Lithium Magazine

By Samantha Wu

http://www.kaura.com
http://www.myspace.com/kaura
https://www.facebook.com/pages/KAURA/34203763931

Kaura (kay-aura) is a band whose musicality exists beyond words. Combining revolutionary and philosophically infused lyrics with powerful melodic rock and a significant dose of Asian inspired sounds, Kaura is not to be missed. Their full-length debut, “That Which Defines Us” is already causing waves in their Los Angeles home and is set to take international music scenes by storm. I had the opportunity to speak with Kaura’s vocal lead and multi-musician Malcolm Guess via Skype, right before the New Year to discuss their process of creating their new album, their unique sound, the drive for their vision, and what the year to come has in store for them.

Samantha: Could you tell me briefly how the band formed?

Malcolm: Well, it was a vision I had for quite a while and was refining the concept of it. I moved out to California and started working on demos of it. I got together about four songs and then got in touch with my friend, Ben Jones [our drummer]. We had played in a band in high school together and we went our separate ways for college. We got to talking about it and we were both at a time in our lives where we wanted to do something significant. He wound up moving out from Connecticut and we started working together and that was the seed of where Kaura started. We met up with Ben Rojas [our guitarist], we had a couple of other people play the bass position at the time [before finding Joss Albright], moved to San Francisco, rejoined back up with [Ben Rojas] and that’s kind of where we are now, actually.

Samantha: How did the name Kaura come about?

Malcolm: [We were] fishing for a name that we felt sonically and phonetically had the impact of what the music would have. The concept of the band was surrounded by the polarities of male and female energies, so a very strong masculinity with intense aggression and at the same time soft, feminine and intimate that came about by putting the “K” and the “aura” together, felt like it had that yin yang balance and it kind of stuck. I ended up looking it up and a year or so later, just Googling it, and it came up as an Indian birth, the description of it is someone that feels or experiences things beyond words. Wow, if I wanted to pick a name that the listeners of our music would experience it would be something beyond words.

Samantha: “That Which Defines Us” is your first full-length release, but I know you had a smaller self-titled release before. Can you tell me about the journey between that release and now?

Malcolm: Yeah, a lot has happened. We were based in LA at the time that we had written our EP. [Ben] Jones and I were living together at the time in a house where we had a studio and everything was coming to a close here in LA. For whatever reason, the energies were kind of inspiring us to leave and that was a time we were called to travel. We ended up packing up our whole lives into storage and travelled for four months throughout India, Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Bali, going and basically looking for instruments that we could bring back and use for writing songs with. We have been on all sorts of adventures being in countries where we didn’t speak the language, didn’t know how to get around, but managed to find instrument builders and music stores, driving out to villages and meeting interesting little people who were craftsmen from a family lineage of music makers. We ended up collecting a whole bunch of instruments, putting them all on a pallet, and shipping them back here. We relocated to Oakland and [drew] from all the inspirations and experiences on our trips, the food, the people, the smells, the religions, and all kinds of stuff we had stored up of the experience over that time, and we came back and just poured that in to this record .

Samantha: What drew you to include Asians sounds, as opposed to anything else?

Malcolm: We spent a good bit of time in Thailand, and Ben and I really resonated with the people and the culture of that area. It’s primarily a Buddhist country and the Buddhist philosophies also resonate really deeply with us. That whole region of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia [produce great instruments like] the thai kim, the yang kim, the dulcimer, there are a lot of instruments that came out of the Thailand region where just the sound and the sonics with them attracted us. So that’s why we gravitated to some of the more Asian instruments.

Samantha: What was the travelling experience like?

Malcolm: It was intense in every direction; it had extreme highs and extreme lows. It was extremely fatiguing, it was energizing, just in every direction that you can imagine. The countries we were in were very intense, India especially. It was a real dynamic experience.

Samantha: What sets you apart from other bands?

Malcolm: I would like to say it’s the sum of our parts that would make us something different than other bands we get associated with. I’d like to feel that our message, or what it is that we sing about and stand for, what our life philosophies are about are something that I think touches on topics that bands of our genre don’t necessarily go into as much. The other aspect is; I think we bring in a sort of worldly element to it. I don’t hear very many bands playing aggressive melodic rock doing that.

Samantha: Which brings me to an interesting point - watching your video for Ephemeral Fall, I couldn’t help but notice that there are a lot of spiritual and revolutionary undertones. Is that something that really drives your music?

Malcolm: Philosophical undertones - yeah, for sure. One of the main concepts that Ben [Jones] and I spoke about when we got together and decided what kind of a band we wanted to be in and what that vehicle would serve is the greatest purpose of our life path and dharma and it’s to do that. We want to sing about topics that inspire us, write music that is inspiring, and as you said revolutionary undertones; I think that comes part and parcel with the whole awakening process of coming more into our greater consciousness. You end up dealing with a lot of the earthly bound things like government topics and revolutionary ideas from that. So that’s a huge inspiration that backs the band.

Samantha: Where do you find inspiration for your lyric writing?

Malcolm: Lyrics, for me, come from a place where I resonate at. I would like to say I’m a truth seeker, if you will. That path has taken me down all kinds of different rabbit holes and to all sorts of interesting places, and I think just from that I have plenty of fodder to work from, and to be honest the topics I like to sing about are things I feel resonate at the same frequency as the music. We try to write music that’s powerful, intense, and heartfelt and ephemic - urgent, I guess. The lyrical matter has to match with that. If we are singing a party song but the music had this really intense stuff, it wouldn’t make any sense. To be honest, there’s kind of a void in a lot of modern music right now where no one is speaking about what’s really valuable and relatable. There’s not a whole lot of substance that I’m hearing from a lot of bands that are coming out.

Samantha: In creating “That Which Defines Us”, you worked with Sylvia Massey who worked with System of a Down. What was that experience like?

Malcolm: That was awesome. She’s a beautiful person, she’s really sweet, incredibly talented and her recording studio, RadioStar Studios, up in Weed, California, is absolutely stellar. She has an amazing collection of gear; her rooms are incredible. She’s turned an old theatre into a recording studio [and] all these little buildings all over town and made a fabulous place to write and recorded in. Her husband is awesome, her staff amazing, all in all a really great experience.

Samantha: So what does 2012 hold for Kaura?

Malcolm: We are quite ambitious and my hopes are quite aligning with my hopes for the planet. On a more local level regarding Kaura, this album is what we are putting a lot of time and energy into, to just see what we can get out and share it with as many people as possible. We are setting up the infrastructure to do more extensive touring out on the East Coast and really just put ourselves into supporting this album. We are writing, so we have a backlog of material we will be coming out with, but our main focus is to support this album and get it out to as many people as we can.

Samantha: And I’ve noticed on your web site you have an acoustic DVD coming out as well?

Malcolm: Yes, that should be out in the next couple weeks. We’re just waiting for it to come back from the pressing plant. It’s a collection of songs from “That Which Defines Us” and from our EP that were beautifully orchestrated with stings with help from our friend Michael Lebpke. They’re accompanied by a couple extra videos and stuff - a nice little package we had hope to have out before Christmas, but became a little late in the production process.

Samantha: Is there any chance you will be bringing your sound to the Great White North, namely Toronto, maybe?

Malcolm: I would love to. I love your city, and it’s fantastic. I love pretty much everywhere I’ve been in Canada. I’ve been to Vancouver and was just awestruck with the beauty. Toronto is just such a cool place. Canadians are always so pleasant, kind of like Australians. I’ve never met one I didn’t like, such jovial people. I like you guys, I would love to make it to Toronto.

Samantha: Is there anything you would like to add for your Toronto fans?

Malcolm: If you haven’t already, go to our Facebook page, it’s the best way to get touring information. Keep in touch with us for news on new releases and song downloads. Over the next several months there will be a series of surprises. I won’t say exactly what, but little bits and pieces we will be releasing to our Facebook fans, so stay in touch with us and take advantage of that.