I had been making artwork and music since I was probably 13 and playing in other bands, but I kind of shifted the way I was making music and the way I was making artwork at the exact same time. This was 13 years ago when I started doing this. It was all kind of about the same thing. The creation of the artwork and the music was all sort of about the act of exploring and repurposing things. I’d go to a thrift store and take through a bunch of records and then at the same time go through a bunch of books and you’re going through the records for cool samples and you go through the books for all the little pieces of imagery or whatever you’re going to cut out. Then they all just sort of came together through the same process, but in different mediums, and just, that’s why it just connects so well.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yep, absolutely. When you are navigating in both of these worlds, are there any logistic elements or things that have kind of surprised you about visual art and music at the same time, or has it been a seamless process of keeping them as one cohesive project?
Ted Feighan:
I think there’s been a bit of that. There are definitely some things that I haven’t necessarily expected. Maybe I’ll make some music or EP or something and I need to do some artwork for it, and I’m having maybe a hard time connecting. What I’m feeling with the music is the visuals that I’m able to produce. Or maybe at one time, I’m just making a bunch of visuals that I really love that I think are cool but aren’t really connecting with what I need for the music. That definitely happens, but the solution to that for me has always just been to make more, just keep making, make a bunch of stuff, make a bunch of music, make a bunch of artwork, and then you’ll figure out what makes sense. I think it’s all been pretty much seamless. I almost always start with the music and I’ll make a record and then I’ll listen to it a bunch when it’s finished and just think about the spaces in which that music might occupy.
Then I’ll start to put together the artwork and the place. When I look at the artwork, I just want to feel like I could picture the music playing in that space. So most of it has worked pretty well that way, and it’s been cool. I never thought I would still be doing this the same way I am this many years later, but I feel like my second home is in those spaces.
Nicholas Kobe:
Speaking of that, if it has at all, how has your creative process for how you approached this project changed over the years?
Ted Feighan:
I think it’s more so that I’ve just accidentally gotten better at doing something. Not necessarily that I’ve gotten more talented. I’ve gotten better at some technical things than when I started. It is sort of accidental – I wanted to learn how to mix this properly or I wanted to figure out how to do this sort of editing. If you listen to those first couple of records of mine, they’re very crude. There’s a bunch of buzzing and stuff, and I like that. I mean, when I started it was like, these sort of – I want to say lo-fi – but it’s funny because the whole “lo-fi” genre has taken on a whole new meaning of everything in itself at the moment. But when I started, I would’ve said that it’s very low, low-fi, low fidelity music, and it puts you in the space and you’re feeling it like that.
The same way it was with the music, the first album cover I did, I made the collage and everything. I laid it all out and it’s just a picture. I took a picture with my camera and then that’s what is the cover of the album. I’d never even thought about scanning something or editing anything like that. So I think over time I just got more into the finer details of some things, making the artwork, scanning artwork, or editing some things digitally. The same is true with the music where it started. I’m still using all the same equipment I started with at the time, but just over years and years of doing it, I wind up just tweaking some things to take out some of the crudeness. Even if I don’t mean to, sometimes I listen to old stuff and think, ‘Oh man, I could even try to make it sound like this rough.’ But then I feel like I’d be forcing that. So basically I’m trying to let it all happen as it happens.
Nicholas Kobe:
Off-topic, but not really, obviously the tropical imagery is a big part of your music. Do you have any particularly favorite tropical birds or plants?
Ted Feighan:
Oh yeah, definitely. That’s a part of it too. I started just with a general interest in tropical imagery because being from here or living here, that stuff all seems so different and cool and beautiful and perfect. I love Ohio and our natural environments and they are pretty incredible too, but we’re just used to ’em. I just had a blanket interest in all that stuff. Then as time went on, I started getting really into some of the specific things.
So definitely I feel like my favorite bird has got to be a toucan or a hornbill. I have a hornbill on all the covers. I just think they’re so interesting looking. My favorite bird or – animal in general – is definitely an owl, and there are a lot of tropical owls, but they don’t have the colors, which is kind of a bummer. But there’s a lot of owls in the artwork if you look at ’em. I think in terms of plants, there are so many good ones. I think orchids are definitely my favorite. There’s a lot of orchids. Anytime I see good orchid imagery, I’m always cutting it out, and the prayer plant. I think the prayer plant leaves are just the absolute coolest.
Nicholas Kobe:
Absolutely. I think the use of, especially the birds and the plants is really interesting for me too, because obviously the colors and everything immediately grab you.
Ted Feighan:
Right? While I can’t have a bunch of animals like that – something dawned on me probably six years ago when I was cutting all these plants and everything, and then I realized, ‘Wait a minute, I could have a bunch of these plants.’ I didn’t even think about it. I could have a bunch of the plants. It’s funny, now I feel like the houseplant boom really took off several years ago and has been a thing. It was just going to the store anytime I could and buying a bunch of plants. That’s been awesome. I mean, I still love to have ’em in my studio right now, I’m looking around, it just has so many of these plants in it, but it really takes you into the space.
Nicholas Kobe:
Absolutely. I mean, yeah, you can’t exactly buy a toucan. I mean, I have a metal toucan sign on my wall here, but that’s about the closest I can get.
Ted Feighan:
Well, I’ve seen people – actually, a couple of people – on Instagram who have a toucan as a pet, and that’s their whole thing, and it actually looks terrible. It’s just my personal opinion, but I feel like birds should be able to fly away.
Nicholas Kobe:
Totally fair. I’m interested, so obviously I’m interviewing you ahead of your performance in Columbus with a TV Girl. How do you take this Monster Rally project and translate that into the live show?
Ted Feighan :
Yeah, it’s a good question. I’ve done a lot of versions of it. The main version I’ve been doing for the past several years is where I have two samplers set up, and I use a Roland SP-404. I have two of them. On one side I’ll have a bunch of drum loops and any sort of basis of the song. And then on the other side, I have a lot of samples that are melodic samples that I’m triggering. I’ll play in real-time in one shot, drums, or whatever else it is. Then that’s usually paired with visuals. So I have a bunch of visuals I’ve made and the visuals some of my friends have made for me that go along with it. So I’ll almost always play with a big projector or something.
It’s a little tricky because I don’t usually travel with that. So it’s kind of at the mercy of the venue if they have the screens and the projector. But for this run of shows, I’m just sort of trying to challenge myself a little bit. So I’m going to be doing a lot of the same stuff with the samplers, but in addition, I’m going to be playing some of the instruments live. So I have a guitar and a bass and a mellotron keyboard, and so I’m going to be playing some live instruments also with the sampler.
Nicholas Kobe:
So when you’re doing this with the sampler, are you playing any songs directly as they are from the record, or are you just making stuff on the fly that kind of fits the vibe?
Ted Feighan:
It’s a little bit of both. So some of the stuff is similar to how they are in the record, but I’ll have some things edited a little differently for live. Then with the instruments I’m playing, I’ll play new parts on top of them and the stuff that’s not even on the record.
Nicholas Kobe:
Awesome. That’s really cool. What kind of vibe does the audience who come to your shows have?
Ted Feighan:
It’s funny, what I think is an interesting thing that happens a lot is people come and they listen to the records all the time and they listen to it in ways that are very relaxed. So it’ll be like, ‘I listen to this while I’m working, while I’m making artwork, while I’m having a dinner party.’ But the show experience, just because of the nature of how much louder things are and all the low end and the bass and stuff, it’s actually much more of a dance party. It becomes a way more kind of movement, dance party vibe, which is great. I love to play the shows that way. I like to get up there and be moving around and just be really enjoying with everybody. So pretty much it’s like coming in for a good time, feeling good, trying to get to that magical place that the music is trying to depict. We’re all trying to get there together.
Nicholas Kobe:
Awesome. So for this specific run of shows, what is your history with TV Girl, and how do you think their audience and your audience are going to meld?
Ted Feighan:
Yeah, that’s a great question, I actually think it’s pretty good. Historically, it’s been good. I know these guys from LA from when I used to live there, but we’ve played a handful of shows together in LA and San Francisco. We have a song that we did together that came out in 2014, I think, but it’s only on Bandcamp. It’s not on Spotify. I’m getting on Spotify now, actually, because a lot of people have been asking for it. So there’s already been a good amount of crossover, and their music is kind of the same vibe. It definitely doesn’t have the same sort of specific imagery that mine does, but it’s poppy, it’s fun. It’s definitely taking you to a state of bliss. They have kind of similar production techniques. I’m hopeful that everybody’s really going to be vibing together on everything. Plus they’re good dudes and I’ve been watching their rise over the past few years and it’s crazy, but they definitely deserve it. They’re good people and they’re making fun music.
Nicholas Kobe:
That’s awesome to hear. I guess one last question before we wrap up is, what is next for Monster Rally? What is the future of this project?
Ted Feighan:
Well, right now I’m working on a new album. Basically, the idea for this record is that I’m playing a lot more instrumentation myself, and I am talking to a handful of other bands I like about features on the album. So the plan is to have this record come out with a number of really awesome bands and people I know doing some vocal features and other collaborations. So that’s what I’m working on right now.
Nicholas Kobe:
That definitely sounds exciting. What kind of phase of the production process are you in right now?
Ted Feighan:
Right now I’m just making all the music, just really cranking out as much as I can, and working with a couple of people who are on the other end of it doing some writing for some vocals. Probably some of this will start to come out next year, probably in the form of a few singles by next summer.