Our Interview with Daniel S. Lionheart of Rifle Men

Rifle Men's music reminds me of after shave commercials.

It is smooth, soothing, usually wrapped in a town, and smells like a man which drives the ladies wild. It also drives me wild, just not in the same way, for me it is more the way a hunter and gatherer type gets excited about kissing his cousin or finding road kill for dinner. I salivate and excrete pheromones that are only detectable by sheep herders and vegans.

Their EP Treewolf is Dead is perfect listing for damn near everything from wake boarding to a bris and everything in between. It is lush and gorgeous and harkens back to the day when men were men and they often had pubic lice and scurvy.

Oh those were the days.

SYFFAL: Please tell our readers the following:
- Who are you?
- Who does what in the band?
- Which brand of speed stick most suits your delicate sensibilities?

Daniel S. Lionheart: Hi Ladytrons and Circle Jerks, you can call me Daniel S. Lionheart. Or, if you prefer, Daniel - sounds more intimate; And you all must know I like to get intimate. In the band 'Rifle Men' , Anthony and I shared duel responsibilities to varying degrees. Side note - He was the 'bastard that wanted to make a perfect record' therefore he produced absolutely EVERYTHING, which resulted in a pretty sounding orgy of tunes. I was the far more boyish type, the one with little musical experience, but a greater sense of scale and child-like approaches when it came to instruments. I never treated them the way he did, like machines-perfect machines. They were extremities of the same trunk to me. I could hear a melody of a guitar line in my fucking head and hum it to Anthony which he would play and record. Albeit, the process was always partnered. I played every instrument in my skull as he equally played them for the computer. Every sound you hear came from the mind of the younger brother of a popular jock or the older brother of the only freshmen Joy Division fan. Get the idea, too cryptic? I didn't understand chords, notes or octaves, but I knew what sounded polite and loving; I knew what sounded personal and evocative.

Anthony always smelled really nice, like a Russian Bath House for teen sex bombs and I simply used English Leather.Cleanliness was never a huge factor that played into getting laid, but it's important that we trickle this information down to the next generation. And if it had gone unnoticed, every song is heavily infuenced by the English and/or European Romance. At the end of the day, it always smells like Teen Spirit.

SYFFAL: Treewold is Dead is fucking fantastic. I haven't had this much fun listening to an album and experimenting in partial nudity since Def Leppard's High and Dry. What where you hoping to convey with this record and did it include 30 somethings dancing in the wee hours of the morning with no shirts on, or is that an added bonus?

Daniel S. Lionheart: Ha, I was unaware our music conveyed such disregard for clothing after or during Lamaze class with your signifcant other. I wanted this record to sound as young as it possibly could. Not amateur, but more 'Teenage Dream', or 'Teen Dream' ; whichever cause you applaud. There is such an obsession with band's like M83 and Twin Shadow, among a myriad of others that verbally and sonically state that 'this new album' is about 'youth, about us growing up'. Ok, fair enough - those guys are phenomenal. When you contemplate it, it's nearly impossible to write an album through the voice of someone inescapably young. Furthermore, it was rarely ever Anthony and Daniel making an album. Instead, it was two stoned boy scouts crying about life and getting erections over mid-nineties film stars - writing about what hurt, what they wanted and longed for and never writing vicariously through adulthood. Who believes an adult whining about touching themselves for the first time in an elaborate thirty something falsetto over intense reverb; I do, but that's for another reason. I guess I do sometimes. It is a pleasure to know that it has the opposite effect on its listeners. That those thirty-something's can eat sugar and erupt their imagination and believe that they still have a heart valve that exists and breathes and is no older than 15 years of age. It's an added bonus if that bonus includes the fact that over millions of people sobbed over that little Jerry McGuire kid. The most precious things are dumb to the world, but beautiful in their own right. I could listen to our EP while watching 'Salute Your Shorts' while eating a boxful of gushers and masturbating to Alex Mack because it makes sense. Nostalgia had a lot to do with these songs, but more importantly it was a fleeting form of self preservation. This sounds arguably stupid, but I wish kids weren't so young anymore. They'd have more to sincerely sing about if they knew how terribly awful life eventually gets.

SYFFAL: Chuck D. of Public Enemy said that most of his heroes don't appear on no stamps in the classic song Fight the Power. Who are your heroes and what don't they appear on?

Daniel S. Lionheart: Well, I am fairly sure that statement doesn't hold water anymore. I can promise you that Malcolm X, MLK, Easy-E, Biggie, Tupac, French Stuart and Kate Bush are all on stamps now which discredits poor Chuck D. With that said, here are my heroes and what they're not on.

• Boris Vian - He's not on acid cause he's dead.
• Ian Curtis - He will never appear on an episode of 'The League' because he hates American football. Nor will he ever be on a commercial for rope. Also, do you think during the early 1900's domestic products like socks, pencils and fingernail clippers were as robustly televised and highly commercialized as Bacardi is today. Trick question, they didn't have Bacardi back then.
• Charles Bukowski - He's not on a pitchfork because he punched Satan in the mouth with three lit, face-melting cigarettes between each finger.
• Daniel Schmidt - Sweet, sweet guy.
• Solid Snake - !
• Michael Haneke - He's not on any silver screens because he's far too golden
• Alejandro Jodorowsky - Likewise.
• Caroline Polachek ( Chairlift ) - She will never appear

None of these men will ever appear on your mother's breath.

SYFFAL: Who are you to assume you know what's on my mother's breath? (hint it rhymes with shooze) Who is Treewold and how did he pass? Was it peaceful at least?

Daniel S. Lionheart: TREEWOLF was a heterosexual experience that Anthony and I experimented with before we wrote the tracks you've been listening to. It was a flirtatious experience that was fueled by joints and manifested in Anthony's little single dorm room on the third floor of Estabrook. We were testing one another. We actually could get along. So we wrote electronic songs that I still listen to and revere to this day. I would love to send you some as they evoke the most primal and erect species of sounds we've ever created. In other words, I miss them. Treewolf died when the Rifle Men rappelled from the roofs and buried that heart. A band before a band. If no one showed any interest in Rifle Men there is a massive possibility that we'd be releasing an EP titled 'Rifle Men Are Dead'. What's funny is that every song you've heard from us if pre 2006. The Rifles and the Wolf lived far too close to one another, I liked that. It was a grand gesture and conformation of our friendship. We were the pit crew until we knew every inch of the engine. All of a sudden, we were inside the beast having a checkered flag swing brilliantly above and behind us. 'The Lake's Alive' gave us those keys. So yes, it was god damned peaceful; It was Lisbeth Wells-Pratt in the library with the snarky posture and lipstick covered revolver.

SYFFAL: How dare you contradict me on my own site. I read that one of you bastards was obsessed with making the perfect album and the other with exploring the limits of sounds, how do these two contrasting visions of the journey vs. the destination work?

Daniel S. Lionheart: This is a short one. I never cared about making anything. I had a High School Prog-Rock band, The Rara Avis, which I cared a lot for, but never had set lyrics. Being the lead singer it was problematic but never really noticed or confronted. I had such stellar musician friends backing me that their dance-punk, sonic brilliance dwarfed my voice to a point that it sounded like Radio 4 was the backing band for a timid Ben Bridwell. Let Anthony finish this one. I was just a kid that wanted to be disciplined musically. This EP is my best report card. I would get 'influenced', chain smoke and write alongside Tony. For me, these songs looked like and explosion in reverse. Everything came together so perfectly and vividly. To Anthony, these tracks probably looked like a sum of many parts; I couldn't look at an album, more or less a song and find it perfect. Nor could I attempt and achieve that.

SYFFAL: Speaking of perfect albums please rank the following albums in levels of perfection 1 through 10, if you never heard of the album just rank it "almost as good as Helloween's self titled album":
- Redman - Whut the Album?

Daniel S. Lionheart: Almost as good as Helloween's self titled album

SYFFAL: Jodeci - Diary of a Mad Band

Daniel S. Lionheart: Almost as good as Helloween's self titled album

SYFFAL: Ben Folds Five - Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Mesner

Daniel S. Lionheart: 8.9

SYFFAL: Active Child - You Are All I See

Daniel S. Lionheart: 9.2

SYFFAL: Here We Go Magic – Pigeons

Daniel S. Lionheart: 8.4

SYFFAL: Slayer - South of Heaven

Daniel S. Lionheart: 10.0 (William Bradford Smith is still my dearest friend)

SYFFAL: I met my SYFFAL partner in crime Joel at a home brewers convention, he is really into brewing his own beer and I was working to weed out subservient alcoholic types, it seems like we shouldn't be friends but it was our differences that made us close. How did you guys meet and what qualities does each person bring to the table?

Daniel S. Lionheart: When I met Anthony he came into my shared double dorm room to see my roommate; we'll call my roommate Rhode Island Porn Scum. So, RIPS introduced us and I eventually made it up the flight of stairs to Anthony's room. His room was devoid of weed or whiskey, but his music was stellar. Months later we were well seasoned and drunk and just started revving up every instrument in his room and finished the Treewolf album; 'Landing Airplanes Like Children'; It was essentially 20 odd tracks I compiled and slapped a title on. We should have hated one another. He was an Italian bro with a gold cross swinging around his neck like a crowd-surfing jesus as I wore short Lacoste shorts, dumb belts and dorky little tee shirts. Anyways, it worked. He was incredibly professional and I was just elated at this bedroom form of recording. Simplicity, stopping recording to smoke heavily and cling to one another's ideas like Ripley in a Power Loader. Likewise, the closer we became as friends, the better the music became. If anything, he was the captain as I was the turret gunner. “Damnit Daniel, get on those railguns and take those Russian bastards out. I'll fly us out of this fucking shattered mess, but get on my six and we'll be home before your dick can scream ' Hallelujah' “ ! He helped me understand 'music' and I assume I taught him immaculate minimalism and well, how to land an airplane like a child; taking something so mathematically advanced, so technically infinite and disturbing - producing music - and making it human and simplistic. You can hear the faults, but do you really believe that they were mistakes?

SYFFAL: Speaking of SYFFAL, our site was started by a group of friends who started sharing the new and exciting music they were discovering with one another. In this spirit who are three bands, other than yourselves, who we should be checking for?

Daniel S. Lionheart: I ain't no good at lists fellas. I'll give my top ____ ( lifelong admired albums of whatever, cool?! Cool. (no particular order) You want me to give you recommendations on new bands, cool songs and booty bouncing jams ?! Fuck, you contacted us, no one knows a fuck-all about us- what could we provide? Just let me curate this one. Otherwise I'll disappoint you both.

• Junior Boys - Last Exit
• The Ruby Suns - Fight Softly
• Pet Shop Boys - Very
• Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen
• Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
• South - From Here On In

Ok, you know what, this is killing me. I can't do this anymore. Maybe you'll let me write a top ten every week?! Interrobang?! Please?!

SYFFAL: If you are serious email me at tim@syffal.com. I understand you went to Hofstra, does having a stellar EP dull the pain of having to go to your safety school?

Daniel S. Lionheart: Handsome, if I went to Wesleyan this music wouldn't exist. But apparently it worked for Das Racist, MGMT, Bear Hands & Francis and The Lights; 3/4 label mates, odd.

SYFFAL: Way to diss Wesleyan. Please promote anything you would like here

Daniel S. Lionheart: If you're reading this please support Cantora Records and the sparkling champagne princess of a website - SYFFAL - Shut Your Fucking Face And Listen (Shut Your Fucking Father's Asthma, Liar). It's all you guys, thanks you so much.