How's your relationship with John, Tim and Dan now? Are you all still friends, and is there a possibility of you recording or touring with Thee Oh Sees again one day?

I'm always open to talking and being friendly with anybody. I don't think that we're not friends because I'm not in the band, that's crazy. In terms of doing music or shows, I don't want to say never, because never is... I mean you see these bands that are like, 'I hate that person! I'll never play with them again,' and then fifteen years later they're playing again, because there was a reason they played music together in the first place. I don't really know. To be honest with you, I haven't really thought about it enough to give you a proper answer. I mean, I talk to Tim. We went to get green tea the other day. Tim is one of the greatest people I've ever met. He's a good person, and probably my favourite bass player I've ever played with.

He's definitely incredibly underrated. That bass tone on [A Weird Exits'] "Jammed Entrance"...

Alright, let's take a minute here! Let's take a minute to specifically talk about Tim. First of all, he's the perfect person to have in a band; no questions asked, that's it. Now, let's move away from how great of a human he is, and let's talk about his bass playing for a second, which gets overlooked all the time. That live band would have fallen apart on its face, every night, if Tim wasn't playing with us. Listen to that live record; he's the best part about it! His tone; consistent every night, his timing; impeccable, his feel is incredible. He's groovy. He's the grooviest bassist.

A lot of the time, people would come up and talk about the two drummer thing, or they would talk about John's guitar and how it's so loud: 'How does he make it sound like that?' All of that stuff is really cool, and it's visually mesmerising to see two drummers. It's kind of like analogue visuals, you know? You don't have anything playing on a screen behind you, but you [do] have two drummers that are kind of making you trip out, because it's kind of psychedelic to watch, but Tim... Tim is the only reason that everybody stuck together musically. There are times when the drums are just ripping apart, and we're not in time together, and then we do come right back, but Tim never moves: 'Here I am. I'm going to be right here for you when you come back. Express yourself, because I'm going to be right here.' He's the reason that everybody can paint over that monstrous bass sound. He never, never goes away. I feel like that's how he is a human too. He is that solid as a friend, and if you listen to his bass playing, it reflects who he is completely; he's there for you. He's just everything you want in a person and a bass player, and I really feel like Tim really gets overlooked, so if someone wants to talk to me and have a conversation, then I'm going to take the time to talk about how much of a pleasure it was working and being friends with Tim. He's a friend that I'll have for the rest of my life, no questions asked. I can call him up anytime, and I know we can spark conversation and go get lunch. He's a great dude, and a prize piece as a bass player, for sure.

I was listening to his new band Flat Worms [with Kevin Morby Band's Justin Sullivan and Dream Boys' Will Ivy]. Their track "Red Hot Sand" is trending right now on Spotify's UK Viral 50. Which is pretty wild!

Oh, yeah! I congratulated him the other day: 'Hey buddy, I see that your project is gaining some ground there.' They have some stuff coming out again soon; they're working. Their next thing is going to be better than what they've put out now, which is already great. I promise you, whatever you hear from Flat Worms in the future is going to be just as good, if not better, and it's going to be a nice progression. They have some good stuff in the works. We're all working, man!

Just one last question, Ryan. Despite the wild and, at times, terrifying political climate across the US and the UK right now, I was wondering what your hopes are for 2017 on a personal level?

Oh, jeez! I haven't thought about this. I've just been living day to day. I live in a warehouse, so I can literally do anything here. 2017... yeah everything's really fucked up. I live in a really weird part of downtown Los Angeles; I live on skid row basically. Two blocks away is Little Tokyo, and then you have an apartment that's three or four thousand dollars a month, and then two blocks down the road are hundreds of tents, with people living outside, and then the woman's shelter... I'm constantly reminded of how real things are on a day-to-day basis, and how fucked up everything is politically in our country and on a world scale.

What I'm looking forward to is the amount of art that's going to be made due to people being pissed off and uncomfortable. I can't wait. I really think that art, music, and entertainment needs an uplifting of reality... not in a 'reality show' sense. I worked as a PA on a reality show, and that stuff is like pure evil to me. I'm looking forward to people being real again. I think it's great that everybody has this voice to speak on the internet and do all this political ranting, but the fact that people are going out and protesting, going to benefit shows, and that people are having to communicate and be in each others faces again; it's real now. If you look throughout history, the most fucked up times created some really cool art... you've got all the punks in the 80s. That in itself has given me hope for having some good art happen.

In many ways, you're right. These times are guaranteed to become a major catalyst for a lot of different artists.

I've noticed this trend in the last couple of years in art... and I'm not knocking anybody's anything. If you're expressing yourself by taking a picture, I don't care what it is, as long as you're not expressing yourself by going out and punching someone in the face, you know? I don't have to like it, but I like that you're getting it out there... I've noticed this trend of 'shock art', like, 'Let's have bondage in our photos!' It got old. This isn't taboo anymore. It's 2017; sex is sex is sex; it's everywhere. I think people have gotten lazy in the past couple of years, and now people get pissed off. I hope people realise how dangerous the world is and make some dangerous art, in the way that it speaks up and it speaks volume.

To me, the most punk rock thing you can do now is be educated. Our country is at an all time low in terms of IQ, and I'm not saying that all Americans are uneducated, I'm just stating a fact. I think it all kind of went crazy, man. That whole punk thing, like 'We're all punks,' but you work at Starbucks or something, and you go get wasted every night, and there's no education. I think that the most punk thing to do is to go and be healthy, go read a book and be really, really savy about what is going on out there, so you can make some dangerous art. Let's make some music that takes people off guard, [where] they don't know what the hell they're listening to, and capture the essence of what's happening in the world right now. If you can capture what's out there and put it on tape? That's what I'm looking for this year.

Something real, and something with meaning.

I've said that art has been kind of lacking [that], but there are people that continuously have done it, and are doing it. It would be pretty rude for me not to talk about the things I love. I really love Run the Jewels, I love El-P. Not only because they're politically dangerous, in the sense of standing up for what they believe in, but listen to that stuff, man, some of those songs have no song structure. That shit is just punk; that's punk. El-P is one of the greatest producers of our time, all the way back to Company Flow in the 90s. He captures a vibe like no one else, man. Those beats and that production, the melodies... everything about it is wonderful. There are artists that just continuously do it. Omar [Rodríguez-López] from At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta, that guy...

Oh, absolutely! I'm a huge fan.

Me too, man! His solo career has pretty much influenced everything I've done. All the way back to At the Drive-In, you know? He's putting out 24 records in the space of a year.

I've listened to the two albums he's released so far in 2017, Roman Lips and Zen Thrills. It's incredible how much material he has in the vaults.

This goes back to what we were talking about with how prolific Thee Oh Sees were. I'm a fan of that guy, and I'm not going to hold myself up to his level of [being able to get] that much done. People work, man, and his music is evolving, and it's stuff that I don't think anybody's ever heard before. I really recommend listening to a record called Sworn Virgins, I believe it's 90% recorded live between him and a drummer [Deantoni Parks]. All that stuff is happening live that you hear on that record. That's dangerous music to me. It's dangerous in a way that people will hear that and have no idea what they're hearing. You know what, I guarantee most people would not be comfortable listening to it right away, because it's something brand new. I personally have not heard anything like that, and I listen to a lot of different music. That's what I mean; I'm hoping for more honest art to get put down on tape, canvass and film and be put in people's faces. I think it's a really good time to take a chance.

There was an interesting article on Consequence of Sound recently about guitar music's place in today's culture. It focused on Japandroids, Cloud Nothings and Real Estate, and the idea that rock music doesn't necessarily carry the same cultural weight that it once did. I guess this goes back to what you were saying earlier about punk rock values no longer existing within traditional 'punk rock' communities, and how, in many ways, the most politically and culturally relevant music today can be found in hip hop and R&B.

I use the word dangerous in the way that, like, a Alejandro Jodorowsky film was dangerous. Like [his film] Holy Mountain: that's not dangerous in the terms of the subject matter, but that can spark something in someone's brain. Watching one of those movies is like taking half a tab of acid; it can unlock a door that can't be closed again. I think a lot of art is lacking that. The whole thing about guitar music not having the forefront that it used to, well that's just the times and technology. Playing guitar is a craft; playing drums is a craft; playing bass is a craft, and programming is also a craft. You're more likely to have somebody gravitate towards programming, sequencing and [using] a computer these days, rather than pick up a physical instrument. That's just because of where we are in our evolution of technology.

I would be really sad if guitars went away. I remember being really young and wanting to play guitar; that was all I wanted to do, and they told me that I couldn't, so I ended up playing drums instead. I remember going to the guitar shop to take lessons when I was six years old, and they were like, 'We won't teach you, you're too young.' It's good that [culturally or politically relevant music] is out there, whether it's hip hop or R&B doing it, but I would really love to see a cool guitar band come out, not necessarily with rocking guitar solos, or the whole eighties hair metal thing, [but] I feel like getting four or five people in a room; people that have really honed in on their craft, and can express themselves through their instruments, looking at each other as they're doing that... the way the air moves in the room, just because the speaker is pushing air. I think that creates the music, just as much as the guitar coming out the amplifier. It's the aura, or whatever you want to call it; the energy of the people in the room.

Whenever Omar Rodríguez-López works with [regular musical foil] Cedric Bixler Zavala, there's definitely that kind of magic there, like that aura or energy that you're talking about. When I saw The Mars Volta perform live in 2005, they blew my mind; that wild chemistry and genuinely uncontrollable atmosphere. As a live act, they were something else.

That's the most punk rock thing I've ever seen in my life. Hands down. When I first saw them, they had eight people in the band, and everybody was playing their asses off, and they were all really good at their instruments. That really speaks to me, and is probably why I gravitate towards those type of people. Of course I grew up with At the Drive-In and skateboarding, but those people progress, and you grow with them. I remember hearing the first Mars Volta record [De-Loused in the Comatorium], and being like, 'Holy shit! The first Mars Volta album compared to At the Drive-In!' I was big into drums at that time, so Jon Theodore was like a god to me. He's still one of my top three drummers ever. That album was released at the same time I liked jazz, and it's a good thing I picked it up because they were playing rock music but there's total jazz all over it.

You listen, and you just realise that they don't give a shit about what anybody thinks about them. They're going to make whatever they want, and they're going to put their hearts and soul into it. If it's going to fail, then they're going down with the ship. I think that's so cool, going in one hundred percent, and not letting up: 'Don't look back, go with your gut instinct.' You either make it, or you fail; either way, you're doing what you've got to [do] to be a person. I like new bands and a lot of music, but I always end up going back home to these places and those records, and I'm like, 'Yeah. These guys rip!' They really care about what they're doing.

Alright, in 2017, I would love to play drums with Omar. That would be a lifetime goal of mine. I'm just saying, I don't have many expectations, but I would love to play with somebody like that. If I never play with that person, then I don't care, but that would be the icing on the cake on my life.

Given everything that Omar and Cedric have worked on and achieved since At the Drive-In's initial break-up in 2001. How do you think the new At the Drive-In album will sound when it's released later this year?

It's got to be different, because they're different people. I know a lot of older fans that have known that band for a long time are probably going to say some really stupid stuff about it, but at the same time don't forget that that band changed your life in your developmental years. That shit changed my life. I remember the internet first coming out, and you could see videos of bands if you went on the right downloading thing. I remember seeing At the Drive-In on Letterman, then I remember seeing them at the Big Day Out Fest, when they broke up. That to me, to this day... the energy when that starts; I have never seen anything like that in person and on video. I think that would be a goal of mine, maybe to assemble a crew that can... that. I strive for that. That realness, that excitement: 'I want to do nothing in the entire world but be on a stage and play music with you,' and that's what I got from seeing a band like that, even in those videos that were super pixelated and it took like six hours to download... you see Omar flipping over his amp and going crazy. You can kind of tell that those people opened up a door to letting energy out, and they couldn't really contain it after some point. That's really cool to me; I was always trying to harness that when playing drums, so I've always dug that kind of stuff

I think those guys are really super cool, and the most punk rock you can get. They do the opposite of what people want them to do, and they're going to do whatever they feel like doing at that time, and that's art. You either lose fans, keep the die-hards, or gain new ones, but it's art. It's supposed to make people feel something, so, [even] if people hate it... right on, man. If you feel nothing, then we have a problem; then I didn't do my job. If you hate it, that still has as much energy as loving something. You're getting an outlet in making fun of me, or hating Thee Oh Sees, or whatever record I'm on. You're still putting just as much energy into something I did as [you are] loving it.

[Going back], I don't have a specific goal for 2017. I'm really excited for the Surf Bort record to come out. We don't know who's putting it out, but that'll be fun. I'm excited for them to get that out. I feel like they worked really hard last year, and they deserve a cool sounding record. It's an interesting sounding record, and anyone who likes recording, the way gear sounds, and crazy titles, should listen to that record. Also, for anyone who likes the first wave of punk, it's very reminiscent of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Dead Kennedys, even, like, Crass. It's a female-fronted band, so people are going to automatically relate it to some other female-fronted punk band, but it does have the weirdness and the dark, drippy cavernness of Crass. I'm excited for that to come out, and I'm excited to get these songs that I've been working on out of the computer and the tape machine and into a room with some bodies. I really want to play guitar in this project.

Have you thought about anyone you'd like to work with when you finally get the project off the ground?

I don't know, man. It's probably going to be about who's in my life at that point. All of my closest friends now play instruments, and, honestly, I'll have to really search for a bitchin' drummer. I need a really, really good drummer, but other than that, I have enough musicians to choose from that I'm friends with. Of course, I have my ideal people, but I can't employ anyone, and I can't take them away from their projects, so I'm going to work with what I've got, and what I've got is pretty awesome. I've got some great people around me, and, if they're willing to do it, then I'd love to have them on board. If not, I'm sure I'll find some people willing to go for it. I promise you, as soon as it forms, I will put it on the internet. Everyone will know as soon as it happens, I'm just not one to rush anything. Opposed to how you've seen me play in Thee Oh Sees, when I'm sitting in a room working on music I'm painfully slow. I will try every single possibility there is, because I don't think anything is actually right.

I'm just excited to be back at that point where I don't know what the hell is going to happen with my life, or my "career", or whatever you want to call it. If anybody cool really wants a drummer, and wants to jam, I'm always open to jamming and playing music with people too. Like, It seems really serious that I'm in this cave, and [that] I'm working and I'm grinding, but I'm really open to playing music [too]. I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm really excited about that.

Andrew Lindsay