Holly Aker: Your new album is expected to be released Jan. 12; where did the name of the album, “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky” come from?

 

 

Dan Konopka: That title is a long story, but it’s a good story. It comes from a book that Damien figured out. It’s from this book that was written in the 1800s. The name “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky” is an abbreviation for the name of this book that’s really, really long. The name of the book is “The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky.” And outside of it just being a super long title, there’s a bunch of other correlations between this book and themes in our album. It was a book that was written in 1876. It was a book that basically claimed that the color blue could heal any ailment: it could make insane people well; it could uncripple cripples; it could make your crops grow better. It was this big story about how this blue light could do this, and after about two years the scientific community debunked the book. But during those two years it was a massive hit. It was a huge deal all over the world. People were buying this book and really believing everything it had to say. The record, like the book, has themes like believing in things that aren’t necessarily true, thinking things are fact with having any facts to back them up, and it’s a lofty concept, but it’s very interesting.

 

 

HA: I’ve been a fan of OK Go since 2002, when the self-titled album was released, and when I heard “Oh No,” I thought you had completely changed your sound. But that change was nothing compared to the difference that “Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky” brings, at least what I’ve heard so far. What inspired you to make such a dramatic change?

 

 

DK: One of the main reasons why there is such a large change in sound is that we basically decided to let go of the electric guitar, rock tendencies that we had solidly established in “Oh No.” Almost every song on that record is guitar-based and has a four-piece, rock-band-in-a-room vibe, and I think we just sort of grew away from that over the last four and a half years when we were touring. We played songs on “Oh No” for three years on the road, and by the end of that process I think all of us were in need of changing the format a little bit to allow songs to be created on different instruments. We sort of dipped farther into the influences we had. There were a lot of Prince influences, and by the nature of working with this particular producer, he gave us license to be as adventurous with the things we grew up on. We’re still the same songwriters, we just felt more of a freedom to get more involved with the earlier influences that we had.

 

 

HA: What do you call the genre of this new album?

 

 

DK: Hmm. I don’t know. Somebody called OK Go’s earliest stuff “arty-party” and “hardy art-rock.” It was a little bit smarter than party rock, but it’s got an artistic flair to it. It’s hard to say. I don’t know exactly what genre this would be in. I guess it’s just alternative rock, but to think of some sort of creative name for it, I can’t really think of that right now. It’s alternative rock, but it’s more thoughtful arty-party.

 

 

HA: What bands influenced you personally on the making of this album, and what bands influenced OK Go as a whole?

 

 

DK: For me personally, when I went into make this record, it was a weird combination. Damien and Tim will have a certain influence in mind, and I respect what they’re trying to do with the quality of the song, and in terms of drumming, I take the idea that they’ve established and figure out what the producer has in mind and try to go for whatever feels best for the song. I definitely didn’t go into this production thinking, “I want to sound like John Bonham” or “I want to sound like Keith Moon.” I just went in hoping that I could get the right feeling to fit the songs that Tim and Damien wrote. In terms of the sound, the influences that I took notes from were the stuff that Dave Fridmann, our producer, did before: The Flaming Lips, MGMT. He has a really expansive sound, so the drums that I picked were stuff that I felt were going to highlight those songs the best. I did more Led Zeppelin-y sounding drums, but the songs really dictated what I played. If Damien wrote something that sounded really Princey. I would try to put down something that suited that, and I also let the song guide my choices. And in terms of the band, I’d say that one of the major influences was Prince. Prince’s “Purple Rain” and his early stuff was a big guiding light for us. And outside of that there has always been elements of The Pixies in our music and that shined through a little bit. And then some earlier blues and rock from the 60’s and soul and R&B for sure.

 

 

HA: The music video for “WTF?” is probably the most creative, trippy and eye-pleasing video I have ever seen. What was the inspiration for the video?

 

 

DK: The inspiration for the video really came from a guy named Tim Nackashi. He is a commercial director and a video director by trade. He had come up with this program called Final Cut for Apple computers. Basically the inspiration of it was that effect, that digital echo effect. We needed a couple of days to play with it and once we figured out the nature of the effect and what we could do with it, we started thinking, “There’s a bunch of things that we could do with this that would sustain three and a half minutes and a rock song. Let’s try to do something creative with this.” We got a clothing designer to help us out, and we went with this really strong color motif. We basically just threw ourselves into the effect. It took about 12 hours to get a final perfect take, and that’s only because when you do the run through, you do the choreography and the song, and you can’t look at the effect until they render they effect. You have to wait 25 minutes to see how the video looks, and we had three or four different computers all rendering takes at the same time. As soon as you got done with your fourth take, you would be able to watch your first take. We would see it and say, “That’s pretty good” or “We need to fix that,” and so it’s kind of fun but arduous process of thinking, “Oh God, I hope that take turned out good.” By the end of the day I think we had about 20 takes, and we picked out the one that had the most spirit.

 

 

HA: What was it like making the video? Going through the steps over and over?

 

 

DK: That was the part that was really fun. A day before we shot the video, we did some test runs with some basic ideas. We knew taking the bars and dragging them across the screen would leave trails that would basically wipe out activity that was in the shot before. The trick to it was trying to figure out which choreography had the best effect. In the process of the day, we were discovering which idea had the best effect. At the end of the shoot, we realized the confetti would look really great, because when you throw it up in the air it creates this massive cascade of feathery things coming down. There was a lot of trial and error, and you just had to stay focused and keep your eye on something that looked creative. And that’s just how it played out.

 

 

HA: OK Go has always choreographed a dance routine to at least one song off every album: “Cinnamon Lips” from the self-title album and “A Million Ways” and “Here It Goes Again” from “Oh No.” Do you think you will carry on the tradition and choreograph a dance to one of the songs from “Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky?”

 

 

DK: I’ll put it this way: I think there are some plans to do some choreography. I don’t think that it will be necessarily us doing the dancing. I think we might be utilizing a whole other species to choreograph a piece for this record, and I think that’s all I really have liberty to say. You’ve got to keep some of these things private.

 

 

HA: Right now OK Go has no scheduled tour dates for America. When do you think OK Go will be touring the states again and, hopefully, Austin, Texas?

 

 

DK: I think that we’ll be coming through your neck of the woods really soon actually. I think the tentative plan is to be coming to you guys in March. Pretty much as soon as we’re doing with our UK and Europe stuff, I think they’re going to plan on having us do as much U.S. touring as possible. I know we’ll be in Austin before summer for sure. That’s my gut. It hasn’t been put on the calendar yet, but my guess we’ll tour all the way through 2010 in the states. I bet you we’ll hit Austin twice.