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Rabbit in the Moon: Interview with Bunny and VJ Brien Rullman
from volume 02 issue 03 // Crystal Farina
Rabbit in the Moon
Interview with Bunny and VJ Brien Rullman
Words: Crystal Farina
Photos: Marshall Dickson
Appeared:
July 7, 2007
House of Blues, Orlando
Rabbit in the Moon formed in Tampa in 1993. They were worshipped by fans everywhere after their release of O.B. E. (Out of Body Experience), and afterwards, they continued releasing remixes including Sarah McLachlan’s “Fear” and “Possession.” Their unique sets are known to demand audience participation by the lead of Bunny’s theatrical performances. Despite the attention their shows bring, RiTM has not allowed interviews until this past year. Now, after over a decade of performances, RiTM’s anticipated album, Decade, has been released. I had the opportunity to speak with two of the members of RiTM before their performance at the House of Blues on July 7th.
REAX: What can fans expect to see and hear for the first time on “Decade”?
Bunny: Basically, Decade is an encapsulation of all the music that we’ve been playing live and never released. We weren’t with Hallucination Recordings anymore, so we had all of this music that we had no way of putting out.
Brien: We had no connection with Hallucination since 2000, when we split. Monk kept Hallucination and we kept Rabbit because he DJed before Rabbit, but he wasn’t actually a part of the show. A lot of people still don’t even know that Monk’s gone. Tonight, which is really exciting for us, Monk is going to play.
REAX: Why did DJ Monk split from Rabbit?
Bunny: We’re more on the spiritual side of things. His act was more of heavy house beats and it conflicted with ours. He wanted to work on a solo career and we wanted to move to L.A., do movie soundtrack work, and branch out. Starting a band in a vacuum is hard enough, but we needed to get out of the state to go to the next level.
REAX: Why release “Decade” now?
Bunny: We produced the Ultra Music Festival DVDs. It was an 80-minute dance music compilation of the festival. We developed a relationship with Big Vision Studios in Burbank and they let us use their studio and cameras. They sponsored us. We shot 9 music videos, when it was originally supposed to be 4. We have six live concert videos shot from Ultra and that’s part of what Decade is. We would never have put out the CD by itself. The album is sound tracking the DVD, and it’s all about the audio-visual elements. We want to give people more because nowadays, everyone downloads their music. For us, the crowd is the third member of the band. Without the crowd, we’re nothing. We’re about the level of being able to touch people, physically, and there should be an element of danger.
Most people in Dance just do drum and bass, house, progressive house, or breaks. The other point of Decade is uniting all of those sub-genres into one, like it was in the beginning. The show element ties everything together. You can’t jump around because there are abstract stories being told on stage through visuals.
REAX: What initiated your live performance elements?
Bunny: The show that got me started was at the Masquerade. It was Nine Inch Nails and Meat Beat Manifesto. Something clicked inside my head at that show because there was something about it that I thought I could improve on. They had one costume the entire time, and they didn’t interact with the audience. I just saw what it could be. That was the inspiration for me to become a performance artist.
REAX: There are the recurring themes of hypnosis and divinity in both of your music’s visual and lyrical elements. Do you pride yourself on having power over an audience?
Bunny: It’s all about mind control. Laughs
REAX: Do you have any formal hypnosis training? I’ve done some research. Performers I admire can control an audience.
Brien: The Hypno Bunny video is also tongue-and-cheek. We do the full launch spiral and it’s something I pulled out of Omni Magazine. Really, the whole point is that we’re empowering the individual with television. “Look into the eye, see yourself inside.” We’re taking the power away from the corporations and giving it back to the people. It’s more about that, than Bunny having power.
REAX: This power is channeled into your unique costuming. How did the LED video suit you use come about?
Bunny: I’ve been doing light suits for years. In L.A., we had been trying to figure out the technology for it for a while. I thought, “I want to have LEDs with full color and map video to it.” The company, more or less, sponsored us, and we had the suit in two weeks. We used it for the first time at Ultra. In the video for “Starshine,” the video suit’s box is animating to the beat of the music. Everything is synced to waveform. Really, the original concept for “Starshine” was based on Close Encounters. When the spaceship landed, there’s a keyboard playing, and lights behind him. And there were lights behind me. The spaceship and him were in a question-answer, and that’s where the whole concept came from— the screen and the suit would interact. A lot of the new music that we wrote for the record—we actually did the videos before the song.
REAX: Where did you record for “Decade”?
Bunny: We mixed the record at a place called Remote Control, which is Hans Zimmer’s studio in Santa Monica. He lent us one of his old Moog’s for the baseline of (“Starshine”) the song.
REAX: Let’s talk about your Bowie cover, “Let’s Dance.” Why choose the WTO riots in the Czech Republic for that video?
Bunny: Originally, the concept that we had was the RAVE Act (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002) and the Homeland Security bills that basically made it illegal for people to gather and listen to repetitive music. To me, it’s what started it. It’s about us. It’s a protest song, and there’s more oppression than just the dance movement. We wanted to open it up a little bit, and just let people realize that you can make a difference, and you can do something about your situation. We’re not saying do it violently, but the whole point is, “stand the fuck up.”
Brien: We were actually in Amsterdam at the time of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests, and I had friends there, in Prague, in the street, who were filming these events. So we got the pieces back and I put together an edit for the song. It really worked for “Let’s Dance.” It turned from a pop song into a “Stand up and protest song.” Let’s dance in the face of this oppression and really take what we’re fighting, which is why we’re trying to do these events and be self-sustaining, conscious, and bring awareness of our music and lifestyle. It’s the same thing with globalization and these corporations that are coming through, and all they are interested in doing is stamping out the independent: the independent farmer, the independent business owner, the independent artist, the independent musician—they’re just trying to crush us, and we’re trying to stop that. I see a direct connection with the WTO protests and what we’re trying to do. A lot of people have no idea what the WTO is, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and I think we’re trying to raise some awareness from the music end.
REAX: At the end of your Bowie video, “Fight imperialism,” is part of some of the graffiti on the walls. Vladimir Lenin believed that, that’s the highest point of capitalism before it’s thrown out. Do you feel we’re reaching that level right now?
Brien: What a dangerous question. Actually, I put a lot of elements in, it rolls past people so quickly, and I’m wondering if people are ever picking up on it, so it’s nice to see. I think the U.S. has an honest heart, and at the root of all people here in the U.S., they want the best for the world. But there are also a lot of people interested in self-gain and that’s the imperialist side. And, interestingly enough, that’s 1 political song out of 15, so we’re trying to be a little political—
Bunny: But we try to keep things subtle, for the most part. We are not Rage Against the Machine. You know, “Let’s Dance” is a pop song, and to rock out with an audience, even if they don’t get it at first, the whole concept of “We can, we will survive,” people eventually get it.
REAX: Now, after “Decade”, do you foresee yourself continuing to create original pieces instead of remixing?
Bunny: Before the split happened with Monk, Dave (Christophere) wrote all of the music. We really became a band in 2000, when we started co-writing. We’ve totally gotten out of the remix scheme the last 7 years. We want to put out a double album because we’ve got a lot of down-tempo and ambient music that we’ve been writing. The focus is on original music.
www.rabbitinthemoon.com
Interview with Bunny and VJ Brien Rullman
Words: Crystal Farina
Photos: Marshall Dickson
Appeared:
July 7, 2007
House of Blues, Orlando
Rabbit in the Moon formed in Tampa in 1993. They were worshipped by fans everywhere after their release of O.B. E. (Out of Body Experience), and afterwards, they continued releasing remixes including Sarah McLachlan’s “Fear” and “Possession.” Their unique sets are known to demand audience participation by the lead of Bunny’s theatrical performances. Despite the attention their shows bring, RiTM has not allowed interviews until this past year. Now, after over a decade of performances, RiTM’s anticipated album, Decade, has been released. I had the opportunity to speak with two of the members of RiTM before their performance at the House of Blues on July 7th.
REAX: What can fans expect to see and hear for the first time on “Decade”?
Bunny: Basically, Decade is an encapsulation of all the music that we’ve been playing live and never released. We weren’t with Hallucination Recordings anymore, so we had all of this music that we had no way of putting out.
Brien: We had no connection with Hallucination since 2000, when we split. Monk kept Hallucination and we kept Rabbit because he DJed before Rabbit, but he wasn’t actually a part of the show. A lot of people still don’t even know that Monk’s gone. Tonight, which is really exciting for us, Monk is going to play.
REAX: Why did DJ Monk split from Rabbit?
Bunny: We’re more on the spiritual side of things. His act was more of heavy house beats and it conflicted with ours. He wanted to work on a solo career and we wanted to move to L.A., do movie soundtrack work, and branch out. Starting a band in a vacuum is hard enough, but we needed to get out of the state to go to the next level.
REAX: Why release “Decade” now?
Bunny: We produced the Ultra Music Festival DVDs. It was an 80-minute dance music compilation of the festival. We developed a relationship with Big Vision Studios in Burbank and they let us use their studio and cameras. They sponsored us. We shot 9 music videos, when it was originally supposed to be 4. We have six live concert videos shot from Ultra and that’s part of what Decade is. We would never have put out the CD by itself. The album is sound tracking the DVD, and it’s all about the audio-visual elements. We want to give people more because nowadays, everyone downloads their music. For us, the crowd is the third member of the band. Without the crowd, we’re nothing. We’re about the level of being able to touch people, physically, and there should be an element of danger.
Most people in Dance just do drum and bass, house, progressive house, or breaks. The other point of Decade is uniting all of those sub-genres into one, like it was in the beginning. The show element ties everything together. You can’t jump around because there are abstract stories being told on stage through visuals.
REAX: What initiated your live performance elements?
Bunny: The show that got me started was at the Masquerade. It was Nine Inch Nails and Meat Beat Manifesto. Something clicked inside my head at that show because there was something about it that I thought I could improve on. They had one costume the entire time, and they didn’t interact with the audience. I just saw what it could be. That was the inspiration for me to become a performance artist.
REAX: There are the recurring themes of hypnosis and divinity in both of your music’s visual and lyrical elements. Do you pride yourself on having power over an audience?
Bunny: It’s all about mind control. Laughs
REAX: Do you have any formal hypnosis training? I’ve done some research. Performers I admire can control an audience.
Brien: The Hypno Bunny video is also tongue-and-cheek. We do the full launch spiral and it’s something I pulled out of Omni Magazine. Really, the whole point is that we’re empowering the individual with television. “Look into the eye, see yourself inside.” We’re taking the power away from the corporations and giving it back to the people. It’s more about that, than Bunny having power.
REAX: This power is channeled into your unique costuming. How did the LED video suit you use come about?
Bunny: I’ve been doing light suits for years. In L.A., we had been trying to figure out the technology for it for a while. I thought, “I want to have LEDs with full color and map video to it.” The company, more or less, sponsored us, and we had the suit in two weeks. We used it for the first time at Ultra. In the video for “Starshine,” the video suit’s box is animating to the beat of the music. Everything is synced to waveform. Really, the original concept for “Starshine” was based on Close Encounters. When the spaceship landed, there’s a keyboard playing, and lights behind him. And there were lights behind me. The spaceship and him were in a question-answer, and that’s where the whole concept came from— the screen and the suit would interact. A lot of the new music that we wrote for the record—we actually did the videos before the song.
REAX: Where did you record for “Decade”?
Bunny: We mixed the record at a place called Remote Control, which is Hans Zimmer’s studio in Santa Monica. He lent us one of his old Moog’s for the baseline of (“Starshine”) the song.
REAX: Let’s talk about your Bowie cover, “Let’s Dance.” Why choose the WTO riots in the Czech Republic for that video?
Bunny: Originally, the concept that we had was the RAVE Act (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002) and the Homeland Security bills that basically made it illegal for people to gather and listen to repetitive music. To me, it’s what started it. It’s about us. It’s a protest song, and there’s more oppression than just the dance movement. We wanted to open it up a little bit, and just let people realize that you can make a difference, and you can do something about your situation. We’re not saying do it violently, but the whole point is, “stand the fuck up.”
Brien: We were actually in Amsterdam at the time of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests, and I had friends there, in Prague, in the street, who were filming these events. So we got the pieces back and I put together an edit for the song. It really worked for “Let’s Dance.” It turned from a pop song into a “Stand up and protest song.” Let’s dance in the face of this oppression and really take what we’re fighting, which is why we’re trying to do these events and be self-sustaining, conscious, and bring awareness of our music and lifestyle. It’s the same thing with globalization and these corporations that are coming through, and all they are interested in doing is stamping out the independent: the independent farmer, the independent business owner, the independent artist, the independent musician—they’re just trying to crush us, and we’re trying to stop that. I see a direct connection with the WTO protests and what we’re trying to do. A lot of people have no idea what the WTO is, or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and I think we’re trying to raise some awareness from the music end.
REAX: At the end of your Bowie video, “Fight imperialism,” is part of some of the graffiti on the walls. Vladimir Lenin believed that, that’s the highest point of capitalism before it’s thrown out. Do you feel we’re reaching that level right now?
Brien: What a dangerous question. Actually, I put a lot of elements in, it rolls past people so quickly, and I’m wondering if people are ever picking up on it, so it’s nice to see. I think the U.S. has an honest heart, and at the root of all people here in the U.S., they want the best for the world. But there are also a lot of people interested in self-gain and that’s the imperialist side. And, interestingly enough, that’s 1 political song out of 15, so we’re trying to be a little political—
Bunny: But we try to keep things subtle, for the most part. We are not Rage Against the Machine. You know, “Let’s Dance” is a pop song, and to rock out with an audience, even if they don’t get it at first, the whole concept of “We can, we will survive,” people eventually get it.
REAX: Now, after “Decade”, do you foresee yourself continuing to create original pieces instead of remixing?
Bunny: Before the split happened with Monk, Dave (Christophere) wrote all of the music. We really became a band in 2000, when we started co-writing. We’ve totally gotten out of the remix scheme the last 7 years. We want to put out a double album because we’ve got a lot of down-tempo and ambient music that we’ve been writing. The focus is on original music.
www.rabbitinthemoon.com
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