Photo by Julia Tarantino.
Monobloc has just released their newest single “Where Is My Garden”, the second of seven tracks from their upcoming debut EP. For those who don’t yet know Monobloc, the band is led by the dynamic duo of Timothy Waldron and Michael “Mop” Silverglade. Formerly founding members of the band Courier Club and creators of the viral Minecraft music festival Block by Blockwest, Tim and Mop felt a pull to start a new musical project as a way to fully refine their sound without limits (enter Monobloc).
“Where Is My Garden” showcases the band’s skill in blending post-punk and pop styles, with their nostalgic guitar riffs overlayed with classical violins and lush synths. The song doesn’t just ask “where is my garden?” but plants sound seeds in my brain that make me want to listen to it over and over again. It was blizzarding in NYC the day I first heard the track, so I couldn’t help but resonate with the title – like yeah, a garden would be real nice right about now.
While we were all stuck inside with the NYC snow storm, I asked Tim and Mop from the band if they would be interested in a quick online interview, and they were down. I think it’s important to mention that Tim did this entire interview with a filter on that made him look like a cat.
Nat: Tell me about the name Monobloc, how did that come about?
Mop: The name Monobloc comes from a chair, those ubiquitous white molded plastic ones you see on people’s decks and lawns. There’s this furniture meme page we were following around the time we started the band, and he had made this thing called Monobloc Summer with all these posts about sitting in this chair and thinking about how your whole youth is behind you. I think it was @northwest_mcm_wholesale that posted it. And then I don’t know, Monobloc Summer became our slogan that year, so when we were thinking of band names, it just made sense.
Tim: The name wasn’t taken because I mean, what band wants to be named after a plastic chair? And then after we decided on it, we were able to pull more of a philosophical meaning out of it you know, maybe out of our ass, but it kind of worked out.
Mop: A forced philosophical meaning.
Tim: And there’s something interesting about how it’s the one plastic chair design that has conquered the world. You could find it in every continent you know. So something about the ubiquity of it all was interesting cause it’s kind of everywhere, even though you don’t really think about it.
Monobloc at Baker Falls, photographed by Nathalie Naor
Nat: Speaking of things that are everywhere, tell me about the internet and how it inspires your musical and visual aesthetic.
Tim: We like taking things that lean classical or timeless, and sprinkling in some stuff that’s more contemporary and a bit memey you could say to blend those two worlds together. Sometimes we’ll take a public domain image and blend in something more contemporary that would typically never be cross-referenced. But when you do, you find the similarities between the two. There’s a meme that says “I miss the old internet and all its surrounding mythology”, and that’s kind of my design thesis. As a band we’re really interested in exploring the visuals and creating a world for our listeners to live in.
Nat: I love that, and I think that’s a great transition into hearing more about your new track “Where Is My Garden”. I would love to hear a bit about the process of creating this song and what inspired it as well.
Mop: That was a riff I had been trying to use for years, and it was a chorus melody that Tim had been trying to fit in songs for years. And nothing would ever really come of it. But then we realized that both those ideas fit together. So we were like oh, nice, this song can finally exist!
Tim: For the lyrics, I liked to imagine someone at a dinner party stuck in a conversation with someone raving about their new Casper mattress, or seeing a modern faucet in a fusion restaurant or something, and feeling like wow, if I wasn’t an artist, maybe I could get myself one of these. Like that internal dialogue of “I don’t need this, I don’t want it” and then having those moments of “hm maybe I do need it and maybe I do want it.” It’s just the very human gray area of realizing life is a bit more nuanced than we thought. And that gray area for us is always where the truth is.
Nat: Can you tell me about some art / artists that inspire both of you individually?
Tim: There are many, and they’re always changing. Every week there’s something new for me. This week has been a lot of Tom Waits…. and also Justin Bieber. I’ve been going down a rabbit hole
with him, it’s insane how beautiful that man’s voice is.
Nat: I know, I was bummed he didn’t come out on stage with Usher during the Super Bowl. But there’s something about mid-2000s pop that just hits different. How about you Mop?
Mop: I always look at the classics. I love classic post-punk stuff like Joy Division and New Order, and newer stuff, especially music coming out of the UK. Factory Records and anything Tony Wilson put his hands on has had a huge influence on our music and design work. There’s always a new band from there doing something that just scratches that right part of my brain. Also the movie 24 Hour Party People. Part of the catalyst of Monobloc was watching that movie.
Tim: Yeah! That’s our favorite movie. I think Tony Wilson just has the best one-liners in the world.
Nat: Agreed. Everyone should watch 24 Hour Party People after reading this. To finish off this interview, I just have a few rapid fire questions.
…Most proud and most embarrassing Spotify wrapped moment?
Tim: I don’t know, I mean, I think having Bruce as my number one is most proud. Now the ASMR history lessons being up there…. I don’t know, that’s pretty embarrassing. But it’s this guy who does these long ASMR audio essays on different topics like prehistoric oceans, the history of cosmetics, nuclear fusion etc.
Mop: I think I’m embarrassed to have had the same top artists for about three years now, but proud because the first band is this Eastern European post-punk band called Buerak. They only sing in Russian, but I don’t know, there’s something about their music that makes me able to listen to it wherever, whenever.
Nat: Cats or dogs?
Tim: Cats.
Mop: I have to stay loyal to dogs. My roommate and girlfriend both have cats, so I really like both of them, but I was always a dog person growing up.
Nat: Last question, can you tell me who Monobloc is in three words?
Mop: “Not a chair.”
Musical artists featured on the track include Timothy Waldron on vocals, Michael Silverglade on bass, Nina Lüders and Ben Scofield on guitar, and Zack Pockrose on drums. The band’s B&W photo was taken by photographer Julia Tarantino, and remaining images were taken by Nathalie Naor at Monobloc’s 2023 Baker Falls show.
