PANIC LIFT Industrial band PANIC LIFT has become a staple in the scene now with eleven singles, EPs and LPs under their belt. Their latest release is an EP titled, Pieces. It's the second part in a five-part EP series which includes a different physical product James Francis is the main guy behind the project.We'd like to thank him for his time in this interview. Hello, can you give the readers a short background on Panic Lift in case theymight not alreadybe familiar? Hi! and thankyou!We are an industrial band fromNewJersey.We got our start around 2006 signing with Noitekk Records in Europe,and laterMetropolis Records in the United States.We’ve released 4 full length albums, toured nationally several times,and have been luckyenough to play a fewlegendary festivals including Wave Gotik Treffen, Kinetik Festival, Terminus Festival and others. I write and record all the music for Panic Lift myself, but when I play live, I bring along Dan Platt on keyboards, Ben Tourkantonis and Cristian Carver rotating on drums, and Aedra Burke (from FIRES) occasionally playing bass. Your latest release is a cassette called, Split.This is a part of a themed series.Why the decision to do that? Are the next editions different formats? Writing full length albums has always been tough forme.Alot of times, I tend to go off on tangents on certain songs and the styles of each song can be opposites at times. I’ve always found myself having to adjust songs or add things into songs to make them all fit together as a whole. I decided that if I didn’t release albums, I could just write whatever I wanted, I could experiment more,and I didn’t have to worry about changing or adding parts just to create a cohesive 40 minute listening experience. Beyond that, I also took into account the overall market right now. I noticed over the last decade when seeing my royalty states that I sold less and less CDs every time I put out a full length, but at the same time my streaming revenue began to skyrocket. I just don’t feel like the average listener consumes albums like we all used to. Lastly, I also looked at my engagement. I noticed a window of about 2 months where traffic would increase to my social media when I released something new. People wanted to hear what I had to say about it, they were checking if I was touring, watching videos.. then after that time, It would drop off almost completely.I couldn’t imagine putting out 10 songs just for the attention span of the listener to be that short.At the end of the day, I am an artist, but I also have to promote myself and as a business it didn’t seem wise to dump out all of my music at once,just to end up having to beg for people’s attention after 2 months. I decided on the EP structure because I knew I didn’t want to just release singles. I also knew I wanted to include remixes. I thought, why not do something thematically connected so I’m able to experiment sonicallyall I want,but there is still this umbrella over the whole project that will connect it at the end. Yes the physical “component” will change with every release. However, the fun part is, it doesn’t necessarilymean it will be a media format like a cassette or compact disc. It may be something completely different,but it will be ultra-limited,and specific to the EP that goes along with it. Could be a t-shirt, shot glass,whatever fun thing I can think up. Do your individual releases revolve around certain themes? Yes, the theme for “Split”was around the song “Tribute”which I took literally. I felt both “Tribute” and “Nowhere Fast’ leaned heavy on my musical influences specifically bands like Nine Inch Nails, or X Marks The Pedwalk. So these songs were tributes to those bands in a way. The next EP that’s coming out in the fall is titled “Fragments” and what connects those next 2 songs will the lyrical content.I found that both these songs revolve around a difficult period in my life last year when I was incredibly stressed, and I felt like everything was falling apart around me. Howhas your studio and production evolved over the years? I found over the years that for me, less is more. I begun Panic Lift using a ton of different software synths, hardware synths, and about was very much about amassing lots of gear. I think over the past decade I’ve gotten rid of a lot of stuff, and really just focused on learning the few things I have inside and out. This approach has really helped me learn how to create the sounds I want, instead of spending all day looking for a sound. I also found that instead of focusing on buying expensive mi
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