For nearly four months after their graduation, UCLA alumni Satoru Yamamoto and Kevin Moultrie devoted long hours to writing songs on a grand piano in their shabby downtown Los Angeles loft and totraveling back to Westwood for practice sessions at the Treehouse on a weekly basis.
Since the days of late-night gigs at the Co-Op and energizing performances encompassing the Westwood music scene, the members of the five-piece indie-hard rock group The Ten Thousand have spent the last year directing their energy toward the production of their new EP, “Nausea.”
The four-track record, released on Tuesday, is a comprehensive compilation of the band’s full and dynamic sound into one entity. Since graduating over the past two years, Moultrie and Yamamoto as well as their bandmates and fellow UCLA alumni Dylan Robin, Garrett Harney and Nathan Kersey-Wilson have taken time off from playing live shows, channeling their efforts toward recording and preparing the record for its release.
Harney said that there are many different musical elements that blend tocreate a sense of heaviness that is reflected on the EP. “It’s not so heavy that it’s a metal thing,” he said. “But it’s definitely somewhere in between indie rock and hard rock.”
To record the live tracks, the group selected Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood, a professional studio that Robin said could accommodate a live band recording. From there, the tracks were brought to Snow Cloud Music, where mixing engineer Johannes Raassina worked with The Ten Thousand to bring “Nausea” to life.
Raassina said that Robin’s distorted guitars, along with Harney’s drumming and Kersey-Wilson’s work on the bass, create a full sound on the EP.
“If not the individual songs, the way they are put together and how they flow with each other will make the listener nauseous,” Harney said. “There’s really no time to breathe on the record.”
Most of the songs on “Nausea” were written by frontman Moultrie right after his graduation, which he regarded as a tough time.
“I think that all of these songs represent what it feels like to be lost and confused,” Moultrie said. “Even though the music from song to song changes pretty drastically, the theme is the same, one of disorientation and confusion.”
The Ten Thousand’s last appearance at the Co-Op in June was a farewell show for the Westwood community. In the past months, the band has played shows on the east side of Los Angeles and in Northern California at UC Davis’ Picnic Day.
Robin, lead guitarist and backup vocalist, lived at the Treehouse during his final year along with Harney, the group’s drummer. From there, the band practiced and gained exposure in Westwood and around Los Angeles.
“It’s been a steady spreading, but also us definitively trying to maintain what we had in Westwood, because that was very supportive and strong,” Robin said. “Westwood has a very high energy and welcoming kind of a vibe.”
“Nausea” is the band’s second EP released thus far and includes an album cover depicting the band members’ faces morphing together. Robin said that all of the members of The Ten Thousand now live together, rehearsing for many hours on end.
“They didn’t even use a metronome for most of the live takes,” Raassina said. “They are creating the timing almost themselves.”
Raassina also described the band as a very democratic entity in the studio.
“Everyone was very involved in the whole process,” Raassina said. “The integrity of the live performance was very important to them and they managed to make it work, which is not an easy thing to do.”
The album title is inspired by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel, “Nausea,” which Moultrie said lays out what it is like to have an existential crisis.
“There are a lot of elements from that book being mirrored by what we were going through as a band because, even as a unit, we were all over the place,” Moultrie said. “Some of us were living together, some of us weren’t; some of us had graduated and some of us were still at UCLA so it was very scattered.”
From the very get-go, Harney said, the band felt that its work was something that was going to continue.
To back up the release, The Ten Thousand will be performing at the Bootleg Theater in Silver Lakeon March 29 for what Robin said will be more of a party than a show and will include some of the band’s favorite DJs.
The band also said it hopes to return and perform in the Westwood scene in the future and to advocate for the expansion of the music community at UCLA.
“There needs to be a reassessment of the local music scenes in Westwood and across L.A.,” Robin said. “Being able to utilize digital sharing in order to create a sense of community is going to be key, and that is what we are trying to do with our band and music.”