WE PICKED UP RIGHT WHERE WE LEFT OFF
A CONVERSATION WITH JEREMY GALINDO OF YOU, INFINITE
Legendary post-rock instrumental band, This Will Destroy You, has released some of the best post-rock songs since the 2000s, including “Quiet”, “Serpent Mound”, and “The Mighty Rio Grande”. Two founding members of the band, Jeremy Galindo and Raymond Brown, who left This Will Destroy You to pursue a career in medicine, have reunited to form you, infinite. Joining them are Ethan Billips, Nicholas Huft, and Johnnie McBryde, all of whom are in Galindo’s This Will Destroy You lineup. The self-titled debut album from you, infinite is nearly perfect and some of the best music that Galindo and Brown have ever made.
“I’ve actually been writing music with Ray since we were like 13 years old,” smiles Galindo. “We met in high school. We were in some of our first bands together. We picked up right where we left off. Obviously, with more experience.”
The recording process for you, infinite’s self-titled debut album was different than anything else Galindo has done. “This is the first time I’ve ever written an album where the person I’m writing with is in a different state,” exclaims Galindo. “For the most part, whoever has the idea will send it over, and we’ll work on it back and forth. There were some things that I had fleshed out fully that I would send to Ray, and he would add to it, or things that he had, like full parts written and maybe I would hear a part to come after it… There were a few times we got to sit together in person, and those were really really productive times. I’m actually gonna be moving back to Austin here at the end of the year, and I think that when we start tackling what we write next, the fact that we will be in the same city and can actually be sitting right next to each other when writing will make a big difference as well.”
Reflecting on how you, infinite establishes emotion in their songs, Galindo says, “I think that we’re aware of the emotion that we think the song is going to convey while writing it and definitely play to that while writing. Sometimes the emotion I think people are gonna feel from a certain song ends up being completely different than what they do. I think without lyrics everything is open to interpretation. So, I find that aspect of what we do really cool.”
There are several mesmerizingly stunning guitar tones on this album, especially in “Shine Eternal” and Throughlines”. “The tones for both songs really we had recorded everything basically straight into Ableton, our recording software,” highlights Galindo. “We used plugins for all of our effects, EQ, and compression. When we went in to record the album, we were re-amping the dry takes of those and then running it through our pedals. We weren’t getting quite the effect that we had had in the demos, so we decided to layer and kind of mix in the live re-amping sound with the actual demo effects we used in the guitar, which is mostly plugins from sound toys for the most part.”
Many songs from the record have an excellent interplay of loud/quiet dynamics. One example is “The Elder”. It starts out very gritty and explosive, with thunderous drums and heavy reverbed guitars. Later, the song gets more gentle, soft, and somewhat melancholic. “Once that first section was finished, I wasn’t too sure as to where to take the song,” comments Galindo. “Just the way it played out in my head, I think it just made sense to have this ambient break and that just kind of led to the idea to have that kind of buildup to the end. I try not to go into songwriting thinking, ‘Oh, this song needs to be heavy or get heavy or have these dips and building back up.’ Sometimes, it’s a point I try to keep in mind for certain songs, but for this one, it did kind of flow naturally from when the first ideas were going to kind of have it dip in and out like that.”
Galindo mentioned that his favourite song from the album usually changes, but currently, he is very fond of “Loop 20”. “There was some really cool looping, sort of swelling textural stuff that I did with the guys I played live with Johnnie, Ethan, and Nicholas through a Memory Man. The four of us were just shooting loops through a Memory Man. There are just these moments that stuck out that we just sampled and put into the song that I really, really enjoy hearing.” Another song he really enjoys is “Focus On Reflection”. “The intro of that song has a kind of ambient melody that I always refer to as like Olympic-sounding. It sounds like some sort of music for an opening to some epic sport. I really enjoyed that one. That was one I had envisioned from beginning to end and I was able to translate the work from my brain to the recording pretty seamlessly.”
The music of This Will Destroy You and you, infinite is atmospherically hypnotic and will most likely put listeners in a trance as it is easy to get ‘lost in the music.’ Occasionally, this happens to Galindo while playing live. “It’s terrifying when it happens, when you end up getting lost live,” he laughs. “There’s been a few moments, especially in our song “Little Smoke” there’s a very, very long progression once that gets heavy, and if you lose your place, it can be very hard to latch on to where everybody else is at because of how atmospheric and reverbed out every aspect of that song is once it gets going. Sometimes, you just get lost in what’s going on. I kind of had to start making a mental effort live to be really paying attention to what’s going on in certain songs.”
If you have watched Moneyball, you would have heard This Will Destroy You’s “The Mighty Rio Grande”, which plays a pivotal role in the film. “One of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had was going to see that movie in the theatre,” comments Galindo. “I remember that they had licensed the song to be a theme for the movie, but I didn’t realize how many times they were actually gonna use the song. Sitting in the theatre was such a surreal experience. I think anytime your music is licensed to something is pretty surreal, but to hear it five, six, seven times that they used it was really, really cool. I went with most of the guys in the band at the time and I think we sat through the whole credits and waited to see our names. It was really, really cool, and I’m very proud to be part of that film.”
Galindo would love to score some films in the future. “I’m sure Ray and I will be working on stuff that is more in that vein and showing our range with orchestration and not just writing in the post-rock genre and showing more range to where maybe some directors and producers will wanna take a chance with us. We’ve done a couple of documentaries and some short film stuff, but I would love to get into film scoring.” He shares a handful of directors that he would love to work with. “Top of my list right now would probably be Yorgos Lanthimos. He is killing it. He has never made a bad film. He’s awesome. But I might be a little, what’s the word, frightened maybe, to try and match his visual style but I would totally be up for the challenge. But there’s tons of directors that I would love to work with. Film is a huge inspiration for me. So, anyone from [Harmony] Korine, to [Gaspar] Noé, to Alfonso Cuarón, to Steve McQueen, there’s so many directors I would love to work with.”
The self-titled debut album from you, infinite drops on February 28. Fans of This Will Destroy You will definitely love the album. “I hope that it’s the kind of album they’ve been waiting for,” says Galindo. “I know it’s going back to our roots quite a bit. I just hope that people hear it, and they connect to it and enjoy it and share it with their friends, and that you, infinite can become as successful as This Will Destroy You. That would be incredible.”