The Roofer's Union

The Roofer's Union was born out of Brooklyn's blooming DIY scene, and their name is a sentiment to that. Spending the last two years playing in venues and rooftops alike, the band acquired their moniker from hosting a series of secret rooftop parties to cater to their underage fans. The psychedelic quintet are gearing up to release their debut full-length album, By Degrees, and today we're excited to premiere the album's latest offering, "Man Kills God, Man Creates Dinosaur." Think Animal Collective meets the Unicorns, and you have a good sense of the experimental, infectious nature of TRU's sound. Stream the track above.

“Don’t be fooled by the completely meaningless title," keyboardist Travis Tyge warns. "Well, this song is a tough one to explain. It came as a sort of stream of consciousness, perhaps my way of coping with my struggle to make peace with humanity’s absurdities. In short, it’s about how shitty people can be, personally or in general. Since it’s hard to assign the song with a specific meaning because it deals with a more emotionally complex notion than a logical one, we decided to come up with one of the more ridiculous titles we could think of. It used to extend further... ‘Man Kills God, Man Creates Dinosaur, Dinosaur.... etc’."

“This is definitely one of our more brief, rhythmically straightforward songs," drummer Kevin Walker adds. "It’s pretty easy to grasp up front, and maintains an upbeat groove which builds and builds until the final outro section. It’s always a fun one to play live.” - Pure Volume

Today we bring you an exclusive song and video premiere from The Roofer's Union.

This Brooklyn-based band of best mates makes electronic psych rock, and they have tons of fun doing it. The video for their newest track, “Smoke Machine” is well... a trip and a half, but with this band that performs in boas, lives for rooftops, and draws inspiration from outer space, we cant say we’re surprised.

Drummer Kevin Walker tells us that they actually got crafty, made puppets, and filmed them over strips of paper. "We wanted it to have a handmade aesthetic, have it really look like we did it ourselves because we did. We then soaked it in effects at the end to match the colorful and vibrant aesthetic of the song. The colorful display is the perfect backdrop for this song. Its electric/indie feel is strong — guitars blaring, vocals echoing, all laced together via ambient synth. It's the kind of track we could listen to over and over again. 'Smoke Machine' is unique because it is the result of all five us co-writing it and working together to explore how to keep a groove going throughout the whole song... It really was a group effort and the result of the band working together, as the most co-written song we have on the album" says Walker.

It seems that these talented young musicians are also very thoughtful songwriters. You may notice chatter in the second verse. Walker explains, "Travis was hosting a day party during the first weekend of summer and Vaughn took out his phone and recorded people’s conversations. The loudest one was about some guy telling us what it’s like to sniff glue." The Roofer's Union have crafted a likable retro sound that'll have you longing for those high school glory days of debauchery and cheap thrills.

Watch "Smoke Machine" now: - Culture Collide

The Roofer’s Union are coming strong with an eclectic brand of rock n’ roll that confidently dabbles in soul, psychedelia and other styles to create an energetic sound easily embraced by live music fans. Electric keys, Jack White-esque crooning, and dynamic song structure leads us on a journey through ‘The Desert‘, a killer selection from their Cosmic Popularity EP. The band will be playing Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn on May 3rd and frequent the NYC scene, also running their own record label called Flat Box Recordings. - Dingus

“Weird is what we do,” “it’s who we are,” it’s what we breathe,” “it’s what fills our soul,” “weird is good.” The Roofer’s Union is NYU’s next great indie band. If you haven’t heard of them yet, don’t worry, I won’t tell. Comprised of Travis Tyghe (Lead Singer, Sophomore, Recorded Music), Jake Chapman (Guitarist, Junior, Recorded Music), Vaughn Hunt (Synth, Sophomore, Music Technology), Artur Szerejko (Bass Guitar, Sophomore, Music Technology), and Kevin Walker (Drums, Sophomore, Gallatin), The Roofer’s Union is the “Electronic Art Rock” band of your dreams–your drug-filled, trippy-ass dreams. Their first EP, Cosmic Popularity, dropped on October 8th and already the music video (embedded below) for “Melt” is taking over my Facebook newsfeed. The video was created in partnership with Tisch Film and TV students (Taylor Gonzalez, Zach Stone, and Matt Nussbaum) who go by GORF. We sat down with GORF and The Roofer’s Union to discuss their EP, the trippy music video, and Guy Fieri.
Local: Had any of you been in a band before The Roofer’s Union?
Jake: I think we all have.
Kevin: I played in the Yellows in Los Angeles in 2011/12.
Artur: I played/still play in a band called Tilde.
Vaughn: I played in this band called Grape Shasta.
Any noticeable differences playing with The Roofer’s Union versus past bands?
Artur: Everyone is just so good looking. Also, everyone seems to work so well together.
Jake: The Roofers is just so much more legit than any other band thing I’ve done.
Vaughn: My last band was like a jam band, so this is much different.
Kevin: Thus far, Travis has usually given us some sort of sketch or demo for us to work with, usually a lot more minimal and electronic based. We start from there usually.
Jake: Usually.
Artur: It’s difficult to find a group of five people that all have the same interests and creative goals in common but I feel like that’s what we have here. That’s the main difference I’ve noticed.
So when you all were working on the EP, what did that process entail?
Kevin: This relates to that last question actually. We all know how to run a studio, each person in the band individually, so together it was crazy. We had no engineer or producer or anything. Just the band in this dope studio (Braund Sound in Greenpoint, Brooklyn) with a bunch of cool shit. So much fun.
Artur: Yeah agreed. It really helped us out because we were able to focus on the creative side of things instead of just worrying about laying down the tracks getting the equipment to work. We had a lot of liberty to experiment with the music and I feel like that shows in the end product.
Jake: Yeah, the sessions were fun. A lot of pizza. A lot of high fives.
Where did the name come from for the band?
Artur: Thanks be to Guy Fieri. We are all licensed contractors.
Jake: Praise the Holy Soul Patch (hosanna). No the name was from uh…who was it that had the band name list? Someone help me with this story.
Julia Rich (Manager, Sophomore, Recorded Music): Ah yes, oddly enough every band member’s uncle was a roofer.
Travis: Every person I ever had work on my roof happened to be an uncle.
And the lyrics…?
Artur: One of Travis’s orifices.
Jake: Ouija, mainly.
Travis: Well, the truthful answer is that I usually write the lyrics all at once in big emotional bursts. In a way it’s a lot like crying, sometimes you just let it all flow out, and afterwards you’re like “what the hell was that.”
How did you choose the song you wanted to do for your first official video?
Julia: I approached GORF after meeting Taylor, and after seeing how similar GORF was to the Roofers in terms of personalities I asked them to choose a song off the EP that would inspire them the most.
Travis: Personally, “Melt” is my favorite song on the EP.
So did you all sit down and have a meeting to discuss the video or….?
Taylor: I met with Julia and Travis a few times to mull over some ideas.
Travis: We sort of met with a few ideas in mind but we never committed to any specific script or plot or anything like that. I think it’s safe to say there was a lot of room for creative development on both ends.
Taylor: A lot of it was very spontaneous.
Zach: GORF had a lot of shot ideas brewing for a long time going in, and we sorta just tried to use as many as GORF could.
Kevin: I had no idea what to expect. I just showed up (late).
Jake: Basically we had a space, equipment, and crazy costumes and props and we made each other laugh all day.
Artur: By tickling each other. We got no work done at all that day.
Travis: Yeah I think the most important thing that we kept in mind that we just had fun with it.
Artur: We had to finish it in one of the dorms cause we ran out of studio time.
GORF, had you all done anything like this before?
Taylor: Never. We were completely in over our heads.
Zach: We’d all been doing separate video stuff since elementary school. And this was our first time to really go all out together.
Taylor: We were very fortunate to - NYULocal