EARS OF MAIZE: First off, I’m a fan of the music and a fan of the records. I want to congratulate you for bringing your music and your art to the Bay Area. Looking ahead to playing at Café Du Nord in San Francisco, I have also been loving listening to your recent EP entitled Own It, which just came out here in December. It is my understanding that you’re looking forward to an upcoming full-length release this spring?
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah, that’s right. What’s listed as the EP now is going to sort of become the full release of this vocal features album that’s going to come out. I believe it’s March 27, but it’s towards the end of March.
EARS OF MAIZE: And did I see that it has a working title of Echoes of Emerald Sands?
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah.
EARS OF MAIZE: Do you want to speak to how you found those collaborating partners and then what it means to you to evolve in adding a vocal component to your music and your records?
TED FEIGHAN: Sure. It’s funny you say that because this has been happening with me a lot too with the music. It’s instrumental, right? So then suddenly when you hear something you’re just like, “Hold on, there’s somebody else in the room.” It took me a minute to get used to that. The origin of it came from just wanting to challenge myself to do something different. People have asked me over the years when I’m going to have some sort of vocal features, and I thought, “Let’s just do it.” Let’s do a full album and get after it. I asked some people who are friends of mine and some new people who I’ve been introduced to through this that I’ve really fallen in love with their work. I’ve been psyched to have them on the record. From there, it just started to come together.
EARS OF MAIZE: With that in mind, has anything changed in putting the latest EP and the new record together as far as your process or being more or less collaborative?
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah, everything has changed, which is kind of funny. In challenging myself to do something different, I was like, “All right, we’re going to get vocal features and I’m going to record as much of it myself as I can.” In the past, it has been a lot of sample-based stuff, and with this record, I have created all of it myself. All the instrumentation—pretty much except for about five percent—was played by me. I am doing a lot more songwriting on this, which has been a fun challenge, and I’m feeling proud of myself for doing it. I came in feeling like I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to, and looking back at the record, I feel like, “All right, I can do this.” I feel psyched about it. I’m happy with how it turned out and getting people to work with me on it showed me that I’m not crazy.
EARS OF MAIZE: Mm-hmm.
TED FEIGHAN: This one really came into being where I was just sort of noodling in the studio. Since my main instruments that I play are guitar and bass, a lot of the record is way more guitar-driven, which is cool. It’s a little different from some of my other stuff. I would just come in and start writing some simple chord progressions and then maybe get a cool drum loop happening and work off of that. I made probably 25 demos of stuff. I would select which ones I thought made sense to the different artists that I was talking to and would send things over. People would think about what resonated with them, work on something, and send it back. Then I would do everything else on my end.
EARS OF MAIZE: Was there something that motivated you to reexamine your process with starting on the more instrumentation side of things versus sample-based stuff?
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah. I’ve always been recording music like this, but I haven’t released it. Monster Rally, at least in my mind, has such a very clear aesthetic visually and musically. Because I’ve done so many of these records and a bunch of stuff surrounding them, I went to make an album before this one and I was doing something a little different and feeling very stressed out that it was different. If I step away a little bit from how I’ve done things in the past, is that going to be rejected? I thought about that for a little bit and was talking to some friends about it. That made me feel like because I’m having this feeling, I have to do it. I have to do something different. I released a lot of things that I thought were limitations on myself. Allowing myself to do that and feeling it was going to be okay has been the biggest and most rewarding thing for me.
EARS OF MAIZE: Well, I have to compliment you on just how prolific you are with the amount of releases that you’ve put out. As a fan of the music, to have that big of a discography is great. I also get a sense that despite a lot of your music up until this point being very instrumental and void of lyrics, it takes the listener on a journey. It tells a story and has this “travel through your ears” component. Is that something that you actively build, or do you see music in a cinematic sense as you’re making it?
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah, people say that to me a lot, and I love it because I have the exact same experience. We all are having this different experience, but the thing that’s in common is that this music is taking me somewhere. I’ll make something or I’ll make a record and I will close my eyes and lay down in my studio. I’ll finish something and listen to it and I have an image and a picture of where I am. That’s one of the amazing things about instrumental music because when you don’t have a voice, you’re not being guided really. Your mind immediately just creates something incredible. I’ve always been drawn to the types of sounds and melodies that push that for myself and hopefully with others too. Cinematic is the best way to say it—just minds traveling.
EARS OF MAIZE: I even feel that from my own experience of DJing. From dropping the needle on that first record to the last song that you play, I want there to be a trajectory—a beginning, middle, and end—taking the listener somewhere where by the time you’re done listening, you go, “Oh wow, where am I again?” You don’t feel like you’re in the same four walls that you started. I get that sense in the music that you create. All that said, can you circle back to how you began in Cleveland, Ohio and this influence of Polynesia and tropical exotica?
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah. A lot of people joke about how I got into this in Ohio. But I think being in Ohio is core to me getting into it because right now is a perfect example. It’s January, it’s cold, it’s windy, all the leaves are gone, and it’s so gray. When I started it, it was in the wintertime that I got into a lot of this stuff. I’m drawn to things that look like places I would like to be. I had been buying a lot of records before I even had a record player. I was going through thrift stores just getting records that I liked and buying records from indie bands. In the record stores, I would look in the dollar bins and pick stuff that spoke to me just on the album cover. I didn’t know a lot of the artists then, and by and large, it almost always came to be this tropical stuff—a lot of exotica and Latin music. It has these bright colors and musically and visually all the stuff comes together. That’s why I loved it. A lot of these old exotica records are so cheesy looking on the cover, but your mind makes up this imagined place. You see this thing that mimics that, which is so unrealistic in many of them, but you’re just like, “Yes, that!”
EARS OF MAIZE: Mm-hmm.
TED FEIGHAN: So I had amassed a lot of these records and started listening to them and I was like, “Oh, this is awesome.” I had always been into hip-hop and particularly into producers. In sixth or seventh grade I was really into The Blueprint by Jay-Z. I was looking up and downloading instrumentals from LimeWire or something. I knew that was a little different from how a lot of other people were thinking because my friends would be like, “Dude, who cares about that?” and I was listening to instrumentals thinking, “I care. This is amazing.” Over time, about a year and a half before I started Monster Rally, I had gotten really into Madlib, MF DOOM, and the Madvillainy record. I remember I bought the vinyl before I knew anything about either of them. That was a lightning bolt. What I thought of as hip-hop or even music in general was shattered by discovering what indie hip-hop was. I had never even heard it before; it was mostly mainstream stuff. When I heard Madlib and J Dilla and all that, I was just like, “I have to do this.” I did a lot of research into what Madlib uses and I bought the Roland SP-303 sampler. It was the first thing I bought. I made pretty much all of Coral and Beyond the Sea just with that machine. Those records dictated a lot of the sound because of that grittiness. You can do so much with that, especially if you’re inspired by what you’re using. It was a total game changer and since then it was just off and running.
EARS OF MAIZE: I feel parallels to some of that experience. I grew up in the middle of Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and lived in Michigan for a while. I feel that dreamer sense of listening to music in your bedroom and where it can take you. I fell into a lot of those Arthur Lyman lounge-style records as I was also getting into tiki cocktails during the depths of the darkest days of the pandemic. But the thing that I really like about your music is that it’s not soaked in kitsch or nostalgia. It has the foundation and elements of those core pieces, but it’s very future-leaning and forward-thinking. How do you balance being your own creative, taking these pieces of influence, but then making something new in the conversation?
TED FEIGHAN: I’d like to say that’s more intentional than not, but I think a lot of it just has to do with choices being made in the selection of samples or types of production. A big thing for me that I think was really helpful early on was that I am not a music producer. I do not understand that sort of stuff; I’ve never been technically skilled in production. Because of that, it’s all just a lot of feeling. You wind up making choices and pushing through. I remember when I finished the first record and sent it to be mastered, the guy was just like, “This is a mess.” I was like, “Yeah, I guess so, but I think it sounds great.”
EARS OF MAIZE: Mm-hmm.
TED FEIGHAN: For things being unpolished, it gives an authenticity. I think that could be the thing that feels modern or future-pushing; it doesn’t feel manufactured. A lot of it feels very much like works in progress, which is cool because then you finish them in your mind, which takes you back to that mental stuff.
EARS OF MAIZE: How do you feel about where you fall in the musical food chain? You’re pulling sampled music and putting a spin on it yourself, and then there’s opportunity for your work and legacy to be chopped up and made into a new reincarnation. How do you embrace where you’re at in that mix?
TED FEIGHAN: I love that. I think it’s so cool about a lot of the things I do both musically and visually. I know that a lot of the things I’m going to produce—the components of what I’m going to produce—are just out there sitting somewhere. Maybe there’s a book at a library sale sitting there that is going to be the album cover of the next thing. So much of it is pushed to discovery, and that is just the most fun thing of the process. Discovering things and getting inspired is exciting. If I am able to provide any of that source to anyone, that makes me feel incredible. If you’re coming from a place of positivity, I just think it’s great.
EARS OF MAIZE: Curiosity in life is the magic ticket to a lot of things.
TED FEIGHAN: Yeah, absolutely.
EARS OF MAIZE: You talked about the early days of walking into a record store and where you would head as far as bins. How about today? You walk into a record store, what is your current fascination?
TED FEIGHAN: I’m always looking at the cheapest bins. To date, I think I’ve never spent more than $15 on a record. The dollar bin is going to be number one. Next, I’m probably going through recent releases in the hip-hop and general indie section, and then anything from the world section. One of those reasons is just because I love the packaging and the visuals. Even bands I don’t care about or have never listened to, you might get crazy inspiration from some of the artwork. The world stuff was a big game changer for me because I started with exotica. Then I realized the stuff I really liked seemed to be Afro-Cuban or something. If I see someone on the cover and notice they have a little string section or some people with bongos, I’m like, “That’s going to be sweet.” Old records are incredible because they almost always have a picture of the band and the gear setup. I’ve discovered so much music that way that didn’t even relate to the project, but just stuff that I loved and then wound up digging into a discography.
EARS OF MAIZE: What’s your current relationship with this analog “in the wild” versus digital paradigm? Where do you feel most comfortable?
TED FEIGHAN: This process and project has been analog forever. For artwork especially, pretty much all the collage stuff is me cutting it; there is minimal editing happening on the computer. Music is a little different just because of how things are. I’ll listen to a lot of records and I will stream a lot of stuff, but when I think about AI, my gut reaction every time is just, “No, no, no.” I personally haven’t used AI to make any music yet. That’s not the kind of thing that I feel curious about. AI stuff I’ve seen doesn’t really do a very good job making collage. That is one of the art forms still that is not easily replicated. Most people who care don’t want to hear music that is entirely AI.
EARS OF MAIZE: With all the influence and material you have, how do you know when a song is at completion or ready to be a defined track versus a piece that’s still being molded?
TED FEIGHAN: Generally, you don’t. This record has really challenged that for me because when I am doing less with instrumentation, it’s a lot easier to be “done.” For so much of my stuff, I have a policy of not overthinking. A lot of it feels incomplete because it’s just ideas. For this record, since I’ve been doing more songwriting, it has gotten me into tweaking some things that have made me crazy. When I get to a certain point, I have to say, “This is past where I would’ve ever been before.” If I feel like it’s good, that should just be fine. That line for me generally has to do with when I start to feel a little crazy. I was once looping something over and over trying to figure out the volume of a guitar. I worked on it for 45 minutes, walked out, came back in, and I was laughing so hard because it was no different at all. I was like, “All right, this is finished. I need to walk away.”
EARS OF MAIZE: Right, and it’s one of those moments where you’re the only one that hears it.
TED FEIGHAN: I’m the only one who hears it. I bring in my wife—she’s not a musician and she’s not even a passionate music lover, which I love. Every time we’re out, she’s always just like, “I gotta tell you, I hate live music.” I’ll have her listen to it, and I only know that something’s not working when she identifies it right away.
EARS OF MAIZE: Do you have a relationship where you’ll put things on the shelf and come back years later, or is it very much in the moment?
TED FEIGHAN: It is very much in the moment and I have to see something through.
EARS OF MAIZE: Gotcha.
TED FEIGHAN: I find that if I wait too long, I will not come back to it. Early on in Monster Rally, I thought I’d come back to everything, and where those songs wound up getting left is sort of what created the benchmark for how they were going to be in the years forward. That was a really nice thing that happened because it prevented me from getting crazy about it. But yeah, I can’t wait too long or I’ll never come back. Also, especially if I’m writing songs like this, I forget how to play them. Then I’ve got to teach myself again and you’ve lost the moment.
EARS OF MAIZE: A lot of your music has been in the studio or bedroom in isolated settings. What is your ideal way of performing and presenting this music live?
TED FEIGHAN: I’m still trying to figure that out. I would like to do a tour of botanical gardens. I’d hit all the best botanical gardens with me and John on drums and maybe somebody else doing Latin percussion—a three- or four-piece group—and have this really natural, lush, organic environment. That would be ideal for me. But I am also playing in these small clubs, which are generally good. We are able to do a good job of taking people where they want to go with the music and some of the visuals.
EARS OF MAIZE: Awesome. Monster Rally—what’s in the name?
TED FEIGHAN: Around 2009, I had been on tour with an old band and came back to my mom’s house. I was going through some old books on a shelf and found a book where the cover art was really cool looking. The name of the book was Monster Rally. It’s a book of cartoons by Charles Addams—you know, like The Addams Family. That’s how I got the name before I even started the project. I was like, “This is going to be the Monster Rally project.”
EARS OF MAIZE: Fantastic.
TED FEIGHAN: Again, it’s all about the discovery.
EARS OF MAIZE: You’re coming here to the Bay Tuesday, January 20 at Café Du Nord in San Francisco. Again, I want to plug the new EP entitled Own It and looking ahead to the new record Echoes of Emerald Sands due out this spring 2026. Ted, congrats on the evolution of your sound and trying new things. As a listener and as a fan, I really appreciate what you do.
TED FEIGHAN: Thank you. I appreciate that. What’s up? It’s Ted from Monster Rally. You’re listening to 90.7 FM, KALX Berkeley.
