Oulipo, a group of long-time friends turned bandmates, has been playing and recording for three years. The North Carolina band was signed to Diggup Tapes in early 2011 and consists of five members, including N.C. State student Timmy Matthews. Frontman Ryan Trauley and Matthews, Oulipo’s guitarist, sat down to talk with the Technician about the band’s long-distance songwriting process and the workings of a new album set for release next year.

Technician: How did you guys meet?

Trauley: It’s a little different for each person. I met Timmy on the school bus. 

Matthews: Yeah, me and Ryan have known each other the longest I think. 

RT: We all met because of one member and that was in high school. We would all play in different bands in high school but play shows with each other sometimes. By the time we all graduated high school, none of us had a band anymore. Everyone’s projects had kind of dried up, so I got them all to play with me.

If you had to categorize your music into a genre, what would it be?

RT: What are we saying these days? I don’t really know, it’s ultimately rock music but there is some kind of weirder element to it.  We’ve talked about Art Rock but, I don’t know, that sounds too pretentious. 

Can you guys describe your songwriting process?

RT: Yeah, it’s kind of changed, right now I’ll make a sample — sometimes it will be rhythmic and sometimes it will have more melodic components and we pass this stuff around online.

TM: Because we all live in different cities now, basically, so we don’t really have much of a chance to show each other what we have in person. So Ryan will usually put something in our communal drop box.

RT: Then everyone kind of thinks on it, sits on it for a while, and then when we meet everyone brings ideas and stuff and we usually try and write the song together.

TM: It usually comes pretty quickly, because we have a weekend or maybe even a day, so we have to kind of try to get something out of it in a really short session.

RT: We will be hyper-focused for like a two-day period and then we won’t really be able to work for a while.

TM: So then we go back and fine tune everything we do.

Timmy, you go to N.C. State and Ryan, you go to Appalachian State right? How do you guys balance being in a band and going to school?

RT: I don’t really find it that hard. The hardest part is being separated and having to drive and stuff, but otherwise it’s not really that difficult. 

TM: It’s not that huge of a time commitment, luckily. There are some months when it is kind of insane and during the summer we are able to get a lot more done. 

RT: We have never existed without having to do that, without having to commute, so we don’t know what it’s like to not have to do that.

TM: Yeah, we just kind of got used to it.

How do you think your first album “That is What I Said (And I Dove Into the Water)” is different from “Primitive Ways”?

TM: Well a major difference is that literally none of us except for Ryan recorded on the first one.  

RT: The first one was kind of like my stuff that I had been working on and then as we started playing together, the recording kind of just got made for that one and we all learned how to play them. 

TM: It was recorded before we decided to be a band. Ryan kind of made demos. Some of those we still play but we don’t really reference them for recording because they were made before they were a real band. 

RT: And then Primitive Ways, we just took a step toward something different, like different configurations of the band would record parts and send them to me and I would  sort of manipulate and make something out of some of these samples. And then the stuff we are working on now, we are really trying to like write songs and then any manipulations that I’m doing are kind of subtle.

What would you say you guys’ greatest triumph was in the band so far?

RT: I mean we’ve had a lot of fun shows. Whenever we do a show at Kings, it feels really good. 

TM: We have done little two-week tours over the summer which has been kind of a miracle because they are always down to like wires, the last two days still trying to iron out details of the tour, but that’s been pretty cool.

RT: Some of the triumphs are kind of also trials. 

What do you see for your band’s future?

TM: Well, right now we are going to take it easy on shows. We do have two shows coming up this year before the new year. One is next weekend, not this coming one but the one after that in Durham with Lilac Shadows. Then after that there is another one, we are playing Local Band Local Beer the last Friday of the year, Dec. 19. So we are doing those two shows and then we might be taking it easy, oh yeah then we are playing in Asheville — I always forget that. But yeah I think we are just going to focus on recording.

RT: Long term we are trying to get an album together and write more songs. Right now we are in the process of writing.