Hi, everyone! A few days back, I got to speak with Robert Perlick-Molinari, one half of the Brooklyn-based dance group French Horn Rebellion. Originally a classical French horn player at Northwestern University, Molinari realized that classical music may not have been his niche. He ended up interning with his brother, David, and they produced a variety of records in New York City. They ended up forming their own group and began releasing music together. Throughout their career, they have toured with bands like MGMT (Robert helped David produce their debut EP, Time to Pretend), Two Door Cinema Club, and Cut Copy. In addition to their illustrious touring resume, the Molinari brothers have their own recording studio in Williamsburg called YouTooCanWoo. There, they have created music for video games (Just Cause 4), ad campaigns (Japanese airline AMA), and remixes for large pop stars like Beyonce and Sia. Not only did I like their music, but hearing about their music background made me very interested in reaching out to the group.
bazzreviews: Which artists or albums inspired you to start a music career?
Robert Perlick-Molinari: I was in high school playing French horn, and my oldest brother taught me how to play when I was six or seven. He brought a horn home for me to start playing, and I was years ahead of everyone else. When I was in middle school and high school, I kept getting encouraged to go to a university or conservatory to be a classical French horn player. I ended up going to Northwestern University. While I was there, I was exploring all kinds of different music. I interned with my other brother, David, who was working in New York at the time. He got to know a lot of great musical artists, and at that time, it’s what got me into “music”. I realized that classical music may not have been my thing. I now wanted to make more modern music, like electronic or rock and roll. I would say some of my biggest influences are Digitalism, the New Pornographers, a lot of other mid-2000s rock. I started going to more shows, and before you knew it, we got involved with MGMT very early in their career. David was producing their Time to Pretend EP, and I assisted him in that. That’s how I shifted from playing classical music to working on more modern stuff.
br: You’ve toured with bands like MGMT, Two Door Cinema Club and Cut Copy in the past, how has working with them helped your career progress?
R.P.M: On those three tours, we were either opening for those bands or on a bill with them. We’ve worked a lot with MGMT, obviously on production, but we played with them live as well. Opening for MGMT on their headline show in Hong Kong back in 2010 was pretty memorable. With Two Door Cinema Club, we were flown out to Paris where they were headlining a casino night. I went on a US tour with Cut Copy as a keyboardist for their touring band, but French Horn Rebellion opened for them in Europe as well. I never thought we would have been able to do this kind of stuff, but it’s been really fun.
br: As you previously mentioned, you’re a classically trained French horn player. However, what made you want to shift over to making dance and electronic music?
R.P.M: I guess working with MGMT on their project really opened the doors for me. I went to high school in Milwaukee, so while I was a student, I was listening to some alternative rock and even a little bit of Christian rock. I lived in the suburbs, and music that was popular with the “cool kids” was Jars of Clay. At that time, I wasn’t exposed to a lot of unique stuff. When I went off to college and to New York to intern, I listened to all of the bands there. After I started going to more shows, I was more inquisitive about finding out what kind of music was cool at the moment. To answer your question, I think I realized I wanted to play that kind of music after seeing Digitalism play for the first time. They played in the basement of a bar that was attached to the Chicago Metro, it was really sweaty and loud environment. At the same time, I lost my mind. I remember calling David and telling him that he needed to listen to Digitalism. It was crazy, because I ended up going on tour with them down the road. I got to meet everyone in the band, telling them how much I loved seeing them perform.
br: I’ve heard you guys are known for some pretty cool live shows, would you say that you guys thrive more on performing live or working in the studio?
R.P.M: That’s true, French Horn Rebellion loves doing live shows. They’re really special to us. However, we are taking a bow from that going forward. We don’t have many more plans to do that anymore, as we’re focusing more on throwing more parties at clubs. We want to work more on our production, and also bring some artists together.
br: Can you describe your process for making songs?
R.P.M: We have a music studio in Brooklyn called YouTooCanWoo, and we’ve got a lot of people coming in and out. Four producers, an administration team, the whole nine yards. A lot of French Horn Rebellion songs that have been made recently are made in a very collaborative manner. On our last album, Graduation Compilation, every track is a collaboration. The ones that were more of our “own” music were on Classically Trained and Infinite Music [of French Horn Rebellion]. For those, it was David or me making music individually and coming together to make it a complete track. We have a lot of our own passion projects, but we’re also trying to manage some of our studio’s projects as well. Our biggest one recently has been creating the soundtrack for the PlayStation 4 title, Just Cause 4. We did around eight hours of music for that. We’ve made music for a lot of short films and ad campaigns as well. We just finished up a full package for the Japanese airline AMA.
br: You’ve also remixed music for Beyonce and Sia- how have they reacted to the changes you’ve made to their music?
R.P.M.: It’s been a little bit of mystery for how it all happened. They asked us to do remixes of their stuff, and we put together some cuts that hit all the checkboxes they had. It was pretty cool, for sure. I didn’t get any personal response from either artist, but their teams thought they were pretty cool.
br: Do you have any other artists that you’d want to do a remix for?
R.P.M.: Yeah, we’re actually working towards that in the next few months. We’re rolling out a record label called Toucan Sounds, a disco and house record label. We’ve signed a few bands to this label already, and we’re releasing stuff in about a month. Some of the titles are tracks that we liked and were able to work with, others are tracks we liked, but weren’t dancey enough. So, we added our own spin to them. If we’re generally speaking, we’ll reach out to bands we want to do a remix for and ask if they’re down.
br: What music goals would you say that you have for the future?
R.P.M: We just want to focus our efforts on making the best dance music ever. Not even the most loud, or “turnt”, it should be fun and available to anybody. I think that’s what we’re aiming for when we start this new record label. I think another one of our goals is to keep growing our record label and reaching new audiences.
Thanks so much to Robert for giving me his time for an interview. He's had an amazing career so far, and he shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. Be on the lookout for new music from Toucan Sounds! In the meantime, I recommend that you check out some of FHR's amazing tracks; they have some really catchy stuff. Thanks again to you guys for reading this, more amazing stuff is coming your way soon!
To learn more about FHR's music endeavors, go to http://www.youtoocanwoo.com
