Tempo No Tempo

If you were to put Foals, The Rapture, Deerhoof and some traditional African music into a food processor you would get the delicious musical smoothie Tempo No Tempo. A three-piece band hailing from Oakland California. After seeing a very energetic performance in San Francisco it felt like a must to get an interview with the band. Singer and guitarist Tyler McCauley had the time to talk about influences and firework fights.

How are you doing?
Great! It's raining in Oakland though. Which isn't a big deal, except I only get around by bike.
Are you born and raised in Oakland?
No, I grew up mostly in San Jose and Santa Cruz. Now we all [Jason Wexler & Alex Kaiser] live in the same house in Lake Merritt. We've lived together for about four years, actually. We all went to Berkeley together, which is where we first started playing together. It makes touring and all that really easy, We're used to having each other in our personal space.
How did you meet?
We all met at school, and we played in a few incarnations before we solidified as a four-piece for about 3 years. We had all moved, and had played music in some form, and then Alex approached me in the dorms to play, I was really excited to play right away. We more or less formed as a party band so we could play at house shows. But then, as we went through school, we spent a lot of time playing together in African music courses on campus, which became another time for band practice, really, because we were all playing traditional music together.
Would you say that the music you're playing today has African influences?
Oh definitely! Some songs more directly than others, but those classes really changed the way we approached rhythm and dance music together. It became less about angular, disco-like music, and more about syncopation, cross rhythm There's a certain fluency of rhythm that you get from playing traditional African music. We're not trying an "indied up" version of highlife, like Vampire Weekend or anything though.
Right now you are a three-piece. What happened to the fourth member?

We had a keyboardist/singer, Chris Cadena he was there for our two EP's, and still is one of our best friends. But he left for L.A. this summer to apply to law school. It was a sad goodbye, and we had a really crazy last show with him in Oakland with Panther, including a fireworks fight in the street.
That sounds crazy. How do you manage to fight with fireworks?
Ha ha. I don't know if I want to encourage anyone else to bad behaviour. That and I don't know what fireworks we used. Let's just say we all had singed shirts at the end of it.
How did your previous bands sound like?

I mostly wrote bedroom singer-songwriter-y music before Tempo No Tempo. Jason (bass) used to play in a straight rock-and-roll band called Fiasco. Alex (drums) played in a whole slew of ska and hardcore bands. Like I said, we started the band as a house party band. So a lot of our previous influences were put aside to make that work. I'd say we're all eager to explore our weirder influences. We all love bands like Deerhoof, Fugazi, Minutemen and Explosions In The Sky
How is the music scene in Oakland?

Tempo: Oakland has always been under-the-radar as far as a music scene.
We have a lot of great venues, warehouses like House of Nostromo and Ghost Town Gallery and Cereal Factory. And there are a lot of awesome bands, we actually took a couple classes with the Morning Benders and Port O'Brien, and there's Man/Miracle, KIT, the Hawnay Troof, the Splinters.
How do you write your songs?

The writing process has changed dramatically over the last 6 months. We began playing for hours on a series of grooves, taped them, listened to them and then took the best bits and made them into songs. What came out was funkier, darker and weirder, which we're all really excited about.
Where does the bands name come from?
It's from an Os Mutantes song. It's nice and vague when you think it's English, and rather nonsensical in the original Portuguese. We wanted something that didn't necessarily mean anything, felt good to say. Sometimes it's more about the sound of a name than the meaning.

Tempo No Tempo plans to go in to the studio in May and record their new album. In the mean time you can see them playing at SXSW festival on March 19th & 20th.