The Chicago-based band Pulsars shares insights into their past, present, and future

Transmission 094: Interview with Pulsars

Pulsars is a new wave/indie rock band from Chicago, Illinois, formed by brothers Dave and Harry Trumfio in the mid-1990s. The band gained attention with their self-titled debut album released in 1997 under Almo Sounds, featuring a sound influenced by synth-pop and early new wave. After touring with major acts like Oasis and Blur, their trajectory was abruptly interrupted when their label’s distribution deal fell apart, leading to an extended hiatus.

Recently, Pulsars have returned to the music scene, reclaiming the rights to their debut album and reissuing it with newly remastered tracks. They have also released a collection of rare and unreleased songs titled Lost Transmissions. The band is currently recording new material, with several projects planned for release, marking a significant comeback after years of inactivity.

The Pulsars‘ Instagram, Facebook

What were some of the earliest musical influences that inspired you to start making music together?

It started pretty young for us. My dad had this crazy 45 collection from the 50s and early 60s, probably ending at the beginning of the Beatles. My grandfather built mid-century hi-fi systems for Cadillac log companies in the States, like J.C. Penney and Sears. We had this cool stereo system in our basement. Starting from age five to seven, we were devouring my dad’s 45s. Many were from Chess Records, Sun Records, all the classic doo-wop and early rock and roll records. It got us really into music. By the time we were eight or nine, we wanted to start a band. We were always looking at the records, the credits, the publishing, all that kind of stuff. That’s what got us going.

How did the environment in Chicago influence the direction of your music in those early days?

If we’re going back to when we were really young, Midwest power pop played a big part, like bands such as Cheap Trick. Cheap Trick in general was a huge influence on us. If we’re talking about when the Pulsars started in the 90s, going way back to the early 80s, once we became teenagers, MTV played a huge role. Both Harry and I watched the first day of MTV and we were glued to it for at least four or five years when it first started. Early New Wave played a huge role in our taste in music and how we approached the bands we started. We were playing in bands since we were nine or ten years old.

By the early 90s, the Chicago scene was going off. Most of America was experiencing the birth of the true indie rock renaissance. Many indie labels were popping up, like Merge and Touch and Go in Chicago, and labels like Drag City were starting. Of course, you had Sub Pop and the whole Grunge thing starting. The band we had before Pulsars was called Larry Cash Jr., and it was a noise band. It wasn’t poppy at all. It was very angular. We were taking our cues from the fanzines and the heavier indie scene of the time.

As a counterpoint to that, we started the Pulsars because we felt the music scene was getting too serious. There were a lot of rules and regulations happening. We grew up listening to pop records and hits, so we decided to start Pulsars. It was our guilty pleasure project. We set out to do two things: write three-minute pop songs and weird ambient pieces of music. The ambient pieces kind of went away as we developed into more of a straight-ahead new wave band. The scene in Chicago and America in general played a big role in shaping the Pulsars, in that we wanted to do something different. It wasn’t cool to have synths and guitars in the same band in 1994.

What was it like recording the demos in that single afternoon that eventually led to the formation of the band?

After being in different bands, Harry and I decided to start a new project, though we didn’t even have a name for it yet. Our friend John Henderson, who was running Tiny Global Productions in Spain and had a label called Feel Good All Over at the time, encouraged us to record something. He said if we came up with some material, he could put it out and wanted to check it out.

So we went into the studio—I had a studio at the time. Over the years, I became a record producer by starting with our demos, and that led to others wanting me to work on their projects. We had some downtime at the studio, so I told Harry, “Let’s get together and do some writing.”

We accomplished a lot in that first day, which turned into an extended three-day weekend. I came up with the hooks for what would become the first eight or nine songs. In that first afternoon, we laid down the basics for several songs. We thought, “We’ll do a song like this, we’ll do a song like that,” and within about three days, we had what was going to be our first record. Eventually, it splintered off into a couple of EPs and part of our first album.

You opened for Oasis shortly after forming the band. What was that experience like, especially as a newly formed group?

Unlike our previous bands, Pulsars was the first band we didn’t care much about promoting. We didn’t plan to do promo shots, write a bio, or even play gigs. We just wanted to make fun music and see what happened. But at some point, we thought we should try playing live.

A friend had an open mic night on a Monday at Lounge Axe, which was the go-to indie rock club in Chicago. The open mic night wasn’t just bands; it included performance art and poetry. So we did our first two shows there, and it just so happened that at one of those shows, two big promoters in Chicago were sitting at the bar. They came up to us afterward, asking who we were and what we were doing. Next thing we knew, we were opening for Blur, and that led to opening for Oasis. That was the beginning of the band’s rise.

Having recently regained the rights to your debut album, what prompted the decision to reissue it now? And how did you approach the remastering process?

Unfortunately, we don’t have the multitrack masters. It’s a long story, but it involves the technology we used. When we got our record deal, we bought Pro Tools and were one of the first studios in Chicago to have it, but we also used tape. The archiving of the different formats was haphazard, and then there was the Universal Fire in 2008. So, we had to work off our two-track mixes.

I spent a lot of time remastering those mixes, and we treated it like a director’s cut. We used some alternate mixes that were more daring and exciting, but at the time, the label wanted more conservative versions. For instance, on some songs, I used a Vox Fuzz bass in stereo, which was more prominent in the mixes I liked, but those were tucked back in the original release. This reissue is going to be a special version of the record.

The band’s sudden inactivity after the Geffen deal fell apart was unexpected. How did you and Harry cope with the end of this period and how did you react to it?

It was an interesting time in music in general. Napster was happening and iTunes was just starting. Apple Music was just forming. We didn’t pay too much attention to the wheeling and dealing. But we got this call from Herb Alpert when we were just finishing our second record, the one that never came out. Him and Jerry, who owned A&M Sounds after A&M, basically told us that this wasn’t the business they got into. Things were going in a direction they weren’t having fun with. So they decided to close the label.

It was a little shocking. We were just mastering our second record. But at that point, we had been a band for about six or seven years. Harry saw the opportunity to go back to school. I was working on a lot of different production projects around that time as well. So both of us had other things to do. We were free and clear to go get another deal, but Harry made it clear to me he didn’t want to go back to sleeping in vans and on people’s floors. So he went back to college, and I decided to produce bands for a while. That was about 24 years ago, at the end of ’99, beginning of 2000.

Now that you are reengaging with the Pulsars, what has it been like revisiting your past work after so many years?

It’s a little trippy. I just did my first rehearsal last night with the material. It’s fun. I forgot about a lot of the layers and things we added to these songs. I’ve never really gotten out of doing music. I’ve been producing, writing, and working with different artists. But those were early recordings, and I’m like, “Whoa, I forgot I did that. I forgot I did this.” Relearning the songs is pretty interesting. Like last night, I was like, “Oh my God, I thought it was this. Oh, it’s that.” So it’s just fun. It’s fun rediscovering the songs and getting geared up to play them live.

What’s your next project as Pulsars?

We started this project right before COVID. John Henderson from Tiny Global, who was our original manager, helped us get the rights back. Pulsars were a lost band of the 90s, really. We never went to streaming because Herb and Jerry didn’t like where streaming was going. They held back, either telling Universal or whatever happened, not to digitize these unless they go to a new label.

We started going through our archive and we have over 80 songs that we feel sound good enough to release. After this record, which is going to be our splash to reintroduce the band, we have record two. Then we have a third record where Harry and I got back together playing music with William Reid from The Jesus and Mary Chain. William was working on a solo record, and I started producing it with him. Harry and I were the rhythm section for this record that eventually became “Damage and Joy.” It got Harry and I playing music together again, and we ended up recording a third Pulsars record surrounding those sessions.

We have two more full-lengths. Going through the masters, we have over 20 covers, so we’re going to compile our best 10 or 12 covers for a covers record. Going back to our very early days, I wanted to do Aphex Twin-style stuff, which is kind of starting to happen now. I was a huge Eno fan over the years, so I wanted to do ambient stuff. We used to start our sets with an ambient piece and then intersperse these ambient pieces between the three-minute pop songs. So we have tons of ambient material that we never did anything with. I think we’re going to do an ambient record as well. So we have about five releases coming up.

Do you have any release dates for those projects?

No. We’ve been kind of slow. We did put out a compilation called “Lost Transmissions” in 2021, which were songs we really liked but just weren’t going to fit in any of these future records. We’ve talked about keeping the release schedule pretty snappy, so probably nine months to a year gap between the releases once we get this record out. This is obviously our rebirth happening. We’re a new band to the majority of the universe.

Photos courtesy of The Pulsars

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others