Xiu Xiu and High Places

Mary Pearson and Rob Barber of LA indie-dance duo High Places talk to Joanna Lowry about life, death and finding beauty in foul-smelling places.

You both come from very different backgrounds: Mary was trained as a classical bassoonist and Rob has a hardcore music and visual arts background. What do you each bring to High Places?
Rob: I think initially we were interested in each others' existence. I was coming from a more heavy, experimental background and she was coming from a more small-town environment where people had DIY house shows. We thought aesthetically, if we did something together, it could fit well. Both of our work was collagey, but in different ways. Mary's was more lo-fi and mine was more dark and dense."
Mary: "For me, the main differences were that Rob was an artist whereas I had studied classical music. I was drawing a lot at the time and I think the fact that I had this raw appreciation for visual art was inspiring for Rob. It's easy to get a little desensitised to it when you're in the art school environment. I really liked his approach to music – it wasn't this cerebral music school approach, it was thinking in textures and colours.

'I Was Born' and the last track ‘When It Comes' suggest a life-cycle theme.
Mary: I liked the idea of writing a song about birth and then writing a song about death but approaching them from a different angle. So, for ‘I Was Born' it's a more ominous look at birth. For ‘When It Comes', it's the opposite. It's not totally uplifting, but I think death is a universal fear we have and it inspires a lot of the choices we make in life, be they religious or whatever. So I wanted to write a song that was like 'what if we were to die and retain consciousness and then realised that it was really nothing to worry about?' During that time one of our good friends who actually introduced us passed away and I was like ok, I can't keep writing this song, this is so terrible. I should be at my most reverent and here I am writing a song about how you shouldn't be reverent. But then I thought he would have been totally behind this song, so now it's become a tribute to him.

What's the thing on the cover of High Places vs Mankind?
Rob: I was walking down my street to go to the grocery store one day and there are a lot of old houses that are overgrown and I stumbled across this derelict fountain that looked like it came from another time. It was really gross; it was basically pond muck oozing over the side of the fountain, and it was covered with bugs. I wanted to take a macro photo of it and I wanted it to be textural. People think it's melted plastic, people think it's snot, people think it's seaweed. I really like the idea of looking at something really closely and finding something interesting – even if it smells funny.

High Places play with Xiu Xiu at Oxford Art Factory, Thu 2 Sep