NICOLE PERLROTH
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/
February 19, 2014
OAKLAND, Calif. — Ask Ben Schneider to name the inspiration for his band, Lord Huron, and he will name George Ranger Johnson, one of the more prolific Western adventure novelists you’ve never heard of.
That’s because Mr. Schneider, Lord Huron’s frontman, made him up. He made up George Ranger Johnson’s website, too. Admirers looking to buy one of Mr. Johnson’s novels will be disappointed to find they are all, conveniently, out of print, and that all the book titles are identical to Lord Huron songs.
George Ranger Johnson is, in fact, just one character in the digital fantasy world Mr. Schneider has created for his band, Lord Huron.Lord Huron songs have accompanying video “trailers” on YouTube, each featuring the band’s protagonist, Lord Huron, played by Mr. Schneider, his trusty companion, Admiral Blaquefut (drummer Mark Berry), and band members Miguel Briseno (bass, percussion), Tom Renaud (guitar, vocals) and Karl Kerfoot (guitar, vocals) as they venture across deserts, mountaintops and tundras re-enacting the adventures of a fake novel series written by an author who does not exist offline.
“People are always lamenting the loss of the record sleeve, which I understand,” Mr. Schneider said recently over coffee. “I loved looking at the artwork and imagining the people who made the music and the lives they inhabited. But now I think we can create an even richer experience with new technology available to us.”
The effect is a digital scavenger hunt of sorts with multiple entry points to the band’s music beyond Pandora, Spotify and old-fashioned tours and radio. Some of the band’s YouTube trailers have received half a million views. Fans also find their music on Vimeo and via Lord Huron’s digital “postcards,” short snippets of song and art the band posts to its Facebook page and Twitter account.
“The more places you are, the more people you can reach,” Mr. Schneider said. It also explains Lord Huron’s diverse audience, which ranges from enthusiastic 16-year-old girls to 60-year-old men.
Mr. Schneider, the soft-spoken digital artist who started Lord Huron as a solo visual and musical project four years ago, is a long way from his hometown, Okemos, Mich. Lord Huron is now headlining its first tour, after touring with Alt-J, the futuristic indie band, last September. The band made the rounds at the Coachella, South by Southwest, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and Firefly music festivals last year and popped up on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and, conspicuously, in a recent Zales ad.Four years ago, Mr. Schneider was working in a job he loathed as art director at a small advertising agency in Los Angeles, developing projects for pizza chains and an online poker outfit.
He found a creative outlet in alternate reality games, or A.R.G.s, interactive games that use multiple media and game elements to tell a story. A.R.G. designers will often leave digital crumbs and puzzles on various websites — some for fake organizations or fake people (like Mr. Johnson) — for players to follow. Players often try to solve the games communally by pooling clues together in online discussion forums, where commenters are often suspected of being the game designers themselves.
A.R.G. historians often pinpoint Pink Floyd’s “Publius Enigma” as the first Alternate Reality game, which began when someone named “Publius” began posting enigmatic messages in a Pink Floyd Usenet forum in 1994. Later that year, the words “ENIGMA PUBLIUS” appeared in the band’s concert lights at a New Jersey concert. (Spoiler alert: the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason said in his biography that Publius Enigma was the work of the band’s record label.)
Mr. Schneider designed visually elaborate A.R.G.s of his own. The most intricate involved a fake history exhibit for a fake scholarly society that believed Antarctica was once inhabited by a fake ancient civilization. He built a website for the society, which included biographies for some of its most respected scholars. At one point, the site promoted a real world exhibit, where Mr. Schneider hired actors to play members of the society and an opposing society who boycotted the exhibit outside. The exhibit included music, but mostly as an afterthought.
Not many showed up. Those that did were a little perplexed. “People really didn’t know what to make of it,” Mr. Schneider said. “The actors I could afford weren’t exactly the best. So people got there and they were just kind of confused.”
He never claimed authorship and, to this day, he will not name the project because he likes the idea of the puppet master remaining forever anonymous. (Perhaps this article will offer resourceful players the final clue.)
But his projects floundered and the day job was creatively draining. “I just couldn’t find a place for myself in the art world,” he said. “It wasn’t for me.”
In 2010, Mr. Schneider left Los Angeles for a week to regroup on the shores of Lake Huron, in his home state, Michigan. He recorded a few songs and created the artwork for what would later become Lord Huron. With some nudging from his sister, he left some of his CDs and art on a merchandise table at the Woodsist festival in Big Sur, Calif., where they were picked up by the San Francisco music blogger Yourstru.ly.
Soon people were asking when Lord Huron would be going on tour. That presented a few logistical problems. “I didn’t really know any other musicians.”
He called up the only musicians he knew: His childhood friends from Okemos. They played their first show in May 2010 and are still touring together four years later.
Mr. Schneider says he was determined to give Lord Huron some of the immersive flavor of his multimedia installations. “You can enjoy the music on your own if you want to, but I also wanted there to be more to dig into.”The band worked with Jacob Mendel, a friend from Michigan, to create their first official music video, “The Stranger.” Videos for “Lonesome Dreams”, “Time To Run” and “Mighty” and followed. Lord Huron offered The New York Times an exclusive look at the new video for “She Lit a Fire”.
Each video claims to be based on chapters in George Ranger Johnson’s “Lonesome Dream” novel series. They feature the band wandering across icy plateaus, rocky coasts, and deserts, often in locations that are difficult to pin down. In one, Lord Huron is chased by a group of what appear to be Villista bandits yelling “We will kill you” in Indonesian. Lord Huron replies, “Kau tidak akan pernah membawaku hidup-hidup!” The band’s EP covers and Facebook page are filled with imagery that doesn’t quite make sense: elephants in oceans, rivers running backward, a palm tree-filled Machu Picchu.
Mr. Schneider said the band’s videos and art were intended to be disorienting and foster a sense of dislocation, like his music. His lyrics dwell on lonesome themes and strange places, and though Lord Huron’s sound has been compared to indie bands like My Morning Jacket and Fleet Foxes, it has an undeniable world influence, too.
“It’s a hodgepodge of different music and cultures that you can’t quite put your finger on,” he says.
The band is working on its next album and experimenting with new digital entry points. Before heading out on tour last January, Mr. Schneider made a brief pit stop in Michigan to see his family and put together a treasure hunt for his 18-month-old nephew to discover when he turns 5.
He is trying to do something similar for Lord Huron. The band is contemplating using a smartphone app that would force listeners to visit a specific physical location — perhaps a strange mountain top, desert or icy tundra — to unlock a Lord Huron song.
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to create,” Mr. Schneider said. “A musical place that is a little bit of a getaway.”
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/meet-lord-huron-a-musical-project-that-is-also-an-alternate-reality-game/?_r=0
February 19, 2014
OAKLAND, Calif. — Ask Ben Schneider to name the inspiration for his band, Lord Huron, and he will name George Ranger Johnson, one of the more prolific Western adventure novelists you’ve never heard of.
That’s because Mr. Schneider, Lord Huron’s frontman, made him up. He made up George Ranger Johnson’s website, too. Admirers looking to buy one of Mr. Johnson’s novels will be disappointed to find they are all, conveniently, out of print, and that all the book titles are identical to Lord Huron songs.
George Ranger Johnson is, in fact, just one character in the digital fantasy world Mr. Schneider has created for his band, Lord Huron.Lord Huron songs have accompanying video “trailers” on YouTube, each featuring the band’s protagonist, Lord Huron, played by Mr. Schneider, his trusty companion, Admiral Blaquefut (drummer Mark Berry), and band members Miguel Briseno (bass, percussion), Tom Renaud (guitar, vocals) and Karl Kerfoot (guitar, vocals) as they venture across deserts, mountaintops and tundras re-enacting the adventures of a fake novel series written by an author who does not exist offline.
“People are always lamenting the loss of the record sleeve, which I understand,” Mr. Schneider said recently over coffee. “I loved looking at the artwork and imagining the people who made the music and the lives they inhabited. But now I think we can create an even richer experience with new technology available to us.”
The effect is a digital scavenger hunt of sorts with multiple entry points to the band’s music beyond Pandora, Spotify and old-fashioned tours and radio. Some of the band’s YouTube trailers have received half a million views. Fans also find their music on Vimeo and via Lord Huron’s digital “postcards,” short snippets of song and art the band posts to its Facebook page and Twitter account.
“The more places you are, the more people you can reach,” Mr. Schneider said. It also explains Lord Huron’s diverse audience, which ranges from enthusiastic 16-year-old girls to 60-year-old men.
Mr. Schneider, the soft-spoken digital artist who started Lord Huron as a solo visual and musical project four years ago, is a long way from his hometown, Okemos, Mich. Lord Huron is now headlining its first tour, after touring with Alt-J, the futuristic indie band, last September. The band made the rounds at the Coachella, South by Southwest, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and Firefly music festivals last year and popped up on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and, conspicuously, in a recent Zales ad.Four years ago, Mr. Schneider was working in a job he loathed as art director at a small advertising agency in Los Angeles, developing projects for pizza chains and an online poker outfit.
He found a creative outlet in alternate reality games, or A.R.G.s, interactive games that use multiple media and game elements to tell a story. A.R.G. designers will often leave digital crumbs and puzzles on various websites — some for fake organizations or fake people (like Mr. Johnson) — for players to follow. Players often try to solve the games communally by pooling clues together in online discussion forums, where commenters are often suspected of being the game designers themselves.
A.R.G. historians often pinpoint Pink Floyd’s “Publius Enigma” as the first Alternate Reality game, which began when someone named “Publius” began posting enigmatic messages in a Pink Floyd Usenet forum in 1994. Later that year, the words “ENIGMA PUBLIUS” appeared in the band’s concert lights at a New Jersey concert. (Spoiler alert: the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason said in his biography that Publius Enigma was the work of the band’s record label.)
Mr. Schneider designed visually elaborate A.R.G.s of his own. The most intricate involved a fake history exhibit for a fake scholarly society that believed Antarctica was once inhabited by a fake ancient civilization. He built a website for the society, which included biographies for some of its most respected scholars. At one point, the site promoted a real world exhibit, where Mr. Schneider hired actors to play members of the society and an opposing society who boycotted the exhibit outside. The exhibit included music, but mostly as an afterthought.
Not many showed up. Those that did were a little perplexed. “People really didn’t know what to make of it,” Mr. Schneider said. “The actors I could afford weren’t exactly the best. So people got there and they were just kind of confused.”
He never claimed authorship and, to this day, he will not name the project because he likes the idea of the puppet master remaining forever anonymous. (Perhaps this article will offer resourceful players the final clue.)
But his projects floundered and the day job was creatively draining. “I just couldn’t find a place for myself in the art world,” he said. “It wasn’t for me.”
In 2010, Mr. Schneider left Los Angeles for a week to regroup on the shores of Lake Huron, in his home state, Michigan. He recorded a few songs and created the artwork for what would later become Lord Huron. With some nudging from his sister, he left some of his CDs and art on a merchandise table at the Woodsist festival in Big Sur, Calif., where they were picked up by the San Francisco music blogger Yourstru.ly.
Soon people were asking when Lord Huron would be going on tour. That presented a few logistical problems. “I didn’t really know any other musicians.”
He called up the only musicians he knew: His childhood friends from Okemos. They played their first show in May 2010 and are still touring together four years later.
Mr. Schneider says he was determined to give Lord Huron some of the immersive flavor of his multimedia installations. “You can enjoy the music on your own if you want to, but I also wanted there to be more to dig into.”The band worked with Jacob Mendel, a friend from Michigan, to create their first official music video, “The Stranger.” Videos for “Lonesome Dreams”, “Time To Run” and “Mighty” and followed. Lord Huron offered The New York Times an exclusive look at the new video for “She Lit a Fire”.
Each video claims to be based on chapters in George Ranger Johnson’s “Lonesome Dream” novel series. They feature the band wandering across icy plateaus, rocky coasts, and deserts, often in locations that are difficult to pin down. In one, Lord Huron is chased by a group of what appear to be Villista bandits yelling “We will kill you” in Indonesian. Lord Huron replies, “Kau tidak akan pernah membawaku hidup-hidup!” The band’s EP covers and Facebook page are filled with imagery that doesn’t quite make sense: elephants in oceans, rivers running backward, a palm tree-filled Machu Picchu.
Mr. Schneider said the band’s videos and art were intended to be disorienting and foster a sense of dislocation, like his music. His lyrics dwell on lonesome themes and strange places, and though Lord Huron’s sound has been compared to indie bands like My Morning Jacket and Fleet Foxes, it has an undeniable world influence, too.
“It’s a hodgepodge of different music and cultures that you can’t quite put your finger on,” he says.
The band is working on its next album and experimenting with new digital entry points. Before heading out on tour last January, Mr. Schneider made a brief pit stop in Michigan to see his family and put together a treasure hunt for his 18-month-old nephew to discover when he turns 5.
He is trying to do something similar for Lord Huron. The band is contemplating using a smartphone app that would force listeners to visit a specific physical location — perhaps a strange mountain top, desert or icy tundra — to unlock a Lord Huron song.
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to create,” Mr. Schneider said. “A musical place that is a little bit of a getaway.”
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/meet-lord-huron-a-musical-project-that-is-also-an-alternate-reality-game/?_r=0
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