You guys played at Pitchfork this weekend, were you overwhelmed for autographs?
A ton of people came up, but we're a band, they want to say they like our playing, take pictures, it was cool.

i hear you got mistaken for a member of Boris a couple times.
Yeah that happened a few times, not really, but it was fucking hilarious, no one know who the fuck we were, it was mostly indie rock people, and we're not indie rock people. Echo Park, we're not. We don't hang with the LA scene or go to any of those shows.

It's funny because LA is seen as a cesspool of promo and everyone getting themselves out there, but the music scene surrounding the Smell and stuff was totally off everyone's radar until a few years ago.
It's because the DIY scene doesn't really get coverage, whereas in New York, that scene has a much higher profile. The indie rock scene works that way, and is a bigger deal. In LA, there are bands downtown, there are other venues, different things going on different places, stuff like that. It's spread out. In New York, there are the cool shows and venues that are known by everybody. I think the way it's gotten popular has been confusing.

I read somewhere that you guys are constantly being asked about being borne out of this huge bizarre kind of hipster paradise, when on the inside it's way less glamorous.
Especially in Europe! It's all over the press, and they're putting it in the NME as the biggest trend in music right now, and people are going over and saying, "This fucking sucks." They come over and ask why they can't drink.

Back to Pitchfork, it seemed like a lot of the festival crowd there was geared up for a new experience, rather than being in a mindset of "I'm going to see my ten favorite bands!"
Yeah, they've become more "I want to find out about new bands, I'm just going to fucking go. Oh Ambulance is playing, so i wont get burned." Or "I've been listening to this band, I wouldn't pay for it normally, but there's some back up so I can get a sample of everything." The thing that happens at most festivals, Coachella for example, is there will be a big band and everyone ditches whoever to go see it, and Pitchfork was one of the only ones that had no empty shows, everyone had an audience.

In the last year to 18 months you guys have probably encountered a lot of crowds like that, playing shows that you get to and no one knows who the hell you are, What's that like to go against, or does it not really bother you?
We were touring for like three months, did about 10 DIY shows, before we had a record, press or anything, that made us work harder and we left an impression, which always feels good. It's hard when people don't know the band because they're less open to anything the band does. That makes you feel like crap and practice a lot more and perform better. If you really want to do it you can do it, we never thought we'd get any kind of press or internet fame. We just looked like whores and thought no one would ever see it.

Is losing the element of surprise as the unknown band going to change your live performance? At Pitchfork you got on stage, did your thing to an unsuspecting throng, then left. Do you think that in two years, you're going to stop between songs and say, "This is a song about a girl--"
That's one thing about our aesthetic we'll never change, the quality of our act has remained largely consistent since the beginning. When we started, we decided we weren't going to do it until it was really good: "This is nice, we'll do it in our live show, this is bullshit, we're not going to do this." That's the way we do it and we're not going to ruin our aesthetic by changing that, because people care now, or something like that. We have more to prove now, our show dynamic's changed when people know the songs, but we can't change and try to bring that about ourselves artificially.

Would you say your songs have specific messages behind them, or are they more concerned with trying to maintain a kind of mood throughout your set?
The songs are about things, just not necessarily targeted to make you think about that, while you're hearing the song, while we're playing the set, but the aesthetic is king. Getting you off is our number one goal and we're not going to compromise that. Which makes it less of an experimental thing...

That's funny, because I remember reading reviews of your record that called it experimental, which I felt was just kind of lazy. Just because you're not verse chorus verse doesn't mean.... Do you read your press and scratch your heads or do you just not read any of it at all?
Every time you have press, people are e-mailing to you all the time, so we definitely read the press, a lot of the times it's obvious; this guy did not listen to this shit, or this guy doesn't know anything about he's talking about, and it's sad because it's Internet time and people need to seem like they're cool and smart. They never talk about how music makes them feel, it's all comparisons, "This is like this, that like that, I'm so fucking smart." It's pathetic, and we read reviews for bands we like, it's a drag when you see the writer had no fucking clue, so much is totally totally stupid. But it's all revenge for me. Next album we'll put a lot more thought into our set, and what we say. Live reviews are better, they're me saying, "I'm here, this is how I feel."

Speaking of touring and honing this thing down, there's a lot of flying around, stamping, and rolling on the floor, Do you check yourselves into the hospital every week, do you wear pads...?
We just get really hurt. Actually at Pitchfork, there was this moment when people were throwing bottles and breaking glass and I ended up getting thrown on them, it wasn't that big of a deal, you just bandage it. We get pretty fucked up jumping around, but nothing serious, no one's going to die. After you're doing it for a while you get used to it, your body does.

Changing gears: I understand you don't fall into this camp, but a lot of indie rock bands are uptight about people remixing your music, and you guys actually sought to release a remix record. What are your feelings on the whole uptick in remixes?
I think that's [being uptight] fucking retarded. Everything we do as a band is about being relevant and a modern band, we try to do what modern bands should do, we want something relevant to our listeners' lives, something fucking cool. And we want something harder too, so much indie rock is based on perfectly canonizing some older band's song. Remixes are tied to this blog and dance culture that's really fresh right now, all part of being more modern and relevant to listeners

Is it more about trying to take rock away from the stale place it's been for the past 5 or ten years?
And it's a way to get new music, because working with the remixers, guys we love, just means good things for us, because we love to hear their music, their remixes, and thinking if they did stuff with us it would be awesome.

Is working with remixers going to influence and possibly lead to collaborative recordings or is it just a standalone thing, a kind of constant supplement?
We see it as an exclusive thing, but there are always parts that rub off on us, "Hey the way they thought about and did that, it was really fucking effective." There's definitely some conscious overlap but we'll never say let's all start a band now.

You hand picked your remixers, so you probably had trust in everyone you contacted. But was there ever a point where you got one back and felt like it sucked and didn't want to use it?
No, we all respect and accept what we got. Every time we downloaded one we found ourselves saying, "This is fucking good, wow!! We had some talks about stuff being polished ever, and we wanted just this part, but there were no rejections or "This sucks," we were all really into it.

You used some unjustly under-the-radar people, but also some really, really obscure guys, people I'd just never even heard of, how did you find them all?
We didnt pay attention to how well known any of them were. We could have asked bigger people, with better original stuff, but we felt most of them wouldn't have been any good at remixing. I just spent a long time on Myspace, drinking beer, seeing what was up, like "Oh this guy's fucking awesome, he hasn't done any remixes, let me ask him and he'll be down." Some people are hungry to do it. Like Pictureplane took it as a chance to be like, "Let me show you what I can do," and we got it back and felt, "Holy fucking shit it's good!"

Couple more things, then I'm gonna let you go. What's theoutlook for the rest of the year? Back to the studio, more tour..?
It's really hard for us to turn down shows, since our original goal was to go out and play, maybe someone will give a shit then, if we played about a hundred shows people might know our name, but now it's hard for us, we're trying to turn down shows to get an opportunity to do this record as soon as possible, just trying to get it as good as possible. And it's hard touring, because we cant really write on the road, [because of] the way our music works. We probably won't make the end of this year, but we're hoping for early '09.

You going to do it with Lovepump again, or have you secretly signed some deal with EMI?
We might do a different label for Europe, but we're going to do everything for Lovepump, their owner has basically become our manager. Lovepump is really into doing smarter and campaigning this record from what we learned on the last one. We want to be with Lovepump, we want to work with Jake, Keegan, Mike. There's no place better for us to be...

How about producing and mixing? You guys did a lot of that yourselves on the last record...
We did everything except mastering. It killed us, and took very, very long since we didnt know anything at all, so for this one we're going to get an engineer to work for us, we're going to either go to a studio, or just a warehouse space to set up shop. We just don't want to have to take it all out and pack it up everyday. Me and the boys are going to get some fancy stereo shit and streamline it. The next one's going to be awesome because we were lacking a lot of expertise with the last one, and for the final we're going to have a pro do it, for this one. And we're going to have it mastered, by the best guy ever encountered.

So with all that in mind, when's the next time you're coming to New York?
It's very possible we'll be there before the end of the year, we're probably going to do a few shows in Brazil, and then hit Montreal. We're trying to lay low, but hopefully we'll be back.

As John said, HEALTH are working on getting their as-yet-untitled sophomore album ready for early 2009. For more on the band, check out their Myspace page and their main website.