Minneapolis art-pop band Poliça is known for innovation, forward-thinking artistry, and novel electronic soundscapes. The 11-year-old band’s new record, Madness, takes them a step forward into the creative realm with producer Ryan Olson’s new anthropomorphic production tool AllOvers. Originally created as an art installation for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art with the help of sound artist Seth Rossetter, AllOvers was designed to ingest sounds, including conversations and environmental noise, and turn them into melodies and/or beats.

“It was meant to be a room filled with microphones that would pick up ambient sounds,” drummer Drew Christopherson says. “Whether it's people walking down the stairs, or people chatting with each other, it takes those sounds, processes them, throws them in a large bank and analyzes all of the input from it. Grabs sections that are in G, sections that are in D, so then you're able to say, ‘Feed me back everything that's this one chord.’ And it can turn all these ambient sounds into a bizarre melody.”

Close attention to the material bears rewards; a keen listen will reveal a profusion of delicacies. Each track rests on repeating themes that develop and grow with the incision of sometimes eerie, but mostly gorgeous, melodic samples. 

As a regular practice for all his projects, Olson gathers sonic input from live instrumentalists, including Madness contributors Aaron Baum, Jeremy Nutzman (Velvet Negroni), and Dustin Zahn.

“We'll maybe do 10, 12 improvs. And maybe one of those will end up with something, Christopherson said. “He really looks for those kinds of accidental things to creep up from some other attempt. And then follow those leads.”

Over seven songs and 31 minutes, we hear the theme of madness take the form of dark and delicate undertones delivering sadness in the form of sweet manipulated vocals with lyrics that are mostly difficult to decipher.

“I'm not a singer-songwriter in this band, so I'm never wanting my words to stand out over the music,” lead vocalist Channy Leaneagh says. “But I do want to always keep working on being able to sing like an instrument and meld into the band, but also make something articulate. I love listening to instrumental music, and music that I can't understand the words too, because sometimes words are too overwhelming.”

Leaneagh describes herself as anti-technology, but also recognizes the way she isn’t. With this particular album, including its artwork, she envisioned deciphering the ways of how an AI tool could be viewed as human, or even another member of the band. 

“Instead of ‘I want this computer to make every mistake go away,’ and by ‘computer’ I mean AI, I'm curious to see what kind of mistakes it makes,” she said. “And where it goes into darkness.”

Additional Interview highlights: 

Unique live band setup

Channy: I was thinking of when we first started. And Chris Riemenschnieder wrote an article in the Star Tribune and was like, "We'll see how long they last without guitars and keyboards." And that has been our — well, we can't add guitars or keyboards, because we wouldn't want to give that guy the satisfaction. I'm kidding ... and then we have our silent member of Ryan Olson, who does all of the production. So just the synth and keyboard work is all done in post. And we're very pragmatic people in the sense – besides the two drum kits, which we continue to work on a system to make them easier to unload and load. It really works for us also to just have a vibe that the four of us get along well. So the idea of the record itself is made, along with the four of us, with lots of friends that play keys, or even sometimes electric guitar that's later processed. But for the touring party, it's just not breaking a thing that is working, I guess.

Drew: Yeah. I mean, I'm glad we've kept it this way for the 11 years that we've been a band. All the electronics that Ryan creates for it are generally done in Ableton. So it felt silly to turn them into a keyboard part because they never really were a keyboard part to begin with. It's more just that Ryan's not here to press the space bar. So to us it's true to form that we've got Ableton running and we're doing our own thing over it. And it's like Ryan's presence with us on stage without him physically being there. And also, we just never felt like we were done exploring the possibilities with this setup. We've never felt limited by it. Instead of doing two regular drum kits, we fully switched to electronics, so we can be totally sample based. And that changed our approach to how the live sound related to the records. We were able to load our own samples and really dial in our own sound from song to song. So that was new territory. We've been able to evolve, but also keep it the same setup. 

Ben Ivascu: So it also really helped with live performances. So we don't have symbols going into Channy's mic when she's singing, and creating a lot of crazy sounds on stage.

Roots of the band

Chris Bierden: The band started on the fringes of new technology, like the Helicon voice pedal. And Ryan using this Yamaha sequencer ... I think the band started as a kind of play with these objects. And after a while, once you figure out how something works, you get bored and you want to move on to something else. And so continuing that process with new toys to play with has helped the vitality of the project. 

Drew: I think there's a couple elements that have sometimes remained traditional enough to where they're recognizable. I think about Chris's bass playing. He's always been a pretty busy bass player that plays almost reminiscent of ‘60s, ‘70s funk-soul sort of licks that continue to exist in a song that started out as this drone-y rumbling electronic pulse thing. So we have been able to take really obscure sounds, and then in the end up with a song out of it. And Channy, as well, totally not afraid to go otherworldly with effects and just layer on stuff and try to blend in with the music. But at the same time, we'll write a verse that is still very much rooted in a folk music tradition, where there's things you can grab on to and remember and sing along with. So it's always been this balance between trying to be experimental and out there, but at the same time trying to make listenable music. And we like it when it's totally out there and challenging; but there's a number of songs that don't sit that far out there. And it's kind of been that balance that we linger in still.

“It all comes back to love”

Channy: I personally am making music to literally feel something. And we all are playing to feel something together, feel something for ourselves. And Ryan specifically, is looking for ways for each of us to be able to express ourselves. Or by that I mean, he thinks about, is Ben going to be happy with this part? How can I work on everybody's strengths? Where will Chris fit in? He's thinking about not stepping on anyone's toes quite frequently. So a lot of care, I guess. And a lot of love. It all comes back to love.