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I recently had the opportunity to send a couple questions to Jacob Thiele, the keyboardist from the Omaha, Nebraska electro rock band The Faint, about their upcoming tour with Ladytron, vegan recipes and 20th century artists.

1. You guys are co-headlining a tour with Ladytron soon, where did this idea come from?

I first heard this idea years ago and it didn’t work out for some reason. We played a show with them in LA a couple years ago and it seemed like a good match!

2. Do you anticipate any electro jam sessions with the members of Ladytron?

Who knows? I talked to a couple of them about keyboards at that last show, although I ended up kind of recommending they check out a synth that might not have been a good choice.

3. Any word on the collaboration that you and singer Todd Fink did with the electro band Boyz Noize?

I think it’s better to keep that a mystery at the moment.

4. Coming from a background in Punk music, how did you become interested in synthesizers? Was there a definitive moment where you thought; “Yes! keyboards are where it’s at!”?

Keyboards were cheap and underutilized at the time. Bands like Locust and Men’s Recovery Project were using synthesizers in strange new ways. There wasn’t a precise moment, other than perhaps buying my first synth, which I didn’t actually buy. I convinced a friend to buy it.

5. Do you have a favorite piece of equipment that you use? Like a synth, pedal or effect that’s really satisfying for you to use?

The Nord Lead 3 is my go-to synth. It’s very easy to use and modulate sounds with. In the studio I like to try and recreate my Nord parts on a Doepfer modular synth.

6. The sounds of the keyboards are so unique and at times sound like a bunch of different things melted together, how long do you spend tweaking the keyboard sounds usually?

It’s hard to say. Sometimes I just make sounds for the fuck of it and they don’t become a part of a song until years later. Sometimes we have the part first and we try every keyboard until we find the right fit. Either way it adds up to a lot of hours of knob twiddling.

7. On “Fasciinatiion”, there are moments of really clear optimistic melodies like the ghostly piano tone on “Machine in the Ghost” and the end synth on “Fish in a Womb” that really pop, how did they come about?

The actual notes probably came from Todd, especially if they’re melodic. The sounds came from god-knows-where. That sound on Fish in the Womb started out as a kazoo on Todd’s demo, which then was an MS-20 on another recording, then two Nord sounds stacked together, and finally having one of the Nord sounds FM the other in a Sherman Filterbank.

8. The Faint took a big risk investing in and creating their own label [Blank.Wav] and self releasing their latest album “Fasciinatiion” in 2008. In a world where the economy is dive-bombing, how is The Faint fairing?

We’re doing ok. I think we’re suffering about as much as the average American. Having to make sacrifices here and there, you know. In the business of touring and such, it seems like the promoters are getting hurt the worst. Let’s hope we can get some new green jobs and reshape this bullshit of an economy into something stable that benefits more than just the fat cats.

9. All of you come from a background in the visual arts, do you continue working in visual mediums outside the band for fun or otherwise?

Oh yeah. Todd and I throw a party called Goo with Derek from Tilly & The Wall here in Omaha. I get to make the flyers for those, which is a lot of fun for me. Dapose makes paintings quite often and makes designs on a regular basis. Those designs often become our t-shirts and things like that. Many times they are made from collage elements that Todd has chosen. So we all kind of play our role in the band design.

10. There was a video of [guitarist] Dapose (I think?) covering a wall with pictures on The Faint’s official site for a little while. Did you guys post artwork around your new studio to inspire the songwriting process?

We do have a bunch of artwork and works in progress around us all the time. While we were writing Fasciinatiion we hung posters of details of Dante’s Inferno. I think it helped add a religious motif to our album. That and the huge stone church that is across the street.

11. If you could pick an artist from 1880-1960 to do a portrait of you who would it be?

Jean Dubuffet or Pablo Picasso. It would probably be more fun to hang out with Toulouse-Lautrec though. Or Rauschenberg!

12. What is your favorite vegan/vegetarian recipe?

I love so many different vegan recipes, but I’ll say [the ] tempeh reuben because Omaha has a pretty legitimate claim to being the home of the reuben sandwich.