Back To The Future The Ride, s/t free mini-l.p. on Deathbomb Arc

It seems an almost weekly occurrence in the music world: a luminary of the punk/avant-garde/whatever scene invents a pseudonym and starts a meditative side project that can be lazily tagged “drone” or “synth” or “ambient.” It’s easy to become quite jaded with all of this cerebral material. Just a few years ago, going noise was the most cynical move in the book; most of the strivers figured out there wasn’t any money in it and moved along. Next-wave artists who have channeled the kind of introspection that five years ago would almost certainly have been plowed into contact mics and redundant delay pedals have started picking up vintage keyboards and “going deep” on a seemingly endless stream of cassette labels and collector-baiting ultra-limited vinyl editions, while many noise veterans have hitched their wagon to the inexplicable but lucrative goth dance craze.

Entering the fray is Brian Miller, Los Angeles underground scene stalwart, Deathbomb Arc label-runner, and founder of the late, lamented forward- thinking punk collective Rose for Bohdan. He used to run around with legendary improv unit Gang Wizard, and currently heads up the stunning four-drummer revue Foot Village. Bottom line: he’s been making Los Angeles cool for well over a decade. Oh yeah, his cat has a blog too. I’ve known Brian for a long time. Full disclaimer: I used to intern at Deathbomb Arc in the mid-00’s, which at that point he was still running out of his parent’s Burbank garage – an effortlessly punk setup. When I heard he was doing a new project, and already had three releases planned, I was excited but a bit skeptical. The solo drone/ambient project under an ironic moniker schtick seemed a bit too trite for Miller, a musical lifer who has toured all over the world and seen many a hyped scene come and go.

The first release from Back To The Future The Ride was a freely downloadable self-titled mini LP. The cover is a blurred photo of a sliver of rainbow cutting across a lush desert landscape, complementing the droning soundscape within. There isn’t much unease here; Brian has forgone the dystopic vision that underpins so much current drone and synth and has gone for a nostalgic, even romantic vibe. Back To The Future The Ride is casual but deeply personal while avoiding the arch aesthetic of so many recent ambient productions.

Back To The Future The Ride, Pronoia Sunsets cassette on Gifts Nobody Wants

The next dispatch from BTTF TR has just appeared on the Gifts Nobody Wants cassette label. Pronoia Sunsets sports more literal-minded cover art: this time, a pyramid representing the history of the Earth, spookily culminating in an all-seeing golden eye. “Pronoia” is an archaic term that essentially means the opposite of paranoia. Instead of everyone being out to get you, the world is constructed for your benefit and delight. The term was first coined by Grateful Dead associate John Perry Barlow and revived in the 1990s by the all-but-forgotten UK Zippy movement – basically a bunch of ravers who branded themselves so well they even got a Wired cover story out of it. Esoteric origins aside, the value of reviving such an underused term in the context of BTTF TR is that it provides an optimistic counterpoint to the paranoid psychology present in so much modern synth. Indeed, tracks like “Sanity” provide a backdrop to a perfect future, free of worry and insecurities — a fresh contrast to the cold and oppressive landscapes we often associate with the genre.

Pronoia Sunsets is instantly recognizable as a different beast from the first self-titled cassette. The whole affair feels more structured, with an internal momentum and deliberate construction that wasn’t apparent on the briefer, more casual sketches of his first release. The cassette is bookended by two short tracks, but the meat of the album is the middle section; this chapter kicks off with the epic-length “Sanity,” followed by the evocative “Crystal Kisses At Reindeer Lake,” which struck me as a Top 40 love song for a utopian future. Around the time of Pronoia Sunsets, BTTF TR made its first live appearance at Sync Space in Los Angeles, a side of the project Miller really wanted to get off the ground. In an e-mail, he related some memories to me about BTTF TR’s first two shows:

“After years of doing Foot Village, even the simple technology of this act scared me to death in a live setting. I think I’ve got the technical bugs worked out now though. One thing I’ve realized is that this act does not want to be that loud live. At home I play at a near whisper, so I had no idea what volume to play at. I tried doing it full-blast noise-style, and all the detail was lost. [The live setup] is essentially the same [as the studio recordings]. For one of the shows I had an iPod going that was mostly silent, but on occasion played a sound bite that allowed me to stop playing and change settings.”

Miller’s live setup is what unites BTTF TR aesthetically with his past work. The entire rig consists of two pieces of gear: a photocell-driven electronic guitar wired through a reverb unit. The straightforwardness of this configuration allows Miller to stay true to his conviction, solidified after years of touring, in “[keeping] the instrumentation simple and [letting] the playing be the strength of the act.”

As far as crowd response goes, Miller likens the live experience to hypnotizing the audience. “A very angsty punk kid,” he reports, “told me this is very important for people to hear… like politically I think is what he meant? I unfortunately don’t know how to interpret that too well.” Miller is quite pleased with the effect his chosen setup has been having on audiences thus far, and has no plans to change up his approach: “I learned from Foot Village that narrow instrumentation not only allows for a certain freedom of performance, but also a certain magic that the audience experiences by getting a lot out of so little. The best compliment I’ve gotten so far is that it boggles the mind how much depth I get out of this almost nonexistent set up.”

Back To The Future The RIde, Mtv cassette on Deathbomb Arc

Two music videos are in the works for Back To The Future The Ride tracks and there is hushed talk of a doo-wop-themed record entitled God Has Given His Daughter To Us in the near future. In addition to his digital-only debut release and the Pronoia Sunsets cassette, Miller has prepped another cassette, Mtv, that is currently available on Deathbomb Arc. This one is “dedicated to fabricated memories of 80’s heroics, future technologies as seen through the distortion of video, and a naive mass media.” Mtv is the third release in as many months from BTTF TR, but it presents an altogether different side of Miller’s project. It’s lazy but accurate to state that Mtv splits the difference between the first two releases. The songs are shorter than the ones on Pronoia, but executed with more focus and structure than the self-titled material. Listen to “FNMTV” from this latest release below. A slightly darker spirit inhabits these tunes, and although there are moments of “video game music” on a few of the shorter tracks, the inimitable spirit of Back To The Future The Ride remains.

And what, exactly, is that spirit? “This is romance music and I would love to play it for every creature in the universe,” Miller replies. “Please invite me to your hood to get smoothed out with it!”

Back To The Future The Ride, “FNMTV” (Mtv cassette, Deathbomb Arc)

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Back To The Future The Ride is available for free download here. Pronoia Sunsets is available from Gifts Nobody Wants. Mtv is available from Deathbomb Arc.

Words: Max Burke

Back To The Future The Ride performs live in the greater Los Angeles area:
Sunday, May 9 at Laemmle Playhouse (Pasadena) w/ Tusk
Monday, May 17 at Pehrspace (Silver Lake) w/ Syndrome WPW, Psychic Handbook, Foreign Cinema
Saturday, May 29 at The Smell w/ Captain Ahab, BITCHES, Batwings Catwing.

Tags: Back To The Future The Ride, Brian Miller, Crystal Kisses at Reindeer Lake, Deathbomb Arc, FNMTV, Foot Village, Gang Wizard, Gifts Nobody Wants, God Has Given His Daughter, John Perry Barlow, Mtv, Pronoia Sunsets, Sanity

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Portraits, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.