Bran Van 3000: The Only Rule Is That There Are No Rules

12/18/07 4:30pm

by Scott Bryson (CHARTattack)

There's a lack of urgency in Bran Van 3000's approach to making music that today's harder working bands would consider appalling. Their last record, Discosis, dropped in 2001. Rather than trying to capitalize on the momentum it created for them, ringleader James Di Salvio and his crew decided to sit back and let the album age like a fine wine. With that disc now considered a cult classic by many, it looks like their decision paid off.

Feeling the time was right for a comeback, Di Salvio called up the members of the Bran Van posse this spring after a seven-year break. The dozens assembled with surprising ease and laid down the tracks that DiSalvio turned into the group's latest opus, Rose. ChartAttack tracked him down to talk about it.

ChartAttack: What made you decide that it was time to get everyone back together for a new Bran Van album?
James Di Salvio: Beyond anything, I'd just say, because we missed each other.

Was it difficult to round up everyone you wanted to?
It's amazing how smooth it went. We all kind of felt it at the same time. When we actually met, there was more magic. I guess that would be the word: magical. We all had time to appreciate that we were together again, appreciate what we lived through, appreciate this assembly of people. That's rare: different types of musicians, different cultures and different backgrounds. When we play together live, that's when it really happens... When we jam it's magic.

Did you have any notion of what the album would sound like before you started recording?
Not really. One thing that we noticed with time is that the appreciation that we had for the existence of this project was in relation to the appreciation we understood in our journey through life. Of how powerful music can really be. We've done our share of party music and rockin' out music. I think thematically, there's this place where punk rock and roots reggae and old school house music and block party hip-hop meet, which is where a lot of us are from.

When you're bringing all of these genres together, do you ever stop and wonder, "Should I rein this in a bit?"
When Discosis came out and all eyes were on it, people were taken aback because it didn't follow any of the formulas of the first one, apart from the only rule being that there are no rules. Then with time, it's kind of wonderful how that album came around, and then people lost their preset notions of expectation and projection and just let it be what it is. It's the same with this one.

When you finished recording, was there a lot of material to sort through?
We had so much stuff, it was crazy. For the little time we spent together, we were pretty prolific. We got some stuff out of our systems, like remembering how hard we can rock and how deep we can groove. But for the final selection of the album, we stuck with this kind of block party sense of togetherness. It's about kind of thinking about the state of the planet and how we can keep this groove on while being responsible — hopefully without being preachy.