If Thousands

If Thousands is Aaron Molina and Christian McShane – an American drone band from Duluth, Minnesota. They began making music together in 2000 by accident when Aaron was looking for a studio space and Christian was looking for someone to share the cost of the studio space he had. One evening after becoming frustrated with each others current musical ventures, they started playing instruments they had no idea how to play (Aaron was a punk-rock bass player and was a Christian a classical/folk/experimental guitarist).

They liked what they heard. The result was if thousands – the name being the product of a jumble of words put on one of the studio walls, until – after staring at all the words for a couple weeks and taking words down that either didn’t sound right or ‘didn’t fit’, eventually “if” and “thousands” remained. To them, it just sounded right for what they were doing.

In the age of “anybody who has a computer can be an atmospheric musician just like Brian Eno,” what sets them apart from the computerized/laptop-laden/digital masses is that their music is not made with computers. What you hear is being made by humans, not a computer program. Not that there’s anything necessarily bad about computerized music (well, there is, but…). It’s just that computerized music lacks that “human element”.

The typical if thousands foundation is guitar + Hammond organ & Moog synthesizer. After that, it’s wide open. They’ve used anything and everything to create sounds their looking for, from theremin, moog, and optigan, to cellos, ethnic instruments, kids toys, handmade objects, shortwave radios, electric drills…. the list is endless (during the recording of yellowstone, they recorded the as-yet unborn child of a friend in her third trimester for live background tracks). How did they do that? Well….. that’s if thousands.