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Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger has jumped into the role of producer for the first time, spending three weeks in the studio recently helming the debut record for Southern California-based Agent Sparks. The quartet's premiere EP, Not So Merry, will be released September 20th, with a full-length to follow early in 2006.
Einziger claims the transition to producer has been a smooth one. "It's been a nice little change," he says. "It was real tiring, but it was a lot of fun because the music was really great."
The recording process was no doubt made easier by the fact that the band includes his younger brothers Ben (on vocals and guitar) and Paul Fried (bass) -- as well as drummer George Purviance and vocalist/keyboardist Stephanie Eitel.
Ben Einziger welcomed having his more experienced older brother in the studio. "Mike was very helpful in helping me not get carried away," he says. "I tend to let my A.D.D. take over my brain, and when something doesn't feel right musically, I start wanting to change things. Mike would tell me when I should and shouldn't be overanalyzing things."
The elder Einziger also helped the band develop their sound, into a kind of "quirky pop music," as Ben describes Agent Sparks. He names everyone from Pearl Jam and Nirvana to Radiohead and David Bowie as influences on the album. Though he might be a little biased, big brother is a fan of the work, describing their sound more specifically as Violent Femmes-meet-Nirvana.
But Einziger now finds himself itching to get back on the other side of the creative process, when Incubus begins working on the follow-up to last year's A Crow Left of the Murder in earnest after playing the U.K.'s Reading and Leeds festivals. "We're about to really jump into writing," he says. "And for the first time in the history of our career, we're in the position to take as much time as we want. We feel like we need to slow down this time." And don't expect a new album to mean an ambitious new tour: "We might write our record, record it, and then write another album. We don't know yet."