Electric President is a recording duo from Jacksonville, FL made up of Ben Cooper and Alex Kane. They released their first, self-titled album in 2006 to high acclaim. The best way to describe their music is sensitive, electronic, indie rock. The band draws comparisons to Postal Service, but as Ben Cooper describes in the interview below the electro super group is not an influence for these ocean-side musicians.

The band will release the follow up to their first album, titled Sleep Well on June 24th.

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Check out a couple tracks from the new album Sleep Well :

MP3: Electric President - Ether

Electric President - Monsters

The band does the best cover of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After TIme I’ve ever heard. Check it out: Electric President - Time After Time

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Electric President’s Ben Cooper took time away from filming five short films for the new album to answer some questions for Above the Fold

ABOVE THE FOLD: Talk a little about how Electric President came to be

Electric President: I met Alex eight years ago in a band called “Helicopter Project”. We played together in that group for about a year before it sort of fell apart (members leaving for college, mostly). Alex and I kept recording together after that, off and on, for the next three years. We eventually gave the project an official name, and he we are.

ATF: What is Electric President all about? If you had to describe its reason for existence, I guess.

EP: The easiest way to describe it is as a recording project. Making records is the primary focus; it’s our favorite aspect of music. Things like shows are secondary to us. We play live shows off and on, if the material translates well and the show sounds fun, but it’s more “if it works out” than “we must do this.”

ATF: The new album is great. It seems to have an innocent intensity if that makes sense…how would you describe Sleep Well?

EP: Thanks. And that kinda fits. The record is almost entirely about dreams, nightmares in particular. Most of my dreams are bad ones, whenever I have them. I don’t know why. But a couple years ago I started writing down the stranger dreams. Sort of a nightmare journal, I guess. I’d originally planned to use the material for some short stories, but while working on the early versions of the songs for Sleep Well I thought it’d make an interesting subject for the record. So most of the songs are based on those dreams, especially lyrically.

ATF: The new album seems to be a brother or sister to your first album rather than a distant cousin…how do you think its different than your previous?

EP: If I had to compare it to the self-titled record, I’d say the first one was a daytime record (the music is simpler and sunnier), and Sleep Well is the nighttime counterpart. But Sleep Well was a different process. Which is kind of a rule for me. I usually come up with a process or a technique for a record and use it for that record alone. If I’m gonna start another album, I need to come up with a different way to approach it. Otherwise, it gets easy to start repeating myself.

Anyway, the first album was written almost entirely on an acoustic guitar. The songs were all fairly simple — more like folk songs than anything electronic. They were tracked into a computer, then we’d spend weeks just fucking around with them. The idea was to see what we could do with production trickery on otherwise simple songs. Like taking three chord ditties and adding fireworks and random noises after the fact. It was the first time either of us had every really used computers in recording, and the idea was to see what would happen if we just had fun with that. Everything previous was done on 8-track cassette machines and mini-disc recorders.

Most of this new record was written on synthesizers, though. I was pretty sick of always writing on guitar, so I stopped. There are guitars on the record, but on most every song they were added later, as accompaniment. But where there was lots of time spent in post on the first record, there was very little of that in this album. So it’s more electronic, but not nearly as manipulated.

This record was more heavily based on a theme as well. The first record had a theme too, but it was more vague. This one more directly affected which songs were used, and how they were tracked.

ATF: Its easy to describe your music as Postal Service-esque, but it feels like its much more than that. Why is your music different?

EP: I think it’s kind of funny that Postal Service is almost considered a genre. But I don’t really know what to say in relation to this. Postal Service is not a particular influence for either of us (Alex has never even heard them). I can see how there are similar elements, but I can’t say much beyond that. So I guess the major difference is that it’s made by different people, with different intentions.

ATF: I read most of your recording is done in a tool shed…what does that atmosphere do for your creative process?

EP: Yeah. Alex’s bedroom and the tool shed behind my house are the “studios.”
And it’s hard to say what the shed does anymore. I’ve been working back there regularly for the past 6 years, so I’m pretty used to it. But I can say that I like the atmosphere a lot, and it’s made working in proper recording spaces almost uncomfortable to me now. For whatever that’s worth. And it forces me to work in the middle of the night due to traffic and outside noise, so I’m sure that has an influence as well

ATF: In the song Bright Mouths you say “We are the thoughts that you were warned about” do you want to elaborate on what this song is talking about?

EP: This is one of the more nightmare driven songs. But the simplest explanation is that I gave a name to the people in dreams that know too much about you and spill your secrets to everyone. Or the versions of yourself that do horrible things in dreams, things that kind of disgust you when you’re awake again, only to make you wonder if you’re really capable of something that awful.

I don’t know if these are common things to dream about, but I’ve had them enough that I named those people/versions the “Bright Mouths.” And the song was written about them collectively, as a menacing little group that’s always watching you and waiting until you fall asleep, to spread doubt or make you paranoid.

ATF: In the song Ether you touch on the sleep issue, is that where the album title spawned from?

EP: Well, the record is mostly about dreams, so it seemed fitting. It was just a working title for months and months, but by the end it just stuck. I tried some other names, but they didn’t quite fit.

ATF: Would you rather have someone listen to your new album before they go to bed, smoke lots of pot, or go for a drive while the sun is setting?

EP: Whichever they’re the most into. It’s very much a “nighttime” record to me, but that could be because almost everything was recorded in the middle of the night, and because of the theme. Whether or not it comes off that way to anyone else, I have no idea.

ATF: What do you picture when you listen to your music?

EP: I don’t listen to it once I’m done. After working on the same songs for over a year, it’s hard to hear them anymore. And at this point, I’m already working on another record, so it’s already kind of background, something I did last year.

ATF: You have done probably the best Time After Time covers I’ve ever heard. How big of an influence does Cyndi Lauper have on Electric President’s music?

Hahaha. Thanks. Glad you liked it. I don’t know if I could call Cyndi Lauper much of an influence. Both of us like some of her songs, though. The Goonies theme is great. And my sisters used to listen to her a lot when I was a kid, so it’s a nostalgia thing for me as well.

ATF: I saw that your album leaked rather early into the torrent world and was even ranked one of the highest downloaded albums on one popular site. Does that give you any mixed emotions?

EP: Well, once press copies go out, it’ll wind up on the internet. It’s inevitable. But at least a lot of people are hearing it. I mean, sure it’d be nice to sell a bunch of records and whatnot, but you have to be realistic about these things. The chances of that happening are pretty slim. At least it’s getting out somehow.

But I have to say, I’m really relieved it was a decent rip. When you spend 13 months tracking your own album, going through the ropes to make it sound comparable to all the studio records out there (but with much less equipment and untreated rooms) only to have it ripped to 128kbps and sound like shit, it’s frustrating.

ATF: Is it true that the Myspace page that is floating around is not run by you or your label? And if not, do you know who is running it? How do you feel about all that Myspace stuff?

EP: Yeah, it’s true.. I don’t know who runs that. I tried to set up a page for us a year or two ago, but we got shut down for infringement, or something of the kind. I guess because this other page had more friends, ours was considered a copy? Either way, the page I made got removed, and I got an e-mail from myspace saying that I violated something, and then they explained the process of proving who was who. I don’t really like the whole myspace anything anyway, so it was kind of a relief. I haven’t bothered to try again.

ATF: What’s next after the new album is out? Any touring?

EP: Well, I’m already working on my next solo record, as well as some side projects. I’m pretty much always recording. But we’re going to do some touring later in the year and perhaps early next year. Alex is still in school, so we can only do shows during his breaks, but we plan to play out during his off times. And we still have a whole bunch of b-sides from this record to wrap up as well. So lots of recording, still.