Blues Control/ Laraaji interview

This fall, the RVNG Intl. label will release another entry in their highly ambitious FRKWYS series, this one documenting a studio meeting between experimental noise duo Blues Control and one of the godfathers of ambient/ New Age music, Laraaji Nadabrahmananda. Once known as Edward Larry Gordon, Laraaji released the seminal Ambient 3: Day of Radiance on Eno's label and continues to create some of the most transcendent music around. So it made sense to talk about this collaboration for the New Age story, so I reached out to both parties:

LARAAJI

Were you surprised that a new band like Blues Control they reached out to you?

A: LEA AND RUSS'S INVITE STIMULATED MY CREATIVE PERFORMANCE IMAGINATION. I FELT HONORED THAT THEY WANTED TO REACH FOR AMBIENT EXPERIMENTATION WITH ME. 

Were you familiar with their music at all?

A: NOT AT ALL BUT INTUITION SAID THIS WOULD BE A FUN AND MEANINGFUL

EXPLORATION. I TRUSTED THAT WE ALL WOULD CONTACT MAGIC IN THE STUDIO.

How did you feel about the music you enacted together?

A: THE MUSIC RESULTS NEEDED SOME REMIXING TO LOCATE THE BLEND THAT FELT BALANCED TO US ALL.. I WELCOMED THE CHANCE TO JAM THROUGH SPONTANEOUS INSPIRATION AND THEN EDIT DOWN TO VERY NEW ENERGY MOVING MUSIC. I ENJOYED THE FUN SPIRIT WE ALL HELD AND WHICH CAN BE HEARD IN THE MIX DOWN.

Do you ever worry that younger listeners might not take the time to be more contemplative and receptive in this culture?

A: I HAVE FOUND YOUNGER LISTENERS ACROSS THE PLANET WHO DO DIVE DEEP INTO CONTEMPLATIVE LISTENING. AND I FEEL THERE ARE DEVOTED MUSICIANS CULTIVATING THEIR ROLES AS BRINGERS OF DEEP LISTENING  INSPIRATION. I ACCEPT MY ROLE IN HELPING LISTENERS YOUNG AND ELDERLY TO LOCATE THEIR DEEPER STILLNESS THROUGH CREATIVE AMBIENT MUSIC LISTENING.

Or has there always been such a struggle for higher consciousness through each age?

A: THERE SEEMS TO BE A PRESENCE OF RIGHT ARTISTS GUIDANCE IN EACH AGE PROVIDING INSPIRATION FOR HIGHER EMOTIONAL SELF CONNECTION. THE STRUGGLE TO IDENTIFY THE ESSENTIAL SELF IN EACH AGE APPEARS REAL, BUT THE WAY SHOWERS AND THE TOOLS ARE HERE.

BLUES CONTROL

How did you become aware of Laraaji's music?  What did you think about it?  Were you into other "New Age" artists as well or did that type of music not appeal to you?

We first became aware of Laraaji's music when we bought Ambient 3: Day of Radiance.  That release seems to be the usual gateway to his music.  We loved it so much that we started including it in gifts to family and friends for a while.  We had already been listening to other new age artists by that time; Laraaji wasn't our first trip into the genre.  This was in the early 2000s when our interest in noise music was waning, and consequently we started exploring different types of psychedelic music more avidly, including new age, krautrock, synth and electronic music.  

We started our own new age band Watersports in 2003, and we were looking for new age-related lps/cds/tapes wherever we could find them - from dollar/thrift stores and used lp stores, to big chains like Target and Virgin Megastore cutout bins.  Thankfully always cheap!  There was a Barnes&Noble near Russ' dad's house in the suburbs that had an awesome new age CD section in the early 2000s.  Every time we visited, we'd pick up anything that looked interesting or old.  They eventually downsized the store, but for a while the new age section was extensive.  We always joked that we were dying to meet the new age buyer and find out who this person was.

When we started Watersports in 2003, we didn't know anyone at all who was playing new age music, and we only knew one person who listened to it (our former roommate Joel St. Germain).  I remember playing new age records at our house for friends around this time and getting fully laughed at.  People would shake their heads, and just say "I don't know, man."  We bought an Envirascape fountain at the Fulton Mall, and we included it in our early shows, mic'ing the water and nature sounds, and using it as a visual focal point.  People ridiculed us for that too, hah.  Our influences when we started out were Deuter, Golden Voyage, Environments LPs / Nature sounds CDs, Paul Winter, Klaus Wiese, Henry Wolff/Nancy Hennings, Wendy Carlos - Sonic Seasonings, Shadowfax, Georgia Kelly, Steve Hillage, Vangelis, Eberhard Schoener, Jade Warrior, Synergy, Messaien organ works, Charles Lloyd, and many more.  

As Watersports evolved, we explored a lot more new age/kraut/synth/electronic music and also got deep into our classic rock/blues/hard rock interests, and that's how the idea for Blues Control started.  The influences for BC are diverse, but we still include a lot of new age in what we do.  I remember a review of an early BC show compared us to Kitaro, which was meant to be a diss at the time.  Musically, I took it as a compliment.

Who's idea was it to collaborate, RVNG's or yours?  What made you think that Blues Control would be a good fit with him? What was it like improvising with him in the moment?  Did you do his deep listening meditations as well?

When Matt invited us to do a FRKWYS collab record, it didn't take long for us to suggest Laraaji, and Matt was all for it. Aside from loving Laraaji's music, we had already communicated with Laraaji in the past and always got a good vibe from him.  The first time we went to see him play live was in 2004 at an in-store benefit for Tribal Soundz in Manhattan. His set that night was amazing, and I had a pleasant conversation with him afterward when I bought a CD. Then in 2010, I emailed him to see if he would play with Blues Control at an ESP Records in-store. He declined due to previous travel plans, but my communication with him via email was great - he was and still is a really open, joyful, down-to-earth person.

I had no idea if he would be interested in the collab idea, but his response turned out to be very positive.  We scheduled a phone call to discuss details, and it all came together quickly after that.  The only things he wanted to work out beforehand were instrumentation and key, so as to encourage a spontaneous and inspired improvisation.  We met at Black Dirt Studio in upstate NY in December 2010.  The first serendipitous sign was when everyone started setting up gear in the studio, and I realized for the first time that our setups were incredibly similar. Laraaji brought along a musical friend, Arji Cakouros, who joined in occasionally, and we all improvised for 4 hours on a single day.  The jams frequently went as long as 45 minutes, and Laraaji deftly moved between very different soundworlds with ease.  Everyone, including the engineer, was marveling at Laraaji's coordination, timing, and musicality.

Improvising with Laraaji was an emotional, spiritual, positive, healing experience.  I really can't convey the immensity in words... It's rare that I cry from sheer joy, gratitude, and awe of beauty, but I was holding back tears at one point during the session.  The experience affirmed my initial love and understanding of music and the inscrutable/infinitely beautiful/meaningful universe, and made inconsequential a lot of negativity I had come to associate with modern life and modern music.

Marnie Stern interview

Last week, a feature I wrote on "she-shredders" for the Wall Street Journal, which entailed sitting down with guitarist Marnie Stern to discuss a song like "Female Guitarists Are the New Black" and all the other baggage that comes with the territory. She bid me head to the Upper East Side and meet her at an ale house around the corner from her apartment. As she sipped an iced coffee and smoked Parliaments (careful to flick the butts way out onto the street), she talked about her failures in finding a male guitarist that could nail the parts to her new songs. We chatted about this topic and other things as well:

It was different awhile back for women. There weren’t many women doing it. Or at least, they could feel the currents against them. I never felt that. Thankfully, it’s because of Kill Rock Stars, Sleater-Kinney, that whole Riot Grrrl movement, helped make it possible for me to not think about it. So I never have, which is great, I think. I just wanted to become a good player and see good musicians. Take Ex-Models, I like seeing bands like that and feeling that they were so good. See, bands like Ex-Models, Hella, Lightning Bolt, and seeing them and just going home and practice, practice, practice.

It didn’t seem like a boys club?

No, that’s just good music. You can see wanking up there and it’s just garbage. But when it’s the music itself, the energy…that’s the thing. I only get inspired when it’s good music. I’m trying to make good music. I don’t want to just be good to be good, I want to put it in a song. That’s the whole point. When I see those bands that I love. At the same time, I remember going to see Erase Errata and thinking they were amazing and not thinking they were women up there. I thought they were neat. Of course, whatever gender you are plays a role in how you approach the instrument. But it’s not gender, it’s the person. See, it’s a difficult thing to have someone ask “what’s it like to be a girl playing guitar?” Well, I can’t tell you, I’ve never been a boy. I know how my brain works and what my make-up is.

Who were your models to look up to, as a female?

(Silence for ten seconds) Nancy Wilson of Heart. Kim Gordon. Um…see it’s different though. Debbie Harry. My perception when I was younger was rolled up with image. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between Madonna and Debbie Harry.

I feel like women have to engage with the image in order to have success.

So I’m learning. It’s hard when you start thinking about it in that way to dissect it. I get asked this question constantly. Generally, you can tell when a person is good at their instrument. You can tell a lot by their control and movement. What I think is interesting is that women are very good with coordination. Women are very organized. And part of the technical side of playing is brain organization. A lot of women play classical piano and classical guitar, which is fucking insane. That’s even harder than rock guitar. It’s just not amplified. i get asked why women aren’t doing shreddy stuff. It’s a hard thing to ask me. I don’t ask my girlfriends why they don’t like the shreddy sound. It just sound tacky or not beautiful or boring to them.

Your style evokes “Eruption” or “Thunderstruck,” the most masculine rock imaginable.

It’s so bizarre. I know in theory it’s “masculine,” but because I’m me, it’s not masculine to my ears. It’s just fun. I don’t think of it as masculine. It sounds cool and fun and big. These are all masculine things. Maybe I’m really lucky in the way I was raised. Maybe I’m dumb? I never thought about it. Even when I was in 6^th grade and I watched GnR, I just thought it was cool, not masculine. Seeing Patti Smith was the same way. I didn’t think of her as a woman onstage.

In the 90s there’s female bands, bands with female bassists. But the exception never quite became the rule.

I’m sure a lot of it is a response to the trend in music. I can imagine if the trend in music was big 70s or 80s rock, I would be revolted. There are certain aspects of image that women did have to portray that is so absurd and unattractive. For women, the association with that is off-putting.

You have to wear fishnets.

Right. Everything is referential to what you know and listen to and like in your life. I guess that’s called “post-modern.” One person who’s never listened to experimental noise bands can hear this record of mine and think it’s crazy. And people from that world would think it’s really straight-forward. People will only hear Van Halen and not know that I’m referencing these newer bands. When my mom hears the songs, she likes this record a lot more. It’s more catchy, I remember them, she says.

Why is it just your name for the third album?

I like the songs a lot. It felt much more personal to me and I felt like this record was very reflective of who I am as a person, good or bad. Even when I was doing interviews a few months ago, I was just a mess and really forthcoming in interviews. When you start to heal and you look back, you go “woah.” I would like to come out of that little group of “guitar player.” I don’t know if I want to be considered a Joanna Newsom, but someone who is good at their instrument yet transcends it with song. When people listen, they hear a lot of guitar. Zach’s drums are everywhere so it sounds busier than it is.

But Joanna doesn’t arise from a lineage of iconic male harpists.

Yeah.

So, the roots of a song like “Female Guitarists are the New Black”…

That was just “Come on.” It’s just…this constant thing. It puts a lot of pressure on me to be seen as this very good guitar player because when I compare myself to all the guitar players I know, I’m alright, but I am not amazing by any means. I’m just trying to write songs. I want to do interesting stuff but it puts this pressure on me to where I feel like the Emperor’s new clothes. I know that I can play really well but not at the level of…and then it goes back to this whole female thing of how there aren’t that many female musicians to compare it to and that’s why it remains a talking point. This is where the uncomfortable-ness of it comes up. Is it just because I’m a woman that people say I’m a really good guitar player? Because there aren’t that many to compare me to? That bums me out. I would like to be good, period.

It’s like that bit in Mad Men where Freddy compares Peggy to “a dog playing the piano.” There’s a complacency and misperception about women’s capabilities. Both then and now.

It’s great and what am I complaining about? It’s great but it just seems to me to always be the focus. I’m just worried that the songs themselves are…wait a minute. Just for fuck’s sake let’s say I played guitar on the new record but so did someone else. Two guitar players like Deerhoof. Would it get the same kind of scrutiny? What do you think?

I’m sure my writing outlets wouldn’t go for it…

Yeah.

What’s it like on tour? Do you get coddled?

I’ve never been made to feel…that’s not true. Sometimes I’ll get to a venue and the soundguy will say: “Are you acoustic? Do you need a stool?” thinking I’m singer-songwriter. That’s when its funny, like when I do the soundcheck.

Do you still have to prove yourself?

No, but it’s because of who I am as a person, because I’m writing these songs and I’m just trying to show who I am as an individual. When we talk about these other things, where people make these assumptions and then I get pissed and feel I need to be doing more to get other women to play guitar. It’s selfish to say it doesn’t affect me who cares?

What do you think of Rock Camp for Girls?

Of course that’s great. But again, I think it’s great to get any kids to be doing music. I’m also naïve. I can’t imagine that a girl would feel that she couldn’t feel she could pick up an instrument and it would not be alright. I can think of people in the past ten years but even those people are in the underground scene. Kaki King is known as a great female guitar player, but again, the focus is on the female, the novelty of it. Shit! Yeah, you’re right. But what a little cloud I live in. the friends that I have who are creative as writers, painters, I’ve never heard instances for them of gender being an issue.

In pop, female presence is a non-question but hard rock remains off-limits.

But if I see a group of females doing hard rock but not being interesting, I could care less who they were.

Like Lez Zeppelin: it’s Led Zeppelin, but dude it’s chicks! It revels in the novelty of femininity and holds it back.

I’m always looking for something I can use myself, a certain style, a new sound. I’m looking always for an essence to use. It’s almost a job. This is what I do everyday. What we were saying about the macho thing is maybe I have a lot of that in me. Weird guitar shrill sounds good to me. Things that to a lot of people, not just women, that make you want to cover your ears, I really actually enjoy that noise. I don’t know why for me I gravitated towards loving that kind of stuff.

What made the album more personal for you?

The whole thing. All of a sudden…I didn’t have a personal life for a decade. I was just doing music and was pretty guarded. And then all of a sudden I had a personal life and it crashed down on me. A guy I had loved a decade ago committed suicide. Things over a two year period were all disappointing. Major disappointments, heart-crushing blows. I hadn’t expected that. I thought I would wait to date somebody and then when I did, it would all work out. So it came crashing down and it made it’s way in. I was so shocked.

That’s what your art is for, to take that blow.

Of course, so when the mood was reflective and sad, I was adjusting the music to reflect that. I was experimenting with reverb and it gave the album a softer thing. The first two albums are motivational and this is about sorrow and sadness and disappointment, telling myself it’s going to be alright. The part of me that feels embarrassed is the part that feels like I’m a sap, a sucker. Being myself, that opens you up for more.

Why did you pick up the guitar in the first place?

It’s the most bizarre thing. I was working as a proofreader at Columbia House, 12 CDs for a penny. I said I don’t like this, I’m going to do music. My friends and family didn’t understand. I didn’t listen to music really. I don’t understand it. There must have been something, but looking back, there was no impetus. Later I listened to PJ Harvey and weirder people. It was something I thought about but I didn’t was a possibility. You go get a job and get married and live a normal life. “You’re going to throw away your whole life?” Now that I have reviews and a record deal, hell no; That’s huge Mom points. Now she says: “I’m living through you, live your dream.”

Coati Mundi interview

This fall, I went out west to have some doughnuts and a Styrofoam cup of Orange Bang and hang with Andy Hernandez, a/k/a Coati Mundi, the man who had a hand in such bands as Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band and Kid Creole and the Coconuts. After bowing out of the biz for twenty plus years, he's back, dropping a fun single earlier this year and prepping an album for release on Rong Music early next year. I wrote a feature on the man entitled "It Came From Spanish Harlem." Here are a few more bon mots:

On his performance at PS1:
It was for an older crowd that knows my history. It’s performance art. In another age, the 40s-60s, it was all part of the performance: singing, dancing, music. Louis Jordan and James Brown and all that, you had the music, but it was a package. The music is together, then you can do the other stuff. It doesn’t become a substitute, it adds to it. That’s how it was with Kid Creole, but before us, it was LJ, JB, all these people.

Back to that show at PS1, it was clubgoer kinds of kids. What I told my posse is we’re gonna ignore the audience, we’re just gonna be another piece in the museum. Like people watch art. Sculptures don’t change because people looking at it. Either they like it or they don’t. At least, they’ll appreciate it. At least you put something forth.


Theatricality:
One thing about me, I was always theatrical. If you look at those guys from the 40s, all those great musicians had a lot of theater to them. We were part of that, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, we kept that in. I was always a ham, which came from me just trying to entertain my aunts and uncles. I could never just do something simple. I could never just play the instrument. I could never keep still. If I played a note, I had to dance to that note, I had to make a face. I couldn’t just play the music. I wanted to show off.

Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band:
I was in my early 20s. I was coming out of being a social worker, up in Spanish Harlem, 122nd St. and that whole area. I don’t remember us thinking of vision. We just came together and everybody was into something. Stony and August, the brothers, they were just into a certain style. I don’t remember any of us saying “This is the vision.” It just came together.

We came together as a friend said these guys were looking for a piano player. My main instrument was vibes. Back in the day, few bands were using vibes. My guy was Cal Tjader, latin-jazz, one of my main influences. Cal Tjader was just a classic player. Lionel Hampton is the number one guy. Milt Jackson, and then Cal Tjader. With the piano, I couldn’t get work playing vibes. In order to keep getting gigs, I taught myself piano.

These guys were starting Savannah Band. And I auditioned with a lot of piano players, all better than me, but I had a sense of humor with it. I was willing to do anything on piano, not just stick with the basics. And they were dressed in these antique 1940s clothes they picked up in thrift shops and I dug it. I was with the program and I played enough piano to interpret their music and get it out there. I didn’t have to be McCoy Tyner. We were just kids in our 20s, from the Bronx in Spanish Harlem.

We became a very successful band. We were living high off the hog or whatever the phrase was. Like a lot of successful rock bands, we went bankrupt. August and then decided to do projects together. So I came along as his musical director and arranger and formed Kid Creole and the Coconuts. It was sad at the end, we were still in our twenties and had a taste of success. It was tough psychologically. How can you go back to square one and start all over again? In my case, my sister supported me and took me in and got me back on track, got me out of my depression.

Kid Creole & the Coconuts never having US success:
We never felt that successful. If you can’t make it in your hometown…we would go on tour: France and Japan and play in front of thousands and thousands of people and then come back to my little apartment in Spanish Harlem and it was like a dream. You’d come back and there’s nothing. What is so difficult about it that we can’t get over in the US. We had a good product and we were entertaining. The music wasn’t ‘pop’ Top 40, but it wasn’t that inaccessible. We weren’t from Mars! It was tough and it was tiring. Eventually it got to me after ten years. It was too much.

Did you and August part amicably?

Not at the beginning. No we didn’t. We’re okay now. When you’re younger, you’re more energetic on not liking somebody. The spiritual part of life doesn’t kick in that soon. We’re cool now, but not back then. That’s the way it happens.

On acting:
I had been doing acting on and off in New York and LA. It came during the band. What happened was…I never planned any of it, the band, the acting. So with the acting thing…The producer for Miami Vice saw me playing in Savannah Band and saw how animated I was. He wanted me in Easy Money with Rodney Dangerfield, but I was going off on tour. So he got this Miami Vice thing and he told the casting person to get a hold of me. My first professional thing was Miami Vice, an episode with Bruce Willis. I played a part of a gun-running mob and Bruce Willis was my boss. It was a lot of fun. I had a great time. I wound up doing a few episodes as different characters. They always called me “The Ghost” because they would kill me off and bring me back as another character. That’s how I got into it. I came out to LA because I had family out here and NYC was getting expensive to live in. It was colder. I just got to change it up. I go to NYC cuz it’s still my town.

Any other acting parts?

Who’s That Girl? was the most popular acting thing. Since then, I’ve done little bits and pieces for a lot of different things. Independent films, We Own the Night with Joaquin Phoenix. Choreography for an episode of Heroes.

The new record, Coati Mundi is Dancing for the Cabama Code in the Land of Boo-Hoo:
This new record was really an accident. One of my best friend’s was a singer and his niece married my co-producer, E-Love. He was a big fan of Savannah Band and Kid Creole. He wanted to write with me. I wasn’t really interested in doing a record, but we got together on our spare time. It took a few years, but we were just getting together and doing songs. A guy named Doug Lee was a friend of Johnny’s and he passed it along to Rong.

It’s cool these cats were into my style. That was intriguing for me, cuz I didn’t think they’d be into it. I was into dance stuff, but not into computer-laden, without any personality, stuff. I would go to the clubs but after awhile it became linear to me, it lacked personality and I wouldn’t know one artist from the next. It didn’t mean anything. It was great productions, great sounds, great beats, but…so I sez to E, I want to put my personality into it. I want to attach my personality, my signature to this album. I’m gonna sing what I want to sing, even if it’s stupid things about a dog. No one is telling me what I’m gonna do. And he was with the program. We’ll see how it works out.

I’m just going with the flow. I try to keep it in balance. If this record never came out, I could care less. I’m an old cat. I’ve had a lot of records out. I’m not a twenty-year-old with my tongue hanging out. If it ain’t right, I couldn’t care less. I’m a bit ornery, old age does that to you. In my 20s, I’d give up my ass a lot. As I get older, the less of a whore I become. In a way, it feels great. I hate to put it this way, but I don’t give a fuck.

idjut boys (and dimitri from paris) interview version 2

Part Two of my Idjuts interview, stemming from my Skype chat with them and Dimitri From Paris that ran as "Paradise Garage Regained" in the Voice a minute ago.

When’s the last time you were all in New York City?

Conrad: That would be last World Cup finals.

Dimitri From Paris: We were together.

Dan: It was great. We finished the day with some French people and Alex from Tokyo, in a little Italian restaurant. It was fairly amicable. There was a fair amount of liquor drunk and music poorly put together.

When you think about NYC at the time, as opposed to London and Paris, what separated it musically? Why did disco happen here rather than in another urban center?

DfP: As far as I’m concerned, my whole musical influences started from New York. I was a fan of all the dance music coming out of there when I was 17. I always lived in Paris, that was in the early 80s, where I started noticing that all the music I was liking was produced by some New York guys. The first time I went here was in 1986, I was already collecting music and Djing in ’82-’83—so I was just hoping I would go there and see how it was. It did play a very strong part with mythical clubs and mythical producers. I didn’t go to Paradise Garage, the one I would’ve like, as it closed down sadly a month before I first went to New York. The rest are legends I read about. But I experienced Better Days, the Palladium, Area. So the first time I went to clubs in New York, I realized just from the technical point of view, it was just another world. It actually sounded good, people were there for the music, they were dancing, there was a whole different vibe. It made sense with the music coming out of there. It did live up to the New York of my mind. I met Arthur Baker, Shep Pettibone popped in, The Latin Rascals. For me, I was a kid in a candy store. There was a real energy you could feel.

Idjuts, you had a chance to see Larry Levan in the early 90s.

C: Same thing as Dimitri, I guess, digging a lot of music of that era in the 80s and then years later finding out more about it. We never went to any of the clubs. The music that was popular in the clubs there that crossed over here, things were happening even though the clubs were very different. The gay scene of New York was integral in that. In a similar way to Dimitri, in the music we played and the music we make that aesthetic, New York was an influence on that and the obvious ccharacters from that. We’ve seen Francois K. play years ago in London. That was mind-blowing, seeing someone with a reel-to-reel. We went “Wow,” that’s a different way to DJ.

D: Maybe that the ethos of this music, it being drawn from many different sources and put into a melting pot, I think that’s what’s lasted from then till now anyway, the fact that ---even though I’ve never been to the Garage—it wasn’t the pounding kickdrum all night, the music would be varied and go different places. We were into Harvey and his parties and musically they were like that. We got to see Kenny Carpenter and Tony ____ when they came to London. That’s how I got New York from the DJs. The freeness in the music if anything else really.

So many ethnicities and minority parties come together. Maybe New York could foster it where other places didn’t.

DfP: I don’t really know what was so special about New York and why we were so influenced by it. We didn’t know anything about the city, we were only getting the music. Dan mentioned Francois Kevorkian. On record labels I was reading his name and every time I listened to his production I went “Wow, this guy is amazing.” And more than anyone else I would read his name. I had no idea who this guy was other than he had a French sounding name. I didn’t know he was a DJ. There was no information we could really get. It was primarily the music that made us like New York rather than New York made us like the music. It’s a big difference from how things evolved in clubs. Clubs became more of a place to party rather than a place to listen to music. I guess the music was of a quality that really appealed to us. It was diverse and creative, there was a lot of creative things. How those guys were DJing was like no one else we heard before. Same goes for me when I first heard Francois, and he still DJs like no one else I know. And he’s nearly 60 years old! Primarily, it’s the music.

How hard was it to come across these records? Before the internet and finding everything.

C: (Tittering) We ended up in a garage in San Francisco that was owned by a record rack. We spent two days in there amid piles of records.

D: Mid-90s. We have been to secondhand shops in London. Traveling around is a good way to consume music. You find different stuff in different places and that’s always been a winner.

C: The music that was popular in New York was bought, imported, it was all here secondhand, lots of it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, it seems to be endless.

DfP: I agree on this.

C: You’d know, man. It’s easier now, man.

DfP: There’s eBay now. A lot of people just got into selling records because it was a lucrative business. There are good and bad things about the internet. Traveling was a huge chance for us to buy records. Wherever we were, or if there was a thrift store. I would wake up early in the morning just to go to record stores. We are really record freaks. It was just vocal exchanges of information. The first time we met, we just chatted about record “Do you know this? Do you know that?” And I went back home with like ten new songs I didn’t know. And then you start searching for that. People who thought alike would meet eventually and exchange what we know. And that’s how the information circulated.

Disco and dance music, it’s not like there’s this centralized knowledge or this canon. You have to go out, you have to see DJs play this record. Did any tracks surprise you when Dimitri handed you the masters?

D: It goes without saying, Dimitri has always been a source of great music. I didn’t know a couple of tracks. What was fun about it was that there were tracks we'd hammered, played lots over the years. It was nice to be asked to do it. Obviously, a lot of that music was dear to me. Wuf Ticket “The Key,” it’s difficult not to take that when you travel to DJ. There’s great tracks all over.

C: Serious Intention's “You Don’t Know,” I’ve worn out two copies of that record. The Rah Band we didn’t know.

D: We were Rah Band virgins.

DfP: That’s a good example. I owed it to this other DJ, P Wax. I used to hate that song. I really didn’t like it and then he started playing it and I went “What the hell is that?” I wound up liking something that I used to hate. That’s the beauty of remixes. That’s also why I put Wham! in there because everyone goes “it’s impossible, they cannot be good.” Just open your ears and listen for yourself. When some guy gets inspired by what he finds on the master tapes, you can just make magic. Rah Band and Wham are great examples of how you can turn cheesy pop songs into something that is really ground-breaking.

Why did you pick Dan and Conrad?

DfP: I did this compilation and while I love dub, I don’t play this as much as they would do it. I play clubs that are more “Saturday night” and I felt they did it much better than me. I knew from the history we had together that they would be into some of those tracks. I just asked them and it just happened. We had discussed it in a club in Japan kind of casually. Like Idjut Boys said, Serious Intention and Wuf Ticket indeed. If you do that, you cannot bypass those tracks. It is impossible.

Let’s talk about dub reggae and how it got infused with New York disco and the resultant odd mutation, those effects made to bear on this music.

C: Yeeeeah. We had a track we had done for something. Yesterday we listened to it without all the effects. We can really overdo it, and often do. It’s the element of space… and you confuse many different kinds and juxtapose sounds and genres together, and when it’s fed through delay and reverb, and it freaks the music out. And we like the freak, to be honest. I guess that’s why it stays.

DfP: We get some echo and feedback on this and it’s perfect.

D: Sometimes a man can turn too many knobs. Don’t play with your knobs too much. When you first encounter that kind of music, be it reggae or electronic synthesizer music, dub music, or the music here, when I first heard that in the club, sonically it had so much more resonance than some of the other stuff that was played beside it, simply because of the space the effects put into it, a drama accentuating various points on the record. Obviously, someone who is the master of that and as a DJ is François, if you want to reference how to do that, and he’s done that on all manners of music, not just on this compilation. He’s done it for rock bands and a lot of it. Obviously, since we’ve known Dimitri as well, a lot of his productions apply that. He does great edits and manages to do it but not do it excessively.

DfP: I would like to add about Francois… He’s been playing at Cielo every Monday. Every time I go to new York, I make a point to go there and sit down to listen to him. even if he plays music I don’t like, the way he plays it is striking. It’s like I’m getting a lecture in music from him. I love it. He’s like those old African tribal guys, who passes the history on to the younger kids orally. He’s one of those guys.

So how did you guys meet?

DfP: Paris is Burning. It was the second Respect party, in 1997. Respect did the first one with some annoying kids called Daft Punk and I was asked to do the second one. I think Daft Punk booked Maurizio. My choice was Idjut Boys, as I loved their U-Star label. It’s in Japan that people played them the most. They had that dub sound that I loved and I never heard anyone do it like this before apart form the original guys. They came to play Respect and we talked shop for hours and that was it.

You guys want to talk about the live mix?

C: Pretty much. We got BBE to hire a Pioneer mixer and two CDJs. To be honest it was interesting as we don’t play off CD, so it was a bit of a learning curve. We just wanted it to sound like playing records in a club. We did it at night in our studio and turned the lights down and had a few drinks and just went about it as if we were playing these records out. To be honest, that seemed the most appropriate thing to do rather than make it tight.

D: We played with Dimitri in LA a few years ago. We had our usual 15 bags of records. Dimitri shows up and is --if you didn’t already know— a fierce record collector and says “I only play CDs now” and proceeded to play seamlessly a load of disco to a big room. It’s only taken about another five years for us to get on the CD revolution. We still play lots of vinyl. A lot of places we go now, more clubs are geared towards CDs now. It’s easier than breaking your back toting records.

DfP: I wanted to add something about the mix. I was happy that they did it. I know I’m a little bit more anal and would’ve spent hours taking the life out of it making it perfect. They made it exciting and it goes together with the way those records were made back then. You had to do the FX as the tracks would go. That’s on the records we hear today because of that vibe and they replicated that vibe on the mix.

Final thoughts?

DfP: The whole club scene hasn’t been about music and hasn’t been in awhile. I think these are historical pieces that were only available as B-sides of vinyl 12”s. They’re not so easy to find but they’re not the most obscure either. If you are just a music lover, you’ve probably heard such things before. This music is quite influential now, like the Norwegian guys and snippets in the music of Metro Area and Justice and the new French punk-electro scene. I felt it was the right moment to show up with these and say “Listen to this.” Music is always repeating itself, but sometimes you don’t now what it is repeating unless you are a proper nerd. It’s something that non-nerds can enjoy.

stephen o'malley interview

For the Sunn O))) listening session from a month or so back, I conducted interviews with both Sunn's Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley. I had met Anderson a few times randomly, but this was my first chance to engage in a dialogue with O'Malley. Quiet, focused, yet open, O'Malley and I chatted abit about his work with artist Banks Violette, my recent obsession with Robert Irwin and perception, and about the Richard Serra painting that adorns the cover of their latest album. Below are a few choice quotes from our chat:

The direction we decided to do before we started anything is to finally work with acoustic instrumentation, to bring that to the table. And then we fleshed it out. Specifically, the integration of acoustic instruments, we wanted it to be a real integration, not just an additional element. It had to be musically relevant. Part of the inspiration of that came from French composers who work in a ‘spectralist’ style. Their style of composition is based on computer analysis of timbre. They’ll work backwards. A lot of it sounds electronic, but it’s not so simple as that. Hallucinatory, like Messiaen. Spectral composers are scientific. That’s all about perception. It’s not illusion. Illusion is the expectation of how an instrument should sound.

It’s extremely focused on sensorial aspects. I like such extreme experiences like isolation chambers. It allows you to re-examine your own work, see flaws, see other details. Of all the records I’ve made, this is one that continually is opening up with more listening.
...
It’s like family, this band. The people that get involved, you get to be really close. But it’s not the other experience I had with bands, where it gets to be bad. You’re not in the band to be friends. It’s been one of the main points working with people. It’s that friendship. It’s a pretty tremendous experience playing the music live so you have to be trustful and confident.
...
It’s spanning generations now with this record. Those guys are old-timers, in their 70s. Dempster has more energy than everyone else. He’s been doing yoga 50 years now. Meanwhile Priester is out in the parking lot. I don’t smoke anymore actually. But they’re deep listeners. They’ve been making experimental free music since the 60s. In some ways, it’s cool to feel you are part of this longer tradition by having these guys involved. We’re the generation doing it now.
...
I hope people who get into Sunn get into other stuff, going backward through the catalogs, references, like I do with music. Real music fans are always doing that, the quest to find the ultimate records, it’s the exploration. That’s the joy of music. If we can turn some kid on at the Hot Topic...fuck. I bought Darkthrone at the mall in Seattle. To be able to do that again, that’s the theory. Hot Topic, it’s fucking hilarious. But teenagers are into it.
...
This record really goes into the musicality of it though. I used to think Sunn was more about repetition in the style of raga perhaps, then cycles. But I found recently that it seems more cyclic than ever, a continual tone, a slow build, a continual piece more than repetition. The focus on the actual musicality has become much more tuned in. musical aspects have been…There is something about the repetition of playing concerts. That’s where the music actually exists. That’s the reality, the manifestation of it, that’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is just documenting. I’m really into that, exploring that way. That seems more like penance somehow (laughs).

juan maclean interview pt. 2

Well, onto The Future Will Come. "Happy House" came before it. Where were you when you did “Happy House”? It has this domestic aspect to it...

You mean...why is it so happy?

Basically.

It’s because of you (points to girlfriend). That’s not true.

My girlfriend thinks it’s about her.

It’s such an ultimate girlfriend song. Actually, three people have told me that they have used it as their wedding song, which is really nice, actually.

“You’re so damn excellent” is such a weird way of saying whatever. Usually, it’s couched in something else.

It says something that people would have a really hard time expressing themselves. Especially if you’re a self-centered hipster. Like we are. You can’t be excited and honest about anything. But I really actually think that’s why it resonated with a lot of people, our peers. And that was…there was a conscious decision to do that, to approach the entire album in that way. In a way that Nancy and I both were like: “We’re going to do a vocal-oriented album, it became apparent that the one thing we had to write about was this very specific thing of personal romantic relationships and uhm…we made the decision to be as honest and sincere as possible, at the risk of sounding trite and especially operating in the hipster world and electronic dance music world where lyrics and vocals tend to be couched in irony or some kind of surface.

Dance music is always very physical and temporal, not emotional and monogamous in relationships. It’s anonymous. To be domesticated is just…

It was the experience…the hipster turning 30 finally kind of thing. But “Happy House” was done at the same time the whole album was done. It wasn’t done before. It’s funny because we had picked…it had been so long since I released anything. What could we put out that’s deeper, won’t be a single, that just gets me back on the radar. I had no idea. I loved the song but I had no idea it would resonate the way that it did, the dance twelve of the year in that world, basically.

And all the financial success that that brings.

That I could kick back the rest of my life, a million free downloads yet again. I didn’t know. It sidetracked things actually, well, you can’t put out an album right after that now. You have to let it play out. It was definitely the theme of the entire album though.

With anyone in mind?

It’s an amalgamation of previous relationships. And Nancy and I have known each other for so long, so well about these things that it was easy. We went to this wooded studio in Woodstock, New York to do the vocals. We would sit on a couch and write back and forth to each other and laugh. So much of it was about our experiences being musicians and living that kind of impermanent, nomadic lifestyle. And you’re not…just personality-wise you tend to be much harder to deal with, very self-absorbed and that kind of thing.
Nancy had a longtime boyfriend who lived in Belgium, Steph of Soulwax. And so…(forgets train of thought) A lot of it, but more so than even being impermanent, which for us is not necessarily true. Everyone around here at DFA is a little bit older and more into being at home. People are married and have kids. So everyone that tours here won’t go away for too long or bring their wives and girlfriends. For me, Nancy as well but for different reasons, it was just about being this type of person who seemed totally baffled by relationships and never having them work out for any long period of time. I feel like on my end of it, it was…some things are very specific for sure.

So what’s specific on the album then?

The ballad “Human Disaster” that’s a very specific thing about a specific person and a situation for sure.

The way it’s set up, it’s a crash and burn and having “Happy House” completes yet re-creates this cycle.

That was an intentional thing in sequencing. The way that we wrote the songs and what songs we picked, it was supposed to tell a story that we had written out.

It was like that Bergman film, Scenes of a Marriage.

That’s what the idea was. The conflict and coming together and that kind of thing. That’s why “Happy House” is at the end, to leave it “happy,” a Hollywood ending. That’s why “Tonight” is the last song on side one, a much more positive coming-together kind of thing. “Happy House” is the last song on side two.

Did you hear back from Dubtribe Soundsystem about it? Did their sample come first?

That was…I actually had all the rhythms written for that song and we wanted to have a piano on it and just lifted the piano from that song. “That goes perfectly on there.” I never tried to find or make any claim that it was anything other than that. It was funny, guys on blogs and messageboards love to point it out. Somehow, this whole culture…I can’t read that stuff it makes me so crazy, that whole culture, there’s this whole thing where people priding themselves on pointing out where you’ve stolen from and that it somehow discredits what you’ve done. Where in fact, since the beginning of pop music, that’s all anyone has done.

Half of Shakespeare is where he took things from and how he put them back together.

Sunshine, the male of Dubtribe, they were hippies. He got in touch with me and told me how much he loved the song. So I’m going to have him do a remix which is a big fuck you to all the guys on the blogs upset. Someone actually wrote me to say “I’m going to tell on you. I’m going to write to Dubtribe and tell them what you did.” And the funny thing about “Do it Now,” it’s literally the piano part (which they sampled) and then the rest of the track is “I Am Every Woman” by Chaka Khan. It’s just those two things put together. (Laughs)

It’s like that Saul Bellow quote: “You’re aloud to steal anything that you’re strong enough to carry out.”

Exactly. That whole culture of…it’s a very American thing, a male thing. It’s an upper-class, over-educated, too much time on their hands, of getting into that world of being an uber-critic. It’s just been a long time problem of hipsterdom. People are so terrified of actually standing for something, being a fan of something. It’s much easier to pan something. It’s the go-to thing for critics of our generation. It’s an easy default. When in doubt, go to the pan. Somehow being negative and critical of something, people think you know what you’re talking about.

Or you could only be enthusiastic about something if you’re a-historical.

This is dangerous territory for me to get into but Hercules and Love Affair, it was my favorite album of the year. But when Pitchfork picked “Blind” as their number one song of the year and much of their dealings with Hercules, it felt like this affirmative action sort of thing. Finally, we can show you we’re not homophobic. Seeee, we like gay stuff, too. That’s a huge element to their approval.

Or like when Pitchfork got into Clipse.

Trying too hard to show that you’re not racist or homophobic. When in that world, it’s always been…racism and homophobia are pillars of rock, of hipsterdom. Of people coming from this collegiate, upper middle-class world. Which is fine. That’s where people have come from. But it’s not fine when it plays out…they’re the first people to say “I’m no racist, I’m not homophobic, I’m not sexist.” But in all of the things that they do, all of those things seem to creep out.

With disco and people discovering disco, James Murphy and I always talked about how disco edits, the whole point is to take out “the gay part.” The gay flourishes are always taken out and you’re left with this very rock thing that’s easy for people to like. DJing, the more indie-rock the audience, they’re so turned off by anything gay. Like, really turned off.

It's like when I wrote about disco edits and talked about how straight and white it has become. No black people, no Puerto Ricans, no gay people, it took thirty years to get white-washed. Back to topic though, was Nancy as big a part on Less Than Human? She seems to be such a big part of LCD.

In thinking about that, she has sung on very little LCD stuff. Little yells here and there and then she plays keyboard in the live band. Nancy is on many songs of mine in the past. (tape cuts off)

Does the relationship play a big part in terms of…?

For sure. That’s where all of this stuff came from. It’s always the most intense emotional things that you’re writing about. You’re not writing about “It was sooo nice when we cuddled on the couch and watched TV.” It’s great but it doesn’t make for compelling songs. The times when I’m most compelled to write is when I’m nearly suicidal probably.

I’m in a relationship now and you have to re-examine your sexism. I’m more in touch with my sexist side as well as my feminist side as now I can see the other side.

I’ve always been into having girlfriends than being like “I’m this music guy on the road sleeping with different girls every night.” Which has made for much more interesting material and references. You figure all that stuff out and it becomes…yeah. That’s what so much…for both Nancy and I.

Is she in a relationship?

I feel like I shouldn’t say. She’s with me on this campaign.

What I like about this album is how, in the past you’ve had this polar thing between human-robot and this time around, the polarity is between men-women. It’s transferred to this other thing.

There’s still robots. I’m taking the position of a super-sexist robot, criticizing a girl for being a girl, falling for typical male tricks. Desire will be your undoing. He’ll treat you like the rest. The relationships remain dysfunctional. For me, it was a clearing out of everything, the last number of years. This is everything that has happened.

Do you work through the crappy bad relationships to purge it?

Well, you linger on the bad parts. Otherwise you keep doing the same things over and over again. It is cool to have this public domain for this art project where you can purge all these things. Now I’m pretty much perfect, I would say.

(To Juan's girlfriend) Do you agree?

(Laughs.)

I’m like the ultimate boyfriend now...But it’s hard living in the shadow of something like “Happy House.” Like James always living in the shadow of “Losing My Edge.” He goes: "I’ll never make a 12” as big as that."

juan maclean interview pt. 1

Here is the first part of the full transcript of my interview with John MacLean a/k/a/ The Juan MacLean. In this first part, we chat a bit about robots, Six Finger Satellite, and of course, the nadir of 80s television, Small Wonder.

Were you much of a sci-fi fan or a comic book fan growing up?

I was a big fan of sci-fi, but with a limited scope. I was not into the fantasy world-related stuff at all, but Philip K. Dick was always one of my favorite authors of all time. Obviously, his writing technically is sorta awful, but the ideas and themes of alienation were big. The cosmology was stuff that I really got into and the offshoots like Blade Runner. It ended up being enormously influential for me. Thematically, that movie has played out in so many of my songs. Setting these scenarios for some being that doesn’t know whether its human or android or not, the polarity between the two. I’ve always used that theme or allegory of robots and androids to represent my own feeling not exactly “human.”

That goes back a ways for you.

To the earliest days of my music career.

Was Six Finger Satellite your first band?

My first and only band. I feel like I’ve had such a charmed music career, two of them, that 6FS…I graduated from high school and with money I got for graduation, I was going to buy a motorcycle and take off. Instead I went and bought a guitar. I just want to be in a band, so I taught myself to play the guitar. Made the band and made 6FS.

Was it a RISD band?

Nonono. We were so far removed from those people on a social level. There wasn’t a single band. We made our first demo after being together for a year, a year of learning how to play basically. Sent a cassette to Sub Pop and they signed us. We were signed.

Did the robotoic aspect of it ever play out live?

Devo was a big influence. We had the uniforms and were very strict about not smiling or showing emotion on stage.

Was that aesthetic was your contribution?

That was my thing. Devo, PKD stuff, Kraftwerk was a huuuuuge one, pretending they were robots and singing about being robots.

Songs about factories...

The uniforms they had we copied. We had shirts with very strict regulations in the band. When you were on tour you had to be in uniform all the time. We had our uniforms with the 6 emblem, your name underneath and we would sell them as merchandise on the tour as well.

Now with YouTube, I keep finding weird Italo disco like The Droids and it seemed like there was this giant movement of robot-pop. Why is it always European though? Never American? Why doesn’t America like robots?

There’s a definite social and cultural aspect to it, because Americans are…there’s such a focus on individuality and personality and originality and those kinds of concepts in these bourgeouis notions where kids grow up being told that they’re better, everyone is above-average, everyone is in the 99% percentile. But this idea of being an automoton or robotic or you’re part of the factory or the machinations of everything else.

Is it anti-Communist? You can’t have that crop up...

Very much so. Whereas that’s a very European –especially German—thing. Efficiency and the factory and that kind of thing. It’s a sentiment that Americans can’t…it doesn’t resonate at all in our culture or in the arts. Literature tends to be about the opposite, about individuality.

America’s lone obsession is Small Wonder.

Never seen it. I never watch TV.

You should check it out, a girl robot that lives with a family. Just terrible.

For me to it’s always a way to hide behind the idea of robots, without having to see that you’re expressing these really human emotions.

Was it funny to be on Sub Pop?

Of course. We were signed to Sub Pop, the first non-NW region band to be on Sub Pop. It was Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad, all those guys. The Xmas parties were quite humorous. All those guys in grunge attire and we would show up in uniform. Then we made a ten inch EP Machine Cuisine that was entirely electronic in ’93.

I remember putting it on and thinking it sounded like NIN.

(Laughs) That at the time, there was no context for that whatsoever. And we made it with Steve Albini. And there’s no guitar, drums, or live instrumentation.

With Juan, why did you want to re-enact it?

My first twelve-inch, there are some tangential references to Italodisco with “By the Time I Get to Venus” was very informed by the Boney M song “Nite Flight to Venus.” It’s where I took Venus from. That song was the template for the very first thing that I did. I was really into Italodisco at that time.

Boney M is a funny phenomenon to me: huge in European, but in America, they don’t even register.

It becomes this esoteric reference.

The robotic thing is a studio construct now though?

Live, not at all. Live has been an attempt…because 6FS was primarily a rock band and part of it was being antagonistic and willfully contrarian. Totally contrary. So when you’re in a rock band immersed in this post-rock indie rock, to bring out keyboards and dress up in these Fascistic uniforms and march around on-stage and pretend that you’re robots, it definitely got a rise out of people and was controversial. In dance music though, the opposite is true, especially if you want to re-create it live. It’s so horribly boring to see somebody start up a laptop or something and try to play live electronic music. So it seems like bringing this punk rock live chaotic element to it is much more interesting.

In the lag of time between 6FS and Daft Punk, what was it like to see their success, to see it come across?

It’s seems to be the theme of my entire music career. To be too far ahead. It is finally gratifying to actually be for once making the music that is of the day, right now. It actually feels a little alien in some ways. After awhile, you do get tired of having to wait 5-10 years for people to say “Wow, you guys were doing that.” And then they went and did it at it was HUGE! But Homework was a huuuge influence for me when it came out. It was fine because I had made Less Than Human and that’s when DFA was signing its deal with EMI right at the same time. The album sat there for a year waiting to be released while they negotiated the deal. In that time is when Human After All came out. It wound up getting released a month after Human After All. It was so hard to take. The name of it and everything.

Rather than being five years too early, you were five minutes too late.

Basically. A hair too late.

andy coolquitt interview

In the new issue of Tokion, I conducted an interview with Texas/ New York artist Andy Coolquitt. For those with elephant memories, he was profiled in the Sunday Times Magazine last year for his 'art house' in East Austin, though my piece focused more on his recent work with light and his forays into abandoned 'crack houses.'

Was the house in E. Austin your first convergence of art and abode?

Andy Coolquitt: No. The installations were tending towards interior architecture for a couple of years before.

When you were a kid, did you behave similarly with your room? Or was there anything you saw that made you snap to the concept?

No, it was a culmination of growing up in a series of unimaginative architecture: the houses, the church, the mall, were all designed from the same sterile worldview that most professionals had at the time. To add to that, my family although very kind people, had no education/exposure to cultural life. I grew up in a working class, Baptist, mostly white suburb of Dallas. Which I still consider as my handicap! My parents were just simply not interested in visual culture.

Lisa (Cooley, gallery owner who represents Coolquitt) talked about the idea of friends, a community, and most of the NYT photos arrange themselves as so. Which came first?

The house was initially designed for multi-use, I had the idea of building the kitchen in a separate structure in the middle of the property, from the beginning. I didn't know exactly how it would develop but the idea of creating an alternative to institutional community was key: the place or the need for a place?


Lisa also talked about the notion of 'crack houses' and I'm hoping you will say a bit about it. Is it the energy of the places, the way refuse is made to serve a purpose again, the desperation of living and consumption, etc.?

I'm not interested in crackhouses per se, but for lack of a better term 'crack spaces.' These are spaces that are outdoors, usually in the center of most American cities, usually these sort of non-spaces, undeveloped and undevelop-able, that exist next to public architecture. in-between spaces, especially in the south where density isn't an issue, or sometimes just overgrown neglected residential lots.

I'm interested in the residue of a gathering of people the night before who came together to share the crack pipe. There is always this intensely lame attempt at creating a living room. The most common solution is a piece of cardboard placed on the ground or against a wall to create a primitive sofa. Often a log will be positioned for a bench, and sometimes it's simply the markings in the dirt left from people laying down, the shuffling of feet, or a small clearing of debris.

Almost always there are 3 or 4 and sometimes up to 20 spent crack lighters. I call them crack lighters as opposed to cigarette lighters because they are used to smoke crack: the fuel valves are always removed to allow for a larger flame, and sometimes the plastic tops are melted and warped from holding the flame too long. They are always just left there, casually placed in these living rooms adding touches of color. I read this as well, as an attempt at domestication, the idea of creating comfort through collection and object fetishization.

Texas: where are you from exactly? How deep do your family roots go there?

My parents and great-grandparents grew up in East Texas, farmers and sharecroppers. My parents were the first to move into the city (Dallas) after they graduated high school.

Thinking of 'iight' (his last gallery show in NYC) and the way you have your objects lean, emphasizing the imbalance and disorientation of the pieces, I was curious if you were familiar much with Houston's chopped and screwed music or Texas hip-hop (and its vernacular) in general? Maybe I'm just coming at it as a music person...

Yesyes! Great connection: leaning against wall, speaking the bare minimum with utmost clarity, rethinking minimalism as chopped and screwed! You are brilliant. I will investigate this.

Can you compare scavenging between NYC and Texas? Did you do much in Austin? It's such a regular activity up here, from scoring terrible paintings, or records or household objects or what have you off the street corner and putting it in your own home. I have at least three paintings this way, dishes, lamps, etc. I don't really remember it much in Texas though (save for dumpster diving behind photomats).

Yeah, scavenging is really different in the two cities. It is a constant activity in both places, but in NYC it takes less effort. With this newer body of work using painted metal pipes, NYC is def a better place for gathering. There's just so much cheap furniture that gets put out. And like you say, it is so regular.

I love it when an old man will stop what he's doing and help me strap a huge load of crap onto my bike. Every old man in Bushwick thinks he knows the perfect way to tie down scavenged furniture. I think New Yorkers love to see someone re-using their trash. I usually get approving nods and sometimes cheers when riding down the street with a full load strapped on.

Of course, in Texas it's a bit tricky, peoples' notions of private property and all. And it's much more racist. When I'm in black or Mexican neighborhoods, I'm always perceived as an outsider and these negotiations sometimes prohibit the process.

vladislav delay/ luomo/ sasu ripatti interview

Starting in late 2007, I began a correspondence with Sasu Ripatti (a/k/a Vladislav Delay, a/k/a Luomo, a/k/a Uusitalo, a/k/a________) that stretched well into 2008. And yet it was impossible to find an outlet for this interview. Despite creating microhouse's truly totemic Vocalcity, not to mention the drug-dubbiest electronic albums of the late 20th century/ 21st century like Entain, Multila, and Anima, he was deemed too obscure by almost every single editor I encountered. Thankfully, the release last year of Luomo album Convivial allowed me to place a feature over at XLR8R, though it is only just hitting stands now. Here are a few extended excerpts from our conversation:

i rarely if ever revisit my old work; for me it's obsolete in some or even many ways after it's been made. usually the life-span of a project for me is the initial feeling or an idea to do something, and then the most enjoyable period of envisioning it and living with the pre-production phase where you dream about it and come together with it and make friends, and then of course the hard work itself, to turn all those feelings and plans into something concrete and struggling with all the practical aspects until the end where you are holding something in your hands and either agreeing with it or not. but then it's more or less over. same with concerts and almost anything else i have been involved with.

the projects become somewhat public domain after i have finished with them and they begin feel less personal and i loose interest in them through that. and of course there's the practical aspect of really spending quite a bit of time in the studio or elsewhere dealing with all the new music i'm making that i really don't long to listen more of my stuff if i have some free time to choose to listen anything i fancy.

i guess there are more reasons that i don't like to revisit the older works, one at least for sure being the over-critical myself that doesn't really allow me to enjoy what i have done but rather pays attention to all the things that i would do now differently, and all that picking up on unnecessary things but i guess that's very common among the producer/artist/etc types.

i know i should maybe do more critical analysis of what i have done, after longer periods of time have passed since the works were made but that's something i have so far avoided doing, and i let the memory golden the facts in time and make my peace with everything i have done in that way.

i think the only way i really spend any time with my older works is when i perform concerts and even then i most often choose to play either the very recent material or unreleased new stuff to see how i might react on it in front of public which is always the most real test listening test you or at least i can do.

> What kind of stuff affected you back during that time?

back when i made Multila? it was a lot of a drugs, i must admit. i was strongly inspired by and into the whole mind- and reality-altering thing, escaping the "now" and living somewhere else. there were quite long periods back then when i was really quite out of it, but fortunately more often than not spending time sketching out some musical ideas.

i'm glad there always was the strong drive to make and be with music, otherwise who knows what might have happened.
looking back in retrospect many things seem naive now, but at the same time i like the fact that back then i was really imagining things more than being ultra realistic that i am nowadays after going through more stuff, both good and bad.

i was really thinking differently about my music back then, not knowing what's out there and thinking the sky's the limit with what i can do with music and that it belongs to everywhere, not being the underground stuff it ended up being.

when i made Multila i thought it's very cutting-edge modern music, especially the more ambient pieces, and not just being electronic or post-techno stuff, and that it should be played at fashion shows or advertisements or movies of the most cool kind. it was a shock to really realize where i did end up with my music when i begun traveling to concerts; really i couldn't believe it was only barely happening and in the very leftfield of the leftfield and nobody was paying musical attention to it besides some chin-stroking guys.

but i think exactly that unawareness was a blessing back then, so i could just come up with anything i imagined, also through being out of it with drugs, i just wasn't thinking and analyzing things like i do nowadays but just going for it. but that's only one side of it. the other side drove me to quite a bit of trouble, health wise and otherwise and there was no light in the end of the tunnel and i'm glad i could become little bit more connected to real world eventually.

***

>i read recently you did a live soundtrack for Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer. and was wondering about your approach to a movie like that, less-dependant upon dialogue and more for scene-setting. what drew you to that film? even when I listen to something like Four Quarters (to say nothing of sampling Hurlyburly for Anima), it has a cinematic sense of rhythm to it, many different elements moving at once, not cohesive in one sense, yet all in the same scene.

cinema is for me more entertainment than anything else. so i'm watching all kinds of stuff, without much filtering. i'm happy to be amateur in film world. but more and more i find myself referring to some movie, how they made it technically or storyline-wise etc, and thinking how could i turn that same feeling onto music i make.

that's what i like in music, that it lives like a life or movie or anything, that it's not just a metronome steady and artificial in that way. faltering, collapse, disintegration, that's what life is sometimes, right? so music should be as well. i don't want nor do i try to separate my music from my life.

for long time i avoided playing with any visuals, partly at least because i wanted to try making the music part as visual as possible and then the thought of having visuals there didn't really add to it but distract. playing to a movie opened some doors for me though, namely it gave me a freedom not having to fill in everything all the time. which is what i could of course do without movie as well but having the visual stuff going on there i felt more secure to let go off the music for quite long periods and play very sparsely which i enjoyed a lot, and for sure i will be doing more of that now also when playing alone without any visuals. i wonder how that will work though, to be seen.

what drew me to the film? i guess at least partly home sickness. i miss Finland sometimes a lot and Kaurismäki's movies sure me quite well. even movies that are not taking place in Finland (like "I Hired...") they have that something Finnish in there that i like and miss. above all, i think his movies are great no matter what, i have always liked them. i will be playing more to his movies in the future, really looking forward to that.

***

there was absolutely no clubbing lifestyle, but rather a pure drug lifestyle. i didn't really read any drug literature either, i just experimented with drugs with some friends of mine. you know, staying at home with dope. looking back i was really immersed with all that stuff for quite long time. i even named my label narcotic back then, and even today completely sober person i chose to keep the name when i re-launched the label because the whole drug thing was so much of an influence to me, and still is.

it definitely gave me some inspiration and ideas i would not have gotten otherwise, but then again i don't think they were anything essential necessarily. but i do think the overall vibe i have is still drugged out, not that i'm still spaced out but that i still think it's a great feeling to be out of your body and feel otherwise, and i do still draw from that feeling when i make music. nowadays i try different techniques for all that, like yoga or whatever meditation or music no matter how esoteric it sounds but it works and doesn't fuck up my body but the opposite. i think back then though i was too fucked up to make any concrete decisions anymore, so it did more harm than anything else. i also got into health problems and had unnecessary issues with criminals and cops etc. so all that just almost completely destroyed my music.

Simone White interview

This was the commencement of an interview with singer Simone White for an article I wrote about Honest Jon's Chop-Up Revue last year, yet I wound up not using her quotes. What was a pleasant surprise about the night was how Ms. White commanded the crowd's attention amid that roster of folks: Candi Staton, Tony Allen, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble with only her hushed songs. I wished that we could've delved a bit deeper in our correspondence, but very excited to see her tonight and see how she does alone in the spotlight.

I'm curious as to how your music came to the attention of Honest Jon's in the first place. Were you familiar with the label beforehand?

I was living in New York and I'd booked a tour on the West coast. I was doing long drives and I was listening to Bonnie Prince Billy's Master and Everyone on repeat. I love this record: it's close and tender and Will Oldham's voice is so pure. I kept saying to people, “I want to make a record like this.”

I met a woman in LA whose boyfriend was from Nashville and knew Marky Nevers, the producer. I went there three times and made a record, first spare and simple, then adding more instrumentation. Finally it was done and I knew I wanted a record label to put it out, as I'd self-released my first record and knew the business side of it, everything that is involved. I was no good at it and needed help.

Marky sent it to Mark Ainley from Honest Jon’s and he liked it and we went back to Nashville and we added some trombones and strings and recorded a few more songs. I wasn't familiar with the label but Marky Nevers had recorded two others that they had signed, Candi Staton and Lone Official. I liked Mark Ainley right away, he's weary of all the bullshit and he's only interested in good music and being authentic (and he would totally cringe and make some typically sarcastic English remark if he heard me say that). For my first record I had used my friend's label's name, The Sincere Recording Company, so I thought it very fitting to be with Honest Jon’s.

I'm afraid I wasn't very familiar with the music on Honest Jon’s. The closest I probably got was Ali Farka Touré's collaboration with Ry Cooder (Talking Timbuktu from 1994) which I loved, and of course all the old folk music my mother sang to me when I was little. I guess my music has most in common with Candi Staton as Marky Nevers produced both our records and used a lot of the same musicians. I didn't think it was strange that Mark Ainley liked my music though. I probably thought he connected with the political songs and the folk aspect.

Speaking of Will Oldham, have you heard Lie Down in the Light, the album that Mark did last year? I seriously think it's Will's greatest record so far.

No! Is there a new one? I didn't know!

Is that your mom on the cover of the album? And is she with a pet leopard? And on the packaging, is that your grandma singing in bloomers and heels on-stage?

Yes, my mom and my grandma were performers and they had a leopard. He lived on the third floor of their house and chewed all my mom's shoes and handbags. I have a million photos of them in all these great outfits, posing with the leopard and on top of their pink Thunderbird and in parks with my grandma's series of Chihuahuas and performing on stage.

Were there always such idiosyncratic and flamboyant women in the family? The pictures really help convey this dislocated feeling I have with the album where I feel it could emanate from really any era, yet it sounds sorta outside of time as well.

There were and are strange and flamboyant women in my family. My aunt on my dad's side was writing pop songs in the fifties at age 13 and my paternal grandmother founded all-women run newspaper in Michigan in 1949.

Did you feel that coming to the guitar so late (the bio says 22) and not being around pop music when you were younger helped you in some sort of way with writing your songs? Or are you now playing catch-up with music?

That's funny you say coming to guitar late at 22. ‘Cos to me 22 doesn't sound late, as in fact I didn't start playing guitar really seriously until about 30. If I only was serious about it at 22! I think the stuff I was playing at 22 wasn't from my true nature. And if I'd stuck with it then I might have worked it out faster or maybe it would have taken me the same amount of time. Because I feel like I got closer to myself and to the music I'm making now through whatever I was doing: photography, writing, acting, and that now it's coming out in music most strongly and most pure.

I think not growing up with pop culture must have influenced me, but I can't identify what's missing. And I don't really live in pop culture now, I don't watch TV which seems to be the big connector of all people. I sit in the garden and stare at the green stuff.

Wait…when you say "playing catch up with music," do you mean playing catch up to the music that's out there or playing catch up with music that I'm playing? ‘Cos there's no way I'll ever catch up to all the music that's out there. I remember when I was a teenager having a list of cool bands written in my notebook so I could rattle them off when people asked which seemed to be the first question you asked someone in high school. If you mean playing catch up with my music, I don't think there is an age for doing anything, especially not something so primary and human as music.

prince language interview pt. 2

Ahmed Fakroun "Yo Son" (Prince Language edit)

A continuation of part one of my interview with Prince Language...

Tell me about the edit that got you written up on the BBC website?

So I did an edit of Ahmed Fakroun's “Soleil Soleil.” I found it in a world music store on seven inch. I had never heard of it and it really blew me away. It was this weird electro-sounding record with a Talking Heads sound, but with Arabic singing. I found two copies, with a dub on the other side, so I would extend it again. I did an edit and it did well. And there was an article on the BBC financial website did an article, implying that my edit had helped bring him to people’s attention again after living in Libya for 15 years off the radar. He was a minor hit in France in the 80s. So he contacted me on MySpace saying: “Thank you for the edit. I really appreciated you helping me expose my music to people.” And he has a bunch of other amazing material, so now I’m working to put together a compilation of it.

That to me is a nice story of how edits work. You’re not just re-hashing old songs, you’re also helping to bring attention to things that have been overlooked. You get to play that role. That’s really gratifying. He’s an amazing musician and I would love to help people hear more of his stuff. I feel I got too much credit, but it’s just a cool thing to help you reconnect with the past and perpetuate that continuum. That a guy who lives in Tripoli, Libya is in contact with me and now we email is an amazing story. I knew nothing about him when I did the edit. I found out down the road that there’s a video for it. In Libya, he’s still revered. It becomes this nice bit to offset the scholarly aspect of it.

What was something you edited early on?

Roy Ayers or Gino Soccio (both of which appear on the Editions Disco label).

Do you perceive the edit as a tool or an end in and of itself?

It started as the former. But now, both what I’ve done --it’s turned into and end itself. Sometimes you do them more under the consideration of turning these into songs, listening to arrangements. The Soccio for instance (see part one of this interview). The original is a 2 ½ minute LP cut and when I would DJ it out, I would take two copies and do doubles of it, which logically came from hip-hop. It’s a cool break so I’ll do doubles and extend it. it took me three years to go “Hey, I could do this on Sound Edit 16,” literally a two-channel cutting and pasting editing track with no grid, no nothing. It’s like doing a tape edit on computer. That’s how it starts. But then you learn about using multi-tracks and effects and layers. The one I did of “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” the Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes with Teddy Pendergrass, that’s an 8/12 minute song made out of the last 2 minutes of that particular record. There’s a lot of complicated effects and programming and arrangements. I worked on and off on it 3-4 months. That became entirely different.

Do songs need to have a flaw?

One is either to go “this song is two minutes, but I’d like to play it.” You want it to go on, the wish you always have when you hear something great, you want it to continue. You don’t want it to stop. Or there are songs where you’re listening to it and the first two minutes are amazing, and then “OH MY GAWD!" This guy starts singing. What the fuck? His voice sucks or there’s some heinous part in it. Or there’s a break in it. Learning about breaks, that trained me so well to look for those little golden moments. There’s that aspect of it. There’s a problem now where a lot of times with edits, people will take out too much of the bad parts. The parts that are “bad” or “cheesy” are actually what make the other parts so much better.

It’s the same thing in language. Meaning comes from difference. If you don’t have any difference, if you just have the “great, cool” part of the song, it would be kinda bland. You can’t differentiate. Meaning comes from differentiation. When you’re working on something, you’ll fall in love with the parts you wanted to originally take out. They get endearing. That’s a real challenge, too.

When I talked to Harvey about it, he re-iterated that idea often, leaving in the bad parts.

He always repeats this anecdote, but it’s so worth it. He made an edit of “Apache,” the all-time, holy grail break of hip-hop. He always talks about doing the edit where it never goes into the break. It’s just stroking and stroking, you don’t get off. That’s brilliant to me. that’s the logical step for me now.

So is that why you use the name “Language” as a DJ name?

The nerdy aspect of it came from being interested in how language is constructed, through repetition and difference. That’s how meaning comes out of language and how linguistic structure works. And I like how that also applies to music, dance music especially. It’s based on repetition. Take minimal techno, where all of a sudden, one little hi-hat crash comes in and the whole landscape shifts. Or in reggae, the music is based on the same 30-40 riddims, but those riddims form a shared communal language.

The difference comes from the individual deejays that are on the track. It dispenses with the traditional western, European notion of everything has to be completely original. Which is bullshit. Classical composers ripped off other composers, Debussy would use folk melodies.

But if you’re making music it’s always "No! we all have this. This is all us. We’re all sharing these things. But I’m going to enact my subjectivity over this shared thing." That’s the nerdy academic origin of my name. But now I’m stuck with it and somewhat ashamed of it. It is what it is.

Do edits become a calling card for other productions?

There’s a number of trends with both good and bad aspects to them. The first one is that edits are relatively easy to do. They’re a gateway production drug. You try editing and it’s an easy way to learn about how things are arranged, how songs are made, what works and what doesn’t. That comes from DJing too. It’s the punk rock thing, it allows a lot of people access into it.

But the downside is that most of it is going to be shit. If you only need three or four chords to play, it’s great because all of a sudden someone who thought they had no chance of ever being in a band before will start a band. But most people aren’t going to be the Ramones or Wire. A lot of people are doing them just to have their name on a record. And they’re doing edits of songs that don’t need to be edited to begin with. Or taking out a perfectly good vocal out. a lot of that is the European aesthetic of vocal is bad.

People will also do edits of songs that are already edited, that has an extended, perfectly DJ-friendly mix, but you can tell they only got into disco a couple of years ago cuz it’s kinda cool now and they don’t realize the song they’re editing is classic, it’s not as rare as you think. You’ve never played it to like…to be blunt about it, you’ve never played to a black crowd and you don’t realize these records are classic dance records to a large group of people. Just listen to WBLS on a Sunday afternoon and you’d realize that. But people don’t get that.

I don’t mean to sound too cranky, it is great that people are discovering a lot of amazing music. but this is where it comes down to doing your fucking homework. The first thing you need to do is learn about the canon of dance music. and learn what all those records are. Records that you will get sick of. You’ve heard “Runaway” or “Doctor Love” three-thousand times, but the fact remains that these are amazing, brilliant records that form that shared common language that led to these other things. You have to use that as your springboard. That’s what people don’t realize.

Harvey is an example of that. Harvey is known as the guy who has taken it so far left-field and does whatever he wants. He’s the paragon of the DJ’s DJ, or being self-indulgent. Yet Harvey knows his Garage classics, Ron Hardy, he knows the cannon. I’ve seen him play sets with “White Horse” and “Erotic City,” and all them. He knows his shit. You can’t know what to deviate from until you know those core classic records. You can’t go left until you know the center...whatever bad metaphor you want.

That’s the downside of the disco revival stuff. It’s great on one hand that people are getting into it and learning about it. But people are not putting much homework into it.

But it’s hard to do the homework. If you’re into rock, you can buy the Rolling Stone book, you can buy the albums, the tomes exalting Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix. Disco is much more de-centralized.

It is. It’s word-of-mouth. You hear it going to parties and dancing to these fucking records. And ask the DJ, who might be a dick about it. You do have to put in the work. That is part of the beauty about it. It’s an oral and social history and tradition. It’s a living thing. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life remains a good starting point, but you can’t do it off the playlists either. You might not personally like all those records.

You have to find your own aesthetic and what you bring to it. I feel lucky that I come from a black music background. I was blessed to be around that, to learn that history, to have feedback and learn that way. 3-4 years ago, my friends who never came to the parties all of a sudden were more interested in it. Eric and Thomas were responsible for a lot of that, helping to make downtown kids more open to dance music. And not just be at a rock show, not remotely ironic about it. Eric and Thomas know their shit. You know those wedding records and you know their place. Rub-N-Tug are head and shoulders above the others. They realize they’re part of the continuum of the Loft and the Garage. Sure, they’ve deviated a lot from that, they’re not canonical about stuff...

They fuck with those expectations.

Yeah, but they’re still in that tradition. They operate from the assumption they wouldn’t exist without that. That’s the important thing to keep in mind.

People doing newer edits that’s obvious to edit, you have to ask yourself, ‘does this need to be put out? Does it need to be disseminated? Or are you doing an edit record because it’s easy? Some edits just aren’t that good. They don’t go anywhere. People will put stuff into Ableton and quantize the fuck out of everything.

The beauty of a lot of disco records is like the drummer was paid in cocaine before the session and he did it all and he’s vacillating 6 BPMs over the course of the track! House would lock it all in, it just sucks the soul out of it. Those are the disadvantages. But overall, it’s a good thing. As much as I complain about it, it is a good thing that more people are receptive to it and open to it. It’s the same thing that happens anytime anything grows into a bigger thing. More money, more problems. It’s an inherent truism to any social thing.

To participate in what little is left of the continuum of New York, downtown culture and dance music culture and all those things. There is a specificity. I think a lot of us really couldn’t have come out of any other place. Growing up in Chicago and learning my chops there was one thing, but it didn’t really come together and make sense to me until I got to New York. NY codified everything for me. Hercules couldn’t happen anywhere else. The DFA couldn’t have happened anywhere else. There’s something about living here and paying too much rent, the desperation and the ecstasy that can come out of that. a combination of those factors. New York means more outside of New York than it does in New York. There is still an aura about it, the sense that that brings and gives you. I don’t see anywhere else picking up the mantle. It’s still the cultural mix. The culture has gotten so much more, the scale has more mass and lowest common denominator.

Back in the day, Larry Levan was playing at the Garage and Frankie Crocker was hanging out with him. And he would hear a record Larry was playing and it would end up on WBLS the next day, the biggest black radio station.

Stores had to start stocking whatever it was Larry was playing because the next morning people would line up to buy it.

There’s those stories, just how he would crossover weird rock records like “The Magnificent Dance” or Liquid Liquid.

On my iPod, “Once in a Lifetime” came up on the walk over here!

Classic example! The fact that “Genius of Love” was at that point, the Talking Heads had never had a chart hit, and it was a source of tension. They had the biggest club record in New York. That records like that could happen. That kind of crossover –or certain records that are classics for hip-hop, The Loft, or The Garage—this mingling and diversity of scenes is an important kind of thing that NY has engendered.

Do you think NYC has an aesthetic?

Just from the backgrounds we come from, the way parties are, the fact that we can go to 4am or even later, that’s just an aesthetic that...there are certain records that only work in those contexts and seep into you. The smoke machine, 5 in the morning records. There’s certain things you don’t understand until you’ve heard them in that context.

A certain level of toxicity.

Any number of factors. Also too, being in New York is being in the context of this rich living history of people here. I remember going to Dance Trax and some old dude would talk for twenty minutes about going to the Garage for the first time. Just to hear that and to be exposed to that link, or to be able to go to the Loft and realize that this is something that has existed since 1969, the very beginning! That you can still drink at the mouth of that river… it’s like “Oh, I can still go to the whorehouse where Jelly Roll Morton rolled.” That’s what it's like, going to the absolute beginning of a music, like the beginning of jazz.