The Helio Sequence:

So Happy Together

By Bob Ham
Photos by Pavlina Honcova-Summers

In the novel A Long Way Down, author and uber-rock fan Nick Hornby encapsulates perfectly the strangely intimate relationship that grows between men who play music together. In one tense and funny scene, failed rock musician JJ is about to get into a fight with former bandmate Ed. JJ knows this because, as he says, “Ed’s ears get red when he’s about to start throwing punches ... I’m probably the only one who knows when to duck.”

Although they’ve never gotten into a fist fight with one another, Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel, the two men who make music under the name The Helio Sequence, have been friends and musical cohorts long enough to know how to handle one another when situations between them get tense.

“The whole process is so quick now,” says Weikel. “There’s a big flare up and then a cool down. It’s what happens when you know somebody so well. I can tell when Brandon’s really upset about something and I can tell when he’s just being pissy.”
That kind of unspoken understanding of someone’s mood is to be expected for two best friends that have been performing and releasing records of lush, keyboard-driven pop music, flecked lovingly with shoegazer and psychedelic influences, for the better part of a decade.

Yet, after all the tours and long hours logged in the studio, the next two years could become a defining time for The Helio Sequence. They just finished mixing their upcoming full-length this summer, an as-yet-untitled album to be released on Sub Pop in early 2008. Once the record is out, “everything in the next two years will be blocked out with tours,” says Summers. “We’ll be doing a headlining tour through the U.S. then hopefully head out with another band and open up for them. We’re hoping to hit Japan or Australia and Europe again.” Before that, the band already has booked a national tour in the fall with fellow Northwesterners, Minus The Bear.

This rather hectic schedule could spell disaster for most other bands, but The Helio Sequence has never been a group to do things the easy way. When the two first decided to make an album, they were working together at a music store in their hometown. “We had been working there for so long,” recalls Summers, “that our boss gave us a key to the place and said, ‘Do whatever you want.’” This meant that the two would close up shop, move all the instruments for sale out of the way, and turn the store into a makeshift studio. They would stay up all night recording and mixing what would become the band’s first full length, Com Plex, then put the store back together, catch a few hours of sleep on the floor, and awake in time to open the store up the next morning.

The sequestered spirit of those early recordings has never left the band, even after signing with Sub Pop. To date, Summers and Weikel have produced, mixed, and sometimes mastered all of their albums, spending long hours in their self-built studio located in Weikel’s house. “Some people go into the studio and they want as many friends and people there as possible,” says Summers, “They want outsiders to help in creating an atmosphere so they can find whatever they need to express. It is totally the opposite with us. We need a very defined, closed-off space and some kind of shelter.”
The experience has become even more closed off for the duo, especially for the new album, as they did a great deal of the recording on their own and sharing tracks with each other later on. “[Brandon] might record a vocal track and I would listen to it and say, ‘I like it’ or ‘Oh, you should change this,’” recalls Weikel, “but I wouldn’t be there for him to record it.” They even worked on a song separately and sent the tracks to each other via email.

It isn’t surprising to hear that the two have been looking for ways to spend some time apart from each other, even in the midst of the creative process, since they have spent so much of the last 10 years together. Summers and Weikel met when they were both high school students in Beaverton, Oregon, bonding over their mutual love of the bands from nearby Portland. “We were some of the few people that we knew in the suburbs that would come to Portland to see shows,” recalls Summers, who cites Pond, Heatmiser, 30.06, and Hitting Birth as making a particular impression on himself and Weikel.

The two soon started making music together, and experienced their first big local exposure after getting accepted to the first North By Northwest music festival (SXSW’s attempt at franchising their success in Austin, which eventually morphed into MusicFest NW, which The Helio Sequence is playing this year) on the strength of a demo. The band was quickly embraced by the Portland scene, which led to their first two releases on local label Cavity Search Records.

Although they are glad that the city they loved took them in as quickly as it did, both men are rather grateful that their band was created and nurtured in a smaller nearby town. “The whole point was to get out of there and get out of that situation,” says Weikel. “If we would have started in Portland, I doubt we would have done it with the same intensity.”

The intensity that The Helio Sequence speaks of took a little while to regain. After the massive amounts of touring that they did to support Love and Distance (not to mention Weikel’s stint in the studio and on the road as a second drummer for Modest Mouse), it took the band “until September of last year to figure out where we are and get in some kind of creative mood,” according to Summers.

The two wrote on their own, getting together periodically to find what they refer to as their “jumping off place.” Summers describes this as “the place where we know we’re going to take the rest of the album.” Once they had a few demos down, the two decided to put them in the hands of some especially discerning music fans, namely Summers’ wife, Weikel’s girlfriend, and their parents.

Though they all loved what they heard, the band also made sure to get the opinions of some musical brethren. Summers sat down with Brent Knopf, a friend and member of the Portland trio Menomena, to have him chime in on where things were going. “I thought that these new songs were fantastic,” says Knopf, during a break from his band’s recent tour of Europe. “My comments were mostly, ‘Wow, that sounds great’ and occasionally a ‘What if you did this?’ kind of question.”

According to Summers, Knopf’s input had a much bigger impact on the songs than that. “It was really productive to take them to someone who had a really good musical ear and someone that we trust musically.” When told that, Knopf made sure to point out that “The Helio Sequence helped Menomena out way more during the recording of Friend and Foe [the trio’s most recent record]. [They] were the first Portland band to take us under their wing. They’re definitely mentors to us.”

For another opinion on the new recordings, The Helio Sequence turned to their A&R rep at Sub Pop, Tony Kiewel, not only because “he is a communicator to the rest of the label so you want him to be into what you’re doing,” says Summers, but also because “he has an ability to put himself very far away from the recordings and have some ideas for it.”

And how did Kiewel feel about the songs he heard? “I loved them. The first demos sounded like a logical progression from the last record and later demos showed a lot more evolution.” Despite what the band might have been expecting, Kiewel didn’t have any suggestions about what to possibly change with the material he heard. “Those guys have pretty great instincts,” says Kiewel, “and by the time they give me a demo, it’s usually pretty complete. My biggest concern was that they get to make the record they want to make.”

Considering the all the time that The Helio Sequence spent producing the records alone with only a little outside help, it seems obvious to wonder if they would consider working with a producer for future projects. “We’re aware of the fact that that needs to happen at some point,” says Weikel. “The trick is to find someone we feel comfortable working with. If somebody really great wanted to record us, we would do it. If nothing else, then just to learn about somebody else’s recording process.”

He also noted that if Sub Pop insisted on them working with an outsider, they would take that suggestion seriously as well. Although that hasn’t ever been discussed with the band, Kiewel says. “Switching up the process is always a good idea. Those guys are so smart and gifted that I shudder to think of what kind of knowledge they might absorb if they were in a studio with a great producer for any length of time.”

No matter if The Helio Sequence sticks to their tried and true method of recording or switches it up, the duo is already looking forward to the music that they want to make together. “We’re going to try to not take so long to make the next record,” says Summers. “We’re supposed to be writing songs right now.”

Weikel also notes that they are planning on going about their songwriting methods a little differently the next time around: “We would never jam or rock out and form a song that way. All of our songs were slaves to the sequencer. We’re thinking about making the rock stuff and laying down drums and guitar first so they have more of an organic feel to them.”

Summers also feels that “there’s so much more for us to figure out. Having gone through [recording the new album] and both of us being really happy with how it is and at the same time realizing what we want to do next, it’s really cool to think that there’s so much ahead now.”

www.theheliosequence.com

The Helio Sequence will be performing at Musicfest NW on September 8 at the Crystal Ballroom.