Depending on which review you read, Boy Crisis are, according to the Guardian “so hip and now that it hurts”, or as Pitchfork Media would have you believe, “the absolute worst band in the world right now. Seriously”. The ‘seriously’ only emphasising the magnitude of their disdain! It is this very uneasy marmite reaction to their music that Boy Crisis are proud of, as it prevents them from becoming yet another pleasant Brooklyn buzz band to rhapsodise about. Boy Crisis’s sound is a playful hybrid of disco electronica meets post funk, infused with a surreal silliness which at times teeters on parody. Lee Pender and Victor Vazquez (half of rapping outfit Das Racist) took time out of meditating and here’s what happened.

What motivates you to make music?

Lee: Just trying to turn people on, or make them laugh or have fun or whatever. Also, The planets, the creator, mythical Gods and real ones. People, flowers, everything in nature.

Victor: Lee Pender

What has been the band’s most surreal moment yet?

L: Elton John calling Tal to congratulate us on signing with his management company.

V: Opening for Katy Perry was also pretty surreal. And watching Bruce Springsteen while on ecstasy after having played to like 20 people in the “dance tent” at Glastonbury was also surreal.

How are you coming to terms with the attention the band is receiving?

L: Eating more junk food, building model airplanes, giving ourselves a lot of haircuts.

V: We also started a fight club.

Is all this as you imagined it would be? Better or worse?

L: I really never imagined how much bottled water and fresh fruit I could get for free, just for playing in a band. So, better!

V: But the bottled water industry’s growth has led to a lot of ecological and economic toil globally. So, worse.

A perfect day for the band, what would that entail?

L: We would wake up as the sun rose, performing sun salutations and then a few hours of silent meditation before embarking on a vision quest. After experiencing untold wonders and spiritual epiphanies, we’d end our journey sitting “Indian style,” clasping hands and singing together as Alex tickled the strings of an acoustic guitar. Then we might just sit and listen to the waves for like half an hour to forty five minutes. Then we’d plant a tree and watch Avatar in iMax 3d. Then we’d write a song about love, one about life, as we swam in a chocolate river, smiling gumdrop smiles and farting beauty

V: Yeah, basically what Lee said except with ‘downward dog’ and ‘cobra Positions’ after the sun salutations and before the silent meditation.

Any crazy fan stories to regale?

L: I gave my guitar to a dude who was clearly on a lot of ecstasy at the end of our set one time and let him take the solo for “Strawberries.” Afterwards he was like “DUDE. THAT WAS THE MOST INTENSE THING YOU COULD HAVE DONE.” Also, we have a Japanese mega-fan who we thought might be crazy because of how involved she was in our lives, just through things she heard or learnt about us on the internet. Like, I think she wished my girlfriend a happy birthday one time. But she came to New York to see us play at Santos Party House and she was actually really cool and gave us green tea caramels and toe-socks and toe-SHOES. Which are crazy. DOMO ORIGATO KIMIE HAYASHI.

V: Kimie Hayashi is really a commendably thorough fan. She’s definitely reading this right now. WHAT UP KIMIE HAYASHI.

What has been your greatest challenge as a band?

L: Just figuring out our dynamic. When the songs are kind of co-written by everybody, and democracy is sometimes a slow and inefficient process. In order to work together we needed to specialize and all be on the same page more or less.

V: Yeah, that and figuring out how to translate the recordings to a live show.

For readers who are not so familiar with your music, how would you describe your sound?

L: Very proto-post.

V: Relatively proto-post.

If you could collaborate with any musician in the future, who would that be?

L: We all really wanted to work with Nile Rogers on the album–he was supposed to come through and play a guitar solo on Bohemian Grove but…well maybe somebody was peeing on our leg about that.

V: Sun Ra.

What is your one great hope and fear for the future?

L: My great hope is for hope itself. It seems like a really worthy goal–I never realized how true the cliche: “You’ve got to believe in yourself” is, until I became an entrepreneurial adult. John Lennon said: “…If people take any notice of what we say, we say we’ve been through the drug scene, man, and there’s nothing like being straight. You need hope, and hope is something that you build within yourself and with your friends.”

My great fear is knowing that one day I will face alone the great unknown of death. Or that Pitchfork won’t like the album

V: My great hope for the future is getting out of debt. My great fear is the cataclysmic effects of peak oil and climate change. But on the bright side, if that happens, my debts will be forgiven.

This is your soapbox, anything else you would like to shout out to the world?

L: I just want to say that Lady Gaga ain’t shit and the world is a vampire.

V: I like Lady Gaga. But yeah, the world is vampire.

Picture Courtesy of Boy Crisis’ Myspace page.