Rocky Tinder and Eric Phipps of the band Wampire did not set out to start a dance band. Eventually though, that is what ended up happening.
“For a while last summer, we were playing street music,” says Tinder. “It was going to be kind of like that but a friend of ours asked us to play their dance party, so we just started making dance-ier type stuff.”
Out of this dance experiment and years of messing around musically together came Wampire. In the short time they’ve been working on the project, they have already managed to insert themselves as a regular fixture in the Portland concert rotations and are now about to release their first recorded work on tape.
“I’ve been a fan of the tape sound in general for a couple years,” says Phipps. “It has isolation of the different channels really nicely and also just the warm tape sound and the fluttering way it spins.”
The tape will feature seven songs with an additional intro and outro track that are fairly similar in sound and length. Throughout the recording process, Tinder was surprised at how their sound changed as the recording progressed.
“One thing I noticed in the mixing process is that the songs on the first side are all pretty much songs that we recorded first. The farther you get in the album, I feel like the cleaner it sounds.”
Aside from a clean recording, Wampire has succeeded in walking the line between dance pop and more experimental music beautifully. Their music ranges from catchy pop hooks to ethereal electronics to psychedelic-inspired guitar riffs.
“[Our music] got so spacey but still like really simple beats behind it, and I think we kind of liked that,” says Tinder.
In addition to a tape, which, for the time being, will only be available at their shows, there will be a digital download to follow in the near future. For the time being, Wampire is writing new material and planning a possible tour. There will be a tape release show, taking place at Work/Sound on July 11, featuring music by the band themselves and guests Rob Walmart, Deelay Ceelay, May Ling and D.J. E*Rock.