It all started back in 2004 when Nik Kozub began some work on a film soundtrack, asking fellow musician/synth-nut Lyle Bell to help him out with it. That film was ultimately canned, but Kozub felt there was enough to the music he’d been working on to justify the formation of a band. The resulting group, its ranks swollen to six with two drummers—Clint Frazier and Gravy—and four synth/bass players—Kozub, Bell, Jason Troock and Will Zimmerman—was born as Shout Out Out Out Out, and five years later the band is stronger than ever, something that Kozub is pleasantly surprised about.

 

“It’s the way it’s supposed to go, but it never really does,” he says of the relative peace that has been maintained within SO4. “We’ve been playing in bands for a long time, all of us, but it never actually works out this way. It’s kind of interesting that this is the project that did work out, but it’s something that we’re all still constantly developing and interested in.”

 

Part of the group’s growing success owes to the willingness of the various members to find the time to engage in numerous other projects that are somehow crammed into their days, coexisting with the growing wave that surrounds SO4.

 

“It’s entirely possible that we’re all biting off more than we can chew,” Kozub laughs. “But the best way to stay interested is to have a few things going at once.”

 

Right now, though, number one in Kozub’s world is the impending release of Shout Out Out Out Out’s second full-length album, Reintegration Time. The record will be ushered into waiting hands with two shows at the Starlite Room, the first of which is already sold out. It’s a strange thing to consider the transition Kozub will soon be making—at the moment, he’s engaged in the day-to-day details of his other jobs as a producer and one of the heads of Normals Welcome Records (along with fellow Shout Out-er Troock), not to mention all the minor bits and pieces that need to be put into place before the big release shows, filling the open spaces of his day with coffee and interviews. 

 

Soon, though, Kozub and the rest of the band will be taking to the stage and engaging audiences with another in what is becoming a long line of big, no-holds-barred shows, leaving their day jobs behind and inhabiting mad-scientist, scissor-kicking forms. The distance between those two identities is something that very much informs the title of the new album.

 

“I recently found out—I didn’t know this at the time of titling the album or the song—apparently it’s used as a military term: reintegration time is the time after a soldier’s been out in the field and comes home to reintegrate into normal society before either going back or getting on with their life,” Kozub explains. “And I guess that’s kind of the same idea ... basically, our lives, just from having to be on tour all the time or putting on a show and then being normal people, involves a lot of blending of absurd situations with normal situations and trying to reconcile the two.

“The intention is certainly not to be like, ‘Oh, wow, it’s so hard being in a band,’” he adds. “It’s just finding a balance in life between just going to your daily work place and being in work mode and then having outside hobbies and interests, so the process is the same thing: you have a long day at work and then you want to reintegrate into normalcy by going to have a beer at the bar or watching Paris Hilton’s My New BFF or something.”

 

But normalcy can wait for now as Kozub deals with the final preparations—things like the impending arrival of Reintegration Time in both CD and triple-disc vinyl versions. (Unfortunately, the vinyl won’t be arriving until after the release shows.) While the triple-gatefold sleeve, laden with pretty amazing artwork, is the ultimate for record-collector types, if you’re going to release any sort of vinyl, let alone a triple-disc album, then it needs to work as a whole if the music’s going to entice listeners to flip the disc over whenever a side ends. 

 

“There’s a real shift in the way people are getting their music these days ... towards songs and single format,” Kozub muses. “The album format is kind of suffering, I think. To us, it was important to have something that works as an album.”

 

Thankfully, Reintegration Time does just that, rising up slowly and then ebbing and flowing throughout. There is a definite sense of movement to the record, something that Kozub says was both deliberate and a byproduct of the way the band wrote and recorded the songs this time, gathering together every type of synth they could find, holing up in the studio and writing the majority of the music right there.

 

“Over the years we’ve tried pretty much every different kind of writing process there could be,” he says, explaining that many of the songs this time began with himself, Bell and Troock creating the basic forms that were then built up until Zimmerman and the two drummers came in to work on their parts. “On this album I would say like 75 per cent of the songs were written entirely in the studio.” 

 

It’s the willingness to experiment—musically as well as in approach—that keeps Shout Out Out Out Out interesting, and a project that continues to be worth pursuing for Kozub. And in his mind, there’s really no end to what the band might accomplish.

 

“I think the limitations have more to do with there being six creative people involved and coming up with stuff that we can all agree on and everyone having their ideas represented,” he considers. “Just making everything actually work and everyone having to make a few compromises is kind of a challenge. One of the hardest things for us to learn when we started recording our first record was trying to figure out, ‘Oh, wow. We can’t all be playing at the same time. Someone’s got to be willing to sit back in certain parts.’

 

“We all have to sort of take a step back sometimes and take a little bit of an outsider’s perspective look at things and say, ‘OK, is this what I want or is this what’s gonna be best for the show?’” he continues. “Everything from writing songs to figuring out setlists, it’s tough. But luckily we wound up with some really good dudes and we all respect each other’s opinions and everyone’s points are generally valid.