Meg Baird is a singer-songwriter who first rose to prominence as part of storied psych-folk outfit Espers, a Philadelphia collective whose three full-lengths crystallized the sound of the more somber and sonically kaleidoscopic elements of the mid-aughts “Freak Folk” scene. Between Espers’ second and third records, Baird released Dear Companion, an understated but deeply affecting solo record consisting primarily of covers and traditional songs. Those who fell immediately under Meg’s spell had to wait an excruciating four years for the follow-up, Seasons on Earth, which arrived on Drag City this Fall. Some songs find Baird joined, variously, by Marc Orleans, Steve Gunn, and Chris Forsyth on guitar. The focus on originals and the inclusion of other musicians expand the sound ever so slightly, though it’s still grounded in Meg’s signature playing style and voice. I spoke with Meg just before she played a show to celebrate the release at Brooklyn’s Union Pool.

VR: Your first solo LP, Dear Companion, was just your voice and guitar. What was the impetus to bring in additional players for this record?

Meg: It happened pretty organically. It was all people that I knew and it was like, “Oh, we should play together,” and then just following through. I didn’t know Marc [Orleans] too well at first but I’ve gotten to know him through D.Charles Speer & The Helix. Steve [Gunn], he actually lived in Philly, so I’ve known him for a long time.

VR: Have the original songs on the album been kicking around for a while?

Meg: Since the last record came out. Some of them are more recent.

VR: The last record was almost four years ago. Is there any reason why there was so much time between records?

Meg: Just the general slide of procrastination and the inevitability of time slipping away.

VR: Was the new record recorded all at once?

Meg: Yeah, in two weeks with Brian McTear at Miner Street. I’ve worked with him a lot; he’s a really great engineer, and I love the studio. He mixed the last Espers record, so it was very natural, really comfortable, and fast.

VR: Between Kurt Vile, Jack Rose, and U.S. Girls, there’s been a lot more attention on Philly artists over the past few years. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship to the scene?

Meg: It is a small city. A lot of people that are coming from that scene are people that are working or playing together. It has a pretty traceable history. It’s not just this random thing, like people moving here and starting bands. It even goes back to Siltbreeze records, and bands like Bardo Pond. It’s still building on things that were happening in the ’90s, and it’s coming from a pretty continuous thread. We were just really lucky that there was a moment when a lot of people were doing things, and that always leads to good cross-fertilization. It makes it easier to make music.

VR: Were you there for the ’90s?

Meg: I was moving there not when it was just happening, but when it had been established. There was also Strapping Fieldhands and the Philadelphia Record Exchange, where a lot of people worked. We’d hang out there on a Friday night.

VR: Is it easy to see a connection between that sort of creative environment and the trajectory of your own career?

Meg: Yeah. I also play drums in a band called Watery Love [with Richard Charles and Mix Milgram]. We were already friends; I guess they thought it would be funny for me to be the drummer. [Laughs]. Mike from Bardo Pond recorded it. And it just made sense; he had the studio space, and he was happy to do it.

VR: What is the current status of Espers?

Meg: It’s still a band, we just don’t have any plans. We’re a slow moving vehicle, and there’s been a lot of scattering and life changes. There’s a lot of people [in the group], people have moved– just normal things that happen over any five-to-ten year period.

VR: I wanted to ask you about LeavesFrom Off The Tree, a record you did a few years ago with Sharon Kraus and Helena Espvall on Bo’ Weavil. How did that come about?

Meg: Sharon was living in Philly for a year, and she missed her singing sessions. She had a good pub in Oxford where she could sing. She knew that I had interest in that too, and had a tiny repertoire and was happy to help. It just came about from us getting together, and she had met some other people in Philadelphia. Before she left to go back to the UK, she thought it would be great if we could record, and we got Helena, too.

VR: I wanted to ask about the intersection between traditional folk forms in your music versus the more psychedelic influences on Espers. How do you see those traditions relating to one other?

Meg: I think they all kind of bleed together for me. When they don’t is when you have to respect traditions, and some people have more specific ideas about where their tradition stops and starts. It’s not like, “It’s all the same,” I know it isn’t, but in what I’m doing I don’t see a lot of difference. I try and be mindful, especially with traditional music, about why some people are very strict. I’m very aware of it and respectful of it, but I don’t quite see it that way myself.

VR: On the last record, you had a lot of covers and this one has reversed the ratio of original to cover material. Was there a reason for that change?

Meg: On the Dear Companion record, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna do a solo record. It just seemed like that would be a fun thing to do, like a classic type of singer record with originals and traditional songs. There wasn’t a lot of time and energy I could put into it; it seemed like it would actually happen if I did it that way rather than, “I have to write an album’s worth of material before I can record it.” I could jump right into it and do it that way.

VR: You mean, it was easier to think about songs you were already familiar with?

Meg: Yeah, it wasn’t like, “Oh I have all these songs I need to record.” I didn’t have that many; I’d been writing for Espers. Also in terms of seeing differences between certain types of songs, there are certain songs that really don’t seem like they would work for singing unaccompanied in venues and bars, but that would sound great in a nice church somewhere; I do try and pay attention to that kind of stuff. With some things, too, you feel like,“that’s more for the home.” Stuff that doesn’t feel right performing. I have that line; it’s sort of my personal philosophy.

VR: In terms of touring and playing live, would you prefer to have a longer-term collaborator or backing band?

Meg: It would be nice, but it hasn’t been that feasible. It’s so hard to schedule people, getting into that tangle of asking someone to commit and not take other offers. It could be a lot to ask of anyone. It’s better to just play with people when they’re available.

VR: The record is dedicated to JackRose. What influence did he have on your playing or this record specifically?

Meg: It’s the first thing that I’ve done since he died. It’s pretty straightforward: I’m in a place where people miss him all the time. There’s a little bit of that feeling of, “He was such a beautiful player; he can’t make another record.” It makes you feel like you have to think about him and feel gratitude that you knew him. I felt like I should acknowledge it, and it’s hard to make a record and not be able to get, like… he could give me a backhanded compliment or tell me he didn’t like it. It was a little daunting to put something out for the first time and not have any of his thoughts.

Meg Baird – The Finder by Wichita Recordings

Words: Max Burke

Seasons on Earth is out now on Drag City.

James Blackshaw. Photo by Lynda Smith

Guitarist and composer James Blackshaw is a singular force in underground music. From his earliest releases on standard-bearing labels like Digitalis and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, to the expansive, stylistically diverse sound of his two most recent full-lengths for Michael Gira’s Young God Records, Blackshaw has simultaneously explored the sonic possibilities of the guitar and the outer reaches of his own considerable compositional talent. The result is a discography defined by Blackshaw’s virtuosic playing, with each record a finely focused exploration of a playing approach or atmosphere. Blackshaw has just release his latest,All Is Falling, and has embarked on a brief North American tour in between stints supporting Swans in Europe.

Blackshaw’s tourmates are the accomplished electronic and processed guitar duo Mountains, old friends who make for a solid double-bill for interested punters. “Generally a lot of people are really interested in both even if they didn’t know one or the other beforehand, it’s a good match. Its been a lot of fun and I enjoy watching their sets night after night which I can’t always say. Even if you like something, it can be hard to watch people play sets ever night. Its been really good, though.”

Recent supporting slots for Swans have found receptive audiences in Europe and the UK, “Swans have quite a diverse fan base but I was concerned that a big chunk of people – if it’s not super loud they’d be like “What the hell is this folky shit?” – you know, this nerd up on stage. But they went really well. Generally speaking, it seemed like a lot of people who went to see Swans ‘got it,’ which is as much as I can ask.” Not all UK shows have gone as well throughout Blackshaw’s career, however. “I think UK audiences cans be really tough. I think I can say that as one of us. For years and years, truthfully, I didn’t massively enjoy playing London for example. Its gotten a lot better, I think people have become more receptive and interested in what I’m dong. I’m from London and I love London and I like Londoners but we’re not always the warmest people.”

After releases from a variety of labels, most notably New York-based guitar guru specialist label Tompkins Square, Blackshaw has found a home on Young God. “I feel very flattered and happy to be on Young God. One of the things I like about it a lot is that the musicians on it and the releases they put out are very mixed and very limited: it’s not a huge roster. I think if Michael puts something out now he has to really really be into it. He releases maybe a couple of albums a year by other people.”

Photo by Fouad Bechwati

“I liked working with Tompkins Square. When I first said I’d do records with Tompkins Square, they hadn’t put out a single record at that point. I didn’t even know how the label would pan out. I think they’ve done some really great stuff.” Tompkins Square is known as a rather orthodox guitar label, an association that Blackshaw sees as problematic on some level. “I’m a guitar player and I write music for guitar, but I don’t want to be ghettoized in that way…like this ’solo guitar scene.’ I’m not being prissy about that, like, ‘Oh, I’m so much more than a guitarist’ or whatever. But my own taste in music doesn’t fall solely and exclusively in that area. Guitar has been the instrument I’ve felt most comfortable with in terms of writing. It’ll always be pretty central, but I feel like all of my releases have never been totally about guitar.”

Ultimately, James’ apprehension about being viewed solely as an acoustic guitar player is an expression of recognizing the limits of guitar and the widening scope of his own compositional ambitions. “It’s an instrument, its like a tool, and it has a pretty limited tonality to it. I think if you’re gonna record a lot of stuff it’s gonna become sort of tiring, so to add other colors is really interesting to me. I really love guitar as a an instrument, its very very close to me but I’ve never understood why people don’t get fetishistic about, for instance, a violin.” The cult of guitar fetishists has never attracted Blackshaw. “It’s like a whole culture, like high-end coffee or something.”

James’s indifference to the guitar cult is reflected in his choice of instrument. “For years I played a $300 guitar. Jack Rose, when he was alive, he was a friend of mine and he would make fun: ‘When’re you gonna get a decent guitar?’ I dunno, it’s a guitar isn’t it? Its got strings on it.” Attention to detail and acoustics when recording always supersedes a fancy instrument. Blackshaw’s current guitar is “a decent guitar but its not super expensive or anything. I don’t have the right ear for it, I can’t tell the difference between my $600 guitar and a couple thousand dollar guitar. A lot of it has to do with recording. All of those early records are on, like, a $300 guitar but I just felt like we recorded it pretty well.”

Each of Blackshaw’s records has a distinct mood, the result of a conscious effort to employ different approaches with each record. “There are certain general ideas about each album that override how they’re made and written. For example, something like The Cloud of Unknowing, which is an album that I like an awful lot [...] I was pretty nervous when I recorded that album. The whole idea of that album is the tonality of the instrument, generating natural drones and overtones while I was playing. The parts are quite simple, but the technique is not necessarily simple. A lot like Charlemagne Palestine, hitting on something for an hour and something emerges, like that on a miniature level for guitar.”

All Is Falling album art

On All Is Falling, Blackshaw decided to employ electric guitar extensively for the first time, the result of a desire to explore another facet of the instrument’s potential and his own approach to composition. “I thought it would be an interesting challenge because I think it made me consider the piece a lot more, as opposed to getting absorbed in the sound of the instrument. Almost like the anti-Cloud of Unknowing, which was just wanting to hear the instrument and hear it sing out. The electric doesn’t sing out as much, you have to be a little more on it and make it more interesting. Considering the arrangements for other instruments more and thinking about the guitar as a part of whole rather than the focal point.”

Looking outside the guitar exclusively and into a wider range of instruments and more dynamic compositions has resulted in the James Blackshaw Ensemble, an expanded group lineup that have played a handful of dates in Europe and the UK and includes pianist David Coulter and string players Joolie Wood and Fran Bury. The experience of playing in a group allowed James to perform certain pieces more fully and also changed his view of his own compositions. “It’s a different kind of challenge. If I’m playing solo I’m very much in my own universe and I don’t have to worry: I can change things up a little bit, I can speed up and slow down and really exaggerate things. When you play with other people – it doesn’t have to be metronomic: part change, part change, etcetera – but you have to consider other people. I’m aware of what other people are doing, its kind of amazing and scary. Sometimes the best feeling in the world is sitting there and playing something and just listening to other parts that I’ve written and hearing it sounds great. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Unfortunately, practical considerations prevent extended periods of activity for the Ensemble; “I’d love to do a tour or an album, but practically, financially its not the easiest thing.” As for Blackshaw’s other collaboration, two records he produced as a duo with Dutch lute player Jozef van Wissem under the name Brethren of the Free Spirit, that project has run its course and there will be no further material. Although he takes his music very seriously, Blackshaw’s low-key and amusing Twitter presence gives some insight into his non-musical preoccupations, notably an avid interest in video games. “I’ve played video games all my life with little breaks, but I got super into Red Dead Redemption. I still enjoy it, I’ve played it out a bit but its an incredible game.”

James Blackshaw, “Part 7″

Words: Max Burke

From Harmonia to Neu!, early Kraftwerk to his solo recordings, Michael Rother is a living legend in the world of experimental music. After Harmonia, his project with Cluster’s Hans Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, made its final live appearance last year, Rother resurrected the music of Neu! in a living tribute called “Hallogallo 2010”. Formerly a duo with the late Klaus Dinger, the group now consists of Rother on guitar and electronics, bassist Aaron Mullan (longtime Sonic Youth sound engineer and guitarist/vocalist in the band Tall Firs) and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who has also recently appeared in Pete Nolan’s Spectre Folk project.

Live, the Hallogallo experience is a combination of grooving uplift — provided by Mullan and Shelley’s expert rhythm work — and maximalist processed guitar maneuvers by Mr. Rother. Rother has a long association and appreciation for All Tomorrow’s Parties, and has participated in ATP events on three continents. “I like the ATP family. I’m friends with quite a few of the organizers and it’s great to see their faces again everywhere. I’ve seen them in the UK, America, and Australia. They have a good selection of music and [the festival] has a very pleasant feel.”

Although music is at the heart of ATP, the event is distinguished by its diverse selection of extracurricular activities. “I was too late to baseball, I haven’t played cards yet, but we played tennis yesterday,” explains Aaron Mullan. “Hard court, it’s good. Not too many people [at ATP] are actually good at sports.” Despite his renowned sound-mixing abilities and longtime association with Sonic Youth, Mullan is such a modest guy that we wonder how he was drafted into Rother’s Neu!-reviving supergroup.

“I met Aaron when he did the sound for Harmonia at ATP in Camber Sands in 2008, and he did a remarkably bad job at that,” Rother recalls, to laughter all around. “We did recordings with Steve in September 2008 after ATP [where Harmonia performed]. So we’d been talking about what to do with the recordings and Aaron did some mixes and we actually released a single with two short tracks.” That single, released on Steve Shelley’s brand-new Vampire Blues imprint, quickly disappeared from Hallogallo’s merch table at ATP. New copies from the pressing plant are due imminently, but Rother laments that he probably should have bought a few more while they were available.

The origins of Hallogallo are rather straightforward, and refreshingly devoid of the hyperbolic self-importance of recent big-name experimental and indie reunions. “I was working on the Neu! vinyl box set last summer, and after finishing that more or less, I got busy doing interviews, and still had a lot of things to take care of with Neu!. I thought of doing live shows again since Harmonia stopped working together as a live band last year; that’s actually the reason I was available to concentrate on Neu!, and so I think it was more or less a natural decision to see whether we could do shows together. I had an offer for a first show in Hamburg, and since then things have been developing dynamically.”

Michael Rother and Aaron Mullan. Photo by Tim Bugbee

Hallogallo 2010 remains an ongoing focus for Rother, as the group has been playing as many shows as they can. “There’s offers for more shows and that has to do with these excellent reviews we’ve been getting… [There's] so much enthusiasm, and promoters from all over are keeping an eye on what’s happening.” The prospect of new material is still undecided: “Well, since we’re all busy, so busy that I’m happy that we can present this music as it is now, there hasn’t been any room for concentrating in the studio and creating new stuff. Though that would be nice to do, of course.”

Mullan has also worked as the house engineer at various ATP festivals in the US and UK, namely for “orphaned” bands who don’t have sound technicians of their own– “the poor bands,” Rother recalls. For Hallogallo’s mix, Mullan works one-on-one with the sound technician, explaining what he wants beforehand. Although Mullan is an accomplished musician in his own right, he doesn’t see much of a separation between the roles: “It all involves technology and sound. What else? You’re on stage [motions to Rother]; you have a guitar you have a mixing board too.” “It’s true, Rother exclaims, “but we have different hats. I have a label [Random Records], it takes care of my own stuff. Sometimes you have to take care of business and organization and the fun part is when you are actually playing music.”

So why has Rother’s music, celebrated only among the most dedicated experimental music fans in the ’80s and ’90s, enjoyed such a great resurgence in recent years? Rother is grateful for the attention but unwilling to jump to any conclusions. “I guess all of you could give me better answers than I can because I’m always surprised. My heart is with the music, it has been all the time. With Harmonia in the ’70s, when nobody wanted to hear Harmonia, I loved Harmonia just as much as I loved and believed in Neu!. So I got used to not having a great audience for what I love, just having to accept that. The ’80s, even the ’90s, were quite quiet for our music. I don’t really have an [explanation] for what is happening now.” Maybe it has to do with other musicians — the next generation, or next two generations — picking up the ideas and citing us.”

Hallogallo 2010 at ATP. Photo by Tim Bugbee

Rother acknowledges the impact of Julian Cope’s 1995 opus Krautrocksampler, a subjective survey of German music from the ’70s that also celebrated groups like Faust, and Ash Ra Tempel. Most importantly, the book impressed German journalists. “They tried to ignore us, but then they had a reason to write about us,” Rother remembers. Regarding the reception of Hallogallo 2010, and Rother’s musical legacy in general for German audiences, Rother is optimistic but circumspect. “I think Germany is still behind; it’s still catching up, slowly catching up. I know this year there were some big German magazines doing stories about Neu! and the Neu! vinyl box set and Hallogallo 2010. But you just look at the people who are excited to see us; there’s much more expectation in America and in England.”

A recent show in Mexico City was unexpectedly galvanizing, says Mullan. “I’d been to Mexico a few times, but the people there are just so excited. There were girls on shoulders in the first three rows and it just seemed so… unlike anything I thought would happen at our concerts!” According to Rother, Hallogallo’s free show at New York’s Lincoln Center brought in nearly 5,000 people.

Although the influence of Rother’s music has spread far and wide, he remains refreshingly naïve about contemporary bands. “I always feel bad because I know so little about other musicians [...]. I have to be honest, I don’t listen to music that much. And if I listen to music, it’s not contemporary pop or rock music, it’s everything from Bach to music from the early 20th century.” Rother doesn’t limit himself to classical music, however, and is quick to compliment some British rockers who were underrated in their own rite. “If I listen to The Kinks, I get excited.” He does concede, however that he is interested in checking out Dungen and T-Model Ford later in the day at ATP.

As for Sleep, Friday night’s headliner, Rother “was quite impressed. This idea of a wall of sound… There’s no mistaking the kind of music that will always appeal to me. [It's like], this is ‘The Music’.” Rother’s beatific smile during live performances, the uplifting, positive momentum of his music, leaves no doubt as to the positive feeling one is left with after witnessing a Hallogallo performance. Rother, however, feels no particular religious inclination. “ I left the Church. I was Catholic as a child but I left the Church and I don’t know about religions. I’m skeptical about organization, about clerical structures.”

Michael Rother. Photo by Tim Bugbee

Rother knew that performing Neu!’s music without a live drummer would be pointless, and is quick to compliment Shelley’s drumming prowess outside of Hallogallo. Referring to the previous night’s closing set by Sonic Youth, Rother recalls: “I’d seen them before so I knew what to expect more or less, but the way he beats the drums, it’s great. It helps, of course, to transport the idea of my music, that physical experience.” Mullan is less reflective about his playing, stating plainly (and perhaps rather facetiously) that playing bass is like playing guitar, except “they’re bigger strings, and you hit them less often.”

Despite his status as an elder statesman of experimental music, Rother’s musical ambitions remain exceptionally simple and human. “My hope, my wish, is to transmit positive energy. The joy I feel playing that music, creating that noise, that’s what I want to reach the audience. And if they have a similar experience to mine, then everything’s done well [...]. I also like creating a wave that goes on forever. If you listen to tracks like ‘Hallogallo,’ that’s the idea: endless music.”

Words: Max Burke
Photos: Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography

Max Burke: Tell me about the genesis of the GDFX project – how it came to be, and where it is currently.

Greg Fox: I’ve been playing drums for a long time and I play a lot of instruments. After I got out of high school, I ended up sort of getting kicked out of my house; and I grew up in New York, so I got a job at Manny’s Music, which no longer exists. I got a job there, and I got an apartment on Myrtle and Broadway – this is like seven years ago. And while I was working there, Korg put out this Electribe. They’d been putting them out for a while, but they put out a new one and they set it up on display so I started playing with it a lot. As somebody who’d only ever played “real instruments” – whatever that means – it was fascinating to me to write a song on a single piece of hardware, because computer music never really caught my interest. So I started messing around with this thing, and I would make rap beats and video game-sounding music. So I had this machine. And when I eventually went to college, I brought it to school, just messing around with it. Me and my friends would get drunk and high, rap, and goof around.

But then I saw this band Blues Control play. They’re not using any of the same machines or anything like that, but Russ and Lea – meeting them, catching them a few times, listening to their recordings – something clicked for me in terms of their approach to composing. Kind of a looseness to their music that I just loved. So I went back to this Electribe that I had and I started trying to approach it like a drum machine/sequencer/sampler/synthesizer, but from a more free point of view. While I was in college, I got commissioned to make a soundtrack for an Atari video game. So I put it out; that was the last output of the videogamey, super straight stuff.

What game was that?

It’s called N+, a ninja game for PSP and DS. I did that and at that point I graduated and my band Teeth Mountain went on tour and I brought my gear with me to mess around with in my free time. And we had a show in Colorado and they needed another band. So I was like, well, I’ve never played by myself before but I’ll try. So I set up and I played, and people liked it. I hadn’t learned not to criticize myself while I was playing music. But people liked it, and I got some press from that one show. At that point, I’d already come up with the name GDFX. I was doing graffiti at the time, tagging GDFX on stuff. So I started going by that; and when I got back to New York, I started booking shows, figuring out what I was doing. It was just an excuse to experiment and do things outside the realm of all the other bands I’d been playing with, which had been taking up a lot of my time. So those shows were just an excuse to set my shit up and do something, and I never had any kind of plan — it would be all over the place. Only recently did I learn not to think about what I’m doing while I’m doing it. So that’s how that all started.

I did a couple recordings. One of them got put out on Little Fury Things, this tape label. So after that I started realizing that it seemed silly to be doing a project by myself that didn’t feature my drumming, because I feel like that’s something I had to bring to the table. I started incorporating the drumming into it, and I started experimenting with drones. My band Teeth Mountain does a lot of droney material — so that was a big influence on me. Then I started learning how to throat sing. The guy from Bloody Panda – this sweet doom stoner metal band that used to be based in Brooklyn, but is now in Brooklyn and LA — throat sings, and he taught me Tuvan-style throat singing. He gave me the basic building blocks, and I started experimenting with it. That just opened up a whole other thing: I can play drums, I can make these vocal loops using throat singing. I realized what my instruments were outside of having just electronics. Then that kind of brings it to Guardian Alien. I started saying to myself, I’m doing this thing now. Wouldn’t it be cool to do it with other people?

So that’s why I started a band. For a while we were just doing it under the name GDFX, but then I had this experience and I’m not sure what it was…a left brain talking to the right brain thing. Something happened to me, and that’s where I got the idea for the name Guardian Alien. The other thing is, while studying throat singing, I learned that the natural note I sing is B Flat. After reading into it, I found out that B Flat is the Crown Chakra, as well as the resonating tone of deep space and black holes. It seems to have a lot of significance, even if I don’t know exactly what it is that I’m channeling.

GDFX, live at Market Hotel, 2009. Photo by Joe Perez/Eyebodega.

We were talking earlier about energy – putting energy into spaces. I think a lot of the bands at NY Eye & Ear have a notion of that, and that it’s channeled through…different sorts of ideas that you might tag spiritual, might not. They don’t necessarily have to be spiritual, they can be very pragmatic. But for you in Guardian Alien and GDFX…can you talk a little bit about what that energy means to you, and how it works in your music?

There’s a lot to say. I feel, first of all, that every day you wake up and you go into the world. Especially last night, when I was hanging out here; I haven’t spent time hanging out in Williamsburg proper late at night. Seeing the way people are, you can feel people’s energy and it’s – not everybody learns this lesson – but it’s a conscious choice — what energy you give out into the world, and what you share. It’s not as simple as “I’m just negative” or “I’m just positive.” Whether you realize it or not, everybody’s contributing. Being aware of that to some degree and being conscious of what it is you’re trying to contribute energetically — it’s as simple as, If I’m gonna be selfish, I wanna feel good and I want other people around me to feel good. Because when other people around me are feeling good, it makes me feel good. It’s like you go to these places, or you hang out on the corner, and you can feel this negative vibe that a lot of people carry on their sleeve. For me it’s like a personal mission to push back against that with a positive energy.

Is that something that manifests itself in all of your activities – GDFX, Guardian Alien, Teeth Mountain, the record label? For a lot of the artists here, that’s what it’s about: pushing against that negativity.

The world is what you make it. There’s that fucking oil spill and, did you see the cover of the Post yesterday? The cover of the New York Post was a toreador in Spain getting gored through the mouth, out of his mouth. It was on the fucking cover. This is what they’re putting out. And like so many stupid New Yorkers – I’m gonna try not to be, but I’m gonna be judgmental – so many stupid New Yorkers that pride themselves on reading the Post are looking at that. I was in the bodega on this corner and there was a kid running around and that thing was on the bottom shelf of the newsstand. That’s fucked up. Not to mention that that’s not news either. All sorts of gory, horrible things happen to people in real life on a daily basis. It’s one thing to have an awareness of that, but its another thing to project it. Not only that, but to be projecting it instead of the fact that the world is currently home to the worst environmental crisis in history.

Exactly. We can talk about a million different issues. Everyone wants to talk about global warming; let’s talk about Zimbabwe, Darfur, human rights in China. I think the reason a lot of people put this negativity out is so they can feel that they’re aware of it — and do something about it, and gratify their own ego. They’re not really doing anything about it, but they can say, I’m a conscious person. Whereas for me, pushing back against it is what it’s about. You’re not gonna solve all the world’s problems; but if you can push against it, and try and distance yourself from it, then at least you can make a small positive change.

Yeah, I can’t stop that oil spill. I can’t do that. And I can’t fix that guy’s face after getting gored. And I can’t save everybody in Darfur. I can’t do any of that just by wanting the world to be perfect, but I can have a positive effect on the people I have a direct contact with — and music is the best way to do it. I don’t have to write a song about sunshine; I just have to come into my playing space with that feeling of positivity and my intention and my will for immediate surroundings — and I can effect positive change. I can insert that positivity and that spirit of unity. There’s a lot to say about it, but “think globally, act locally” is a good slogan. It’s all about you and the people around you; and to the extent that that can be a microcosm of the whole world – with the awareness of all the fucked up shit that’s happening – you can have control over what you put out into your surroundings. There is also a collective consciousness; thoughts aren’t just in your head, they go out. Energy flies all over the place; it’s not just cellphone signals. You meet people who exude an energy that you can feel when they walk into a room — whether it’s a good energy or a bad energy.

It’s an ongoing reality that everyone deals with, and everybody makes it more or less a priority. I think we’ve said a lot. Let’s switch gears and talk about upcoming shows, booking, Fourth of July at Shea Stadium?

I used to book a lot more shows. I’m kind of trying to get out of it. When you tour a lot, you end up meeting a lot of people. And it’s like, Oh, my cousin runs a venue in Brooklyn. I get emails from people — “Can you hook me up with a show?” — and I wanna help them out, and I’m all over the place with my own shit, trying to hustle in New York, pay my rent, do odd jobs, and play music in all these different projects. On top of that, trying to put together a good show for somebody who’s coming through is not always possible. The people who dedicate themselves to booking only are really the people who should be booking shows.

You also don’t wanna talk to someone whose music you really respond to and try and put something together and not do it as well as you should…

Or on the flip side, somebody you really like as a person whose music you don’t really like. They come through and they want you to help them out with a show. It’s like, Uhhh….alright.

That can be a hard thing to navigate. Even though the Brooklyn scene is pretty big and stretches out across the country, it’s hard to be friendly with someone and care about them and be like, I don’t really like your band. It’s not about “integrity” in an abstract or ideological way. It’s just about being honest and truthful.

It’s really important to be honest though. I will also say that as an example, I toured with Future Islands a little bit. The first time I toured with them, I’d met them before and I thought they were awesome dudes. When I first heard them – this is a while ago, they’ve come along way – it wasn’t my vibe. But after getting to know them more and touring with them more and becoming really good friends with them, I love Future Islands now. I love their new album, I listen to it all the time. That can happen too; it’s like when you get close to somebody you can start appreciating their music in a way that you didn’t when you didn’t know them.

But getting back to the booking thing…I was booking other shows, I used to book at Market Hotel a lot, I had a studio there for a while. I was the only person booking shows there for a while other than Todd. I had a couple really great shows there, but also a lot of really mediocre shows, where I was doing a favor for someone who was coming through. So I did that for a while, and that situation got kind of shitty, so I got out of the Market. My cousin opened this new venue, Shea. So I started doing the same hing. Some of the shows were great; some of them weren’t. The first show I ever booked there was when they moved into the new space at 20 Meadow St. I’m trying to remember who I booked…a lot of people came out. So I just kind of decided, I wanna book one show a year at my cousin’s venue. I’m gonna ask all my favorite bands and my friends and just do it once a year and never book any other shows. Fourth of July this year at Shea Stadium. Future Islands is playing, White Mice, CSC Funk Band, Liturgy, Guardian Alien, Telecult Powers, Lexie Mountain’s new project. I’m blowing it the fuck out.

Greg Fox appears June 12 at Bonnaroo with the Dan Deacon Ensemble, July 4^th at Shea Stadium with Guardian Alien and the aforementioned groups, and August 26 as GDFX at Telecult Powers’ Cosmic Meditation Zone in Crown Heights. Listen to GDFX at the Free Music Archive.

Interview by Max Burke
Photo (top) via GDFX’s Myspace

Max Burke: How long have you guys been together?

Peter Kerlin: Two years. Nawi and I had been in another band called The Holy Childhood and then I stopped playing music for a while and then I met Nick in this graduate program we were in; he was a student of mine, and we started playing. Nawi and I were fantasizing about having a band that would be all low-end — Nawi playing baritone sax, me playing bass…

Nawi Avila: …low-end in competing waves.

PK: So we started out with that idea and it kind of grew. We spent a year before we played, just trying stuff out, getting together a palate of sounds, a distinct palette. Nick does a lot stuff with contact mics and he has a synthesizer that he runs the contact mics through and he drums. So for a while, we developed that palette, getting it under control, and working with a basic way of playing together.

Have you been involved with music your whole life?

PK: Pretty much my whole adult life since I was 18 or something, a lot of bands.

You just put out your first record, your first LP. Was that recorded professionally?

PK: We did it with a friend of ours — Josh Druckman — who has a studio in upstate New York, in Rock Hill, called the Outlier Inn. So he recorded it and it was pretty simple, with very minimal overdubbing. Almost a live record, in some ways. We just tried to get good performances and kept it at that, almost no editing.

NA: One of the songs has overdubs. All songs are live performances, live takes except one. Maybe that’s a fun game to find out which song has the overdub; only one of them does.

PK: The approach was just capture the performances, get the right energy. And we did the mixing and mastering at The Seaside Lounge in Brooklyn, which was great. We decided to do a limited run of 200 vinyl, and we’re still figuring out what we’re doing for digital. If people are motivated, it can be found. We’re trying to figure out what it is to put out a vinyl record yourself, what you should expect. I’ve been in groups that have done that before, but it was always the other people in the band who handled it. So this is the first time for us. But we’re excited; we love the way it came out, got a lot of nice feedback. So it’s been really exciting; we’re psyched.

All three of you guys are from New York?

PK: Nawi lives in Pennsylvania.

NA: I was in Brooklyn for a number of years. I moved back to Pennsylvania almost two years ago, so I’m a commuter.

Nick Hasty: I’m from a small town in Georgia. I lived in Athens for a couple years, but I live in Brooklyn now.

PK: So we don’t get in as much practice as we did when Nawi lived here, but we’re getting used to the new schedule and the new way of doing things.

Do you have a formal rehearsal space?

PK: Yeah, we’re in one of those “big band buildings,” so we struggle against other bands, other people playing in other time signatures.

They don’t have the same ideology about all low-end?

PK: Yeah, and we’ve gotten strangely few complaints about that. It works pretty well. But that was also a first, being in one of those kinds of spaces. But it’s cool.

You are distributing the album yourself?

PK: Right now Discriminate Music is distributing it – we’re just doing local stuff. There’s so many great spots here in Brooklyn, like Academy, Earwax, ESP-Disk. So we’re just doing it that way: “slow distro.” Like slow food, but slow distro. We’re just like…I’m totally distracted by this movie.

[All look up at the screen. Charlton Heston's 1971 post-apocalyptic classic The Omega Man is playing]

This is a good movie. I’m gonna go watch Omega Man. Thanks guys.

[Laughter]

NA: It was a lot of friends who put it together. Josh Druckman and some friends of Peter’s helped us master it. And the art design…

Source of Yellow, Self-Titled/Self-Released L.P.

PK: My friend Gabrielle Schies did it, she’s a talented designer. It’s nice to have something that’s really handmade, that feels like a work of art. It has an aura of its own. That’s something we wanna keep doing.

NH: What’s nice about doing it by yourself is it’s not part of a chain or anything. We just made this thing, we got some friends to help us, we all went in, and here it is.

NA: Very professional friends. We thought about doing it ourselves a bit but it was absolutely a great decision to find those individuals to master it. Those noise elements — I love them, but I also want other people to hear them, not be hurt by them. They did such a masterful job – it shines, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes.

PK: Mastering is a mysterious, beautiful process.

It seems like some people have the knack for it, almost a supernatural ability. I don’t really understand what’s going on with mastering.

PK: When you get to work with people who make records all day, every day, and they can be like, “No no no, let’s do it my way.”

You guys were the first band on the second day of NY Eye and Ear…there were only a few people in the crowd. Did you care that you had the four-in-the-afternoon slot?

PK: No, we were just psyched to do it. It’s something I’ve really wanted to do for the last couple years. It’s cool to be here; I have my blue bracelet and I can hang out and peruse records. We were just really psyched to do it. Maybe next time we’ll be better about our response time; we were a little behind the curve. It’s a reason to be up and at ‘em.

Source of Yellow, “The Metronome Breaks the Hearts of All Believers” (Source of Yellow, Self-Released)

Source of Yellow play Zebulon on June 16th with Latalan Hardi Trio, Slow Stoch, and Brian Osborne as part of Jeff Conklin’s Avant Ghetto series. Their debut LP is available now online.

Interview by Max Burke
Photo (top): Jockey Goggles

Samantha Cornwell: I know that you do all of your own album art work for Sun Araw, and seem to have a pretty clear vision of how you want your music to be represented visually. How do you feel this aesthetic unity effects the Sun Araw experience and sets it apart from other musical projects that you are familiar with? Have you applied a similar rigor to previous musical projects of your own?

Cameron Stallones: I want the zones to flow all the way through, start to finish, eyes to ears, brainpan to inner visions. That’s really powerful and important to me. I just can’t help but get stoked about the object-creation side of it anyhow, such a heavy scene! Not to mention the ability to physically realize for others the inner-zones that you’ve been dwelling in so long while recording. Thankfully, in most of the other bands I’ve been in, people have been down and had similar goals. In Magic Lantern the artwork is always a collab, but those dudes like getting down into it, making something really thorough. I guess those are complicated ways of saying I can be super picky, though. But a lot of the bands I idolize are those that were super singular in their aesthetic visions as well as their music. I just see it as preparing the way for the jams, folding them in love.

In a previous interview, when discussing the difference in vibes between HEAVY DEEDS and ON PATROL you described HEAVY DEEDS as having a “perfect world” vibe; in ON PATROL, those energies meet the real world. You also described ON PATROL as an “application” or a “compromise”. Based on this, would it be wrong to say that the quest for Utopia is an important theme in your work?

Woa, well, I wouldn’t say quest for Utopia myself, but I’m definitely looking for how to live. I can’t really help bending most of the stuff on my mind into the shape of what I’m working on, and for me Sun Araw has always been a pretty spiritual project. ON PATROL was a direct result of the major “All Night Long” hangover, you know? I lost two of my dearest voyaging partners to Portland a while back, and was kinda finding myself going it alone, floating free, and it seemed important for me to figure out how to keep on the night after HEAVY DEEDS are done. That sort of energy is vital, powerful, and the real deal, but it’s not sustainable — nor is it meant to be. Those ascendant moments are short lived for our own benefit, I think. So for the rest of the time, you gotta get On Patrol, you gotta Mind Psalm and get on it. I was really surprised to see how that energy manifests itself so pro-actively: it’s a job, it’s a beat. But that’s how it came out, and seeing it now, it makes a lot of sense. It’s full-time! But it’s joyful work, the only work, and it keeps you out of deep trouble.

Is there anyone making music right now who you feel a strong aesthetic connection with, other than people that you’ve been grouped with through a label, or through the press?

Definitely there’s a lot of people around that I love and respect, some of whom are a huge influence on me personally, if not musically. But I usually process Sun Araw as a fairly solo inner-voyage: letting down the nets in the dead of night, hoping to catch some food, you know? There’s a lot of people who do that, but I think working that way produces pretty disparate voices. That said, some of those big fish are running amok, tearing through the nets of a lot of like-minded people. So I’m always pleasantly surprised to see similar vibes cropping up and blooming all over jams from people I’ve never met, people I know, people I wish I knew. But almost always, when you hold those similarities up to the light you see how they’re appropriated from completely different, even contrary angles. But that’s the strength in it: angle after angle after angle, I want that Picasso vision. Let me see every side of it at once.

Since I know that you do illustrations for your album artwork, and are currently working on a music video that you directed yourself, I want to talk a little bit about your interaction with visual art. Who are some visual artists (from any era) who you really connect to? Do any of these artists influence your visual style at all? Your musical style?

Musically I’m mostly influenced by filmmakers, especially long-take brothers: Tarkovsky, Altman, Bela Tarr, Greenaway. I’m pretty devoted to long-form, mantric music and so I’m all about straight lampin’ in deep focus: angle after angle on the melodic object. I get a lot of inspiration from that breakdown of the illusion of fixed perspective. As far as my album artwork, I probably get more inspired by typography, first-wave independent jazz covers, and yeah probably other record covers mostly. I get way down with anyone creating mystical spaces. I love Augustin Lesage, some of the darker, more tripped abstract Gorky’s. Something about true early twentieth century zoners is so much heavier than anything you see in painting today, especially those abstractions that flew in right before the whole thing got intellectualized and manifesto-ed. Those dudes trained their mystic sight; they saw some serious business.

On a related note, what do you find to be some of the challenges of connecting your musical style to a visual medium?

It can be a real struggle, but for me to feel the total flow it’s really necessary. It’s always the last part of the process, and up to that point you’ve spent so much time inside those jams, turning them over and over, that assigning visuals seems kinda reductive, even though it’s important. I try not to illustrate or show the whole situation. You want it to be an expansive force, so I look for a powerful portion that can turn the floodlights on, light it up from the inside.

What do you find most exciting about working on a solo project? Would you ever consider including additional collaborators?

I don’t like to ever put rules or restrictions on anything, but I think Sun Araw will most likely remain a solo voyage. I’ve done collaborations in the past and will in the future. I’m working on three right now, actually. I love writing and jamming with other people, but that just usually compels me to start a new project with them, if it seems like it’s bearing fruit for the long haul. Araw is a Tagalog word that means “sun” or “day,” and there’s a heavy Sun Day zone for me in there: sacred rest, that’s a big part of it. I think it will always kind of be a retreat for me, from whatever else I’m doing at the time.

Do you think you will continue to make music as “Sun Araw” for the long haul? If you ever stopped making music, what do you think you would do instead?

Oh yeah I hope to. But I hope to do a lot of other stuff. I’m a big film geek, and I work with film in my day job. Directing the “Deep Cover” video and shooting it on film as opposed to digital, was a calculated move to force a serious re-stretch of those muscles, get some juices flowing in ‘em. I’d really like to make some films. I’ve got some stuff I’m working on casually. We’ll see what happens.

Sun Araw, “THE STAKEOUT: REPRISE” (ON PATROL, Not Not Fun)

Interview: Samantha Cornwell
Photos: Cole Prentice

To cruise deeper into the zone, please visit Sun Araw’s website. ON PATROL and HEAVY DEEDS can be purchased directly from Not Not Fun, though you can also stream both albums and more right here.

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)

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.

One of the things I was really looking forward to at SXSW was sitting down for a chat with some of the artists I had been following for a long time but had only had the opportunity of corresponding with over the internet. Rangers‘ Joe Knight, who released a stunning record of “pop songs” on Olde English Spelling Bee earlier this year, was high on my list. Sadly, the interview I had planned to conduct out with him out there never came to be. It was such a hectic week for both of us that somehow we only managed to say a quick hello as he and the other members of the SXSW Rangers “band” — which had convened for the first time in Austin that week — were lugging their gear out of the backyard where the Micro-Pixel-Rites showcase was hosted. Fortunately, we were able to catch up on the information super highway when we both got home.

Last week was a big week for Rangers, marking not only your first appearance at SXSW, but also some of your first live appearances period. How would you describe the whole SXSW experience? Anything weird or unusual happen?

Dunno. It was a lot of fun. I guess it was random how it came about. I’m from Texas and have been to SXSW a bunch and I was tentativley planning to go just for fun and to catch up with some friends from back home. Then I started to get some offers to play shows, so I started to throw the idea around with my friend Peter and we were trying to think of the best way to swing it. We had some friends who were down to go and ready to practice; we practiced a bit and that was that. We had a great time.

I have to admit I was a little surprised when you told me that you would be performing with a full, 5-piece band, seeing as I know Rangers primarily as a solo recording project. What guided this choice, and who did you recruit for the occasion?

Well, when I mentioned the idea to Peter we started to think of how we would pull it off. I really like the one-man thing (Ducktails, Sun Araw), but I just doubt I would have the patience or technical know-how to put together some elaborate set with samples, loops, etc. The band option sounded easier, actually. I don’t really think the Suburban Tours stuff translates that well but the Low Cut Fades portions were really fun to play.

Having said that though, playing with a band is great! And these guys are so good and have such good attitudes. There are endless possiblities with a band. I would love to get away from the guy-in-a-kitchen recording sound and move towards a full-fledged live band sound with everybody contributing. We’ll see.

How did you feel about the result? I thought your songs translated really well live — still identifiably “Rangers,” but riding on an entirely different kind of energy. Pretty rock n’ roll, to be honest.

At the very least it was super fun. The guys have done a great job. As far as how the music translates live… well, that’s pretty shaky at best. We gave it a shot and put ourselves out there for better or for worse. We also had to borrow amps, thanks soooo much to Sleepover and Cloud Nothings. They were very kind, however we won’t do that again — not because it sounded bad, but just because shit… if you’re going to go play somewhere, have your own gear. We felt really awful about asking. We were flying by the seat of our pants, so I guess it worked out.

Joe Knight with the Rangers band at “Shake Some Action,” Weekly Tape Deck and Friendship Bracelet’s joint SXSW 2010 showcase

If VH1 made a “Behind the Music” documentary about you ten years from now, how would the story of Rangers begin?

“Area man makes tapes.” It would be a very brief, non-descript Onion article I think.

What kind of stuff were you listening to when you began the project? Would you count supermarket or elevator music as an influence?

Not really… anything that sounds like “elevator” or “grocery store” music is just me trying to rip off a Chic song and it coming out poorly. I honestly don’t think I was listening to that much of anything; I had just moved to San Francisco, and was living in the Haight, so I was listening to homeless people argue I guess. I remember listening to Funkadelic, PIL, Earth Wind and Fire, and Chic a fare amount, now that I think about it.

Most of your songs seem to built on loops — even the “pop” songs on Suburban Tours, where you sing. What draws you to the loop as a compositional building block?

That’s funny, I have a loop pedal but I rarely use it. Not any of the songs on ST used a “loop” pedal so to speak. All of the drums are played live along with the tracks. Its just repetitive at times but all of the repeats are me just playing the stuff live.

I find your music to be highly imagistic; I’m sure your song titles and lyrical content are partly responsible (not to mention the videos for “Deerfield Village” and “Out Past Curfew”), but I often find myself visualizing images of urban and suburban sprawl when I listen to it. Perhaps it has something to do with the geometry and repetition of your tunes, their slightly sinister monotony. Do you have any specific images in mind when you record?

Dunno. I had moved to San Franciso — which is a real, dense city — from Dallas — which is really just a suburb — so I was probably thinking about the built environment around me and how different it was now and how fucked up it was then.

The Rangers band at the Micro-Pixel-Rites 2010 SXSW Showcase

Timing-wise, the release of your debut L.P. on Olde English Spelling Bee seems to have coincided with the height of the hypnagogic/glow-fi/chill-wave hype parade. Not surprisingly, blogs have been lumping you in with this “movement,” even sometimes to the point of mistaking you for someone who “jumped on” after acts like James Ferraro and Ducktails. How do you feel about this?

Oh I totally jumped on after Ferraro and Ducktails, no doubt. I have been recording music since probably around 2003, but the stuff before them was way different. They were both big inspirations. Dunno what to think. Honestly, I think ST will be the death knell for the scene you mention; it will be what “raining men” did for disco, ya know? I think that would be pretty cool. I doubt it would ever come close to being that significant, but its something to shoot for I guess. Either way, I’m going to keep recording because I enjoy it; I enjoy the process much more than then end result most of the time. So I’m not worried what “scene” my music get’s lumped into. I have a lot of ideas, and I love the whole process of trying to put your ideas to tape or any other kind of medium. Some people draw, paint, write, or have some other creative release; I like to record. It’s pretty self-indulgent but everyone needs to indulge in something from time to time. I would love to get better gear, we’ll see….

Lastly, what do you think is the best way to listen to your music? Any ideal setting or scenario?

I have no idea really…I mean, it was all recorded on headphones so I imagine headphones would be the way to go. In a relaxed environment, when you want to get away from work or daily routine stuff I guess.

Words: Emilie Friedlander, Interview with Joe Knight
Photos: Emilie Friedlander (except for the aerial photo)

The first major snowstorm of 2010 in New York City occasioned one of the most noteworthy nights of the Unsound Festival. The festival, which originated in Poland and is making its stateside debut this year, is a two-week series of concerts, film screenings, talks, and other special events in Manhattan with a focus on experimental dance and electronic music. Tonight’s concert took place at Le Poisson Rouge, a relatively new downtown venue that seeks to bring classical and experimental music to the beer-swilling masses in a club setting. LPR is relatively small with an impressive sound system suited to avant garde musics, which often hinge on subtle gestures and deep listening for success.

Tonight’s show was a revue of four international artists currently redefining what it means to be “post-rock.” Although there was a flurry of activity and excitement around post-rock in the mid 1990s, the term has since become synonymous with antiseptic exercises in predictable soft/loud dynamics and a profusion of tiresome acts with increasingly pretentious song titles — not to mention a willfully opaque aesthetic that is comically arch and tedious (see: Pelican, and pretty much the entire Temporary Residence catalog). Drawing equally from ambient, laptop improvisation and left-field experimental electronica, a handful of innovators at the fringes of the genre are pushing post-rock into new territory.

First up was Mountains, the Brooklyn-based duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg, known for their unique brand of guitar and loop-based ambient music, and as the guys behind the Apestaartje label/collective. They released their first widely available full-length — the superlative Choral — on Chicago’s venerable Thrill Jockey last year, and have toured widely in Europe and the States. Holtkamp and Anderegg’s interaction as a guitar duo forms the core of Mountains’ sound; the group began their set in this mode, typified by Anderegg playing more traditional chord-based guitar as Holtkamp improvised in a more abstract way, at times approaching a prepared guitar technique. As Anderegg held down the melody, filling a role similar to that of guitarist Mark McGuire in Emeralds, Holtkamp began weaving in a variety nontraditional sound sources, including a loop of an eggbeater in a metal bowl, an antique accordion-like device, and a vintage electronic keyboard. Soon enough, waves of distortion began to shudder though the mix, barely audible but insistent, producing a tension with the dominant ambient beauty. In the second piece, which inverted the dynamics of the first, this distortion came to the fore. Beginning with loud, atonal distortion, Holtkamp and Anderegg peeled away layers of sound until they arrived back to where they started, concluding the piece with a fragile and gorgeous guitar duet.

The overall impact of Mountains’ music is deceptive simplicity. Piled high with layer upon layer of samples, their music is not unlike the “laptop folk” artists who rose to underground prominence in the early part of this century, primarily through the efforts of Peter Rehberg’s Vienna-based Mego label. But whereas those artists explored the harsh and static sound of the digital, Mountains — who rely on more traditional instrumentation — are brimming with organic warmth, subjecting their sources to the rigors of electronic manipulation without allowing them to become sterile. At one point in the set, Anderegg put down his guitar and intoned softly into the microphone: a wordless hymn of the human voice, distinct and powerful and clearly audible amid the surrounding electronic hiss and layered sounds. Mountains set the bar high with their opening set, and affirmed their status as one of the most ambitious and emotive electronic acts working today.

Tape

Next up was Tape from Sweden. The group, usually a trio but appearing today as a quartet, has been exploring the intersection of jazz and the post-rock sensibility on the Häpna label for nearly a decade. Their latest full-length, Luminarium, refined a sound at once more and less engaged with post-rock aesthetics than that of their contemporaries. This may sound like a slight, but let me explain: Tape strikes me as one of the most self-aware bands in the entire post-ambient/instrumental electronica scene. In a field crowded with preposterous groups making even more preposterous claims about the epic sweep and depth of their music, Tape aspire to a minimalist line of thinking, treating each song (of all the artists performing tonight, they come closest to crafting traditional songs) as something of a trifle. This is due mainly to their perfunctory keyboard melodies, which often take center stage; some of them are ridiculously simple, but they never last more than a few seconds. Indeed it is difficult to tell exactly what, if anything, has “happened” over the course of a given Tape track. While most post-rockers engage in a tired loud/soft or dissonance/melody dichotomy, Tape is happy to barely engage in traditional rock dynamics at all. Wielding a makeshift instrument consisting of cymbals suspended by rope, percussionist Tomas Hallonsten stuck to a straightforward rhythm — when he was actually playing, that is. At the end of one piece, he picked up a trumpet and delivered a brief, seemingly haphazard solo. Despite their intense focus, the members of the group barely acknowledged each other’s presence on stage.

If anything, Tape has succeded in removing the rock from their titular descriptor – they are merely “post,” reducing the genre to a series of gestures and notions. And appropriately for their brand of concise, conceptual music, theirs was the shortest set of the night. If you weren’t paying close attention, you might not have noticed they were playing at all – and that’s a genuine compliment.

Radian

Tape’s response to the challenge of deconstructing rock music — which amounted here to a shrug — stood in stark contrast to Radian, whose method of attack is more like a punch in the face. Perhaps that’s going a bit too far, but the group’s ability to knock the ground out from under the listener is breathtaking. Live, the band manages to reduce a variety of standby rock maneuvers to their simplest form, then effortlessly reconstitute them into something new. Drummer Martin Brandlmayr is particularly crucial to Radian’s success. His ability to juggle his signature out-of-step drumming — using both traditional sticks and subtler wire paintbrushes — with the sampler attached to his drumkit was simply supernatural.

Radian’s first few songs were aggressive numbers with muscular percussion complimented by rudimentary but precise attacks from bassist John Norman and the synthesizer work of Stefan Németh. As the set wore on, Radian pursued their sound to its logical end. Their second to last piece was a standout with a structure so complex that it threatened at times to crumble under its own weight; just when when we thought that something in the composition had gone terribly awry, however, Brandlmayr would trigger a sample or come through with a quick percussion move and everything would fall back into place. By this time, Németh was playing guitar; although technically closer to a traditional rock band than any of the other performers that night, Radian had veered far out of the realm of recognizable pop/rock dynamics. In fact, they seemed to have more in common with the sample-heavy deconstruction of artists like John Oswald, or the glitch techniques of Markus Popp’s Oval project.

The notoriously imprecise designation IDM hung over the proceedings at Le Poisson Rouge that as much as the abused notion of post rock, and the night’s final act, Tim Hecker, brought this dialogue front and center. Performing with a relatively straightforward set-up (a laptop, a mixer, and a keyboard arranged on a table), Hecker began unceremoniously about twenty minutes after Radian left the stage. His arrival, however, was impossible to miss: the venue went pitch black and the sound was all-encompassing. The sight of fans gathered in a circle around the blue glow of Hecker’s Power Book – the only significant light source in the room – seemed fitting for the demanding exploration of ambient electronica to follow. The audience was immediately engulfed in an oppressive wash of ambient sounds, expertly manipulated by the acclaimed Canadian artist. In a set that ebbed and flowed like a precisely composed classical piece, brevity proved to be one of the most effective weapons in his Hecker’s arsenal; the piece ended right when it seemed like it might stretch into oblivion. When the lights came up, the crowd seemed bewildered. After tromping through the snow on a day when many businesses were closed and other concerts canceled, they had been rewarded by transporting performances from some of the most innovative electronic musicians working today.

Words: Max Burke
Photos: Max Burke

At the midpoint of the last decade, it seemed possible that noise music was ready to reach an audience beyond a core group of hardcore scene aficionados, record collector nerds, other musicians, fringe Euro art enthusiasts, and Midwestern basement hangers-on. Wolf Eyes toured with Sonic Youth and released the epochal Burned Mind after signing with Sub Pop. Carlos Giffoni inaugurated his first No Fun Fest with a mind-boggling line-up of artists from all corners of the scene. Giffoni’s own No Fun Productions tracked the development of noise from 2005 onwards with a carefully curated selection of just over fifty releases in five years, a surprisingly lean number of offerings from a scene known for its sometimes comical prolificacy. Lightning Bolt was gaining some overground attention with a brand of hyper-charged punk that merged noise and thrash metal with the strong aesthetic appeal of the legendary Fort Thunder collective.

In the intervening five years, noise became institutionalized. In 2009, Giffoni earned his MFA at the New School and announced plans to scrap the 2010 edition of No Fun Fest after last year’s sold out weeks in advance and came complete with a screening of moving image work by noise artists at The New Museum. But noise never broke through, even if sensitive white kids everywhere maintained their death grip on mainstream indie rock aesthetics. Some long-running concerns broke up (Yellow Swans), others drifted into puzzling noise-dance hybrids (Black Dice), but most — from veterans Merzbow and The Dead C to the ubiquitous Wolf Eyes — soldiered on. In the waning days of the ’00s, vintage synthesizer worship took center stage, a sign that the harshest and most brutal practitioners of pure noise may be on their way out.

It was against this backdrop that five acts descended on Greenpoint’s Coco66 on Friday evening, one of coldest nights so far this winter. The bill felt like a throwback to the halcyon noise days of the early ’00s: two members of Wolf Eyes, long-time scene supporter Thurston Moore’s Northampton Wools–a duo with Bill Nace that explores the outer limits of harsh, abstract guitar squeal–and headliner Death Unit’s long-awaited return.

Opener Dog Lady (né Mike Collino) kicked off the evening in fine form with some solo electronics; brief at every turn, the set culminated in a distorted violin piece, drawing an inevitable but very favorable comparison with C. Spencer Yeh, also in attendence. Next up was Spykes, a solo project by Wolf Eyes’ John Olson. Given the Wolf Eyes pedigree and the project’s name, I was anticipating an offering of harsh noise. After a tentative introduction full of oppressive percussion gestures, however, Olson settled into a far more ambient groove. A cassette deck furnished a sonic background for improvisation on a variety of wind instruments, including a distinctive, two-pronged, flute-like contraption. The result: a memorable, surprisingly low-key preamble.
Cover art for Nate Young’s Regression lp, on iDeal

Nate Young’s Regression project followed suit. Young sat at a folding table loaded down with gear, a microphone perched conveniently at his side, the above banner hanging behind him. Combined with the venue’s rudimentary but effective laser-light staging, this visual made for a kind of “satanic planetarium” atmosphere. Beginning with a few indecipherable words–spoken over treated tapes–and progressing into a not entirely unpleasant ’70s horror film groove, this short piece was an effective reflection of the material that appeared on his excellent Regression LP last year. Ten minutes in, Young uttered a plaintive “Well, that’s my jam,” and the crowd responded with a roar of applause.

Next up, Thurston Moore and Bill Nace’s guitar duo Northampton Wools provided what was, by some measure, the harshest and most uncompromising set of the night. Beginning with some casual tinkling of the guitar strings, then swirling ever deliberately toward full on white noise squall, they musicians unleashed the full spectrum of guitar autopsy techniques, from running a small metal bowl up and down the neck to simply beating on the pickups. Northampton Wools dared the audience to turn away, and a few did. Due to Moore’s notoriety, even his most abstract and challenging performances draw a small army of obnoxious photographers, determined to capture every gesture and grimace of the lanky living legend while studiously ignoring visual documentation of any of the other acts. This depressing state of affairs led me to remark to my concert-going companion that they should regulate the sale of Digital SLRs to thirty-something self-styled “photographers” the same way they regulate handgun sales to former felons. Regardless, Moore and Nace succeeded in a transgressive performance that was a definitive example of Moore in abstract guitar mode.

Finally, the moment of truth arrived. Inactive for years, just seeing Death Unit set up their gear was enough to get even a hardened scene veteran excited. Once Giffoni set off the first of many distorted waves of electronic scree and Sullivan unleashed his first riff, it was clear that this Death Unit relaunch would borrow equally from noise’s past and present. Unfortunately, the high-end of Giffoni and Sullivan’s compelling assault drowned out much of the drum work Tremaine and Corsano were unleashing beneath. The percussion duo seemed less dynamic than in their other projects, for the most part beating away at their kits and stirring up an unfocused racket. The opening piece succeeded as a relatively speedy hit-and-run of overwhelming volume and unhinged aggression. But the much lengthier second set — despite kicking off with a very promising techno loop from Giffoni, strongly reminiscent of his impeccable No Fun Acid project — failed to cohere into a satisfying whole. That said, there were certainly moments in the extended jam where everything fell into place, and Death Unit became more than the sum of its parts. These fleeting glimpses–when Giffoni’s thick bass sound punctuated Sullivan’s punishing guitar gestures, for example, or Tremaine and Corsano settled into a propulsive lock-step groove–were enough to make the whole experience worthwhile.

Successful improvised music requires countless hours of practice and a near-telepathic sense of shared vision. The four members of Death Unit have distinguished themselves in the underground through years of relentless touring and by pushing boundaries of their individual aesthetic visions, so it’s natural to expect great things when they come together. It would be wonderful if Death Unit had the time and inclination to rehearse until they became true equals in a group dynamic; but for the time being, the music they create together, although composed of many brief glimpses of greatness, is merely very good. This is by no means an insult to the players, and the entire evening served as evidence that wherever noise has been in the past, many of its highest-profile practitioners have a very bright future.

Words: Max Burke
Photo: Max Burke