Rubber Band Gun (ft. mem. Foxygen, The Lemon Twigs) Shares ‘Cashes Out’ LP + Album Video
Today, Rubber Band Gun (the project of producer, engineer, and multi-talented performer, Kevin Basko) finally presents their brand new LP, ‘Cashes Out’ (via Earth Libraries).
“From the start of recording ‘Cashes Out’, I wanted a unique visual talent to accompany the sounds we were making,” said Basko. “Ben Montez has an incredible eye and ear for collaboration and he really brought the Vegas dream to life. With a combination of found stock footage, intimate practical shots, and absurd animation, he has built a neon world and story around the themes and characters explored in this record. Each song/video can live in its own world and feel coherent on its own, but when played together as a whole, Ben has created a film that pushes those boundaries and shows the viewer a side of RBG that they’ve never seen before.”
As many of the albums in Basko’s big year carried unified themes, ‘Cashes Out’ was written with the express idea that it would be Basko’s big leap into the conventionality of the music business. That said, rather than streamline or simplify for that pop approach, the record retains the multiplicity of ideas and tones that run through the Rubber Band Gun catalog. After opening with introspective piano, ‘My Time’ erupts in a spray of ‘70s neon and the album never looks back.
That step out of time is particularly fitting, as holing up in his home studio of Historic New Jersey has meant that Basko’s music lives in its own context rather than any particular scene or trend. “I’m more of a fish out of water, but I’m creating my own scene that is without a true geographical home base,” he explains. “In some way, that makes me very Jersey-ish because I’m not giving up despite a lack of acceptance into a certain culture.”
A big part of that new scene comes from Basko’s close partnership with Rado. The pair’s seamless connection dates back to Basko’s time at Berklee College of Music, when he took a bus to New York City to see a Diane Coffee show. “We met that night and hit it off quickly. A few months later he asked me to join Foxygen,” Basko says. “He’s the only producer I’ve ever had for a Rubber Band Gun release, and I trust his ears endlessly.” In fact, in addition to producing and engineering Cashes Out, Rado helped round out arrangements on percussion and electronics.
Basko opened his laboratory up to further collaborators for the album, working closely with brothers Mike and Brian D’Addario, Sam France, and Jackie Cohen, as well as co-writing lyrics for the first time with bassist Johnny Costa. As a musician known for prolifically releasing material after locking himself away in his home studio, this more collaborative approach opened up Basko’s process. “It’s a pleasure to work with so many friends, and I learned a lot from watching them and hearing their feedback,” Basko says.
The rough-hewn and homey five-part harmonies on album highlight ‘Be Together’, a Bowie-indebted take that alternates between tonky stomping and lush, swaying calls out for something more. The chugging square-wave stutter of ‘Like That’ further showcases that renewed energy, Cohen’s falsetto swimming laps through Basko’s burnished synth wave pool. Closer ‘Catches A Trout’, meanwhile, finds Basko and Rado threading guitar, synths, and sequencers through each other in fluorescent knots, a fittingly bright and untamed ending to an album that gleefully refuses the rules that it even set itself.
“This album was an attempt at making a Rubber Band Gun modern pop album, but we used all kinds of equipment used for making more sample-based music and then ran that stuff back to the tape machine in new ways,” Basko says. “It was all recorded out of the box and some of the sounds we got on this record were completely new to my discography.”
The larger Earth Libraries community bolsters Rubber Band Gun as well, as Basko has produced a variety of albums released by the label. And while the many musicians that have come through his Historic New Jersey studio have each unlocked new depths to their own sound, Rubber Band Gun remains an idiosyncratic and unique world.
“The community is a big part of what drew me to Earth Libraries,” he says. “It was nice to know that someone in the industry saw the real potential in these records I was proud to work on. They’re not overly focused on what’s ‘popular’ or relevant. They like good songs and that’s all I care about.” And as evidenced both by the timeless pop wonderland of ‘Cashes Out’ and the diverse strength of Basko’s songwriting prowess, it’s clear that those same values inspire the seemingly endless well of beaming indie pop that is Rubber Band Gun.
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