Sun jammer extraordinaire Matthew Mondanile glides solo as Ducktails and with a pack of childhood friends in the more song-bound efforts of Real Estate . He’s not from the beach but his songs are about the beach. Let’s talk to him about that.

What’s a typical day for you?
Hmm. Well I wake up around ten and eat a bagel. I live with my parents, so there are always bagels. And then I go down to the basement.

What happens in the basement?
I go out to the car I use, grab an amp, my guitar, and my backpack and then I set it up in my basement. Then I try to record jams.

Do you need any extra inspiration? Or is the basement enough?
Charles Berlitz is my inspiration. He was my travel guide through the land of Pacific City.

Pacific City?
It’s on an island off the coast of Europe. It’s where I started to make psychedelic music.

What’s it like?
It’s a pretty amazing place. There are cheap kebabs and all the musicians hang out at this place called New World Hot Dog, so I met a bunch of them there. And they loosened me up–they showed me it’s easier to jam when you look out the window.

It’s a basic tip, but it sounds like a good one.
Yeah. So at New World Hot Dog we’d listen to music and drink beer. Before I was introduced to Pacific City I was pretty bummed and didn’t know how to focus my jams. I was scatter-brained–I traveled to different places while I was in Pacific City, like Finland, Spain, Granada and just chilled with my friend Brittany. Granada’s one of the most beautiful places…

Hold on–what island did you say Pacific City was on?
I’m not really sure. It’s somewhere between New Jersey and Asia.

Does it exist in the physical world?
For some people, yes. But not for others.

OK. A lot of people make the beach reference with Ducktails. They say it sounds “tropical” or whatever–is that a direct experience of tropical climes, or is it more imagined and projected?
Yeah well the one thing is that it’s all imagined. I don’t live near the beach but I love warm weather. It’s more of a nostalgic aspect that I express within the music and that reminds people of good times at the beach, I think.

Do you think that nostalgia is what drew you to music that drifts and drones?
Honestly I wasn’t too familiar with drone music. I was living in western Massachusetts and there is a lot of noise, experimental, free acts up there, so I was always surrounding myself with stuff like that but I grew up listening to pop music and driving around in cars with my friends in Jersey. So that kind of meshed together–and then I started listening to more progressive kraut music, y’know, repetitious stuff, and African music and really finding major similarities in repetition in music from different parts of the world. So it’s not necessarily drone but more repetition that keeps me going.

Like loops?
I use loops live. But in the studio it’s just me jamming.

Is it a private process?
Yeah, it’s pretty private… I mean, because I’m the only one there. I want to start recording more with friends in a creative way, not just playing the parts but improvising onto tape.

Does Real Estate give you somewhere to do that?
Martin Courtney, my best friend who I grew up four houses away from, writes the material for Real Estate–I mostly just play his parts. But it’s fun to do that ’cause it’s so different to Ducktails.

What did you listen to growing up?
My first CD was a weird 80s Greatest Hits comp of the Beach Boys, but then in High School it was like Sonic Youth, Neil Young, Little Wings etc.

Heard anything good recently?
I like hearing stuff my friends give me the most. I try not to pay too much attention to new music.

What music are your friends making?
My other friend I grew up in New Jersey with, Julian Lynch, lives in Wisconsin now. He makes amazing bedroom pop music and plays the clarinet exceptionally well. And my friend Dan Lopatin lives in New York and plays the synthesizer under the name Oneohtrix Point Never. His jams are really good. There are others, but that’s enough shout-outs.

OK. Do you have any specific images in mind when you jam?
Sometimes I think about girls? But no…I try not to distract myself from the sound…I really like to use as few tracks as possible and have it sound raw. Very basic and simple, but still a bit abstract–like “Beach Point Pleasant,” that’s a sample from an Ethiopiques song, pitched down, and then I played some keyboard over it in my room. Then I played guitar over it–it’s like two tracks, it took me ten minutes to record that song. I mixed the songs down quick onto a four track and then I listen to them in the car and drive around.

Where do you drive to?
I drive in circles around the block.

Does it make the block seem different?
Not really. It’s the same old block. The music changes.

So it’s not like the music transforms where you grew up or anything?
No, not really.

Sorry.
Hahaha.

I guess I’m just trying to dig into the music a bit. The woozy feeling of nostalgia you get from it. But it’s a nostalgia for a place I’ve never been. Just somewhere I’ve seen on TV or in travel brochures or whatever.
Hahaha, yeah that’s cool. It’s funny, because a lot of people say my music has to do with their memory.

But I guess you’re jamming, so it’s kind of the complete opposite.
You think so?

Well isn’t it? It’s improvisation, surely?
Yeah, it’s in “the now.”

So where do you think the memory and nostalgia thing comes from?
I think it’s from the fact, uhhh…I don’t know how to answer that. Other than sometimes when you record something right away, like without thinking, it’s more of a document or an archive. Those things are used to preserve memories. That’s a major part of my recording process. Preservation of ideas.

Like sound photographs? But of things that aren’t physical and couldn’t be shot by a camera?
Exactly.

Like sound photographs of Pacific City?
Yup!

Ducktails – “Daily Vacation”

The first Ducktails record will be release on LP through Not Not Fun and the CD version on Holy Mountain. Second record on a secret NY label. It’s called Landscapes and he’s finishing it now.

NO PAIN IN POP