An Interview with Solar Twister, August 2026
Dylan:
We’re both way into the science of sound.
It’s like sound is a physical material you can warp in all kinds of ways before it hits your brain. We’ve always been approaching it from the angle of making art.
Elliott:
I see how music is one way of channeling the elements. It can be an escapist headspace existing in a separate world or a paint ball to the kingdom.
How was the band formed? How/when did the members decide to start a band?
Dylan:
We went from being teenagers screaming through guitar pedals to now saying it’s a real band. And it’s an obvious direction to go in if you’re two brothers both making music.
Elliott:
We’ve changed the name a lot. From Spider Biter to Rocky Mountain Poison Control, and then Solar Twister.
Dylan:
When you google searched Spider Biter it was just a ton of disgusting spider bite photos.
Elliott:
And with Rocky Mountain Poison Control people in Colorado were calling us about their moonflower emergencies.
Dylan:
We’re keeping Solar Twister. It’s like tornados on the sun and solar panels. You don’t see anyone’s gross spider bitten legs.
How did you develop your sound as a group? Was it more of an immediate click or has it evolved over time?
Dylan:
We’ve always listened to the same music, so a lot of the same musical ideas are floating in our heads. We’ve been blending a lot of different combinations of sounds.
Elliott:
It’s a synthesis of new and old technology, things both thrifted and invented. Dylan’s always building new guitar pedals. He’s got a business called Psychedelic Electronics.
Dylan:
Yeah that’s major. A few years ago I was circuit bending. You can just add some wires to the circuit inside of a talking action figure or something and turn it into a psychedelic sound generator. Since then I’ve gotten way into designing guitar pedals and synthesizers. The engineering side of our music has gotten pretty advanced with custom gear.
You mentioned coming back to Texas after being in Brooklyn!! Does location have any impact on your creative process/sound? What were your experiences in each? (how does the overall scene differ between Texas and Brooklyn?)
Elliott:
Yeah, the music scene in Brooklyn is like a big soup of experimentation.
The main difference in the music we made there is in the limitations, here we can play loud without waking any couch sleepers, but don’t have 10 venues in walking distance. The DFW scene has a real energy to it. I think in Texas, the counter culture is scattered, but just as relevant as anywhere else. I’ll be making my way back over to the east sooner or later.
Dylan:
New York City has so many awesome cultural layers. There were millions of things to check out and we saw a lot of great concerts. It was a great learning experience to begin work on my guitar pedal business. That led to cool things happening. Especially when sharing it with other musicians. I met the virtuoso guitarist On Ka’a Davis on the subway in Brooklyn. We talked about effects and he ended up using one of my fuzz pedals on a WFMU radio broadcast! It’s hard to describe the level of sound art he gets with effects and his cosmic guitar technique. You have to check it out! A couple months after that, Elliott and I saw Glenn Branca’s Hallucination City. It was 100 guitars turned up the max and we sat in the front center row. And On Ka’a was performing in that! Good to be back in Texas. It’s like a Hobbit zone or something. The J.R. Ewing statue in Weatherford is always here to greet us.
Tell me about Magnets!! What was the creative process behind it? What significance does it hold to you? How did you create this work as a collaborative effort? Anything specific you wish to highlight about it?
The single came about as a release leading up to the album we’re working on. I think the idea for the song Magnets! came from a demo messing with guitar through a vocoder. I kept screwing with the “laser tag” loop and somehow got it to sound angular. The whole song just materialized in the process of duct taping and adding all the other sounds to see what worked.
I think the lyrics are about something between a solar flair and a cyborg smackdown. Or the vibe of running out of iCloud storage.
Elliott:
The b-side “Flashkick” was one of a few that I had ready to go from my board. I picked it because it’s a groovy juxtaposition. The harpsichord and percussion reminds me of library music, also the soundtrack to Colossus The Forbin Project.
Dylan:
Flashkick is a mod slang too!
Tell me about Twister Cat!! I saw on your website the videos/graphics created with Twister Cat, does the band and graphics coincide with each other or are these separate endeavors? Was one born because of the other?
Elliott:
Twister Cat is a domain for the video and graphic work I do. It’s more of an art project than a business, but I do commercials too. It’s one of those names that’s just stuck around. I did a Twister Cat billboard as a part of the modern billings series before attaching any meaning to it.
Dylan:
The FW Modern Art Museum really had a big impact boosting our creativity. Elliott does most of our artwork. I can definitely see Twister Cat turning into an awesome production company.
Describe the average band practice! What does your creative process look like? How do these songs go from ideas to music?
Elliott:
Motifs, scenes, and words come into my head randomly and form into songs as soon as I can get it across. We practice, but always end up changing the songs during performances. Sometimes completely new songs will evolve that way.
Dylan:
Songs usually develop from super long jam sessions. We record everything and end up with either a ton of sound LEGOs to put together or a totally finished song on the first take.
What is the hardest part about being in a band? What gets you through those times?
Elliott:
It’s pretty easy right now, we’re not like Oasis.
We could really use a drummer and bassist.
I think every band knows that booking shows can be a chess game. One time we showed up to a gig only to hear that it had just been cancelled last minute, and the guy who put it together was already headed home. We ended up playing unplugged at Washington Square instead.
Dylan:
It’s mainly logistics and stuff like that. We just need a van at this point.
Elliott:
You’ll be living in a van down by the river!
Which song of yours was the most fun to write & make? why/what was the process?
Elliott:
It’s definitely one that’ll be out on the album. I recorded the drums in this upstairs office room. It had a very dead sound with the square ceiling tiles and all.
Dylan:
There’s another epic piece that might even be a whole different album’s worth of material. It has some heavy things in it. Like one really long song maybe split into two or three parts. I plan on building a Synthi Hi-Fli effects unit to get the right sounds for that.
Aiming for the sky - what is your biggest goal as a band? (dream venue, collaborations, achievements, etc.)
Dylan:
We’re planning on doing more shows across Texas. It would be cool to do a full on Beto O’Rourke and hit every town, and we haven’t entered the wook zone yet. It would be great to conjure a vibe like that with a large audience and blow everyone’s mind. There are definitely some producers who would be awesome to work with. Sonic Boom is high on the dream list when we reach peak dharma.
Elliott:
That’s the vision. It would be cool to tour Japan, the countryside and everything. Get Boredoms back together and tour with them!
Dylan:
That would be legendary! The only way to go up from there would be to land on the moon.
Check them out HERE!
Comments
Post a Comment