LomoAmigo: Sprocket Rocket Away with COIN

COIN is a talented synth-pop band based in Nashville. As a LomoAmigo, the band’s members have taken a series of photographs using our Sprocket Rocket camera. Find out more about them and their experience with it in an exclusive interview!

The ‘product of the 90s’ as how they fondly call themselves, COIN recently released a self-titled EP that contains songs about their personal experiences and emotions. This time around, the band has teamed up with Lomography and taken the Sprocket Rocket out for a spin.

Could you tell us more about yourselves? How did you guys come together to form a band?
The band came about when Joe and Chase sat next to each other in a music theory class in college. They’d met previously in West Virginia (where Chase grew up) when Joe’s high school band played a show there. A few years later, they were in that class together and vaguely recognized each other. I (Ryan) was dating someone that sat on the other side of them in that class. She’d overheard them talking music one day and very quickly volunteered me to be the drummer of their new project that they’d started 20 minutes prior called “Casual Friday.”

I then got a call from Joe a few days later, played my drums loudly in Chase’s (then) college dorm bedroom, and we decided that something about playing together was really special. The name Casual Friday didn’t stick, but I did. We then met Zachary because he shot a music video for us for free. We then realized that he had a multitude of instruments at his house and thought, “Maybe he could play bass for us?! Okay. Yes. He has a bass. He is definitely playing bass for us!!!!” And… here we are.

How would you describe your musical style?
When we were in the studio at the end of last summer, we wrote a few words to align with the point we would be trying to get across by recording and releasing our first record. We wrote “fun” on the board. So cliche, we know. But we truly do want this music to be fun to listen to. Both recorded and live. We’re ultimately some sort of interpretation of our favorite indie rock, new wave and pop influences. Sometimes we can’t explain it, but it’s us.

Where do you get your inspiration to write music from?
We all have such different backgrounds. Chase played piano in church his whole life, Joe sang and played guitar in a band all through high school (which he actually fronted), Zach was a singer songwriter who released his acoustic music on a website called MySpace.com, and I used to play drums in metal bands. With that said, COIN is the first time any of us have felt like we’ve had a home for our creativity; a place we actually belong. It sounds incredibly cheesy, I I know, but isn’t that what every musician wants to find? When Joe and Chase write our lyrics, they feel they’re able to write about the common ground we (and all our peers) share in this new and budding “adulthood” thing that we’re somehow supposed to start pursuing.

You guys recently shot a series of photographs with Lomography’s Sprocket Rocket, could you tell me your experience with it?
It was a blast. We were lucky enough to be in New York for most of the rolls, and then finish them out in Nashville. Also to our advantage was the fact that we have a brilliant and dear friend on the road with us at all times, David O’Donohue, who could take some photos with us and show us how to hold a camera.

What is your favorite part about this camera?
Yeah, so, the whole part where you don’t get to see the photo until it is developed. That is awesome. We did a great amount of guesswork when shooting these.

What inspired you to shoot that series?
The frigid weather that week in the “Big Apple” really just injected some life into our creative spirits…. Kidding. Really, the camera was easy to use and we knew we had a lot of photos to take, so it was just fun to shoot whatever we were doing that day.

If you could photograph any place with the Sprocket Rocket, where would it be?
New Zealand? Is that the right answer for a photography locale question?

Do you have any advice for current or future Sprocket Rocket users?
Don’t overthink it. Don’t take selfies.

Besides making music, what do you guys love to do?
We (collectively and/or individually) adore eating food and drinking coffee, playing video games in the van, abstract painting, producing and recording music for our friends, taking advantage of an app called “Rapchat,” and making fun of each other until it kind of actually hurts.

written by givesmehell on 2015-04-11 #people #music #coin #lomography #lomoamigos #lomoamigo #sprocket-rocket