continental
what they've gained from what they've lost

It’s been a few months since Continental bass player Brent Kimble died of a heart condition at age 29, and the rest of the band is getting ready to release their eerily titled third album, What Was Gained from What Was Lost. For the four remaining bandmembers, it might take a while to figure out what that is, but for now they know they’re not going anywhere. On a sunny day in May, Christopher Lautz met up with the band in their garage bar, dubbed “The Flamingo,” to talk about their friend, their new album, and their future.

The band probably answered the first question on fans’ minds with a brief statement on their website:
“After the tragic loss of our dear friend and bandmate, Brent Kimble, we have decided to continue Continental as a quartet. It's easy to say ‘Brent would have wanted it that way,’ but in this case, we couldn't be more certain of it. Brent loved this band, as do we, so we feel compelled to keep it going. There will always be an empty space on stage, in our practice room, and in our hearts.”

“Brent loved everything that he did, he’s one of the most passionate people,” says drummer Gabriel Coan. “He loved being in this band and he pushed to get things done, and he drove us nuts sometimes with his impatience, but it was because he loved it so much. He was always thinking about the band.”

“What would we do, put it under another band name and play the same music? It’s not gonna happen,” keyboardist Mike Eul says. “And I don’t think we know how to play any other kind of music or we’d want to.”

The seeds were planted for Continental back in 1995 when Coan saw Eul in one of his first classes at S.F. State.

“This kid walks in and he’s got this homemade T-shirt that says, ‘J is God,’ and I was a huge Dinosaur Jr. fan,” Coan explains. “[I thought], ‘Oh, I know what that is. I love this kid!’ Then, like, two years later I finally talked to him.”

The two became friends and their love of music led them to the next logical step, starting a band. After Eul recruited his buddy Kimble to play bass, Coan brought in his friend, guitarist Matt Holt. Soon, the foursome began practicing and honing their unique brand of thoughtful, melodic, instrumental music. The band quickly gained a following playing local clubs, and after a few years, the group added second guitarist Craig Escalante to further fill out their sound.

On their website, the band describes their music as “textures and beats made with guitars, basses, drums 1&2, blue keys, black keys, beat boxes, neon boxes, bells, brushes, bows, strings, horns, and hearts.” Their heartfelt, meandering compositions have led to comparisons to a less melancholy Mogwai.

Whether they end up in an old chemical factory, the garage studio next door to the Flamingo (Coan, Eul and Escalante live in the same building, each with a garage), or even Kimble’s parents’ house, the actual recording is done relatively fast and the majority of time and effort is spent on overdubs and mixing.

“We try to [record with the] full band, then do overdubs,” Coan says, “and sometimes we’ll come up with new parts and ideas just through the recording process. But we don’t do the headphones thing; we just set up monitors and let stuff bleed, and just play.”

Coan takes care of all of the recording and mixing.

“The recording process to me is tedious and boring and it’s just [about] getting a good take,” he says. “Mixing, and even doing the overdubs, is fun because it all starts to come together, it’s much more creative.”

Because of Continental’s DIY approach and access to free studio space, that creative and fun part of the process can take a while; the band says they rarely revisit recorded tracks until months later.

“We take way too long, because we have that luxury,” Holt admits. “But we couldn’t do it any other way. We’ve talked about it - can we do what we do under a stopwatch? It’s been nice to have that luxury, to take as much time as we want, but that’s why it takes forever for our records to come out.”

“I don’t think any song we’ve ever recorded has been 100% finished when we recorded it,” Escalante says. “Songs evolve through the recording process and then we try to recreate some of the overdub stuff to make it live, so things continually change.”