White Laces evolved a little over a year ago as a pet project in Richmond Virginia from the basement walls of a modern-day mansion/squat affectionately dubbed "The Unicorn Manor." From there, the White Laces became a serious quartet, where they headed to Boston to record their self-titled EP.

Relying on heavy eighties throw-back synth, noisy overlays, clipped guitars, and a maelstrom of projected imagery, the White laces are the kind of infectious band that gets stuck in your head for days at a time.

antiMusic caught up with Landis for a pre-Austin hype-session.

antiMusic: Where did the name White Laces come from?

Landis: I've always avoided this story because it's a bit odd, but I guess its sort of silly to hide the origins. I was sitting in the kitchen of the Unicorn Manor while my roommates were watching Let the Right One In decided to pick up and read a copy of Harper's since they were already ¾ of the way through the movie and I didn't want to have the ending spoiled. I was perusing an article about prostitution in the Weimar Republic and how the women in the profession at the time tried to get around publicly advertising their wares by wearing different colored shoelaces to denote what their specialties were. I thought "White Laces" seemed innocuous and pretty uncomfortably sinister, so I decided I'd use it as the title for the demos I had been working on in my bedroom.

antiMusic: Can you give us a brief backstory on how you met and how this band came to be? What was the Unicorn Manor? How did that turn into the White Laces?

Landis: I more or less formed the band after the songs were finished, but Jimmy (the drummer) and myself and jammed together several months beforehand. He was (and is) by far my favorite drummer in the city, and I knew I wanted to work with him on whatever project I was cooking up. The rest of the band came together out of acquaintances and happenstance. I'm incredibly happy and baffled that we ended up with a live band that has the kind of chemistry that we do now, because it could have easily been a disaster.

As for Unicorn Manor, it was a punk house of sorts that I had been living in for about a year. It was (and is, for the next two months at least) a party house for twenty-somethings that was a respectable cultural landmark before it was bashed in by house shows and debauched parties.

antiMusic: Talk about your musical influences. What was the music scene like growing up?

Landis: I grew up in Martinsville, VA, and there was NO music scene there whatsoever. I never went to a single show in my town and the only "bands" that I played with were loose collections of friends that never played out. We came from the most economically depressed city in the entire state of Virginia, so it wasn't exactly the epicenter of a flourishing arts scene. When I started to go to shows, it meant finding a way to get to Chapel Hill, which was roughly two hours south of where I lived. I ended up with a pretty strong indie rock influence as a result (Merge, Sub Pop, Touch and Go, and tons of also-rans).

antiMusic: What was it about the music you grew up around that made you say, hey I want to do this, and I want to do it this way?

Landis: There wasn't much of a context to what I enjoyed, so I had to pull a lot of things out of the ether and create a context for them that was part internet, part fanzine, and mostly blind speculation. I knew that I liked things to sound dirty and unkept, and I always tend to gravitate to that, regardless of my roots.

antiMusic: Your music has sometimes been referred to as psychedelic shoegaze. What does that mean to you? How would you classify your music?

Landis: I get the psychedelic part. I never did drugs until I was almost done with college, but I was always drawn to things that toyed with your perception of what was actually happening. I liked being tricked by sound. The whole shoegaze thing was an extension of that, but honestly that was just the first EP. When I'm unsure of things I smear them more, and that's what the first EP was, a smeared garage record. As to how I would classify my music? I don't know. I like making dreamy rock. I like to insinuate more than I punctuate.

antiMusic: Why the love of archaic synth?

Landis: It's unruly and I've always loved the feeling that I'm wrestling with an instrument rather than having dominion over it. Also, they're cheap.

antiMusic: What has been the hardest part of this process?

Landis: The most difficult part of the process is the desire to move forward and having to wait. The first cassette and the EP were an experiment in stripping stuff down and barreling through the songs. We took the same approach with the videos. Then of course we get the requisite garage rock/shoegaze tags but we've already moved on from it. I guess it means that the ideas got across, and I still really enjoy the record, but I'm antsy.

antiMusic: What have you had to overcome as a musician to get to this point?

Landis: Teaching myself to simplify and accept mistakes as a necessary part of the process.

antiMusic: What is more important to you, the song's structure, melody, lyrics, or overall vibe?

Landis: The answer to this is probably a combination of the melody and vibe. I'm more interested in being able to hum things now. I'd really like to work towards a record that's hummable and has a distinct mood to it. Even if things get absolutely out of control, I want there to be an element that's distinct and unifies things. There's really no way to describe that without sounding like I'm absolutely full of s***, but I hope that makes sense.

antiMusic: Talk about the recording and production of your self titled EP. I am told you initially recorded everything in a run-down garage then headed to a warehouse in Boston that you shared with another musician, Kevin Mika to actually lay down the tracks. Does Kevin's music appear anywhere on the tracks?

Landis: Actually, we recorded everything up at Kevin's space in Boston. Jimmy and myself set up in a room with a bunch of vintage equipment and ran through the basic tracks in about a day and a half. From there, I drove back home and did overdubs in my apartment on my laptop, then flew back up and finished the record during a 24 hour mixing session on my birthday. As for Kevin's presence on the record, he contributed some handmade oscillator sounds at the beginning of Motorik and helped out with some odd effects during overdubs of the other songs. A lot of the lo-fi sounds came from the fact that we were recording through weird speakers and effects rigs.

antiMusic: What is your favorite track and why?

Landis: Probably "Spirituals", just because it represents the clearest break from things I had done before. There's a lot of silly history to that song that would make sense in an anecdote that's too extensive to print. Suffice to say that the lyrics to that song were partially written while the events described were occurring.

antiMusic: Talk about the making of and the creative inspiration behind " Motorik Twilight"

Landis: That song was the first proper White Laces song and I've always seen it as the focal point from which the rest of the songs could radiate. It's really just a collection of melodic stem cells. As for the rest of the inspiration, I was in a pretty s***ty romantic situation that kept perpetuating itself and that song is about caring about someone a great deal but having to be absolutely obliterated to even be able to tolerate one another.

antiMusic: Who would you like to work with in the future?

Landis: I haven't really thought about this. I have no idea how far these songs/records will take us and I feel really odd tossing out names. I'd like to work with people I respect, whether they're my friends or people whose records I grew up admiring. It doesn't matter as long as the songs don't suffer.

antiMusic: You're headed out to SXSW for the first time. Can you give us some insight about how you are feeling, what you are doing to get ready, what your expectations are? What tracks do you plan on playing? What visuals are you using? How will this live performance differ from your past performances?

Landis: I'm a bit anxious about the whole thing since there are a forest of logistical problems to overcome with that sort of thing, but I love Austin and I couldn't be happier to bask in the light of warm weather and cheap beer. As for the songs, we're sticking to the EP and the two songs that will be off of our new 7". I'd feel a bit silly testing out new material in front of an audience who has the option of seeing 600 bands play songs that they already have stored in their muscle memory. But how might it differ? We're all going to thrash around and sweat more that we normally would. I hope that our collective energy makes up for the lack of a projector.

antiMusic: How is this creative project different from anything you've ever done previously?

Landis: It's more collaborative in a way that is both fulfilling and productive. I genuinely love playing with every person in this band and I feel like everything we're working on is exponentially better than what came before it.

antiMusic: For those who are loyal followers, what is the one true element of the White Laces they will continue to hear no matter where the band progresses?

Landis: Whammy bars and punishing snare drum hits.

antiMusic: Do you see yourselves changing pace musically?

Landis: We're scaling back a lot of the distortion and the "jammy" bits that were on the first EP. Everything now is much cleaner and more prickly. We're not disowning what we did before, but we're certainly retooling it. We're pulling a Hemmingway. We are going to say what we feel we need to say in the most succinct way possible.

antiMusic: In the future, what other musical risks would you like to take?

Landis: Saxophone.

antiMusic: Where do you see yourselves in the next year?

Landis: Hopefully exhausted from touring and trying to finish a proper full-length.

antiMusic: What have been your successes to date? Personal accomplishments?

Landis: It sounds silly, but I'm trying to be patient and accepting of everything we get asked to do as an "accomplishment". The fact that people come out to the shows is all the success I want. And buying enough of our records that people aren't nervous about putting more out. Personal accomplishments? My guitar and amplifier don't sound like s*** anymore.

antiMusic: Do you have a muse, ex-girlfriend, or lover you write about?