Introducing Lowell’s very own, The P.A.’s & Their Lore-Driven Dungeon Psych Magic
Riley Halliday
“We’ll just steal power from, like, a bar or something.”
One long extension cord and an argument with the cops later, the P.A.’s was born.
I spoke with Lowell resident Ellis Roundy, vocalist, guitarist and visual mastermind behind the Dungeon Psych lore band The P.A.’s. Roundy was working on a flyer for a friend’s band when we hopped on a video chat.
“I do lyrics and I do guitar and vocals. I also do all of the art and the visuals for the band. Joe Milia he’s on drums. And then Brad Presta is on bass. Ian Miller is on keys. That’s the band as it exists now. Most of our photographs come from Sam Schofield, a photographer who’s a close friend.”
I was amazed by how many albums they have in the three years they’ve been playing together. So I got to asking, what was the process of putting out your first album like?
“The process has kind of changed a lot over the few years that we’ve been around. [For the first record], I would write an entire song and then bring it to the drummer. It was just a two piece at that point, so we would just flesh it out in his garage, and it was like, oh, that’s a song. Every week, we would have another song. So I would just do that every week until we had an entire record. Then we talked to my friend Dan McDonald, who’s actually [produced] every record since, except for Novo, about recording. We would write an entire song and move on to the next one, and then not really look back, just kind of rehearse through it and make slight changes here and there. Second record was more jam oriented, and then we trimmed it down.”
Then came the lore-driven record.
[“The third one, Novo,] was completely story driven, with a plot that chronologically aligns with the songs in the record. Actually, we made a lore booklet (Are you kidding that’s incredible!) for that record that details it song by song. [We’re] currently in the midst of writing the lore for the most recent record, Gevurah. The iconography and I guess, mythology that we pull from is a lot of Tolkien [and] Dungeons and Dragons.
Bancroft’s castle was about the desolation of an entire kingdom because the king made a bad deal. Novo was about the Orc people going into this mountain and creating a city atop the mountain, which is called Novo. [It’s also] about the Glowing One and the Magi, who stole one of their babies in the night and turned it into this deity that defeated Sobbh, which was one of the demons.
(SPOILER ALERT INCOMING)
We later find out in the most recent record the baby is the Glowing One. So Sanguinex had been sending his stuff since the second record and destroyed Bancroft’s kingdom. The third record, Novo [features] Sobbh, which is this cat beast. You can actually see him on the album cover. He’s kind of like Garfield with a third eye. He doesn’t look that frightening on the album cover just because of the style, but he’s supposed to be this horrible entity. And then for the most recent record, the Halberd (type of weapon) that was used to vanquish was taken past the arch into the Green World. They took it down into these caverns. And so it’s about all these bounty hunters who are going down into these red caverns to retrieve the Halberd and defeat Sanguinax.”
Let’s recap.
- Bancroft’s castle = an entire kingdom was desolated because the king made a bad deal
- Novo = the Orc people go into a mountain and create a city there called Novo. Novo features the Glowing One and the Magi who stole one of the Orc people’s babies in the night. The baby turned into a deity aka the Glowing One and defeated Sobbh, a cat beast. He destroyed Bancroft’s castle
- Gevurah = The Halberd (weapon) was taken past the arch into caverns in the Green World
So do you all, as a band, play dungeons and dragons together?
“We really want to do a Dungeons and Dragons campaign based on Gevurah. Because it is kind of modeled after a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Where it’s in these caves and there are different rooms [that] have challenges and enemies in them.”
Did music come first? Did visual art come first? Was it kind of a joint coming together?
“I think in the beginning, it was mostly a musical thing. I went to school for graphic design. So I was obviously doing design work for the band just because, you know, I figured, why not use it if I have the skills? So it was kind of both. But then as it went on, I sort of started to really consider how using visuals to communicate audio and lyrical themes could all coincide together.
For bands like the Grateful Dead, which I know; as hokey as their music […], has been characterized recently, they sort of have created a culture and a look to their sound. [They] created something that is more reminiscent of an art movement, rather than just a band that makes music. And I think that there are other bands that have done really great things. I was just talking to Amber (vocalist of the PinkLids) about this, and she was saying she thinks The Cure [is] really interesting how they were part of the goth culture and how throughout their discography, you can actually track the visuals of their band and how it coincides and using that as inspiration. And also kind of not thinking about how you’re perceived in the art world as, you know, as sort of an overblown Prog thing. I think there’s sort of this assumption that if you have all of this stuff on the stage, if you do these theatrical things, if your art style is a certain way, then you’re kind of taking away from the music. But I would discourage that line of thinking or don’t pay any mind to it, because I think that music and bands are capable of creating that culture without diluting anything.”
Absolutely. In a way, there’s making music and then there’s world building, which you all are doing. And the music is a soundtrack for that world.
So I wrote down in my notebook here the word synth-spo. Like inspo, but synth.
“Absolutely. Ian rocks the Korg Minilogue right now.”
What’s your synth-spiration? Who inspires you in the techie music space?
“So I think a lot of Prog [rock] bands, I guess, use synth a bit, like Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk has a lot of sounds that we’ve definitely pulled from. Vangelis, too. And his work, especially on Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire . I think Ian really likes doing the more soundscape-y stuff, too. When a synth isn’t essential to the sound, he’s sort of creating moods. I’ve often thought about that. A lot of the music that I listen to at work is soundscapes and video game soundtracks, like original soundtracks, especially Skyrim and stuff like that. I’d love to see what that would be like with The P.A.’s. How would we approach that? I’d love to do that.”
I would love to play a P.A.s sound-tracked video game. If that happens though, the P.A.s will have done it all. Is the world ready? Compelling initially was the P.A.s genre invention, Dungeon Psych, and now that we’ve entered the start of their world I think I’ll stick around for the magic. Meet me in Novo, we can all go the P.A.s tour together.
Ellis left us with this inspiring message from Nardwuar.
“Keep on rocking in the free world doot doola doot doo.”
Keep up with The P.A’.s
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Riley Halliday is a puppet maker, digital artist, and abundantly curious journalist focused on digging into the underbelly of the art world.
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