A Thousand Cranes: Philosophical, Confessional And Loud

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to sheaserrano@gmail.com.

• A Thousand Cranes is an awkward, woozy, surreal band that's probably a band in only a liberal sense of the word. The first time you listen to them, you're either going to say that they might be the greatest thing going on in the city right now, or you'll put finger quotes around the word "music" when you describe them to someone else because you think really its just a bunch of weirdos making noise into a microphone. (We're of the thinking that it's the former.)
• We fully intended to hate these guys when we initially heard about them.

Oh, you probably need to know this too: The interview below is long as shit, more than 1,200 words. And that's after it's been parsed down to the most important parts. Mostly, we try to keep these interviews somewhere in the vicinity of 600 words, because anything beyond that is usually uninteresting. But this time we couldn't cut it any shorter without thinning out some of the brilliance behind the music.

Keep it moving to read about a lotus, a really expensive fishing net and the greatest single answer to a question in the history of the Artist of the Week column.

Rocks Off: Standard AotW Opener: Tell everyone everything they need to know about A Thousand Cranes in exactly six words.

A Thousand Cranes: That lotus always rises from shit.

RO: You have a song called "Diamond Net." Would an actual diamond net be the greatest net of all time?

ATC: The name is taken from Indra's Net of Jewels, which is related in the Avatamsaka Sutra. It is a parable that there is a net covering the universe, and at each intersection or node of the net, there is a jewel. The net is infinite in every direction and every dimension, so the jewels are also infinite.

The jewels are precious and beautiful. However, if you look closely at only one jewel, you will see reflected in it all of the other infinite jewels, and each of these infinite jewels in the reflection of the one jewel reflect every other jewel as well. So the reflecting is infinite.

Indeed, this does sound like the greatest net of all time.

RO: You went with the name A Thousand Cranes for your band name. Why? Did you feel that 990 cranes weren't quite enough cranes to represent your band's awesomeness?

ATC: Thank you for the compliment. We named ourselves A Thousand Cranes because it is poetic and pretty. There is a Japanese legend that if you create A Thousand Cranes you will be granted a wish. Also, the quantity 1,000 is overwhelming in magnitude.

A Thousand Cranes, "Pop It"