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I have a really big crush on Minneapolis right now.  I get butterflies in my stomach thinking of Twin Cities acts such as Atmosphere, The Goondas (check them out on bestnewbands.com), Zoo Animal, and, now, up-and-comers Phantom Tails.  Phantom Tails’ influences cover basically the entire spectrum of music and then some—from Chopin to Kanye West to whale songs (nope, that’s not some super obscure band; I’m literally talking about the underwater songs that whales sing), they’ve got some seriously varied tastes which helps in making some seriously interesting music. With this song, All Good Things, the band packs a punch of energy thanks to their tasty musical recipe: a little We Are Scientists, a hint of Of Montreal, plus an extra dose of electronic sugar. The result is a vibrant, artfully electrified track, rich with beats that I imagine would make for an insanely awesome and sweaty live show.

Claire Gallagher: Alrighty, who’s who? What are your names, what instruments do you play, etc?

Logan Kerkhof: Makes beats on an MPC-2000 drum machine named The 24 Karat Nightmare.

Sergio Hernandez: Plays 2 synthesizers, collectively known as The Balanced Scale.

Dave Dorman: Plays a bass guitar called Ricky Stallion

Orion Treon: Plays a guitar called Deeep Purple.

Smoky Midnight: The van.

CG: Where are you from?  How did the band come together?

OT: Logan and Dave grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side, of the Mississippi river, a.k.a. the rugged lands of Wisconsin.  Serge and I moved to Minnesota together from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in Texas.  Soon after this move, we met Logan and Dave. Both had since relocated to Minneapolis for scholarly pursuits.   We all connected while playing in the band that was Plastic Chord. When Plastic Chord dissolved, Sergio and I continued to write new material, Logan switched from trumpeteer to MPC-2000 arrangements and a new beast emerged. Phantom Tails began as a trio, but was lacking a certain fuzzed out grit. Dave returned in top form to provide the bass end of the equation, and now we are.

CG: Who are some of your biggest musical influences?  Any influences besides music–people, art, literature, film, etc? Are there any particular eras or places or both that have influenced your work?

OT: Devo, RZA, Chopin, Brian Eno, Prince, Depeche Mode, Afrika Bambaataa, David Bowie, Phillip Glass, Kanye West, House Music, Krautrock, Miami Bass, Ragtime, Tin Pan Alley. 60′s garage rock, 70′s German electronic music, 80′s post-punk, 90′s Hip-Hop. Songs animals sing. Non-musical influences: Matt Wells and Rogue Citizen, Duchamp, Hemingway, Dave Smith, David Lynch, Charles Darwin, Hauntings, Food and Drink.

CG: Did growing up where you did influence your music at all?  Do you feel a kinship with your hometown?

SH: The mid-west is, in fact, a very inspiring place.

OT: For Serge and myself, South Texas was influential in that there was no music scene whatsoever.  That is not entirely true; the music scene thrived on Tejano, Tex-Mex, and Mariachi enthusiasts. There were a lot of good musicians, but it was hard to start a band and there wasn’t anywhere to play if one did. Despite this, it’s impossible not to feel a kinship with the ocean/gulf when you’ve grown up by it. The hometown influence is not as prevalent as the Minneapolis influence. Here we are surrounded by so many venues, musicians, friends, and experiments. There is art in everything this city is.

CG: What bands do you think you sound like, if any?  What bands have others told you you sound like?  Any strange or incongruent comparisons?  What bands would you like to sound like?

SH: We’d like to think we sound like that alien saloon band from star wars but others have said we sound like a collage of Devo, Beck, Depeche Mode on blast, and Black Sabbath all decked out in glorious drum beats that rattle the bones and scatter the brain. People have labeled us as electro-punk, garage rock, indie pop, dance rock, whatever.  We like to call it Deep Space Doom Funk. One person told us that listening to our music was like eating a bowl of Golden Grahams with whole milk . We were very honored by that comparison .

CG: What do you think you would be doing right now if you weren’t a musician? What did you want to be when you were a kid?

OT: We have all always wanted to play music. In our youth we were enthusiastic about dinosaurs, astronauts, and art.  If we weren’t a band we’d be tending to a colony of dinosaurs on the moon and painting on our downtime, when they all go to sleep. That or communing with our orangutan brethren in the jungles of Borneo.

CG: What has been a personal high and a personal low about your musical career so far? Any particular moments of awesomeness or embarrassing blunders?

OT: The biggest low that comes to mind was when our old van, Big Red, stopped working in the middle of our first tour.  One of the biggest highs was finding Smoky Midnight in Chicago and finishing our tour.  The best moments are when complete strangers in other cities genuinely listen to and appreciate our music.  Hopefully it makes them think and dance, and hopefully they tell their friends.

CG: So what’s the story behind your band name?  How did it come about?

OT: Some people are born with tails.  All human embryos have tails.  There is a man in India with a 13 inch tail.  In most cases, doctors cut off any prominent tail soon after birth.  Phantom limbs sometimes occur after amputees undergo the unfortunate procedure.  Although the limb is removed, the receptors in the amputees brain are not. The sensation is sometimes described as an ‘itch’ or ‘tingle’ where the limb once was. The same idea holds true for dogs with cropped tails. What we are referencing is a step further, in which we are conscious of our ancestral tails.  To acknowledge our Phantom Tails is to keep aware of our animalistic tendencies, such as courtship dances and the consumption of food.  Also, what is left our tails; the tail bone, is right in the middle of any booty shaking, which we strongly encourage. The lyrics are ghost stories.

CG: What is next for the band? Are you planning any tours?  Any collaborations or side projects?  As for your next project/sound, willyou stick to your sound now or will youexperiment/take a new route at all? If you do, do you think your fans will dig it?

SH: Next on our agenda is a tour to New York City at the end of January, then on to SXSW and the whole west coast come March. All the while still rocking the twin cities on the regular. There are also currently a number of side-projects/collaborations/other bands which we are involved with including; Me and My Arrow, The Nightingales, The Sex-Bots, Musk Ox, Drug Stallion, Triad Mimes, Raw Sug Beats, and Ghost Town Saloon. As for the next Phantom Tails recordings, we have a few different projects in the works.  We will be entering the realm of cassette tapes with some of our more unorthodox, experimental, and instrumental material.  Our main focus will be on our next album, which will be released in 2011 on vinyl, digitally, and CD.  It is already written and contains our strongest material thus far, all we need to do is record.

After listening to this song, I feel like I want to move.  After doing this interview, I feel oddly enlightened.  I think I’m going to go eat a bowl of Golden Grahams with whole milk and dance my face off.