Hot Loins

Hot Loins play the Mesa Luna with Dandi Wind on Wednesday, December 14. All ages.

4 p.m., Bellingham, Washington
It’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m squinting through the fog to make sure the rusted Dodge Ram is on our tail. Sean Elbe and Cameron Reed — a.k.a. two-thirds of the band Hot Loins, a.k.a. promoters Adventures Close to Home — have driven down to Washington to pick up two L.A.-based bands and bring them over the border. I’ve stowed away on the journey, witnessing first-hand the lengths to which these boys will go to for the music they love.

Sean Elbe, keyboards: joint communication/business major, three years at CJSF.

Cameron Reed, guitar/vocals: communication major, two years at CJSF.

Hot Loins: noisy, but not too noisy; dance-y, but not too dance-y; scream-y, allegiate.

Sean Elbe and Cameron Reed met at a CJSF event, a battle of the bands held at the pub. With a mutual love of all things music-related, it wasn’t long before Elbe and Reed “bro’d down.” Two years later, they are hosting a CJSF show (Three’s Company, Wednesdays 8-10 a.m.), spending all their free time putting on and promoting shows, and — along with Elbe’s childhood friend Dave Rogers on drums — performing music under the scurrilous moniker Hot Loins.

Sean Elbe: That’s where we first met, at a CJSF event on campus.

Cameron Reed: Was it?

Elbe: Yeah. Indie night.

Reed: Oh yeah, I met all the guys in the Raking Bombs and Sean at a battle of the bands up at SFU, in the pub. I was totally into what Raking Bombs were doing and I just went up to them and was like, “that was awesome.”

Elbe: We became best friends really quickly, and Dave and I grew up together, beside each other. Two houses away. Then we started doing the radio show together.

Reed: We’re all involved with it, but we don’t really have anything recorded, so it’s not like they’re able to play it on the radio all the time or anything. It’s not like we’re a band that came out of people at the station. It’s a band that came out of friends with common interests. The radio just plays on what are interests our, which are . . . fuckin’ music and wanting people to hear the music we like. Because we’re smart. [laughs]

The college radio connection doesn’t end there. The first time Hot Loins recorded tracks was last year, a demo for CiTR’s annual battle of the bands, SHiNDIG. It failed to win them a position in the contest. This year, they recorded another demo, again for SHiNDIG. This time they made it to the semi-finals.

While Hot Loins received such praise as “either complete shit or complete genius” on their first round of judging, the semi-final judges proved to be less hyperbole-prone.

Elbe: One guy wrote, “Learn how to tune your guitar or maybe get some lessons.” At that point, you can’t really be upset about that, because you realise the judges just don’t get it.

Reed: Generally that whole “you just don’t get it” is kind of a cop-out. You hear that a lot. People do like us, but it’s difficult to fully get into our music unless you know where we’re coming from, to a certain extent. We all listen to the same music, I’m really influenced by no-wave and stuff . . . We’re probably not gaining fans from people who are just into upper crust indie pop.

The thing with the “get some lessons” is that I don’t really know how to play my guitar. I am self-taught. It’s not that I don’t know what to do, it’s that I’m expressing myself and using the guitar as something that will make noise and melody. For me to fuck around is, like, feeling the song.

Elbe: My training is classical piano, forced through my head. It’s like, “No, you’re not going to go play baseball in the backyard with Dave, you’re going to sit and practice.” But thank god my mom made me go through that shit. Now I’m able to, in the middle of a song, go [making noise and stomping his feet on the ground]. I remember the first time I tried to do something like that, I was like, “but, but, it’s not . . . ”

Reed: Yeah, I remember that! You couldn’t actually break out of the “how it’s supposed to be” thing. But now you get fucking so carried away you break your keys.

It is amazing, the fact that Sean’s training is the antithesis to mine. But yet, the only way that anything I do will actually translate into a song is because of Sean. I’ll show this riff to Sean, and the first thing he does is exactly like how I hear it.

Elbe: I just like the Moonlight Sonata, what can I say.

Reed: [Laughs]

Elbe: It’s sort of true, though.

Reed: He does love the Moonlight Sonata.

I learned in an electroacoustic communication class that the definition of noise is unwanted sound. I therefore find the term “noise music” rather confusing. Then I Wikipedia-ed it, and found this quote from renowed noise musician Masami Akita: “If by noise you mean uncomfortable sound, then pop music is noise to me.” And things started to make sense.

Elbe: It’s a process of being like, “Wow, shit, this is - The Peak