At a first glance, members of the experimental-rock band Freaks in the Wild don’t exactly live up to their name. Made up of UCLA alumnus, singer and guitar player Piti Sukavivatanachai, singer and bassist David Garske, drummer Ryan Janke and keyboardist Wen Guo, the quartet appears to be your average post-college-age adults, working and residing in Los Angeles while doing the music thing on the side.
However, a closer look at the band members reveals that their “freakiness” doesn’t come from living some kind extreme lifestyle, but rather from a style of music that they call all their own.
Comparing themselves to bands like Radiohead and the Bad Plus, Freaks in the Wild combine instrumental improvisation with lyrics that they say come straight from their own life experiences.
“I just kind of think of people as the wild, and we’re kind of like freaks compared to everyone else out there,” Garske said.
Natives of Santa Barbara, the guys in the band have been playing together since they were in junior high school and formed Freaks in the Wild in November 2009 when they were in their mid-20s. Garske and Janke met Guo, originally from Taiwan, while the three were attending the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles and added her on as the keyboardist.
Freaks in the Wild will perform this Saturday at Operation Montezuma, a free concert with several different artists in the lineup, at 1651 W. Temple Street in Los Angeles.
Freaks in the Wild pride themselves on marching to the beat of their own drum ““ quite literally.
“We do what we like and we like what we do,” Sukavivatanachai said.
In a city like Los Angeles where so many people come to make a name for themselves, Freaks in Wild say that they strive to maintain the integrity of what they like, regardless of what other people might think.
“(People) will do whatever it takes. Even if they don’t necessarily like the music they’re playing … they’ll just do it because they want to make it,” Janke said. “We don’t really make compromises on what we like … I think that makes us kind of stick out in a way.”
The band members say they draw their sound from bands who have a similar attitude of doing what they enjoy without compromising just to be more popular.
“We’re inspired by music that’s really similar to us. Where we can tell that the bands are really doing what they want ““ their own kind of music ““ and not really holding themselves back with limitations,” Janke said.
Freaks in the Wild’s debut album, “Wouldn’t It Be Strange If …,” is a compilation of raw improvisation and lengthy instrumental riffs.
Produced in the band’s downtown apartment, the six tracks were finished in just one to two takes each, with all band members playing simultaneously (contrary to how most artists produce these days, with each member recording in isolation from the others).
“The way the album progresses, it starts out as a pretty generic sounding song. And then the last track is this 10-minute long, random, noisy, free improvisation,” Garske said. “So to me it’s kind of like, here’s this normal thing and then by the end we’ve taken (the listeners) through these six tracks that just get weirder and weirder.”
As for what to expect from the band, it said that every show is different.
“We improvise a lot. Our songs … move around a lot,” Garske said. “It keeps our live stuff pretty fresh, I think. Sometimes our improvised stuff sounds better and more unified than our actual songs … you’ve got to come to find out for yourself.”