FREEwilliamsburg: FREEwilliamsburg Showcase Q&A with Javelin

(left to right) Tom van Buskirk, George Langford

Today is our final band Q&A ahead of the Northside festival. We're having a chat with Javelin, a pair of guys from Providence, RI. The duo make music steeped in the day-glo aesthetic of their hometown, but smooth the edges with summery samples and R&B groove basslines. On jams with self-explanatory titles like "Andean Ocean Tape," you can practically see dolphins performing synchronized leaps. Javelin is going to be playing tonight at Death By Audio at the FREEwilliamsburg Showcase.

Q&A after the jump:

So is this show part of a larger tour?
We're doing a little weekend jaunt, Northside and then Providence, back to Brooklyn.

Are you going with anyone?
We're doing 2 shows with These Are Powers, and Sunday and Monday we're playing with Teengirl Fantasy.

Do you know the bands you're going with personally?
We know These Are Powers from around here. They asked us to play their opening and we installed our boomboxes at their art installation. I've actually been painting with them too.

I actually wanted to ask about the boomboxes, can you tell me more about it?
It was an installation at Secret Project Robot. The boomboxes were collected over years. [George's] brother gave us a long time ago an FM transmitter, and we had fun with it, and in Providence boomboxes cost like fifteen bucks max so it wasn't a big deal. So we taped them up and drilled holes in them and painted 'em.

How'd you get in with Luaka Bop?
At all our shows wherever we go we always kept handmade CD-R's cut up from LP covers, and just anyone who likes us we gave them one or sold them one, and one of the first people we gave a CD to, we had no idea, did graphic design for them and it ended up in their office.

When I googled your name I found another Javelin band, one from South Jersey, I wondered if you anything about them.
The reunion band? Yes! There's also a goth band from Japan, and they have their own label and clothes and stuff, a lot of merchandise. Like a boy band. They're a goth boy band. But we know about the one from Jersey, if there's any band we want to share a name with it's them. We'd go on tour with them.