Valley collective Mountain Interval named itself for a collection of poetry by the inimitable Robert Frost.
“I think the idea is that it’s supposed to just be another way of saying ‘valley,'” says drummer Mike Benoit. “I’ve always sort of thought of it as a stretch of time that’s totally incomprehensible in length. I think that the important part of this, though, is that we feel a really strong connection to New England’s nature and its culture, so the name is sort of a way to reinforce that—via Bobby Frost, an appropriate spiritual guide—and I feel like it represents the music pretty well.”
The indie rock quintet—Benoit, vocalist Alexa Clark, guitarist Jake Grant, bassist John Zarcone and Sam Witty on keyboards and synthesizers—celebrates the release of its Nocnitsa EP March 5 at the Florence American Legion.
The seeds of the band were sown in 2009 when Grant, Witty and Zarcone were performing together in minimalist instrumental math-rock outfit Among the Aztec. Realizing that vocals might actually be a nice way to augment their sound, they recruited Clark into the fold.
According to Benoit, the songwriting flourished and the audience began to take notice. Before long, the group became Mountain Interval and its number of members ballooned to six with the addition of Nick Duska and Cody Ball. Before a 2010 show at Pearl Street, Duska came down with the swine flu, and the group called on Benoit to fill in.
“They asked me, but I had only heard the songs a few times live,” recalls Benoit. “I think that at that show we were just really psyched at playing this super composed music with someone basically just trying to take cues and improvise all of their parts. What made this really crazy for me, conceptually, is that it was the drummer—which is a really foundational part of any rock band—who was the one who had to just wing it.”
The show went well, Duska and Ball amicably departed for different reasons, Benoit stepped in full-time, and the ensuing five-piece coalesced into the Mountain Interval that rocks today.
The band formed with the idea of writing music that did not spotlight a specific instrument, but featured multiple elements working in harmony towards a “bigger sound.”
“We were really inspired by music where the instruments weaved around each other and created this one powerful organism,” Benoit explains. “John summed it up nicely saying the thing that was so impressive about the music was its ability to excite without any instruments playing chords or lead lines in a traditional sense. Everything was a part of something shaping something else, in turn creating a very vivid and surreal-feeling atmosphere. That’s a philosophy that remains at the heart of the band.”
Mountain Interval hosts a Nocnitsa CD release show with special guests BIG NILS, Whirl, Pachangacha and Fat History Month Saturday, March 5 at the Florence American Legion. For more information on Mountain Interval and to check out its latest music video, visit http://mountaininterval.wordpress.com.
