Souvenir's Young America have raised the bar with their latest offering "An Ocean Without Water". A unique melting pot of influences, SYA have created a beguiling instrumental sound that is part Morricone Spaghetti Western, part electronic and part thundering desert rock.

For this interview band members Jonathan, Ken and Graham all sit down to discuss their new album, their local scene and the records that have been glued to their stereo's this year. Just don't call them post-rock, though.

First question, Souvenir's Young America is an interesting name, where did you get it from and does it have any significance?

Ken: It was the best one on a list of bad names.

Jonathan: Ken and I came to practice with a different set of words each time and cut it down slowly, finally putting those 3 words together. It was meant to be a difficult name for a difficult band back when we were just a Godflesh-esque two piece. But the name has evolved with the band. I like that the souvenir's has ownership over young America. It has a political and historical theme to it without being straight forward.

Graham: It's all relevant to the modern situation in this country and how it all plays off of past experience. The Young America movement originally started in the nineteenth century as a means of promoting American expansionism and vicious patriotism as a means to mend the increasing divisions between states which would lead to the Civil War. The leaders attempted to whip an otherwise distracted populace into a patriotic fervor motivated by the tenets of Manifest Destiny. Today, we're left with only this sense of obligation to such concepts, as if we're owned like a small trinket by the leaders with only the vaguest concept of learning from past mistakes.

If you were to describe SYA's sound to a newcomer, what would you say? What goals do you want to achieve with this music?

Jonathan: I hate when people ask me that question after they find out I'm in a band. It's so hard to answer. I just tell them to listen to it. That it's instrumental. I don't know, we've gotten some pretty crazy comparisons over the years. Autechre and Sleep doing Tom Waits songs.

Electronic-doom-country-krautrock. Red Sparowes, Jaga Jazzist, and Earth in a blender. Godspeed doing 70s biker metal. Desert rock, Space metal. I have no idea if any of that helps or fits. And as far as goals go, to just keep creating and being productive. Try new things and go new places. Getting to Europe soon would be awesome as well. Plus just getting this music out there and people having their own experiences with it. Instrumental music can express feelings or describe situations where words fail. Without words to lead the listener, each individual can have their own ideas, feelings, visions, or experiences with each song. I love hearing about it from people who listen to us.

Graham: Anything we can achieve is great. I'll continue to invest all I can into this and see where it takes me. Anything is possible.

Ken: I'd like to be able to continue pushing this band as far as it can go artistically, and I really don't see any limits to that. I don't mind saying that as far as the business end of the band goes, it would be nice if we can get to the point where things start to pay for themselves so that we can focus on making the music we want to make without having to dump money into the band. Of course, the artistic and the logistic sides of a band are always going to be intertwined to an extent.

What is the SYA songwriting process like? Do you start with a basic riff and then add the layers of sound and percussion?

Ken: A far as the nuts and bolts of song writing go, I'm honestly not sure that there's any real methodology behind our song writing. We tend to write backwards or from the middle of a song far more often than we write a whole song from beginning to end.

Typically we'll start off with a part or two that one of us has come up with and if it's something that we like we'll try to expand on it until we can all say "Yeah, this sounds like a potential ending or bridge, let's flesh it out and see where it goes." Then there's the often torturous process of trying to put everything together into a cohesive piece that makes sense to all of us. Since we're always writing our songs together as opposed to one person doing the writing and teaching everyone else their parts, it's very organic process.

Jonathan: There are always new ideas, sounds, or feelings we want to incorporate in our songs and that helps keep things fresh. Everything plays off each other for a reason, from the ambiance to the heaviness to the melodies.

Graham: Speaking only for myself, I find a song I really like and try to rip it off a little bit. By the time we're done with it, it'll be totally unrecognizable. Stravinsky once said that a good composer doesn't borrow, he steals.

With the amount of attention to detail on "An Ocean Without Water", how important was it to find the right producer?

Jonathan: Really important. I only wanted to do this record with John Morand at Sound of Music. I didn't want it any other way. I wanted to create a real headphone record, something where you could hear new things with every listen. And John did that so well on those Labradford records. Plus we had worked together before and really gelled. I love the way this record sounds.

Graham: We went with a producer who was very high and that was a really good choice.

Ken: We wrote this record in a relatively short time span, which means that we put a lot more thought into the overall flow of all the songs than we did on our s/t album, which was written in bits and pieces over a much longer period. John helped us keep that consistent flow.

You have recently finished a tour in the US was it a good experience and will you be heading over to Europe in the future?

Jonathan: I really hope so. Europe would be awesome. It's a goal for sure. Just need the money to do so and the interest to make it worthwhile. Shipping all those keyboards and getting plane tickets is going to be expensive. But people outside the US have been more supportive than people in the states from day one. I'd love to return the favor.

Graham: Wherever we can afford to go, we'll be there.

Ken: US tours are always fine. Not a huge success but we never loose money either. Some cities we get huge shows, others we struggle to get anyone out. That's tour. It's all a roll of the dice. We've been lucky enough to play with some great bands from time to time and that's been a big help.

The album came out on Crucial Blast, what are they like to work with?

Jonathan: I love what Crucial Blast has been doing over the last few years. Adam takes good chances and puts a wide variety of experimental music out there. Even his recent choices of reissues are fantastic. And Adam has been one of our biggest supporters over the years. I remember being on tour and coming across a feature on our first record up on the front-page of his web store. He was the first store to really help out our small release.

After our first year as a trio, we needed to find a larger label to call home and help us move forward. We mailed the "September Songs" recording around, talked seriously to a half dozen labels, and in the end decided Crucial Blast was the best fit for us. After meeting Adam in person, we had made up our mind. He was willing to fit our time frame into his schedule and support us in the ways we needed. Even now, he's willing to communicate with us and is open to any ideas. We're pretty happy thus far.

Hailing from Richmond, Virginia what can you tell us about the local scene there and is there anybody we should look out for?

Jonathan: Tulsa Drone does awesome instrumental stuff loaded with dulcimer. Lord By Fire plays some awesome metal. Mouthbreather plays great frantic punk rock. Aughra puts on a cool solo electronic show.

Graham: Richmond is one of the best cities in the world. Cheap to live, people are awesome, the amount of alcohol consumed makes me feel like far less of a drunk. The music scene has produced amazing bands pretty consistently for over two decades and really shows no signs of stopping. From Born Against to Labradford, RVA's held it down. The only downside to that is how spoiled people can get around here. Sometimes it seems like the amount of activity is taken for granted.

Ken: I've been in Richmond for eight years now, so it's pretty safe to say that I like it a lot. It's one of the most relaxed, consistently fun cities on the east coast, if not the entire U.S. We've always been a bit of an odd bird in relation to the rest of the music scene here, but lately it seems like things are starting to click a little bit for us when it comes to hometown shows.

SYA sound different to the vast majority of instrumental acts. Do you feel part of this post-rock movement?

Ken: "Post-rock" is something we don't identify with. That genre is completely over-saturated with far too many bands that aren't really pushing themselves to do anything new. Plus, when a review slaps the post-rock label on something, the first thing that comes to mind for a lot of people is going to be Godspeed, Explosions in the Sky, and a whole bunch of other bands that we don't sound like at all. For better or worse, we're doing something totally different, so I'd rather not be lumped in with that genre and the baggage that it carries.

Graham: While there are certainly band comparisons that I don't mind, I think the genre tags and classifications can be indicative of what's wrong with music criticism these days. If you look at the advent of rock journalism, you had writing that was as subversive and interesting as the music being made. We just play music. I'd rather people comment on the music instead of dumping it into an easy category.

Jonathan: We listen to such a wide variety of music and we're bringing elements in from all over the place. It's hard to describe what we do, even for me. And I think we're all pretty happy with that. Sometimes you hear elements together that shouldn't work but do. We've got electronic, metal, western, prog, blues, and experimental elements that all come together somehow. I think that's great. If the music leads the listener to have a connection... to think or feel or see something, then we've done our job.

With SYA reviews cropping up on diverse publications like Wire and Kerrang!, has it always been an aim to connect with as many markets as possible?

Jonathan: We take ideas from a wide range of influences and we don't fit into any scene per say, so it makes sense to me that we have the possibility to get reviews in a diverse set of publications. I'm all for fitting in with whatever and whomever. I really like playing a show where record nerds in their 60s are getting into it next to record nerds in their 20s. It happens from time to time and it's great. The more people that listen, the better!

Would you consider soundtracking a film and if so, who would you like to work with?

Jonathan: I would love to do a film soundtrack. I really hope that's something that we do at least once. But the music we'd write for that would sound quite different.

Graham: It's interesting, because I love music that sounds cinematic, but I tend not to like actual soundtracks as much as regular albums. Soundtracks themselves carry aesthetics inherently conjoined to the film that they score and it can be difficult to separate the two. I love how evocative soundtrack music can be, but because it is often inseparable from its visual counterpart, it can limit what the listener visualizes.

Ken: I think doing a soundtrack would be a bit of a challenge really. Since we don't tend to write in any kind of linear progression or with a concrete narrative in mind, it would be interesting to figure out how we'd go about doing it. I've always really loved the music that Neil Young composed for Dead Man. It's just this really stark, beautiful guitar work that fits the film perfectly, it isn't necessarily written to provide a theme for the film so much as it syncs up with the ebb and flow of the film and really becomes a part of it, even though it's very distinctive and interesting in its own right.

Jonathan: Cliff Martinez has been doing some amazing soundtrack work in recent years. The Nick Cave's recent soundtrack with Warren Ellis for "The Proposition" was stunning.

Last question, when not recording/touring what bands can be found on your stereo and what has been your favorite release so far in 2007.

Graham: I listen to a lot of different things from 60s French pop music to Turkish psychedelic bands to dub to crust punk to country. I'm always listening to New Model Army. Best record of 2007 so far is Rhys Chatham's "A Crimson Grail."

Ken: High on Fire (ready to hear the new record!) and The Party of Helicopters. Best release of 07? So far it's a toss up between The Hidden Hand "The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote" and Turbonegro "Retox."

Jonathan: I'm constantly rotating records in and out, old stuff and new. It's hard for me to give you an idea. Recently? Cerberus Shoal, Autechre, Earth, Ashra, Early Day Miners, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Matmos, Carcass, and Sleep. Bummed the new Bjork and Neurosis records didn't blow me away this year, but they still have some good tracks. Still got a few months to decide on the best of 2007, but Grails "Burning off Impurities" is at the top so far. Shining "Grindstone" and Dalek "Abandoned Language" are up there.