Interview: Getting to Know Grivo
Grivo frontman Timothy Heck talks Glenn Danzig, jazz chords, and embracing experimentation in his latest interview with Afterglow.
Written by C.S. Harper
Photo courtesy of Holodeck Records
Austin band Grivo is a musical tour de force. In 2018, the band released their entrancing debut album, Elude. The record established Grivo as a band to watch in the Austin music scene, pioneering a genre-defying sound that combines shoegaze and doom metal.
Hailing from a small town in Michigan, brothers Timothy and Matthew Heck founded Grivo and began making music in the Midwestern punk and hardcore scenes before moving to Austin in 2015. After bassist Ricardo Tejeda joined the group after answering a Craigslist ad, the band began to experiment with the dark, layered soundscapes that dominate their 2018 album.
Afterglow spoke with frontman Timothy Heck to learn more about Grivo’s origins, the process of creating Elude, and the band’s future plans.
Your band name is pretty unique — what’s the story behind it?
I found it in an old “Kids in the Hall” movie. I just grew up liking that show, and I thought it was kind of funny that there’s this character who takes himself way too seriously, and then you know, he just has that name. ‘Cause he’s kind of a joke on (Glenn) Danzig in a way. But I thought it was really funny that I’ve just kind of always kind of written music similar to this. It’s sort of dark, and just to kind of not take myself too seriously.
You and your brother began making music as jazz enthusiasts. Has your love for jazz inspired you in your musical process and your debut album, Elude?
I would say somewhat, particularly in terms of chord voicings and just the vocabulary of 12ths, and 13ths, and all that. It just sort of opens your mind, or your ear, to a new set of tones.
The production on Elude is rich and intricate. What was it like creating the soundscapes on this album as a three-piece band?
We kind of just hold ourselves to doing everything that we can do in the practice space. I mean, there’s some guitar overdubs, but I didn’t really go too crazy with it. We just sort of take on a sort of rush mentality of trying to do on an album what we can do live and not really indulge too much. We try to make the limitations be that: that if one of the three of us can’t play a part, then maybe the part needs to be reassessed.
How did you develop the fusion of elements of shoegaze and doom metal that we hear on Elude?
It was just kind of stuff that I was into, and then when Rick joined the band, he had a pretty big influence in terms of metal and stuff. ‘Cause he was really into — not necessarily exclusively doom metal or anything — but he likes really heavy music. And I kind of wasn’t as into that. So I think that’s a lot of it, is when he came in. He really brought a lot of that.
“Sonder” is definitely a standout from Elude. It is the shortest track, and it’s completely instrumental. It has very sparse production, which is different from the other songs on this album. How did this song come about?
That one — I can’t honestly remember — I mean, I’ve been playing that one on acoustic for a long time, and I kind of always intended it to be an acoustic song. And then, we just messed around with that ending one day in practice. That was one that we honestly didn’t pay very close attention to on the record, which I know sounds odd. That was one where we just let it flow in a weird way. ‘Cause there couldn’t really be a metronome, ‘cause I was just playing in free time. So that’s kind of where that one happened. We tried to keep that one very live and just sort of react to one another.
Your creative process for this album seemed pretty free — you let things take you wherever they went. For your music videos, did you take a similar approach? There’s a lot of psychedelic visuals in your music videos — was this aesthetic planned or did it similarly develop on its own?
That was actually more of a chance meeting. We were hooked up with the Essentials Collective, and they just had so many ideas and all this vivid imagery that they wanted to put in. And we kind of helped direct them in terms of cadence of where things fit with the music. But really, the visuals, particularly of the “Burnout” video, are almost entirely them. And then the other video was (directed by) a friend of ours, drip//cuts, that does essentially video synth work. And we didn’t actually have our hands too close on that one. That one was a lot. We kind of got crunched for time, so we trusted him to do that one a bit more. I think we only got one edit at that, and I believe the other one, we had like 12.
What’s in store for Grivo in 2020?
We’re always writing, but it’s kind of been a time of really trying to reassess and then trying to figure out what we want to do next. Just experimentation, largely. We have no real definite plans. We’d like to release an album this year, but I don’t know though, if that’ll happen. It’s not out of the question, but we don’t really want to rush anything either. I know that’s not the most fascinating of answers, but yeah, that’s kind of where we are.
Is there anything else you’d like to let our readers know about the band or your upcoming music?
I hope everyone keeps an open mind to everybody’s music and art. Everybody’s different — their whole life experiences and all that. Just hope more people listen to jazz, and metal, and hip-hop, and everything. There’s so much good stuff out there, especially since people can make an amazing album in their bedroom. I just hope that everybody keeps an open mind.
This interview has been minimally edited for clarity and length.
Listen to Grivo on Bandcamp and Spotify, and find them on Instagram and Twitter @grivoband.