It's hard to do an interview with Starship Amazing. The two members who make up the electronic duo, Calvin Hansen and Derek Alexander, riff with each other after questions, going off on tangents, peppering in obscure references, Alexander occasionally slipping into a faux Jersey accent. The conversation doesn't evolve in the way you'd expect.
You've probably never heard of Starship Amazing, despite the fact that they've released eight albums in the last three years, several available for free on their website. For a time, their most recent album, "Ya'll Stop Bloggin'" was the number one Alaska album on the music-sale site Bandcamp.
Sometimes categorized as "chiptune" after the music created by the old MIDI tracks from 8-bit video games -- and because they use a MIDI keyboard for many of the melodies on their tracks -- the band actually describes their music as more traditional electronic.
"I'm always reticent to use the term 'chiptune,'" Hansen says, "just because I don't think people who aren't nerds know what it means."
There's a nerd aesthetic to a lot of Starship Amazing, a sense of "geek chic" to their music and side projects. Alexander is the star of a series of online retro video game reviews known as the "Happy Video Game Nerd." Hansen is working on a solo album that he expects will be more ambient electronic than Starship Amazing's work. They listen to out-there music, everything from hardcore rap by a group known as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (yes, that's the name of the band) to the upbeat keys-and-drum duo Matt & Kim. They're both into video games and Japanese animation.
Alexander and Hansen met while working at information technology services at UAA. Alexander has since graduated, while Hansen finishes his degree and works full-time at the university. Both had previously created some solo tracks for which they now have nothing but disdain. "Unreleased forever," Alexander says of their first tracks.
"We should probably just burn them," Hansen adds.
This kind of distancing from their older work comes up often. They've buried their first album, "Zoom-zoom Internet," as something of a bonus at the end of another CD. Alexander has denied the use of songs from some of their older albums to people who ask permission to use them for other projects. Not because they don't appreciate people enjoying their music, but because "we don't want to promote that old stuff anymore," Alexander says.
Their 2008 album "The Power of Science is Staggering" was, until January, the most recent album released for free on the website. "It's an old record," Alexander says, "and it was the best record we could make at that time. It isn't representative of what we are now."
They made the six-song "Ya'll Stop Bloggin'" available for free because many of their fans had only listened to the other free releases, and not the albums available for purchase. But that isn't to say they haven't seen success with their pay-for-play albums.
"When (2010 double album) 'Scoops and Gearheart' dropped," Alexander says, "there were about 36 hours or so where we were like, 'Holy shit, let's quit our jobs.'" Sales eventually leveled out, until, Hansen says, "it's not rent money, but it's pizza and beer money."
That double album -- officially "Scoops the Robot" and "An Apocalypse in Binary: The Memoirs of Gearheart Deckrion" -- is a good example of what the band is about. "Scoops" is an upbeat, heavily melodic album, while "Gearheart" is big on industrial rhythms and significantly darker. Alexander says they whittled the two albums down from about 100 potential songs, and they really wanted to capture "opposite ends of the emotional spectrum."
Some people may have a hard time imagining how a series of electronic beeps and canned rhythms can evoke emotion. They both know, though, the emotional effect that their music can have, even if it's not the emotion they felt when they created a song.
Alexander shares a story of a fan who wrote to them and said a song from "The Power of Science" really spoke to him in the period after his father passed away. That song, "Finally," was written as something of a soundtrack to an "epic battle" that Hansen and Alexander had in mind.
"We were amazed that someone could find comfort in a song that we wrote envisioning an epic battle," Alexander says. "But that's the power of music, I guess."
They say the fact that their songs are instrumental helps fans take away different feelings from different songs, since their opinions aren't influenced by lyrics. That doesn't mean Starship Amazing is opposed to eventually incorporating lyrics into their work, however. They're both interested in collaborations, and they've had something of a friendly rivalry with local artist Marian Call, their biggest competitor on Bandcamp. Call's own geek aesthetic would seem a good fit for Starship Amazing. Both members of the band are only interested in developing the band as long as it seems natural.
Another recent goal has been to increase their exposure by performing live shows. One of the challenges of electronic music is promoting it beyond the niche audience to which it already appeals, and live performance is one way to do that. The band also hosts weekly podcasts that they say have been really good for exposure. Beyond their Facebook, Twitter and podcast, they rely mostly on word of mouth for promotion, and say they don't want to become "too self-aggrandizing."
It's hard not to get caught up in Hansen and Alexander's enthusiasm. It's clear that they enjoy what they do, and they say that for them, it "takes longer to dislike" every album. As they learn better the software that they use to make their music -- much like any instrument -- and continue to expand in different directions, there's a lot to look forward to from Starship Amazing.
Contact Ben Anderson at ben(at)alaskadispatch.com.