So how did you guys all meet? What’s the origin story of Komodos?

Hunter: In the origin times I lived with Kabir, we went to school together in Boston, and he bought a drum kit, right? I’ve always played the guitar and so we started jamming there. Taran lived in Boston around the same time, there was some overlap. So we all started jamming together. This was in 2020 so a big COVID type beat… It was the fall, lockdown times, just playing music in the Mission Hill apartment in Boston. I got a call later on from Kabir and he was just like “do you wanna come to New York and start a band?” And I was like yeah let’s do that. Sounds like fun. So then we moved to New York. But we didn’t all move at the same time, they were in Connecticut. And then we found blessed Benny on Craigslist. He really rounded out our group and here we are.

Taran: We had been looking for a bassist for awhile. We had a friend who played bass but he lived in Boston. And he would come down to Brooklyn just to play shows and then at some point he was just like “I can’t do this anymore” and we were like yeah that’s super fair dude. But then we found Ben.

So what made you move to New York? What made you want to pursue the band thing here?

Taran: I bet we all have different answers for that. But personally I started playing live in college and I just loved it. I was up in Northwestern Massachusetts going to college and I would drive the like 3.5 hours down to Boston to play shows. But they were mostly acoustic singer/songwriter type stuff. But I always loved playing in an ensemble. It just feels way more fun and powerful to have like 4 or 5 people, you know? So it was just always something I wanted to do. Especially since Kabir and I grew up coming to the city because we had an aunt that lives in midtown.

Kabir: I mean it just seemed like the coolest thing to do at the time.

Ben: I was just a little girl with a dream. The big city lights in my eyes. So I got on that bus and I said I'm going. And that was it.

Hunter: I don’t know, I had been playing music for awhile and wasn’t really doing anything with it so I was like…. If there was ever a time to try and do that I thought maybe… whenever that was… New York seemed like the place to be. It seemed like the place to do it. But to give some context we didn’t even know Ben at the time, but I guess he was in a similar situation. But I think at that time we had all just finished college and were like “what are we doing?”. We might as well start a band. The stars did just kind of align in a way where it seemed possible. I think we all came to New York with that in mind.

Taran: Yeah like I didn’t even have a job, I just moved here to play in a band.

Ben: My cousin had a spare room and I was like “let’s just figure this out” and I picked up a bar job and yeah, imma make it work.

What about the name Komodos? How did that come to be?

Kabir: Well we were floating around names for a while and after we had the realization that your band name doesn't matter that much we settled on Komodos. Just cause visually it looks cool and I think it has a nice sonic appeal to it.

Taran: Yeah I thought of the name, I had seen it on like a graphic design poster on Instagram and it was just a Komodo dragon and then the word “Komodo” at the top and I was like “if this were a concert flyer that would look super cool”. And that was the whole reason we grabbed it. It really just looked cool.

Lets get into the creative/writing process. What’s the dynamic of the four of you like when you’re writing?

Kabir: It's pretty collaborative. We all write our own parts and Taran writes the words. I guess process wise we’ll just kind of come up with an idea, jam on it and if it sticks we stick to it. One of us will come in with any idea whether it’s a riff, chord progression, bass line… drum groove or whatever. Usually it’s together but we’ll pretty much just jam on an idea and see if it sticks.

Taran: Sticks in the sense of if we’re jamming on it for like 20 minutes and we like it.. usually there’s a sense of excitement about it, there’s some sense of electricity you know?

Do lyrics come later?

Taran: Lyrics almost always come last.

Hunter: We just come up with something, I mean we’re a rock band so usually one of us comes up with a guitar part or something. And then Kabir plays some shit that sounds fucking hype and then… if it sucks then we don’t play it.

Taran: Yeah usually there's a feeling behind it.

Hunter: Yeah I also feel like we could make a lot of different kinds of music but we have taken time to block out some shit and be like “nah we’re making this”. But I also feel like there is some variety to what we make. I don’t know, we’ve kind of figured out how to stay in our lane and its always evolving…

Ben: Yeah I think it’s taken a minute. We’ve been playing together for a couple years now. There’s definitely been times where one of us is super hype on something and the rest are like “ehh I don’t know”. It’s just taken time to get to know each other as musicians and at this point as a band we know what’s something we can bring to the table that the others will know is cool.

Taran: I think a big part of it is getting to learn each other's tastes. Because I can sometimes be drawn to stuff that is relatively round for a lack of a better word. Like if I show it to Kabir he’ll be like “this is too corny” you know? So now when I write if it sounds too much like another band, if you’ve heard of it before, I can anticipate someone being like “this sounds too much like this other New York band”. I don’t want to put that out under our name. Why would we want to make something someone else has already made?

How do you know when a song is done?

Kabir: I think you can work on a song forever. You can tweak it for a long time… we have songs we’ve been tweaking since we’ve been a band you know?

Taran: I think there’s a sense of like… we only finish songs once we book our recording spots. I think sometimes it’s when we have a deadline. We’ll be like okay here is the recording slot we have so we have to finish shit before then. But generally speaking when we choose to record songs its more or ;less got all its parts together and we generally know what the shape and the vibe is. So when we know when we’re gonna record then we know we have to iron out all the details.

Hunter: I have kind of a weird answer to this… I feel like it’s done when we’ve played it live like four times.

Kabir: And it changes every time.

Hunter: Yeah like it will have been different all four times but it’s like okay, we played it three times, then we go back to it and change and tweak it. But I feel like that’s when I feel like “okay this is a song we have” and it feels full.

Lets talk about the new single Icarus. You released it in April, what was that writing process like? Tell me about it.

Hunter: This is a very old song. We must have written it in like 2022? I had just gotten a fare evasion ticket on the subway…

Taran: And I had too weirdly enough.

Hunter: Yeah and I got home just after getting my ticket and we were all rehearsing in our apartment and it came out… the riff the verse…

Taran: It was for sure your riff first [that started it].

Hunter: It's gone through a bunch of versions since then.

Ben: We probably had like 5 different versions of it.

Hunter: Yeah but we brought it back in the mix relatively recently.. like 6 or 7 months ago… and then it took on a whole new life from what it had been before.

Kabir: especially the chorus like we kinda changed that so now it’s really big and lush. It never used to be like that.

Taran: We were literally writing the chorus while we recorded it. We did one version of it and then took the demo home from Martin our guy and I wasn’t too happy withjust heated how it sounded so I was like let’s do something else with this. And we played around with effects a lot too. He (Martin) had this really cool reverse tape deck or somewhat.. it really made it sound a lot more sick. It made the guitars sound a lot trippier.

Ben: Yeah I feel like I was kind of a stick in the mud with this one because I always felt like it was cool but I never felt like it was really clicking. So we went through a bunch of different choruses but the one thing that always stayed the same was that one verse riff. I think we already had the recording sessions booked and were trying o figure out like which songs to do and when we hit the chorus I was like “oh fuck”. Honestly it might be my favorite out of all our songs. I'm really glad we stuck with it.

Kabir: I think it’s really fun to play live. Live it really hits a lot.

Taran: Not only was the melody for the chorus changing a lot but the instrumental part was too. It wasn’t until relatively recently in the song's evolution that we added the guitar break where the drums and bass cut out and it’s just me and Hunter. I hadn’t thought of a melody for it yet but I think we were about to play a show at Mercury Lounge and I was just strumming the chords in the basement and that’s when it really… the melody it has now really came to me pre-show. And in terms of the meaning behind the song.. We recorded these awhile ago back in October or something. I had just had a really bad late night out, a lot of shit happened. It was a stretch of time when I was just partying a lot, which was fun but it has repercussions you know? And I think that’s something that all these guys can relate to, so I just wanted to write a song about that.

Remind me, where did you record the song?

Taran: BC studios in Gowanus. With Martin Bisi, he’s been there since 1979. He’s a real legend. Opened the studio with Brian Eno. He recorded Sonic Youth's first two albums. He really knows what he’s doing. He’s been doing this for almost 50 years now.

So you recorded Icarus there. Have you recorded any other songs there?

Hunter: Yes. We’ve recorded 6 songs there including Icarus. The two singles that came out before Icarus, which were “Dead” and “Lucky Says” were also recorded in Gowanus with Martin. We just finished tracking like 3 more so those will see the light of day soon.

Who would you say are your biggest musical influences as a band?

Kabir: I guess collectively that’s a harder question.

Hunter: I think collectively we need to agree first…

Kabir: I think Fontaines DC for sure.

Taran: Yeah Fontaines for sure. I think we’ve all been fucking with Wunderhorse.

Ben: Radiohead

Taran: Radiohead definitely. Some of the noisy Sonic Youth stuff.

Are your personal tastes pretty diverse?

Hunter: Super different. It makes answering the previous question very difficult. I love The Rolling Stones and a lot of 70s rock like The Stooges, The New York Dolls... That kind of shit.

Ben: I like this band Kikagaku Moyo. I like super psychedelic shit. I like Tool and weird shit like that. And I love The Red Hot Chili Peppers man. I love those bass lines.

Kabir: I feel like I listen to a lot of things.

Taran: Kabir listens to so much music dude…

Kabir: I listen to too much music like it’s hard to condense. I guess I would say a lot of similar stuff to what we said like the Fontaines. A lot of post-punk bands. I've been getting into Sorry lately. The Murder Capital, their new record is great. I really like Sonic Youth and some of the grungier stuff they’ve done. The Strokes, Interpol obviously….

I was waiting for that. I feel like every band says “The Strokes obviously”. They’re super influential.

Taran: Yeah they’re just one of those bands that did a lot of things first, or at least they popularized them first. Sometimes I’m jealous because I’m like man if we were making music in like 1990 then people would say “they sound like Komodos”. I just want the opportunity to do things first. I was talking to this writer recently, and I was telling him I'm in a band and he was like “I really respect that because I feel like there’s not much you can do in rock and roll that’s new anymore”. And I was like yeah I guess that is true but also like… if there’s a will there’s a way. But yeah in general I love Velvet Underground. Television, Queens of The Stone Age and Interpol I am always returning to. The Strokes are for sure a big influence for me.

With the New York rock and punk scenes running so deep, how do you feel you either fit into that narrative as part of the history, or how do you set yourselves apart?

Taran: The way I think about it, especially in New York, there’s such a distinct evolution of bands in the city. Starting from The Ramones or whoever it is, there’s depths that they all took but I think its cool to look back on all that obviously feel inspired by those bands but also thinking about how we can do something that takes those influences and does something different with them. I've never thought about maintaining a “New York Character” in our music but I think just living here and being here and working here… We will always be a New York band, you know?

Do you have influences outside of music? Like in other art or in everyday life?

Kabir: Yeah totally. In terms of general creative version that’s sort of how I see this project, it’s not just the music it’s also the visuals and the aesthetic behind it. Which I think we take a lot of pride in. It’s all part of the same cloth. It’s all diy like I do most of the art but all these guys help out. But yeah, I like photography and literature… I’ve been really into magical realism recently. I think that’s a really cool thing that can tie into music and how music can take you to other places.

Ben: Yeah I think this goes back to the New York question too but just living here and meeting all these different people.. the amount of people you’re talking to and all the different faces you see everyday is definitely a source of inspiration and just wanting to do something creative with that. Just everything you’re experiencing. For me this is definitely my main creative outlet and the desire to do something and put something out there… taking something from your mind and putting it out there… it's something that this city is constantly refilling and refueling.

Hunter: Going off of what he’s saying I think being in New York lends itself to a certain kind of lifestyle. It’s a fast city as people say, you’re just super busy doing a lot of shit but I feel like that definitely can feed into music in a way. It’s almost like you get a built up angst of just being in New York and music is a great way to release that in a way that’s not destructive or whatever. Its the urgency you know?

Taran: I think of it in terms of form and substance and in terms of substance it’s all about the city and what comes with it. Like I was saying before, you’ll be out at the club and have an interesting conversation with someone for 10 or 15 minutes and then they really make you rethink how you think about certain aspects of life you know? And that can bleed into a song for sure. Or just seeing some random shit go down on the subway or whatever it is… Lyrically I definitely find myself drawn to a lot of poetry, and I write a decent amount too, but some of the beat guys. Ginsburg and Kerouac. Rimbaud and Tagore, too. I try to get some literary elements going when I can.

What can someone expect from a Komodos show?

Taran: Some good tunes. I think when we perform we really give ourselves to the music. It’s music first in a way that really changes the way we perform it.

Kabir: A lot of sonic energy. We’re a pretty loud band so come and get your face melted.

Ben: I feel like we bring the energy so if you come just be ready to get melted.

Hunter: Yeah a lot of beautiful loud noises and you’ll definitely see Taran shooting from the hip in whatever fashion he chooses for that night.

Do you approach your songs any differently for live performances?

Kabir: I think we have a pretty live sound off the record. I think that’s what we kind of try to capture is playing live. That’s how we started, you know? We were never really a recording project.

Taran: There’s obviously differences but I think the main difference is that things [live] are just a little less manicured. It’s a little more rough around the edges but that only comes natural I think.

Hunter: I feel like just recently we started getting away form what we sound like live in the recordings. Which will be interesting because I do feel like most of our songs are pretty much ahem they are live. Maybe a little twinkle here and a sparkle there but they pretty much just are what they are.

Taran: I think live there’s a little more sweat involved than you would imagine when you’re listening on Spotify.

Yeah I think your sound definitely comes across that way. I can imagine being sweaty listening to you live, you know? I can imagine being in the pit. What’s next for Komodos?

Taran: These three songs we just tracked were trying to get them out as soon as we can because we’re all pretty excited about them. But there’s always such a delay between recording and then actually putting shit out. By the time we released those singles Icarus, Dead and Lucky Says, they were pretty much old news to us. So we’re excited about these new songs right now because I think it’s gonna be a pretty big shift. I mean it’s all relative but I think they feel like a big shift to us. It feels like a new direction which is cool.

Kabir: We have a lot of aspirations.

Hunter: We're playing in Newcastle and London. Stay tuned for that.

Lastly, if each of you could collaborate with any musician, dead or alive, who would it be?

Hunter: Jimi Hendrix.

Ben: Jeff Buckley.

Hunter: Charlie Watts.

Taran: Maybe Jimmy Paige. That could go crazy.

Ben: If I could say a second one it would be Sade.

Taran: I would also say Sinead O’Connor. Probably her over Jimmy Page. That would be sick.

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Blue Hour Press

Post-Punk, Poetry, and the Pit: Komodos and the New NYC Sound

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Blue Hour Press