Activity released their debut album two weeks into covid lockdown in March 2020, a record with a weirdly prescient title, Unmask Whoever. The music also fit the time: mysterious, alien, sinewy, cautious paranoia. Aka a good time! Despite the less than ideal time that the first album dropped in, Activity survived, mutated, and actually got better. Spirit in the Room, made during peak pandemic isolation — “to keep from losing our minds,” frontman Travis Johnson says — takes all the best parts of their debut and condenses it like a white dwarf star, and then expands upon it. Synthesizers, samples and programmed beats take a much larger role this time and make for great companions to play against, taking things from the surreal to the unreal. It’s a fantastic album (read the full review here) and you can listen to it below.
We talked to Travis about the new album, and he told us about 10 albums that influence the vibes of Spirit in the Room, including Tortoise, This Mortal Coil, Fairport Convention and more. Read is annotated list below.
10 ALBUMS THAT INFLUENCED ACTIVITY’S ‘SPIRIT IN THE ROOM’
Sandii / Sandii and the Sunsetz
There’s this song “Zoot Kook” by Sandii that I’d wanted for a while but the copies are all really pricey, but it’s also on this other record she did called Heat Scale that’s a lot less expensive. On both she’s working with YMO’s Haruomi Hosono. I got it at the beginning of the pandemic. Numerous times we set out to make a song like it and it ended up sounding completely different, but those songs made the album, so it’s in the DNA. The working title of “I Like What You Like” was “Sandii” for a long time. Anyway, that whole Heat Scale album is really interesting, strange new wave stuff with lots of Okinawan and Hawaiian influences.
—
This Mortal Coil / Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd
These records are only somewhat related, but I discovered them around the same time (which is kind of embarrassing because they’re both so classic). I was still reeling from my mom’s brutal death and both of these (It’ll End in Tears and The Moon and the Melodies) just felt exactly right. When I was trying to come up with my guitar part for “Where the Art Is Hung” I knew I wanted it to be this murky ambient thing that gets really crystalline and defined at some point. And these were the blueprint for that, especially “Barramundi.” And “Fyt” was the idea behind some of the more ambient, abstract, hypnotic parts of our album. Getting into these retroactively made me like the Cocteau albums I’d already owned a lot more too.
—
Fairport Convention
If I could sing like anyone, it would be Sandy Denny. “Genesis Hall” is one of my favorite songs of all time. Our song “Ect Frag” is electronic in execution I guess but to me it sounds like a 60s folk rock thing, and the samples are from an obscure folk record. The idea, especially with Bri singing (kind of like Sandy Denny), was for it to feel like something like “Genesis Hall” or “Reynardine,” kind of haunted and ancient, like something excavated.
—
Joe Henderson featuring Alice Coltrane – The Elements
This was another one I got a copy of just before the pandemic so for a few months it was in heavy rotation. The feel of “Earth” wormed its way into “Department of Blood” big time, the bass sound and the relentless percussion, even though it sounds a lot different. Probably most of the stuff we do where we think we’re emulating something, we’re just failing miserably. This is probably one of those cases.
—
Suuns – Fiction EP
This came out when we were getting together to work on new stuff, at the height of the pandemic, our one social outlet. We’d always been fans, and it was good timing. We’re always trying to figure out how to combine different elements in a way where the lines are all blurry, where someone might think “I don’t know which part of this they wrote first and based the rest of it around” and Suuns have almost perfected that. Tense, pretty, menacing, soothing, jazz, dance, heavy guitars – seamless. Touring with them last year was a treat.
—
Charlie Megira
There’s a Numero comp that came out shortly before Covid and, once again, I’d gotten it and then was locked in my apartment with it. I don’t normally listen to stuff like this but it was just too good. “Cloud Come Here” was written in the style of some of the softer stuff on this – lonesome, hushed, etc. I’ve heard people say we are somehow Twin Peaks-ish, and when I listen to this album by someone else, I think I know what they mean.
—
Prober Sunburn – Forgotten Sunscreen Applied by Basso (compilation)
Cool compilation of left-field and downtempo stuff. Especially the songs by Ghia and Miko. I can’t remember exactly which moments of which of our songs, but we tried ripping off both of those at various points. Most of the new songs that are more live/rock setups could’ve been played in tons of different ways and it felt like we tried them all. One practice was entirely spent trying to play one of the new ones like the Miko song “Im Garten.” To me, even those things that we didn’t keep are still big parts of what the album ended up being.
—
Tortoise – “I Set My Face to the Hillside”
I’ve loved this song/album/band since I was a teenager. When Jess brought in “Where the Art Is Hung” and played us the outro, I thought immediately of trying to go for the sound of the outro on this song. I didn’t know what I meant then and I still don’t but to me it feels like we pulled it off.
—
The Lines – hull down
An insanely under-talked-about post punk group from the 70s and 80s. This was their lost album, filled with all these little open-ended electronic experiments, which is how a lot of the songs on Spirit In The Room started. It’s really inspiring. A lot of the ideas I got from this didn’t make the album (I still have hopes for some of them), but they were still in the mix in terms of where everything was coming from.
—
Smog – Dongs of Sevotion
This was my mom’s favorite Smog album, and I listened to it a lot after she died. We got the title of our album from a lyric in “Distance.” It’s also the name of Tom Jones’ 32nd (!) album, so we kind of had to go with it.
—
Activity will be on tour beginning in late September, including an appearance at Pop Montreal. Tickets are on sale Friday, August 4. All dates below.
Activity — 2023 Tour Dates
9/27 Troy, NY @ No Fun
9/29 Burlington, VT @ Radio Bean
9/30 Montreal, QC @ L’Esco (Pop Montreal)
10/1 Toronto, ON @ Monarch Tavern
10/2 Detroit, MI @ PJs Lager House
10/3 Chicago, IL @ Hideout
10/5 Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club
10/7 Dubuque, IA @ Fox Den
10/8 Davenport, IA @ Raccoon Motel
10/10 Nashville, TN @ The Basement