On Bruun: Robe by New York Vintage. Tank by Bess. Bracelets by Bing Bang. nOn Harding: Jacket and t-shirt by John Varvatos. Hat by Victor Osborne. Necklace by Dior Homme.

EX COPS

Brian Anthony Harding had done the Strokes thing. His first band, the folk-rocking HYMNS, who were blessed by Spin and played with Beck, was the product of longtime friendships between himself and his bandmates. But Ex Cops, his new project featuring a rotating cast of bandmembers (like Amalie Bruun, pictured) is the product of coincidence.

“It’s something that started a year ago in my head,” says Harding. “Then I became roommates with Dan Shapiro”—who would go on to serve as the band’s de facto producer—”through Craigslist. I started living in Bushwick in an apartment with six people; Dan just happened to know how to do all this stuff. Luckily I found someone who speaks my language, especially when I’m notoriously abstract.”

By “all this stuff,” he means recording and mixing an album using GarageBand and a laptop, but he also means the process of “getting sounds.” This entailed the untangling of some sonic metaphors: Harding would describe to Shapiro what he was looking for and then, he says, “I would go on YouTube and play some songs, like the Cocteau Twins and Jesus and Mary Chain, to show Dan what they were doing. He would move the knobs and figure out how to make a sound like we wanted. We made our own sound.”

The result is Ex Cops’ first EP, White Women, which dropped in August: a happy electronic marriage of the gothic and the dreamy; it’s surfpop pulled under the waves by a lo-fi, but powerful, undercurrent.

“I dream a lot in black-and-white,” says Harding. “I wanted it to sound colorful, but also black-and-white. I think we sound like a black-and-white dream, but not lucid yet, working towards lucidity. People have been posting all these photos, like of themselves at the beach, on Facebook, and to me that’s like telling someone about your dream: super-interesting to you, completely fucking boring to the other person.”

He continues, “I think it sounds pretty hazy, sometimes lazy, but not in a schlubby way. I really do think it sounds pretty beautiful. And it’s the first thing I’ve done that I would ever deem cinematic.”

The atmosphere of Ex Cops is very different from what Harding’s done before. “HYMNS was alt-country-ish. I’ll say it’s completely refreshing and challenging to have to do all the groundwork yourself, with no money and no label. I think it’s fucking fun!”

Dreamier electronic music might reach fewer ears than alt-country, but that’s beside the point for Harding: “I want people to understand that you don’t need a fancy studio or some crazy record label to make genuine music that you really want to make. And that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been making music that I want to hear, music that I can fall asleep to and listen to around my house without feeling guilty that I’m listening to myself.”

Playing for others presents more of a challenge, and Harding is still experimenting with his live set, sometimes playing with seven members, sometimes three, sometimes just his laptop. “We use a lot of samples, a lot of synths. I’m used to getting on stage and just rocking, bar-band style, and not worrying about, ‘Oh shit! There’s a Juno sample on that part! We totally forgot!’”

Yet varied sounds have conspired to confluence in his brain since he was old enough to listen, if not before. His father, John Harding, a trumpet player who has toured with everyone from the Temptations and James Brown to Frank Sinatra and the Bee Gees, also taught the history of pop music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “I was listening to Sid Vicious and Tina Turner when I was five years old,” Harding says.

“I remember seeing Linda Ronstadt when my dad played with her and she kept complaining about the fucking A/C. I found that really gross. One time—and this is the one that sticks out—my dad was playing with Sinatra in the ’70s, and my dad fell off his riser. Frank stopped the show completely to see if he was OK. That was very cool. He told me about not jumping into things fast, taking the time to get good, and tipping your soundman.”

What surprises Harding is that all these influences, samples, and sounds could come together on one laptop to create something so much more than the sum of its parts, something stirring. “I’ve been in big studios and recorded with big, expensive gear,” he says. “And I did all this with one guy in a room in Bushwick.”

Ex Cops performs today at Cake Shop and Wednesday at Santos Party House as part of the CMJ Music Marathon.

Styling by Christian Stroble at ArtlistParis. Makeup by Cyndle Strawhecker. Retouching by Shin Ono at Pier 59 Studios.

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