Self-described as “sliced, sample-damaged drone, raging feedback-drenched noise and candy-colored pop,” Catalpa Catalpa’s debut album, Hardoncity, is awash in sound, anti-sound and samples. We like it. Two grade school friends screwing around with everyday sounds grew up and turned their project into an everyday experiment that’s pretty damned good. Plus, it’s available free to the public.

Hayes Shanesy and Justin Stewart’s obsession with sound and music has brought about a decidedly good debut record. After paying their dues at college and going through a myriad of bands, (whose names denote the juxtaposition of their new band as a whole: Backhand, Bladder, Racecar, Leichman, Midnight in the Garden of Eden and Skankersores) Catalpa Catalpa is aptly named for a scaly deciduous tree found in Ohio that has pod-like buds and sheds spinning seeds in the spring. So it goes in Cincinnati when you have unbridled ambition and a limited audience, but thankfully you can use the web and free media to share your message.

For example, fans and curious music lovers can download their CD release party set here and check out the album here. But please, actually buy the album and give these guys some revenue, people. They’ll make it worth your while with some unusual inside-out packaging that includes a fold-out hand-silkscreened poster designed by Shanesy. (And we can’t promise, but we think it may just save your soul come judgment day.)

Anyway, we sat down with Hayes Shanesy to talk about Clear Channel, 16 year-old North Dakotan girls and copylefted music.

MONKEYCUBE: How did Catalpa Catalpa come to be?

HAYES SHANESY: The band is a duo, Justin Stewart and myself. We started Catalpa Catalpa in the spring of 2002 when Justin moved back to Cincinnati after graduating from college. I had just recently borrowed a four-track cassette recorder and was getting into recording. We played in bands together in high school and were good friends and had talked about playing again. We began very rudimentarily putting things together on that little four-track, really pretty out there found sounds and field recordings. One of the first times we got together we recorded the sound of an electric pencil sharpener, Justin’s dog licking the microphone, a really simple bassline and a little guitar melody.

We did a lot of sound manipulation and really really simple instrumental songs that were more sound based rather than musical. As I began getting more serious about recording and collecting gear we began working more with melody and rhythm while still playing with noises and sounds.

Describe your music and approach to sound.

Once Justin and I were at a Landing show at this tiny restaurant in Cincinnati and the barback or somebody asked the woman in the band what kind of music they played. She quickly snapped, “dream pop,” and that was that. We play music that is fun to make and hopefully nice to listen to.

We won’t try to label you, but what do you think the current climate is like in electronic music? What’s the future?

I think it’s pretty great in many ways. Everybody’s a producer, which obviously has its ups and downs. I think it’s absolutely amazing that you can record a pretty damn fine sounding record in your bedroom without investing that much money. This opportunity has opened the floodgates to every aspiring producer with a laptop and a couple of programs. This is good because recording is really fun and if some sixteen-year-old kid in North Dakota wants to make Acid House songs in her parent’s basement or something more power to her. She could potentially make a really beautiful record that you or I could hear about and listen to in our rooms with our friends. And that’s really cool. Of course the downside of this is that there is a ton of music available that is terrible. I haven’t seen American Idol myself, but this phenomenon speaks of the culture. There are so many great records that came out this year alone that I know would not have been possible without the home studio.

Monkeycube is a constant critic of Clear Channel. What are your thoughts about what this unwieldy crackwhore is doing to the industry?

Clear Channel is dehumanizing pop culture. I think it’s interesting that both Clear Channel and sixteen-year-old suburban recording enthusiasts coexist. Clear Channel in addition to other exorbitantly large groups are simply not sustainable. The time will come when people will realize that they are being force fed by strangers and that they truly miss human interaction.

Monkeycube is working on revving up our Monkeycube Screechcast (like a Podcast, but with a classier name). We think it’s a great way to clue into that human interaction, although we can’t promise we won’t sell out if given the right price. What are your thoughts on Podcasting?

I think it’s neat. Another great way to level the playing field and take it baaawaaaaack.

Yeah. Okay. Us too. So explain this term that’s been floating around: Copylefted music.

Copyleft is basically copyright’s long-haired, younger sibling. Whereas copyrighting a work is legally limiting and protecting the creator from derivative or unauthorized use of their creation, (usually for financial reasons) a copylefted work strips away the exclusivity that a copyright provides and allows others to use your work as a source or a foundation for their own creative ideas. Although it seems radical, it’s really nothing new, musically or otherwise. People have been standing on the backs of giants forever.

So do you download other artists’ music and mix that into your own?

No. Although there are vocal and found sounds sampled on the record, nothing was downloaded from Opsound. It’s funny, Opsound put out the record and they are all about open source, copyleft, and the progression of releasing music, but we definitely weren’t hip to any of this until pretty late into the game. I think it’s interesting and great that Opsound and Creative Commons are working towards a freer society where people worry less about protecting their work and stacking loot and more about doing good work. With that said I still like getting paid. And it’s a little tricky to make that happen when you release your music for free and don’t really play many shows. Somewhere along the line there is a nice balance where music is affordable and artists don’t have to starve.

Curious, independent thinkers can hear Hardoncity for free over at Opsound.org. Try it. You might like it.