Ted Feighan of Monster Rally on Sampling, Self-Doubt, and Making a Record That Sounds Like a Place

Some of you know him as Monster Rally. Ted Feighan is ten albums deep, all instrumental, all built out of samples pulled from thrift store records but his newest record, Echoes of the Emerald Sands, is the first time he stepped away from that entirely, and getting to talk to him right at that pivot point was a gift.

Here's what we got into.

Before Monster Rally, Ted was in a band called Driver Side Impact. Pop screamo, Cleveland, during the whole Thursday and Taking Back Sunday era. He was 18

Then Ted left the band in 2008 and came back to Cleveland with no plan. He was buying records at thrift stores mostly because it was fun to dig through them, and he kept gravitating toward tropical records with cool covers.

There he found Madvillainy. Didn't know anything about it. Bought it purely because the cover art looked amazing. Put it on and realized hip hop could be something completely different than what he grew up on.

That's the origin of Monster Rally. He said the SP-303 is the reason he's doing any of this.

We spent a while on production nerdery from there, and it turns out we're the exact same kind of Kanye-as-producer people.

His new album, Echoes of the Emerald Sands is a full departure. Ted set out to make his own samples, which pushed him back into actually playing instruments again, and it ended up guitar-forward because guitar is where he writes from. He also brought in vocalists for the first time, including TV Girl, and a track built with Henry Mancini material that's fully cleared by the Mancini estate.

Every collaboration on the record happened remotely. Nobody in the same room. Ted's in Cleveland and most of the people on the record are in LA, where he lived for years before moving back. I expected him to say that was a limitation. Instead he told me it was freeing. He was insecure about making a record this way and being alone in his home studio with nobody watching him let him do better work.

Tour dates in the fall with Rumtum, who has been playing drums with him. That partnership is new. Ted has played every Monster Rally show alone up until this run, and having a second person on stage makes it feel like a full band.

He's also got a sister album coming at the beginning of next year. Alternate instrumental versions of the new record plus seven or eight new songs.

And he's open to working with more people. He said he's trying to work with everybody. He's even floated the idea that the next record could just be a straight hip hop record.

Go listen to Monster Rally. He's on Spotify, Apple Music, all of it. Catch him on tour this fall.

And Ted, seriously, we should hang out more.