Calgary-Edmonton hybrid Type Monkey Type’s fun and games
There’s a good chance that plenty of indie rock bands take themselves a tad too seriously. And it’s a well documented fact that most prog-rock bands definitely take themselves too seriously. And while Type Monkey Type — described by Beatroute ’s Chris Schieman as being “from an alternate universe where the Pixies wrote the album In the Court of the Crimson King”— embrace a wide swath of musical genres and influences it’s one group that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Today the group’s main monkeys — Edmonton’s Errol Halberg and Ottawa’s Stuart Wershof — have brought their sense of humour to Sunnyside’s Lido Café to discuss their bouncy debut Jungle Noises a disc they describe as “pre-apocalyptic fusion rock.” The pair explains Halberg met while working at a Calgary engineering firm “sitting like monkeys on typewriters all day long.”
“I got a connection with the company through another friend who works there and he’s like ‘Yeah there’s another guy working there who plays open mic nights and stuff.’ I’m picturing like long flowing hair and Neil Young covers” says Wershof.
They jammed for the first time at A Bar Named Sue playing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” The audience’s response was positive — and they progressed as a pair. Wershof says he brings a solid funky background to the group; Halberg the tenor singer of the group cites his primary influences as the Rheostatics old-school Genesis and “people who write good songs.”
“We appreciate each other’s taste in music but we have a contrasting approach to it” says Halberg. “I usually write a song and it ends up being a bit singer songwriter-ish — like folky. Then Stu adds a disco beat and a guitar solo. Because every song needs a disco beat and a guitar solo.”
The band has also logged plenty of miles on the QE highway — with Halberg’s brother Anders the group’s drummer living in Alberta’s capital — playing an equal amount in both Calgary and Edmonton. Jungle Noises recorded at Cameron May’s studio in Calgary romps through a schizophrenic mishmash of styles taking wild and unexpected musical turns with virtually every track.
In addition the group has produced a delightfully low-tech stop-motion video for “Puppet” featuring a tennis ball Pacman’s quest for romance that suggests equal amounts of hard work and just plain fun.
And that’s the group’s modus operandi. After their upcoming release bash Type Monkey Type will head into the B.C. interior for an intensive two-week tour.
“Every show we play is not the same. There’s a big improvisational aspect of our music. We’ve played a lot of shows together and they’re changing and evolving” says Halberg.
But Type Monkey Type expects the tour to be plenty of fun and that’s something that is key to the group both in theory and in practise.
“As for the whole not taking ourselves too seriously” says Halberg “That’s definitely Stu’s influence because he…”
“Doesn’t take anything seriously” finishes Wershof. “At a show we played at the SOS fest in Edmonton we were playing ‘Watch Something Burn’ and we went into that transition to this alternate time signature but we were all at different points and we didn’t get it right. Anyway no one noticed except us but we basically looked up started laughing and continued playing the song. The whole goal of this is we want to have fun and we want other people to have fun otherwise there’s no point in making music — or no point in doing anything really — if it’s not enjoyable.”
