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be-ready-when-i-say-go · 4 years

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5sos Lyrical Analysis

A/N: Hi! I just wanted to start this off with a huge thanks to everyone that sent me in lyrics. This project has been two fold: Part one is just looking at certain lyrics, for my found poem series. This just means I want to use and even respond to certain lyrics in my poems. I compiled them into two separate lists:

Find Youngblood here.

Find CALM here.

The second part was to take a close look at the overlap in lyrical content between Youngblood and CALM. This is NOT a complete analysis of their lyrics. I wanted to make that clear. I am by no means intending on making a complete analysis of their lyrics. I am not even attempting to make a completely analysis of these two albums, though I’ll touch as many basis as possible.

Please note: I am using the phrase ‘narrator.’ One, this is an old habit carried on from all the close readings I did on poetry. There’s typically, out of respect, a division between the author of the work and the narrator of the piece presented. These two can, and sometimes do, overlap, especially in forms like poetry. But I feel it’s important to use ‘narrator’ even in this analysis. Old habits die really hard and sometimes never do. But also because it feels more respectful to assume a collective unit and unified front rather than trying to piece apart the personal experience to a specific member since I am looking at just the lyrics, I’m not scoping out Twitter, or IG, or Cocktail Chats. I know those connections are there. The only thing I wanted to focus on was the content of the lyrics as they are presented, solo, nothing else. I recognize and understand that each member is bringing a unique experience to the table and there is plenty more in these songs if those other pieces are added.

These are gonna be a little disjointed. I’ve been staring at lyrics and notes for two weeks at this point, almost. I’m sorry it’s not necessarily a more cohesive front. So please enjoy! And feel free to send your thoughts!

All that are below are my personal opinions.

I’m just going to hit the ground running. I’ll be including pictures of the chart and then a paragraph of my thoughts below them.

CW: Mentions of drugs (recreational and prescribed)! Just in case anyone is sensitive to that.

Enjoy below!

Youngblood deals with heartache, but there’s an internal struggle on how to heal and move on. So in songs like “Better Man” and “Monster Among Men” that internal struggle is seen via introspection. In CALM, the same sense of struggle is seen in “Red Desert” and “Old Me”. However, an interesting deviation occurs in the lyrics of “Teeth” where now there’s a very specific identification of a person that the narrator sees as causing them turmoil. I’d like to note in both albums there’s a clear you present in both albums, which is a source of heartbreak and pain and even that you is addressed in several songs. However, “Teeth” stands out because of the you just being transformed from just a human that receives and dishes out pain, into the personification of a devil. This you in a way seems to have lost their humanity. And perhaps to the narrator there is a small appeal to that, with the addition of “put your hands on me.” An important thing to note is that while Youngblood and CALM never fully resolve their issues, but there is growth and maturing that’s heavily seen in CALM.

In some ways, I am about to state the obvious: Fire is destructive and flames takes no prisoners. However, an interesting thing about something that is destroyed is that it leaves in its place the opportunity for something new, and potentially better to be planted. “Valentine” leaves behind a feeling of combination, intertwining with “so deep, your DNA’s being messed with my tough/ Can’t beat us/ So real, fueling the fire until we combust”. And even though it seems to lead to an explosive end, the point here seems to be much more focused on the journey, riding the high no matter what. This is a theme, that I think, heavily seeps through Youngblood. Youngblood seems less focused on the results and much more focused on the journey, the ups and downs, the pleasure and pain. There’s a search in Youngblood, a quest for answers that in some ways CALM answers. One such answer can be see in CALM’s “Old Me” with the line “Ashes on the floor, but I’m walkin’, walkin’, walkin’ out of here alive.” Even though the journey might of ended in flames and destructive, the narrator still remains, they are still able to come out on the other side of everything they have endured. Another answer resides in “Lover of Mine” where the narrator is asking in some ways that their loved one to use fire for rebirth of the relationship with the lines, “All of my regrets and things you can’t forget/ Light them all up, kiss them goodbye.”

On the opposite end of the search and possibly more aligned with yearning, in Youngblood with “Babylon.” The chorus centers around taking the adventure of love to it’s highest point but the aftermath of the crash as well “We both said we’d love higher than we knew we could go” and “Burn to bright, now the fire’s gone, Watch it all fall down.” I will come back with more on Babylon further on.

A lot of Youngblood is a struggle of man vs. himself, an internal struggle to let go, to move on, to figure out one’s identity. In CALM that struggle remains present, but a new conflict is presented, in the form of a relationship. We can see in Teeth the narrator has started to directly reference a “you” where conflict now resides, “Some nights you’re the only thing I know/ Only thing burning when the night grows cold”. I like to conclude that there is a hot and cold aspect to the relationship that the narrator is seeing. In a previous line, “Sometimes when I look at you, I see my wife,” the narrator expresses that there are some redeeming qualities, that there is some good. Whether not this is the exact same relationship as discussed in Teeth is not a question I want to undertake, however, in “Lonely Heart” there’s a reference back to the bad, “Our house on fire, we’re burning/ We dance inside, you’re hurting.” Not all that glitters is good proves itself right once again.

I combined the light and dark with the night and day imagery. I did so for space sake. This could easily be double the size it is currently, but also because there is sometimes the passage of time associated with the both light and dark and night and day. They are transitions. The transitions in Youngblood and CALM occur with lyrics like “I saw you looking brand new overnight” from “Lie To Me” “Call me in the morning to apologize/ Every little lie gives me butterflies” from “Teeth” and “I don’t wanna kill my time with anyone else/Dancing in the dark till the sun comes” from “Kill My Time”

I also choose to separate out the light and dark from other color imagery because of the way it echoed and resonated with daylight, moonlight, midnight and creating shadows in the lyrics. There’s a very specific sense of time in some songs. In Lie To Me we get the reference “3:00 AM and the moonlight is testing me” paired up right against “if I make it till dawn it won’t be hard to see/ I ain’t happy.” The passage of time, or rather the supposed passage in Lie To Me, illustrates how things can change, or be shaped and molded.

A pretty cool thing I noted is that there’s references to time with “midnight, daylight, 3:00 AM, tonight” and that brings along the brightness of and the absence of the sun and light where as in particular with No Shame the only reference to light if from a camera flashing. This made me wonder more about the appearance of light and perception. There is a face that the narrator knows is only seen captured by photographs and while at events with the bulbs of a camera and the true face of themself that only they would get to experience.

I included this section about drugs and alcohol to illustrate a certain aspect of growing up. I’m not attempting to romanticize any use of drugs, alcohol, or nicotine. These are statements, from the narrator, that yes they have used them. But this is about the narrator’s experience. And I, as little old me, ask is that you please be careful out there!

Back to the lyrics, it’s fascinating to see how the relationship with substances as evolved. If we start towards the end of Youngblood, we get a tale of the narrator and their best hosting a party while parents are out of town, having the cops called on the party, and then riding out in the car, continuing the party, but at a much smaller capacity in “Best Friend” to a very helpless feeling in “Why Don’t You Love Me” with it’s line, “Few drinks deep at a table for one. and then we expanse to “Get you high when I’m high” and “Sugar coated brain, the fluid ain’t to blame, for the sugar coated pain” in “Empty Wallets” to a memory, the reality that even parts of our life journey that weren’t great for us can still be missed with the lyrics in High “And I’ll always miss the memories of the morning we were high.’ The question can continue further to the point: Does the mentality create a challenge for recovering and moving on? And I personally think, sometimes yes it can. In other times, we can still remember those moments but ultimately realize that there is better progress made by moving forward.

We do get a reference to Xanax. Notably, it is a benzodiazepine which are notoriously hard and dangerous (if not done right and with professional help) to get off once a person starts using them. But they are effective for some. Done with my tangent now, let’s get back to the focus: The lyrics in “No Shame” in which the narrator sees the “you” or significant other dumping their pills and being “so sick” of them is really crucial. I think it touches on how hard trying to get better can be for the person experiencing it.

On a much lighter note though, we can move to colors! I personally see a lot of color (or feel like when I’m listening to certain songs I should be wearing a certain color, which I’m sure sounds crazy) when I listen to Youngblood. I was intrigued though to look for the use of color and even images that evoke a certain color. I didn’t find a whole lot of it, including CALM. Which seems pretty consistent. I don’t see a lot of visual components to their lyrics. The soundscape of the albums appears to be the backbone for a lot of the colors, I feel. And the emotional impact seems to the their larger focus when they write.

Particularly cool lines that have color or color imagery in them, in my finding were “Fragile, always ‘about to fall just like sand/Castles” from “Monster Among Men,” “We’re classic together like Egyptian gold” from “Valentine” “It was more than just a neon weekend” from “Woke Up In Japan” and “Red, red desert/ Heal our blues/ ...Twilight moments with you” from “Red Desert”. The twilight line in Red Desert gives a purple vibe, or at least I see the color purple there and I can only wonder if it’s because I was prepped beforehand with the colors red and blue. However it works, I think it was a brilliant choice to couple twlight after it, to paint a full picture. “Neon weekend” should just be tattooed across my forehead because it gives off such a vibrant and bright life that nestles in very well with the energy of Youngblood’s entire album.

A slightly related note, I pulled a couple instance of the phrase “heart” for this section. I wasn’t sure if others associated the color red with it. I did however think that the use of “blood on my shirt” “roses” and even “sirens” left me with the impression of colors, specifically blue and a small bit of blue for the sirens.

There were two really strong parallels when it came down to the use of “dancing” throughout the albums. In “Ghost of You” we get the lines, “Dancing through our house with the ghost of you/ ...And I’ll chase it down with a shot of truth/That my feet don’t dance like they did with you”. It’s almost direct parallel is in “Lover of Mine” with it’s lines “Dance around the living room/Lose me in the sight of you/I’ve seen the red, I’ve seen the blue/ Take all of me.” I personally wonder if one could spin this, as so that Lover of Mine could take place before Ghost of You. However, that’s the poet and author in me looking for the story and strings.

A crazy parallel I noticed was between “Empty Wallets” and “Lonely Hear” I promise here I won’t be pulling the red strings. In Empty Wallets there’s the sentiment of hurting and forgiveness, with of course that blood pumping rush of youth with, “Living our lives/ Dancing on empty wallets/ Spend it all on you” and “I always believed in second chances/ I always believed in you”. And it sorts bumps against and shares a space with “We dance inside, you’re hurtin’” and “Can I get a second chance? Can I have another dance? Can I have another life with you” from Lonely Heart, where we see this urge with the narrator to make up for their wrongdoing and recognize the pain caused to the other person in this relationship.

I can’t talk about Youngblood and CALM without mentioning the strong growth that’s come from the former to the latter. It would be an utter disservice to the different roles these albums play. Youngblood is so much about loss and growing up and fumbling through life in a way where the counterpart CALM is more about finally get a handle on all those questions and growing from them.

The strongest parallel I gathered was from the insistences in Better Man and Old Me. I recognize that Better Man overall has this echo of love, and finding someone else that helped them through the growing pains. But I think it’s worth noting that in the context of Old Me there’s an acceptance to the fuck ups, there’s an acceptance shit had to go bad to finally find what was wrong. I think the strongest lyric to this point is in Old Me “Another round, here we go, going in blow for blow/ Look into the mirror, take the punches that I throw” and “Had to fuck it up before I really got to know me/ All of the mistakes I made, I made, I made, I made/ Whatever the price I paid, I paid, I paid, I paid.”

I added a chart about the phrase “letting go” of which a lot of it is about how it’s hard to let go. Which I mean, is very accurate and relatable. The most explicit example is in “When You Walk Away” with the lines “I’m bad at letting go/ Won’t you let me down easy?/I can’t let you go” this sentiment is paralleled several times in CALM as well, one example in particular is in “Not in the Same Way” with the lines “You say, ‘Go’ I won’t leave” and “Turn right around, throwin’ rocks at your window.” If walking away was easier, I don’t think we’d have the albums that we got from the band. I wanted to include this section with change and growth but it would just be too long and too much. So I broke it up, chart wise.

Alas, I’ve returned to Babylon! First though, I want to touch on overall on the way this chart is set up. I tried to explicit lyrics of “fatal love” but I did expand my criteria. So it if it looks a little wonky and long, I do apologize.

Now, some really cool overlaps I noticed where between “When You Walk Away” and “Not in the Same Way.” It’s the particular phrasing on how gut wrenching love can be sometimes. In “When You Walk Away,” the narrator states with the opening! which is a really crazy but strong way to open “Cut me open, take my heart/ So we’ll never be apart.” When we look at “Not In The Same Way” we get a very similar wording “Rip my heart out and leave, on the floor, watch me bleed.” The first song, “When You Walk Away” is a bit more a plea to be saved from the heartache and “Not in the Same Way” is more of a statement, it’s more like the narrator saying this is what you’ve done to me.

Okay, we all know how much I love Babylon. If not, check out this post. But to summarize why Babylon fits into this narrative of fatal love, it’s because of the cyclical nature of this relationship that the narrator is in. A historical reference Babylon alludes to the fact that the narrator knows this relationship wasn’t truly built to last. Babylon was built, destroyed, rebuilt, and then destroyed again. And this relationship seems to keep burning at both ends, almost falling apart and then it’s saved, only for it fall.

To quote myself from the Babylon post, “ ‘Your short fuse, my half-truths are not amused.” like both y’all are our contributing to the problem, one is EXPLOSIVE, one is reserved and that’s a combination bound to cause friction in a relationship, romantic or other, and there’s no blame in the way it’s said. “I wish we had a clue to start new.” LIKE, clearly this shit isn’t working but neither one of us knows how to really fix it besides to watching the flame burn out and when it burns, she roars, she takes down everything with it, i.e. “We watch it all burn down.”’ Alas, we’ve gone back to that destructive nature fire. And we’re with the narrator where all that is left are the ashes. Love is fatal because it really can destroy everything that we’ve only known.

The next few charts are just for funsies, I did some more direct comparisons. If you want further thoughts, you can hit me up. But this post is already miles long! Thanks for reading!

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Tagging: @compulsiveidiota @pinkbubbles-and-bigtroubles @5-secondsofcolor @calumscalm

#calum hood #luke hemmings #ashton irwin #michael clifford #5sos #5 seconds of summer #5sos CALM #5sos youngblood #CALM #youngblood #lyrics

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belizedeservesbetter · 5 years

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The Worst Kind of After School Special

The hand on the playbill is choking all life out of Jagged Little Pill

There’s a lot going on in this musical so trying to figure out where to start with this is going to be as messy as this show.

You know what? We’ll start with what I liked. Get those small bits and pieces out of the way.

Alanis Morrissette is an absolutely incredible singer/songwriter and has written albums worth of amazing music that is highly specific to her life and yet feels highly specific to our own. Her songs are infused with a beautiful brand of theatricality that made me surprised she hasn’t lent them to the medium before now. That being said, of course the songs in the show are great. They’re from Jagged Little Pill! The orchestrations as well were super solid. I really trust Tom Kitt with these kinds of things, especially after the master orchestration he did with American Idiot.

Lauren Patten is just as good as everyone says she is. While I had some issues with her character (will discuss this later) I loved seeing Patten get a chance to shine. I really enjoyed her performance in last year’s Days of Rage and thought she was even better in this. Her performance felt so full and rich and completely vulnerable. Of course her rendition of “You Oughta Know” is completely awesome, and the way she started off the song completely calm and composed while already belting out the notes was really lovely to see.

There was only one characters I really truly loved and that was Mary Jane Healy, as played spectacularly by Elizabeth Stanley. Everything MJ did was far more interesting than literally anything else on that stage. Her story was interesting, fresh and unique. It felt the most honest of the plot lines by far. I was so interested in everything that happened to her and her husband Steve (an underutilized Sean Allan Krill) and yet the show quickly glossed by all of their most uncomfortable moments in favor the far less interesting high school aged characters. Stanley was truly incredible and I loved every second she was onstage. Her “Smiling” and “Unforgiven” were truly the highlights of the show.

Occasionally there was some interesting staging, one of them being this cool spinning in chairs moment during “Ironic,” which should have involved main characters Frankie and Phoenix but was instead used with an unnamed teacher character who was in exactly one (1) scene. The spinning swing set for “Head Over Feet” was also cute, if not a little precarious. I was worried Antonio Cipriano was going to topple off of it the whole time. (Side Note: He’s listed on the website as Ensemble but he definitely had a named character) The staging of “Smiling” was super cool and was the one moment in the show where I thought Diane Paulus was going to do something really incredible. I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s a really cool moment.

Alas.

Diane Paulus really can’t stage new musicals. All of her revivals are divine but there’s something about new material that just doesn’t work quite right. She throws a lot at the wall, and only some of it sticks. It felt very haphazardly directed, with a bunch of different stylistic things happening that didn’t go together. She had time to see what worked/didn’t at the out of town tryout and still chose not to make the show cohesive, which is disappointing.

However, my biggest problem with the show is the show itself. It’s messy, introduces a million different plots and characters and resolves very little. Because of this, characters were paper thin and I didn’t feel like I knew any of them besides one or two little facts. This led to me honestly not caring that much about 90% of those characters.

The primary example of this is the brother character played by Derek Klena. His name is Nick, but I had to look that up to make sure because for the life of me I had no idea who his character was. I knew he was Derek Klena, so whenever he was on stage my brain went “Oh there’s Derek Klena.” He’s perfectly fine in the show, but not only is he barely in it, he has absolutely nothing to do. I don’t really know much about his character besides “Harvard” and he very, very easily could have been taken out. Nothing about the plot would have changed. Actually, this would have given us a better opportunity to dive deeper into the other characters, who, even though we still didn’t know, affected the plot in a more prominent way.

Jo is an interesting character in that she’s one of the best performances in the show and has some of the best lines, but altogether only affects one plot point and is forced into doing so. Let me explain. “You Oughta Know” is the third best moment in the show, but it is entirely dependent on Jo previously breaking and entering into Frankie’s house, finding something out she shouldn’t have, and then ending up in NYC because the plot said she had to. The song should’ve been moved up to either the beginning of Act Two or the very end of Act One, because as of now it kind of comes out of nowhere. Anyways, I feel like if Lauren Patten wasn’t as good as she is, Jo would’ve ended up on the cutting room floor somewhere.

I had this problem with a lot of the characters, actually, just about all of them. Everyone was extremely half-baked.

First of all, there’s The Frankie Problem. Frankie is an activist and adopted and bisexual. That’s all we know about her. Does she like anything? What cause specifically motivates her? She’s an activist in the most generic term. Helen Shaw from Vulture wrote something really good about Frankie’s character, which, to sum it up, basically said Frankie is super self-important and annoying but she’s not supposed to be. We’re supposed to love Frankie, but I really didn’t like her at all. Also, nothing she does makes sense. She picks a fight with literally everyone over every single thing. Likewise, SPOILER, she cheats on her girlfriend/friend/it’s-complicated-because-it’s-never-explained relationship with Jo and fights with her mother MJ and just runs away to New York and makes a situation about a character named Bella allllll about her because she can. I wanted to know what Frankie cared about. You can say “activism!” but what specifically. Most activists have a very specific cause they especially champion, but I didn’t know what that was for Frankie. She seemingly cared about everything, but she mostly cared about herself.

This leads to the The Frankie and Phoenix Problem. This is also SPOILERS but Frankie falls very in love with Phoenix very fast and as soon as she sleeps with him for the first time she tells him she loves him, and, then, when he can’t say it back, she says this whole self-important thing about being impossible to love. However! Right before he was telling her how he was busy because he was trying to help with his sick sister! We also know extraordinarily little about Phoenix, and he kind of comes out of nowhere, so it’s tough to root for him when we’ve already had “Hand in my Pocket” to establish the Frankie and Jo connection.

On the plus side, Celia Rose Gooding, who plays Frankie, is wonderful and I look forward to seeing what she does in the future.

I really don’t know how to approach Bella’s character, because the show clearly didn’t either. This is a big spoiler, but she is raped at a party and one of the many plots of the show is about this. However, she isn’t really in the show all that much. We have no idea who she is. She’s friends with Nick, but not very. She eerily appears in the light sometimes around MJ and she has one scene with MJ, but how much they try to tie these two characters doesn’t work. I wish Bella was a character we knew more. I almost wish she was Jo, or even Frankie. If we look at the characters as tiers, with MJ and Frankie being Tier 1, Jo, Nick and Steve being Tier 2, she would be on Tier 3, along with Andrew (???) and Phoenix. She is The Girl Who Was Raped, which was actually kind of offensive.

As for the rape scene itself, they do show it in flashback. That is something you should know going into the show. It was not handled well. Also, the person who raped her (I think his name was Andrew??) is in the show for exactly two minutes. I actually thought a different character had raped her because we have no idea who anyone is.

So that’s all my story qualms.

The show utilizes this dance chorus that is absolutely obnoxious and distracting and takes away from literally every scene. They come in out of nowhere and make every single song (literally!!) a big song and dance production number, which greatly took away from the story. Every time I saw them start to dance into the scene I internally was like “wait no! stay away!”

I mean it when I say

every

single

song

was a huge production number. And we didn’t need it! It actually took away from the emotional impact they were supposed to have! Likewise, there was only one solo in the entire show! Every single other song was shared between multiple characters. I think they did this because they had too many characters and had to give everyone something to do but every time it happened, the main character singing it lost some of their needed emotional impact.

If I had my way, I would cut the ensemble in half and only use them in half the songs. The dancing was far too much and it made the story messy and it made the stage far too busy. It wasn’t even that good either. There were some nice moments, but overall it didn’t work. It was distracting and dare I say it bad.

At the end of the day, the show was “woke” for the sake of being woke. It wanted so badly to say something that it ended up saying nothing. To be honest, the amount of “wokeness” felt performative and not genuine in the slightest. It felt like an after school special in the worst kind of way. The teens weren’t people but caricatures of teenagers.

I really wanted to like Jagged Little Pill. I love writer Diablo Cody and I love Alanis Morrissette. This should have been amazing, but instead it fell flat. A show that should have been filled with life felt like a well structured after school television special. And All I Really Want(ed) was something with more grit

#jagged little pill #i really wanted to like this show and yet #lauren patten #broadway #review

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totallyvain · 5 years

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Vanity Hour With Hala

WORDS BY: Thania Garcia

Hometown: Oxford, Michigan

Sounds Like: Something you’d find in a soundtrack for a nostalgic film about teenage love in the 70s

Most music nerds can tell you that Detroit’s music scene in the 1960s and early 70s was rich in R&B and soul. Thanks to the success of Motown Records, Detroit became one of the few cities in the United States that is synonymous with music. It is also the home of Hala, an indie rock project that stemmed in the neighborhood of New Center in Ian Ruhala’s attic turned studio.

“From the tiny window at the front of my room I could see the Motown Museum from across the street,” says Ruhala, “The history as well as the musicians who surrounded me, were a definite influence when I started out in the local scene at the time.”

In 2016, Ruhala released “Spoonfed,” a collection of 12 songs, an altogether 40-minute project made up of wavy guitar interludes. “Spoonfed” turns five in a few months but despite its age, the album continues to pack a global punch. And thanks to the power of Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature, one of the most beloved tracks “What is Love? Tell Me, Is It Easy?” has a mind-blowing 8 million streams on the platform (and counting).

“I guess, the first really interesting thing that made me acknowledge that something positive was beginning to happen, came when my friend Samia messaged me a YouTube link to Emma Chamberlain singing “What Is Love, Tell Me Is It Easy?”, in her car. That made me laugh.”

His latest release came in a pair of sunny tunes one titled “Sorry” and the other “More Than Anything.” The success of Hala can be traced back to many roots but a notable feature is Ruhala’s artistry when it comes to guitar. The track “Sorry” best exemplifies that fact. it features jumpy strings and drums, with Ruhala’s dreamy vocals singing “Your weekend is drifting on and on/ I just don't know if I can go on/ To get it.”

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Totally Vain: In the past, you’ve shared that it's important you write and record music that is true to your experience. Has there ever been a sort of still period that puts you in a writer’s block? If so what do you do to get out of it?

Ian: Writer's block is definitely something I have felt from time to time. I just find it really hard sometimes to sit down with other songwriters, and write about a certain subject matter; “summertime,” or “love,” etc… It kind of feels forced at times like that. At home, I find that my best ideas come usually at night time, when my brain for some reason seems to be working at its most. And, if I get stumped, sometimes it is best just to step away from a song, or the guitar/instruments in general, and things will pop into my head much more naturally after that. Maybe a certain experience will also spark a lyric, or chorus line during this period of separation from the music.

TV: Your music often times reminds me of the kind of music you’d find on a movie soundtrack, so I’m just curious if you have a favorite one or if they are places of inspiration for you?

Ian: Many songwriters think of music in broad ways; colors, or with a much more theoretical approach. I really like to write sometimes with a more cinematic approach. In doing that, I find that music video concepts will sometimes come even before the song is completely finished. This usually makes the thematic element of the song more obvious in the beginning stages, which is definitely helpful in keeping my mind on track. Not to sound too simplistic, but Freaks & Geeks has a really great soundtrack that I find covers a lot of ground musically over every episode. There are a ton of others I could mention, but that one I feel is a good example of following a formula of being un-formulaic. Honestly the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, is another great, and popular example of this.

TV: I remember seeing an interview of yours where you’re talking about “What is Love? Tell Me, Is It Easy?” and you mention that you recorded most of the instrumentals on your own and you had to work that way since. Is that still true? Do you plan to incorporate a band during studio sessions? If yes, how has that transition been for you?

Ian: Up until this point I have recorded everything, by myself, and at home. I am definitely not ruling anything out, but I really do enjoy working and recording in the most independent way possible. But, who knows? One day I would really like to do a 70s style, singer-songwriter album, with string players, and all that additional “jazz.” Something a la Van Morrison, Nilsson, Bowie, or McCartney, you know?

TV: When you go into the process of making an album or any collection of music that tells a story, what is the first step? How does that vision play out in your head and finally come into fruition?

Ian: I think with making a cohesive body of work, I usually start with setting limitations for what I want to create for myself sonically speaking. For me, recording can sometimes take a long time, and working with the same gear helps with keeping things somewhat similar and following this idea of continuity in some form or another. With that being said, I think this also allows me to do whatever I may want to do genre-wise, or in the vein of storytelling, and get away with it; because I am still utilizing what gear I initially limited myself to use, in order to record the songs.

TV: Before you started playing music, did you keep a journal or write creatively?

Ian: When I was younger, I did a lot of illustrating which I would most definitely consider to be a creative outlet. I made comics with friends and things of that nature. But, no I did not really keep a journal, actively, even though now I do like to handwrite lyrics, in order to more visually realize what I like and do not like.

TV: What makes good production?

Ian: A good ear, that will not be satisfied until the sound imagined is created or replicated.

TV: What do you feel is the best song you’ve released and why?

Ian: That is a really hard question to answer, but I feel like “Sorry” is maybe the song that I am most proud of (as of right now). I spent a lot of time, vigorously focusing on that track, and I feel like it opened the door for me, capability-wise, to make music with a more intense production component. I probably did over a hundred takes just to nail the guitar solo in that song. Chopping up bits and pieces, making sure it was all in time, as well as I just wanted to create something different from other solos I had been hearing at the time. I wanted something fast, intricate, out of left field, but also with a pop sensibility.

TV: So you’ve finished your US tour and now you’re supporting The Regrettes & Greer on a few dates. Do you enjoy touring? What kinds of things have you learned about being a musician on the road?

Ian: I really enjoy meeting fans, and with touring, that is definitely the easiest way to pursue and have that connection. It is just incredibly surreal for me to meet people that are excited about my music in the same way I am excited about others. And, I know for me, those moments of interaction with an artist were and are really special to me. I think the biggest take away with touring in support of artists like Hellogoodbye, or playing on the road with Anna Burch, has been learning how to be patient, and empathetic towards your fellow bandmates. Knowing you could not be doing what you are doing without them, really puts things into perspective.

TV: One of your songs was sampled on a hip hop track, Big K.R.I.T’s “High Beams (feat. WOLFE de MÇHLS),” did that at all persuade you to begin thinking about messing with other music genre stylings than the ones you have in the past?

Ian: Staying in just one lane, musically-speaking, for me has never been of interest. Going back to the question regarding movie soundtracks, I feel the best soundtracks are ones that run the gamut when it comes to musical genre. The music I am currently working on, to me, feels genre-less in a way. Because, I am consciously “attempting” to write out of my comfort zone. I think this will make a lot more sense when my next record comes out, as I try to tap into a little bit of everything, from hip-hop, to pop, punk, and country.

With every Vanity Hour comes a playlist curated by our featured artist.

Hala’s playlist can be found at the Spotify link below.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1z9FTLM4SNzggJh3NQxJpC?si=o2zOWHnbQymNBSMqt9rC9g

#music #musicblog #blogger #hala #indie #indierock #alternativerock #beatles #beach boys #music video #new #news #blog #writing #journalism #mick jagger #zayn #Harry Styles #vanityhour

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miannedomusings · 6 years

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K-pop favourites from 2018

ALBUMS (in no particular order):

Hope World - j-hope

mono. - RM

Love Yourself ‘Answer’ - BTS

Sun and Moon - SAM KIM

Don’t Mess Up My Tempo - EXO

honourable mentions

Blooming Days - EXO-CBX

Present : You - GOT7

Wish & Wind - HEIZE

SINGLES:

SoulMate - ZICO ft. IU

Young - Baekhyun & Loco

Getting Closer - SEVENTEEN

Ddaeng - BTS rap line

Is Who - MINSEO (not technically a single... but very good)

CHOREOGRAPHY:

THANKS - SEVENTEEN

honourable mentions

FAKE LOVE - BTS

No Air - THE BOYZ

Getting Closer - SEVENTEEN

MUSIC VIDEO:

Singularity - BTS

If you want to read my thoughts on my choices, they’re below the break.

If you want to, share your faves! I’m curious!

ALBUMS

Hope World : This beauty is amazing. One of the the things that makes for a good album is the story it guides it you through. The order of the tracks is almost as important as the songs themselves. Musically speaking, this album totally does that for me. The way the energy changes over the course of the album always surprises me -- the mood the first song puts me in is so different from the feeling this album leaves me with. The upbeat fun of the first few tracks are exactly the flavour I hoped for from a j-hope album even if didn’t quite know it beforehand. They just felt right, they feel like Hobi. The transition that starts with Baseline totally surprised me, and did such a great job of showing his other hip-hop flavours as it takes us into Hangsang and Airplane pt 1. Blue Side is quite possibly my favourite on this album. For me, it’s such a visual song, and I’m completely transported every time. This album blew me away. I didn’t know what I expected but this surpassed anything I had in mind. And I love that I feel like I know Hobi more from having experienced this -- and isn’t that what a mixtape should do? Now when I listen to other and older BTS songs I feel like I’m better able to hear j-hope’s j-hope-ness in his verses.

mono. : I know I said “in no particular order”, but this album, this is probably the best of the year. This album feels like meditation to me. The whole album is so spacious, and the use of repetition makes this album feels like a series of mantras to help you engage with the sadder sides of yourself. I take a lot of deep breaths listening to this album. A lot like Hope World, I love the order of this album. Each song carries a slightly different mood, a different shade of grey, and it pulls you down to different levels of sadness and quietude. I love the brief relief you get in everythingoes -- it’s able to bring you up again and see the sun through the clouds. When I listen to this album I often feel like each song relates to a different time of day -- part of the journey of this album is through the course of a day. I always struggle to put my feelings for this album into sentences -- it so much a collection of feelings that it seems to defy description (at least by me). Cathartic, Melancholic, Meditative, Introspective.

Love Yourself ‘Answer’ : Answer beat out Tear for a few reasons -- and not because it’s longer. Though I adore many of the B-sides on Tear, I think the weak points are weaker than those in Answer, and I think Answer is more successful as an album -- it told its story better than Tear did and I’m a sucker for a good story. The movement through the 4 phases of the album was pulled off so well! All the Trivia’s were spectacular, and these versions of the vocalists’ songs were all better that any versions that came before. This album is a joy to listen to, and when I start listening I’m committed to seeing it through. I hate being pulled away from it part way. It really does succeed in being cohesive (which can be a rarity in k-pop) and whole.

Sun and Moon : Sam Kim showed up out of no where and smacked me over the head with this album. He is a fabulous song-writer and a welcome breath of instrumentation in the largely electronic k-pop scene. His voice is soulful, perfectly suited for his style, and I’m in love with the way he lets it get rough when the songs needs it. This album is so romantic -- I shouldn’t like it as much as I do. But I actually feel the romance and love it. He brings an contagious amount of sincerity to his songs. Even if this album was full of duds, I think it may still have made it on this list thanks to The One, Make Up, and It’s You -- some of my favourite songs of the year!

Don’t Mess Up My Tempo : Unlike most of the others on this list, I don’t think this album is really telling me a story. That being said, I do still like the sometimes surprising transition from track to track. There isn’t a bad song in the batch. This album has some of the best production I have heard this year (I expect nothing less from SM -- the company is in love with weird samples and unexpected sounds). All of the songs are crazy catchy and enjoyable to listen to. And they’re interesting! The vocals are phenomenal, and most importantly, I am happy when I listen to this album! This album feels out of place on this list when I compare it to the others, but I don’t care because I love it!

SINGLES

SoulMate : I’m sure if ZICO had released an album this year it would have made it onto this list. I adore the way he plays with what Korean sounds like, and him and IU complemented each other surprisingly well. “Delightful” is the first word that comes to mind when I think of this track. Right off the bat you get the jingly percussion that I think must have been coins bouncing around in a glass jar and it makes this song feel so bright. ZICO’s rapping brings an awesome contrast after the first verse and chorus, and the instrumental solos give me wings. Love it.

Young : Baekhyun and Loco play off of each other so well in this song. Hearing Baekhyun out of the context of EXO is a treat, his voice is able to deliver more of an edge than I thought it could. Loco has such a unique voice. It isn’t “pretty” and I never want it to be because it’s roughness makes something gorgeous! Each phase of the song sounds so different from the last, but in very small ways. The way that vocals and rapping mix together, and how the backing vocals vary make this song so interesting to listen to. The cyclical musical elements of the song do an amazing job of communicating the lyrics and the laid back vibes of the song suit the two voices and make it so easy to listen to and enjoy.

Getting Closer: Fierce. Seventeen finally tried a dark concept and pulled it off! I really like this song and I hope that there is an album with a similar tone soon to follow. This song really continues with Seventeen’s minimal style. The song uses monotones vocals and synths to create its dark vibe and make the softer moments so much sweeter. One of the highlights in this song is when they use of layering high vocals on low raps -- still keeping everything very bare, but adding just a touch of interest. And also, the choreography. It’s so powerful. It’s gruff. And it will bite your ear off if you get in a scuffle with its dance break. It almost made it into the choreo section of this post.

Ddaeng : I almost forgot to include this song on this list. This song that I had on repeat for weeks. Shame on me! This song is so BTS, I love it deeply. Besides being infectious and a wicked display of rap skills, any translation worth anything has about a page and a half of footnotes to go along with it. Our bulletproof wordsmiths seriously pulled out all the stops on this one, just to throw some shade. And then Suga mixed it with that gorgeous instrumentation and bitchin’ beat. Solid.

Is Who : This is a bit of an oddball on this list, and it isn’t even technically a single, but this song is a hoot and half. If someone with a voice as lovely as Minseo’s is going to serve me up some pop-jazz-swing with fiddle and ragtime piano and SCATTING, I’m going to eat. it. up. This song is fun! It is bright! And it isn’t what I often hear in K-pop.

CHOREO

THANKS : Seventeen, seventeen, seventeen. Sometimes there music is a little too sweet for me, but their dancing melts my brain every time. They use their numbers so well and their dedication to precision when dancing prevents from their complicated dancing from ever looking chaotic or messy. This song in particular - OOF. Wow. If you haven’t watched the performance video for this song, you should. They manage to have so many moving parts, and it reads as intricate, but always clear. They also do a great job of matching the sad vibes of the song. There are so many dances that could have made this list, but Thanks is so far beyond any of them in my books that I couldn’t have it sharing the title.

MUSIC VIDEO

Singularity : Is anyone on this blog surprised by this? I don’t shut up about this m/v. And for good reason -- it is freakin’ amazing! Aesthetically gorgeous, kills it with the visual metaphors, the choreography is beautiful and surprising given the music, and it’s minimal without lacking anything. Lots of K-pop m/vs are either very visually loud, or “minimally aesthetic” at the cost of substance. Singularity manages to find a balance. Taehyung does a stellar job with his acting and I am sucked into this world every time.

#kpop #review 2018 #bts #exo #svt #sam kim #minseo #zico #iu #loco #rm #jhope #ramblings #song ramblings #music rec

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russiancircles · 6 years

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Russian Circles Interview with Brian Cook // Stylus Magazine

Full interview by Chris Bryson via Stylus

Russian Circles perform in Winnipeg on April 8th at the Garrick Centre. Chris Bryson had the chance to chat with bassist Brian Cook to get a sense of the world of Russian Circles.

Stylus: You’ll be coming through Winnipeg on a pretty extensive tour. How do you deal with the challenges of being away from home when on a long tour?

Brian Cook: Well, at this point the band has been doing this kind of thing for 13 years, and I’ve been touring for about 22 years, so at some point you just learn how to cope with it on some subconscious level. There are a few obvious things you can do to keep yourself sane: take solo walks away from the club, keep in contact with friends and loved ones back at home, try to eat well and exercise when you can. A friend advised me before my first tour to spend 10 minutes alone every day, and that’s good advice. I find the bigger challenge to be dealing with coming home. Tour has its own momentum. You get in the van and it takes you to your next destination. At home, you have to recalibrate your brain to be self-motivated. I occasionally see articles about musicians dealing with post-tour depression and it’s a very real thing. You go from being constantly in motion, constantly validated, and constantly surrounded by people to being static and alone. Dealing with that is the bigger challenge, in my opinion.

Stylus: Does the band ever change or alter its approach to songwriting and if so what have been some of the reasons for doing so?

BC: Every song is a little different. We all live in different states, so we end up trading a lot of audio files. Sometimes songs are cobbled together out of a bunch of different ideas, sometimes someone comes to the table with a fully written song, sometimes we just stumble across an idea when we’re all in a practice space together. We don’t have an established process.

Stylus: Being an instrumental band allows you to cover more ground stylistically with less need for adherence to a particular style. What aspects of your music do you think best benefit from this flexibility?

BC: We’re all music hunters, so we’re always exploring new artists and new sounds, but we obviously owe a lot to metal. And for me, honestly, most of the interesting guitar-based music happening today owes something to metal. But metal also has a tendency to cling to these aesthetics that can be a little cartoony and juvenile, and that winds up manifesting in a lot of the lyrics and vocal delivery in the genre. So being an instrumental band has benefitted us because it allows us to cull from the instrumental side of metal without having to shoehorn some campy frontman into our sound. I think it opens up our music because we’re not working with the limitations of a vocalist, and i think it provides us with a broader swath of listeners who might not be open to the guttural growl of the Corpsegrinder or the operatic wail of King Diamond.

Stylus: The music of Russian Circles is filled with an emotional weight buried within transcendental darkness. What are some of the inspirations and influences behind the narratives and ideas for your music?

BC: Any narratives are totally subconscious. We don’t have an active muse and we don’t write music based on a theme. I have nothing but respect for artists who can work off a concept, but for us, the music either resonates with us or it doesn’t. We don’t try to cobble together songs based on a preconceived notion; we write music based on what resonates with us on a very immediate base level.

Stylus: Was the looping of guitar always something the band has done to give added heft to your music? Are there any other methods the band uses to further amplify or give added effect to your sound?

BC: We’ve always tried to fill as much sonic space as possible. Looping allows us have multiple layers and multiple textures going at any given time. We’ve also incorporated things like the Moog Taurus so that one musician can play two instruments at a time. Ultimately, we really just want to make things texturally rich and dynamic, but we also want to adhere to the three-piece format without resorting to backing tracks or having a laptop on stage. There are a few other tricks we employ, but we can’t give away all of our secrets.

Stylus: What made the band decide to do a live album?

BC: The songs are constantly morphing. With our studio albums, we’re making adjustments and edits all the way up until mastering. Once the album is actually finished, the songs still wind up evolving in the live show. We don’t drastically alter them, but we find new things to highlight and new ways to simplify things. So there’d been some talk about trying to record a few shows at some point just to document how the songs had grown. The problem is that going into a show knowing it’s going to be under the microscope of recording would ultimately sap some of the energy out of the performance because we’d be trying to play things as meticulously as possible. It just so happened that the Dunk! Festival set was recorded without our knowing it, and it was a concert we were all very happy with. There are still a few flubs in the performance, but that’s the nature of live music.

Stylus: From what I’ve read Russian Circles is a band whose members don’t live in the same city and don’t get the chance to play together often. When it comes to sculpting and recording what songs or a final album will be, how do differences in ideas and opinions get resolved?

BC: If it doesn’t resonate with all three members of the band, the material gets scrapped. We’re all pretty open to criticism; no one is afraid to ditch a riff or mix up a part if it isn’t working. Honestly, the biggest conflicts in this realm have been pretty minor. I remember Mike really gunning for this one particular thrash riff that wasn’t really vibing with Dave. I was the mediator, and I told Mike the riff was really “fun”. That was enough for him to willingly scrap it. There is no fun allowed in Russian Circles.

Stylus: I read in an article with The Seventh Hex that with the music you create you said you “want to make something that sounds natural and human.” As an individual player and collectively as a band, how do you go about doing that?

BC: I’m just not a fan of music that sounds like it was built on a grid. I’m not opposed to using technology to make the recording process cheaper and smoother. It’s way more financially practical to record on ProTools than tape, after all. But I don’t want music to sound mechanical. There is very little electronic music that resonates with me because so much of it sounds like canned music. It doesn’t ignite my imagination. It just makes me think of someone sitting at a computer screen, staring at a grid, and plugging sounds into quantized beats. It really depresses me. I want music to be an escape from staring at a computer screen. And more and more rock music is recorded in that manner. The drummer doesn’t even play on a lot of current metal records; the engineer just samples drum tones and they plug those sounds into programmed beats. It’s no wonder so many modern rock records sound so sterile and flat. There is no push and pull. No space. No interaction between the instruments. I know that’s what some people really want out of their music—they want it to be perfect and crisp and even. But i prefer when it sounds like the band is so passionate about what they’re playing that they run the risk of mucking it all up. That’s way more exciting for me.

Stylus: Do you think it’s important when creating music (or any art) to maintain a balance between the pursuit of perfection and retaining immediacy and cohesion?

BC: Absolutely. I’ve been really digging this Workin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet record, and there’s one note Miles hits in the first song that sounds flat to my ears, and I totally love it. It’s jarring, but it reminds you that this album was made in a live environment. It’s a snapshot of a time and place. It’s not trying to create its own reality. And it makes all the moments where the band locks in and plays off each other feel that much more inspired. But I’m also someone that would rather spend five years listening to a record and wrapping my head around it than to hear something that’s beat-detected, auto-tuned, and ultimately designed to be instantly digestible and quickly forgotten. I want to make art that’s still interesting ten, twenty, thirty years down the road. And as someone that still buys vinyl, I only want to spend money on music that still excites me after a decade or two of repeated spins.

Stylus:. Will the band be bringing any new elements into the fold with the next music you put out? Can you tell me anything about the next Russian Circles release?

BC: Hopefully. There are a lot of ideas floating around, but we haven’t yet started to put the album together, so who knows. There been discussion of trying to make a darker, uglier album, but we also have a tendency to wind up writing songs with the opposite mood of what was initially intended. So we’ll see what happens.

Stylus: If you were to give one piece of advice to a musician/band trying to make it in the musical world as it is today, what would it be?

BC: Well, first things first, you would need to define “making it.” When I first started playing in bands, all I wanted to do was play a show. Then it was just a matter of putting out a record. Then the goal was to tour. And that’s about it. I had “made it” by the time I was 18. “Making it” should really just be about creating something you’re proud of, and everything else is just icing on the cake. At this point, I’m way more interested in musicians like Sir Richard Bishop or Daniel Higgs—musicians that have a history of doing whatever the fuck they want even if it means they only draw 50 people in their hometown or only sell a few hundred records. It’s more exciting to see someone make art that makes them happy than to see someone try to build a lucrative career pleasing other people. So my advice is to do whatever you want and do it passionately. Be involved in your musical community. Go see other bands. Support underground venues. Buy bands’ merch. Throw your own shows. Make your own tapes or records or CDs. Value your own art. Make it special. Make it sacred.

#Russian Circles #Brian Cook #Stylus Magazine

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teramelos1 · 7 years

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Nick Reinhart Interview // Marcel’s Music Journal

Big Walnuts Yonder–an incredible supergroup featuring Minutemen’s Mike Watt, Wilco’s Nels Cline, Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, and Tera Melos’ Nick Reinhart–just put out one of the most powerful and marvelously eclectic rock records of the year. Even though the band formed way back in 2008 and didn’t record the album until 2014, it still sounds raw and fresh as hell. The dirty funk of opener “All Against All” accurately portrays the LP’s unique blend of lo-fi math rock and noisy, throwback ‘90s skate punk, while the energetic “Raise the Drawbridges?” gloriously flaunts ear-piercing guitar licks and groove-heavy percussion.

Aside from recording seriously great music with Watt, Cline, and Saunier, Nick Reinhart has proved himself to be one of the most strikingly innovative guitarists in recent memory with his countless other bands and side projects. He is best known as the frontman of Sacramento-based experimental rock trio Tera Melos, who explored complex, mind-bending indie-math zones on their most recent release, 2013′s X’ed Out.

Reinhart has also worked with drummer Zach Hill in Bygones and Death Grips; played live in Rob Crow’s band Goblin Cock; and performed a series of engrossing, entirely improvised live sets with Dot Hacker’s Eric Gardner as Swollen Brain, all of which are discussed in our interview below (the power of collaboration is definitely key here).

You and Eric Gardner from Dot Hacker just played some shows as Swollen Brain. How did this whole project come about?

I met Eric through my friend Jonathan Hischke, who plays bass in Dot Hacker. When I originally moved down to Los Angeles I lived in a duplex next door to Eric. I would house sit his Vietnamese pot bellied pig, Francis, a lot. I was a big fan of his drumming in Dot Hacker and at some point it came up that we should play music together for fun. We had a pretty immediate chemistry in playing free, improvised stuff. We played our first show in September 2015 and we had a nice response, so we figured make it a regular thing. No intense band practices, no songs, no rules. It’s a really fun musical project to be a part of.

How do you feel playing improvised sets?

I really enjoy improvising. While I’ve done solo improvised sets, it’s a lot more fun having someone else to connect with on previously unpaved musical roads. With my band Tera Melos we take practice and preparing for a set/tour pretty seriously. We usually need around 12 full days, give or take, of long band rehearsals before we’re comfortable enough to play a show. We even dump lots of brain power into designing the set and which songs or transitions go where. For me practice is usually fairly stressful, as I wear a few different hats- playing guitar, singing and running some sort of sampler/keyboard rig all while doing the pedal tap dancing thing, and I want it all to sound cohesive and thoughtful. there’s a lot of work that goes into that. So as far as improvising goes- it’s amazing to ditch all the preparation and just play music without preconception. It’s very liberating. With Swollen Brain we do play together in our rehearsal studio, but it’s less “practice” and more just playing little sets. We’ll generally do 20 minute bursts of sound just to keep our improv brains fresh, which after 2 rounds of bursts our brains are actually very not-fresh haha. To get better at improvising it seems you just need to do it often. So in a way it’s sort of practicing, but not really… “Practicing” is also a way of familiarizing ourselves with whatever gear we happen to be using at the time. In my case it’s usually a freshly constructed pedal board. I like to have time to see what works sonically and what doesn’t before we play a show. The other thing I like to consider when playing a free-form set is how to keep things flowing and interesting- for me and the audience. Obviously you can’t force magical moments to appear in that context, but I want to set myself up for those moments to occur. Generally that means having the tools that will allow me to make little musical stories with dynamics and tension. One of my favorite parts of an improvised performance is when someone walks up to you afterwards and asks, “so how much of that was improvised?” and the answer is, “well, all of it.” I’ve been the person asking that question and when you get that answer it’s a magical moment in and of itself.

Do you think Swollen Brain will remain solely a live band? Would you ever be interested in recording studio material?

We actually just started making a record. The process of how to go about capturing our vibe was hard for me to envision. It took me a second to wrap my mind around how we could best accomplish a recording. Because it’s very much a live, organic process of improvising it would make sense to just set up some mics and hit record on a bunch of sound bursts, but we felt that it should be sonically more interesting than just drums and a single guitar track. When we play live I end up looping layers of sounds and then repurposing the loops to relate to what I’m doing with the live guitar sounds. Then once we land on something that works we turn that into a little mini song. So one of the recording methods was playing until we landed on some interesting loops, then capturing the performance of drums + loop action, and then overdub myself improvising over that. We did variations of that method for a couple of days. The next step is sifting through all of that and making sense of it.

You also played in Rob Crow’s band Goblin Cock on a tour of theirs late last year. What was that like?

It was great. I love Rob Crow. He’s one of my favorite musicians. Tera Melos toured with Pinback a couple years ago and it was one the my favorite tours we’ve ever done. He’s super thoughtful and just a really great person all around. I was stoked when he asked if I wanted to do the Goblin Cock tour. It was challenging because i had to learn a style of music that I wasn’t really familiar with- whatever brand of metal Goblin Cock is I guess. He uses alternate tunings and B.C. Rich Warlock guitars exclusively. So I had to relearn chord shapes and which notes went where on a really weird guitar, then apply all that to a kind of music I’d never played. Oh and we wore cloaks and face masks that were very hard to see out of, plus all fog machines and strobe lights raging. So there’s actually just about zero visibility on stage. But yea, it was strange and really fun.

You’ve mentioned before that Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and Underworld rank among your top influences when it comes to electronic music. What drew you to the sound of those artists and what impact did it ultimately have on your own playing style?

When I was 16 a friend showed me those artists. At that point I was really into punk rock. The electronic music that I was hearing had this relentless energy and all these really melodic sounds mixed with abrasive sound effects. That was really new and exciting to me. I had a super natural, positive reaction to it. The same friend had a Playstation and a game called MTV Music Generator. You could make your own songs by placing pre-recorded samples onto a timeline. It was a very dumbed down way to make something resembling the electronic music that we were listening to. So I’d mess around with that at his house after school. A couple years later I got a desktop computer and found the program Fruity Loops, which was the next step up in music programming from the video game. A couple years after that I got a program called Reason, which I have worked out of ever since. At that point I hadn’t really gotten into guitar pedals and sonic exploration. I mean, I had some pedals, but I was still playing in a punk-ish band and bedroom moonlighting as some electronic music poser. Eventually Tera Melos was created and the guitar pedals section of my brain expanded. I started to recognize the ability to recreate some of the sounds I had learned to make on the computer. Incorporating that sort of stuff into an outside-the-box rock band became really exciting, and still is for me. I should also mention that my knowledge of electronic music in general never really reached beyond those three artists. I think there was just something really special about them that opened my mind at the right time.

Do you think collaborating with other people allows you to think outside the box and push the limits of your own sound? I can sense an almost cosmic force from these Big Walnuts Yonder recordings.

Yes, 100%. Musical collaborations that take you outside your comfort zone are crucial for growth and creativity. When I began playing music with Zach Hill it was like my musical brain got super charged and started wandering in different directions that I previously hadn’t really explored. Rob Crow and I have been batting ideas back and forth for awhile now as well that will hopefully take shape soon. I’m excited to see where that collaboration will take me in terms of new musical territory. And yes, of course the Big Walnuts Yonder thing had a lot of cosmic force going for it. Those guys are all very big inspirations for me, so making that record was a big part of my creative timeline. I think it’s too soon and close to the album release to be able to recognize the greater impact it had on me, but what comes to mind immediately is exercising the ability to to maintain creativity and keep up with these musical giants, and for them to be stoked on what I was bringing to the table. It would be like an indie game dev that grew up playing Nintendo all of the sudden getting to work on a new game with Shigeru Miyamoto. And not only that, but Miyamoto is excited about your ideas and he’s reacting to them with new ideas. It’s sort of like that. Pretty crazy. The other thing that comes to mind is that I had never written guitar parts to pre-existing bass parts in this capacity. 8 of the 10 Big Walnuts Yonder songs were born in Mike Watt’s brain and started with his bass as “song forms,” as he calls them. In other words, I was having to figure out how to write interesting guitar parts to songs that consisted of only bass. In Tera Melos I can probably count on one hand the amount of times where even just a small portion of a song’s construction started with bass. I can recall being very frustrated trying to come up with guitar parts that way because it’s so foreign to me. Of course out of that frustration comes great things. I was well prepared for this challenge though. It took me a while to understand Watt’s compositions (they’re pretty wild) but once I was comfortable with his approach to song writing I think some really cool, unique stuff came out of it.

What was it like recording the album in just three days?

When we started the process of creating Big Walnuts Yonder Mike had been sending me songs that were just bass compositions. So I would sit with them and contemplate different ways to compliment what Mike had written. Now Nels and Greg on the other hand- they had heard what Mike and I had worked on, but I don’t believe they had fully composed “parts” like me and Mike, that is to say I think they had “ideas” and then brought them to life in the studio. It was so crazy and inspiring to see it happen like that. So when we were all set up and ready to play we would jam a song through a few times, talk about the sections, iron out a thing or two and then hit record. It was 99% live. I was actually a little nervous because I hadn’t recorded live like that for many many years, since being in a crappy sounding punk band as a teenager. I mean, my bands usually record live, but then guitars are scratched and then redone. So this is truly a live record with all of us in the same room reacting to each other. I think that nervous energy really helped me pull it together personally.

I think Zach Hill is an artist who compliments your musical style and approach really well. You played on the last two Death Grips albums, Jenny Death and Bottomless Pit. Was that a particular collaboration that gave you the chance to explore new themes and ideas? What were the recording sessions for those records like?

Zach Hill is a very big inspiration for me. He’s one of my favorite musicians of all time and I think he’s contributed some really important things to music. The way I play and perceive music is directly related to him, so it makes sense that what we compliment each other. Contributing to Death Grips’ body of work was really special for me. I respect that band so much and to be able to help them shape their vision is a really cool thing. I think the reason it works well is because I understand where they’re coming from and where they want to go. I haven’t worked with anyone else in that context, so in that sense there are new ideas that appear that otherwise wouldn’t. A lot of the time our creative ideas are simpatico and feel really natural. It’s like as soon as I’m around those guys my brain’s bluetooth automatically connects to their system.

Aside from the recently announced tour with CHON, Covet and Little Tybee, does Tera Melos have any special plans for this year?

I think Tera Melos will probably start doing fun stuff pretty soon here.

Reinhart has a new band with Mike Watt (Minutemen), Nels Cline (Wilco), and Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) called Big Walnuts Yonder. Their self-titled debut is out now on Sargent House.

Via Marcel’s Music Journal

#Tera Melos #Sargent House #Big Walnuts Yonder

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joneswilliam72 · 6 years

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The 405 meets Jessica Pratt: "wherever dreams or your unconscious lie, all my music comes from there"

Even though we were scheduled to meet, it was still somewhat surprising to bump into Jessica Pratt in a Stoke Newington pub on a quickly darkening November evening. The California songwriter's music is so ethereal and ephemeral that it often seems like its creator could surely only exist under specific conditions, in short pockets of time, that only precipitate once every few years, during which she might produce another 30 minutes of delicately exquisite music and then disappear once more into the atmosphere.

Of course, Jessica Pratt is not a mythical being, even if her gorgeously unique recordings might conjure that impression. In conversation, Pratt proved to be a considerate and contemplative mind, speaking with the softness and openness redolent of her North Californian origins. Our discussion of Quiet Signs, her excellent new album for Mexican Summer, revolved mostly around the difficult and "bloody" process of its creation; two words you wouldn't at all associate with the spectral final product. This is where the cognitive dissonance rang most loudly; how could something that sounds as if it's musical condensation collected and concentrated on tape actually need a serious amount of time, effort and struggle to create?

Read on to my conversation with Jessica Pratt to fine out how she grappled with bringing Quiet Signs into the world.

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It's been 3 or 4 years since the last album, what are the big changes in your life and musical approach that we should know about going into Quiet Signs?

I don't know if there's anything incredibly specific as far as milestones, but I think one notable item is that I basically went on tour for a year playing the songs from the last record, and I think that playing that consistently night after night after night you learn a bit about how you sing and play, and you just naturally evolve. I feel like that definitely happened; I learned how to sing a little better or more effectively in certain instances. Anything you do that repetitively hopefully you get better at it, so I think there's a little bit of that at play.

It was interesting because there was this intense period [of playing shows] and then I just took a bunch of time off, it wasn't really planned it just sort of happened; I just couldn't do anything else, I just kind of had to stop. Then I sort of worried that my abilities had atrophied a bit, I felt very out of practice when I came back into trying to make music again. There was sort of a bit of an extended rehabilitation into feeling like I could really be in the zone consistently. Honestly, that took up the majority of the last year and a half at least, when I was making a concerted effort to make music again. I was pretty much just doing that like a full-time job.

I met my boyfriend Matt, who plays on the record and was a big emotionally-collaborative figure with the record. Music making has always been very private for me, but we definitely developed a really intuitive back and forth where I basically showed him any fragment that I thought was valuable and we would have a small dialogue about it. I wouldn't call it collaborative in the sense that he didn't write anything, but this is the first time that I've ever had anyone involved, first time I've even just had someone sharing an opinion before the finished product. We lived together at the time too, so it was a very fluid thing.

Do you have a regular practice, like a specific area or time when your write, or does it happen all over the place?

It's definitely home-based, I've never had an outside practice space or anything like that. Usually you find your places. The last record I just had my tiny bedroom, I did everything there. But I moved into my boyfriend's house, and it's a 3 bedroom place, it's not huge but there's definitely various rooms, and he works 9-5 pretty much, so I had a lot of time alone in the house and I would just go from space to space - and not every space feels good, there were certain rooms I never really went into.

Is it usually the case that you know what you want to sing about before you start writing the melodies?

It's a very unconscious process; it's like a weird divining thing where you just play the guitar and sing at the same time and at some point hopefully something gels. It feels a little bit like channelling something, there's never a preconceived idea.

Does it often surprise you what you end up singing about?

Maybe not the lyrical content; the words are always last, the shape of the words will be there but then I have to flesh them out with something literal later. But yeah I think melodies can be very surprising, you don't always know where they come from.

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You actually recorded in a studio for Quiet Signs, how was that experience?

It was maybe scary at first; I initially began it on a trial basis because I was really unsure of how it was gonna go. I'm very used to recording at home, but I was having some technical issues, because I had rigged up this new setup involving a big tape machine that was really problematic. It was making me not want to work on music because I was afraid if I tried to record something it might get messed up.

Then I signed with Mexican Summer and they have this studio that artists can use, so I thought I might as well try it just because it's a good resource. Then very unexpectedly it worked out really well. It took a little bit of work to get the sound I wanted, but I was working with the engineer there Al Carlson, and he was very in-tune and really good at listening and then helping to develop the sound.

I guess not every song I brought in worked, and I think maybe it might not have been true if it was done like the last record, because cassette tape is very small and it's a forgiving world and you can do a lot within that, but at the same time there were things on a grander scale that might not have worked on smaller tape. It goes two ways.

In the notes for Quiet Signs it says you believe this is a more cohesive record than your previous, so what makes it feel that way for you?

I guess cohesive because it was the first time I'd ever begun writing songs with the idea of it being one object at the end. My last record there was a few scattered bits and pieces that were a few years old and a certain chunk that was written all in one blast. I think thematically [On Your Own Love Again] all makes sense together, sort of on accident. But this was the first time I had ever really known that everything I was working on was going to be part of a collection, so I sort of picked and chose based on that, so cohesive in that sense.

What are the themes that you see in Quiet Signs?

It might be too soon to say; it took me a long time to see those themes on the last record, and sometimes people pointed them out to me, which was interesting. I definitely see broader themes, for sure; it's more open and less guarded than the last record.

Yeah! There seems a lot more obvious emotion on the surface. I also hear a lot of escapist ideas.

That's interesting. I think I'm a big escapist. I'm trying to be less of one. It feels realer to me; the last one feels more like a dream imprint or something, and maybe had some more evasive lyrics on some level. I think I was just in a very different headspace [on Quiet Signs]; a more conscious headspace.

I also notice a lot of images to do with flight on the new album; birds, wings, aeroplanes...

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Again, not a conscious move. I think it just kind of happens like that, it naturally bubbles up. I don't know if you remember your dreams a lot, but you can go through certain phases where you have certain symbols that keep popping up, and maybe it's like your brain trying to process one particular idea or something, and I feel like it works in the same way with song imagery.

Is that what the title Quiet Signs refers to, these images popping up?

Quiet Signs is something that's half an intuitive phonetic thing and also a stand-in for some type of musical intuition; really listening to where things are coming from, sort of like the channelling thing that I was talking about a bit - it kind of relates to that experience, I still haven't quite figured out what it is.

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The album starts with 'Opening Night', which was inspired by Gena Rowlands' performance in the John Cassavetes film of the same name, what was it about her that spoke to you?

That's again a bit of a loose, abstract grab. But at the very beginning, when I first writing songs for this record - there's a lot of theatres in LA that play old movies - and the Beverly Cinema was playing two Cassavettes movies. One was Opening Night, and I had just started seeing my boyfriend then and we went to see them; it's one of my favourite movies and I'd never seen it on the big screen.

Sometimes when you see a film, especially in a theatre, it'll stay with you for a while in your unconscious space, and it definitely did. I think whatever struggles you're currently going through, it's a pretty human thing to find yourself in a character or to relate to aspects of a character's experience, and there were definitely elements of that.

It's a really good film, but it's a very anguishing thing, and I feel like you should just watch it, but it's basically a person trying to muster a performance through this extreme personal hardship, and it's basically watching her unravel and then come back again. It's really intense and sort of this bloody battle - I know that sounds very melodramatic, but I think there were aspects of that that I related to in this period where I was trying to figure out how to feel comfortable writing again after taking so much time off.

You have quite a lot of moments in your songs where you sing wordlessly, and those are often the first bits that catch my ear, I find myself singing along to those parts first. Are you trying to convey emotion in those moments or is it purely melodic?

I think again it's just purely instinctual thing. I definitely grew up in a really musical household where people weren't necessarily playing instruments a ton, but there was a lot of singing and a lot of very confident singing all the time, just as a joke or just singing whatever comes into your mind. I feel like that comes naturally to me, and sometimes I want to vocally sing something that might be the equivalent of a horn line or something like that.

There's flute and few other instruments on this record that you haven't had before, did you have that intention before the studio?

No, I had no idea what was gonna happen. The studio thing was on a trial basis; Mexican Summer does free studio for artists on the label (and you pay the engineer fee), but that's an amazing resource, obviously. Al, the engineer, he's a multi-instrumentalist, but I had no idea we'd be working together in any capacity other than him being engineer, but it happened in a very natural way. Now I don't even really remember how it exactly all began.

He plays the flute on 'Fare Thee Well’?

That was one of the earlier songs we worked on, and I had this long outro that was really unusual for me, and I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with it. I thought maybe I would layer some things, and I think he was like "maybe we could try some flute," and I was like "alright..." I wasn't sure it was gonna work, but year I really really like what he played, this extended flute solo.

It's awesome! Lyrically, do you think your songs have narratives or are they kind of emotional movements?

I think that there's a narrative. It might not be a perfect story arc or anything like that, I think my lyrics have always been a bit impressionistic. But I prefer that, I think. Again, there's nothing preconceived, I never do anything super consciously, it doesn't work like that. Some of the songs on the last record have a bit more structure, as far as following a train of logic, but it doesn't feel necessary. There's just a core essence to the music that is there, and everything is just built to maintain that; I think that's the most important part. There's definitely meaning to all my lyrics, but I don't know if I'll ever write a song that's totally discernible from beginning to end.

How do you feel about explaining lyrics, or do you prefer to leave it to the listener?

That's a really good question. I really like hearing about other people's lyrics, but I'm also afraid about spelling things out too clearly for people, because maybe it limits their ability to interpret them freely. So, I sort of want to, but maybe don't want to.

OK, well, all I say is that I hard relate to the line in 'Here My Love' where you sing "try to keep my worries safe from where they'll do you harm," that one really gets me.

See that's a very literal lyric, they sneak in.

That's autobiographical?

For sure.

Are most of these autobiographical?

I'd have to think about it. I think in some shape or form, yes. This goes back to the stage actor playing a character that you're watching in a film; the emotion is there and real and based on something, but the form that it's presented in might not be a super straight-up literal thing; it might be put through a few lenses. I think sometimes that happens with my lyrics, where even perspectives will change or tenses will change, but it'll all be going toward the same general thing.

Do you ever think twice about some lyrics because they might be too honest?

I don't think my lyrics are ever so blatant that they take you out of it. I think generally, even the lyric that you pointed out, within the framework of the song it doesn't feel jarring or anything like that. But I do tend to avoid, just by instinct, anything that's too jarringly real in a way that isn't fun for me.

I have to ask about one more lyric, if I may, but it's the image "you're a songbird singing in the darkest hour of the night," is there a symbolism there?

Ooooh, it's very personal, and again I don't know if it's best to elucidate every bit of every song, but I think that sort of references singing to no-one, you know? Very alone.

'Crossing' isn't on my lyric sheet, and I can only really make out bits and pieces of words, was that purposeful?

'Crossing is actually a wordless song! The way that I write songs is always the same; it's melody and words that come at the same time, but it's generally phonetic structure of words. Sometimes I get lucky and some real words come in that feel good and work with the song, and I'll take those and work off them, but generally I'll write the structure of the song in full and the melody in full, and I'll just have all these weird dream puzzle-piece parts that I'll have to go through and systematically put words in.

But ['Crossing'] was just one that was very, very, very resistant to it. There are some real words in there, but it felt more than anything like a song from a dream, and I think because I was working very intensely on these songs for a year and a half, I was trying to do it like a day job, I would pretty frequently have dreams where I was playing a song, where I was hearing a song and then you wake up and you can't quite recall it. It felt so much like that to me, where the words are indistinguishable and the melody is just barely there when you wake up. I feel like that place is where all of my music comes from, wherever dreams or your unconscious lie, it all comes from there. It's very representational of something really important.

Interesting. It also sounds a little bit different, was it recorded differently?

I guess there are some slight production differences, it might be a little thicker than the rest of the record, because the rest of the songs are pretty straight-up. That one was just kind of like a weird slapping paint on a canvas, and even the piano in it is very choppy and pounding and maybe just a little bit cut-and-paste. It was the last song we recorded, so it was a real blow-out.

Did you always know that 'Aeroplane' would be the last song? It's such a perfect ending.

Yeah, it does feel like a perfect ending, but no I didn't. It's weird because that ending, the little coda, was just improvised in the studio, and I feel like that is what makes that song a good ending on the record. I didn't really have a super strong idea of the sequence until pretty far into it, but I'm happy it's the last song because it works really well.

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What do you hope people feel when they get to the end of the record?

I guess I want people to feel whatever they naturally feel, but I hope that what I get from it makes sense to them. I feel like that last track, especially the last section, there's some desolation but there's also some hopefulness as well. I feel like it's really 50/50, and I feel like that's a good note to end on.

Very cool. Were you reading much around the time of writing and recording?

Yeah, I was trying to read a lot. I read George Saunders' Lincoln In The Bardo; I was reading that for the longest stretch while I was in the studio. I was there for three weeks in New York and it was really cold and snowing and it was the perfect headspace. I love George Saunders, and that just felt very appropriate. I also read James Baldwin's Another Country, which was amazing.

I read that Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia, but I think I stopped reading that right before the end because I was so frightened thinking about developing any of these weird neural problems where you hear music involuntarily, it was starting to trip me out, thinking about the way that your brain processes sounds. Some of his patients have auditory hallucinations they can't control, especially when it's looping songs like national songs or children’s songs, things they heard when they were a kid that are super-ingrained that aren't necessarily the most pleasant to listen to. I think about that a lot, how long that stuff stays in your head, and when it comes out. That's a really interesting thing to me.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2StjrEM

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drewkatchen · 7 years

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Chris on his back patio | June 2017 | Jersey City, NJ | Pentax 67

Because my interview with Chris Leo involved a nice bottle of wine on a pretty damn nice summer day, our discussion meandered and maybe went longer than we initially expected, a fact that led to a hasty conclusion and us speeding off on bikes -- him on his and me on his wife’s -- to his work at the last minute.

Also, Chris is as generous in conversation as he is in his lyrics, and he’s willing to let things drift to wherever they may go for as long as they go.

What follows is the second portion of our talk, which is concerned mostly with his band The Van Pelt, a musical group that began performing initially in 1993 and disbanded in 1997 after releasing two full-length albums on an independent record label. Chris played guitar and sang, and Brian Maryansky, Neil O'Brien and Sean Greene performed with him. Also, this interview is very much in the spirit of the way interviews run long in fanzines, with very little editing and condensing so as to offer the reader an accurate, non-embellished portrait of either their favorite band or a band they wanted to know more about or a band they know absolutely nothing about. Those are the interviews I grew up reading, whether they were in Maximum Rocknroll, HeartattaCk or a million other zines. That transparency is also in the interest of letting the artist’s thoughts run in their full and proper context. So a majority of this discussion below is as we had it, with very light doctoring for cohesion. I hope you enjoy it.

The Van Pelt have had several reunions, which first began in 2009, and they will continue this month with a small string of live performances. Go see them.

You can read the first portion of our chat HERE.

Thanks for inviting me over again. How has your day been so far?

I’m a little overworked. There’s the coordinating with wineries, how to get my wine from Italy to here. Then there’s the distribution part. I only import from Italy. Then there’s all these companies that I distribute wine from, but I don’t import their wine. That’s during the day. And then I have to find new people to sell it to and then I have to get it to those people. So I’m also the delivery man.

When do you sleep?

I don’t sleep much because at night I go and I’m doing this wine bar in Downtown Jersey City. The problem with New Jersey is it’s not for outside thinkers. It’s a place to breed outside thinkers that then get the fuck out of here. It’s a great place to create expats.

Well, let’s flip the record a bit as it were, because this is also partially based on what you’re doing with music.

At this moment, Charlie the dog interrupts the proceedings for a few moments. But it’s cool because he’s stopped barking and now he’s being friendly.

Is he young, how old is he?

He’s actually almost seven. We’ve had him for three years. He was in the pound for three years and he was on the streets of Los Angeles for a year. That’s why he’s all tough guy.

Did you get him in Los Angeles?

Yeah, we got evicted because of him barking like crazy.

I believe it. So what year did The Van Pelt begin?

I think we began in the fall of 1993 or in the spring of 1994. It’s hard to say because there were many iterations of the band. I started out on bass.

Did you?

Yeah. And we made these two albums, and the second album -- which was our more popular album – we had issues with the mastering. So, not only did we want to get it back in print and we wanted it remastered for our own sake. And so we did.

Is it more fun for you talking about wine or the band?

There’s definitely more joy in wine. Music isn’t pure joy. Music is pain. But also amazing. I also like talking about music because it’s so hard for me to articulate.

You’ve remastered these records again because you want them to sound better. But you’re also doing what you don’t like to do, which is play shows. Why are you doing that?

Except that I feel like I’m in a cover band.

Oh, that makes sense. But does that fact make it any easier?

Yeah, because now I’m singing the songs of this pretty cool kid from twenty years ago. And I’m playing a part; I’m trying to get into his mindset. One common theme of the band is disillusionment with the left, this civil war amongst Democrats and progressives in America.

What left are you talking about?

I’m talking about an eighteen-year-old’s idea of the left. I’m talking about an eighteen-year-old who is coming from an all-boys Catholic high school who created his idea of the left and was dying to leave this and find my people in the Lower East Side. The huge mistake I made was that to me the left meant open dialogue and the right meant closed dialogue. Where I really wanted to go was where you could sit at a bar or table with anybody and you could throw out any topic. What I found was the left was not about open dialogue. It was ‘The right believes ABC; we believe XYZ.’ And I didn’t think that was the way it was going to be. I thought it was going to be ‘The right believes ABC, and we believe everything else.’

So, lyrically that is what the band represents to you now? When you look back on it that’s how you see what you were doing?

Partially. In the sense that it’s one of the themes I’m excited to revisit because I think it’s so relevant now with the Democratic Party not see what was really coming with the progressives and Bernie Sanders.

The other thing I like revisiting is Chris Leo apriori optimist versus Chris Leo the empirical optimist. These things have changed quite a bit, but I love playing the role of the apriori guy. For example, if I was kind of hip to Monsanto when I was nineteen or twenty, I would have thought it was way cooler than I think it is now. I would have thought this idea of fucking with nature down to the bare bones is the coolest idea ever. ‘That’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re part of nature. If we don’t admit we’re part of nature then we don’t really understand nature. We’re part of nature and us fucking with it is the coolest thing ever.’ That’s Chris Leo the apriori optimist in the nineties. Let’s take this to the extreme; let’s take on nature. Yes, so many times we’ve done this we’ve failed miserably but let’s keep doing it. Chris Leo the empirical optimist now, twenty years later…if Monsanto had this little lab in Nebraska where they did all the same things and they live streamed it to us and said ‘Hey, we’re going to make this crazy square tomato and we’re going to feed it to dogs for twenty years and see what happens and we’re going to do all these other experiments but inside this hyper-controlled environment. But that’s not what Monsanto does, so therefore now I will get on board with the left of the early nineties and the left now and march against Monsanto.

You did write a lot about food in your songs. Hang on, let’s see what did I write down in my notebook? Here are some examples: An unseasoned meal, before the meat turns toxic in our tubes, feed me bread, lychee pits, gathering bread for your plate, more apple pie than I’ve ever been.

I guess I’ve been heading down the food and beverage path forever. And with The Lapse I had ‘Buffet.’ [’Buffet’ is a song from the 2000 album ‘Heaven Ain’t Happen’ where Leo proclaims ‘We make meals out of condiments.’]

I’m assuming you like to eat even though you’re very thin. Damn you.

I do like to eat.

What else was on your mind then?

Sex. Love. Politics, yes. Mortality always.

Even at that age?

ALWAYS. I always think about it.

Do you see yourself as a musician, songwriter, arranger? What do you see yourself as?

I’m not a performer. I’m terrible. I’d like to believe I’m a musician, but again, I feel like there’s this reciprocity that comes with being a musician, and I can’t say that I’m a musician. I don’t feel confident saying I’m a musician, but I like playing music.

What is your relationship with music like now?

It’s starting to find a real nice sweet spot, 43 years deep into my life. When I was making music with The Van Pelt and even The Lapse, sometimes I was just a little too close to it to appreciate it in its fullness, particularly with The Lapse. I almost became less of a fan boy than I was before I started playing music. I was just too deep in it. Too heady with it. Then, after the Vague Angels [Leo’s band from the aughts], I stopped playing music entirely. So, I haven’t written anything new for eight years or so. And the first year was amazing. I became more of a listener in every sense of the word, and not just with music, but with wine too. It was so helpful. I had this burst of interest in music, just as a listener. I was a super fanboy.

Of what?

I was just sucking everything up. At the time, I was living in Italy, and I was trying really hard to find good Italian music. I was really digging deep into Italian music. But then my music muscle atrophied. Not playing music, I realized that all these other things I was investing my interest in co-opted my brain. It was this really weak music muscle. Then I would go years picking up one or two bands a year.

What were the genres that you began liking as you got older?

I’ve always loved pop and dance. In the eighties, they used to call me a poseur because when I would write band names on my shoes, I would have like R.E.M., Erasure and Cover Girls. Kids would be like ‘You can’t put Cover Girls next to R.E.M.’

Who were the Cover Girls?

You don’t remember them?

I know the Weather Girls and Mary Jane Girls.

[Chris sings to me] Show me, show me you really love me. Actions speak louder than words.

Is it freestyle?

Yes, I love freestyle. We should do a freestyle night. [Chris frequently has friends and patrons play music on the bar’s sound system]

Oh, you know more than I do about freestyle.

We can get people to help us out. So, this is also during the glory years of 120 Minutes, so I was just discovering late-era Wire, but listening to Silent Morning. It’s always been a thread in my life, dance music and freestyle and pop.

I would get that listening to The Van Pelt.

Ha. Ok, remove yourself from the situation a bit. You gotta know what you do, and that’s not always what you listen to. I just don’t do certain things. There’s plenty of music I just don’t do. With The Van Pelt, I was hyper-restrained and I loved it. When we broke up I didn’t want to do anything restrained. I wasn’t feeling restrained. Now I’m stoked to do a lot of that. I wanted to explode because I was just so sick of the punk environment being so sterile. Music is supposed to make you abandon all inhibitions; music is supposed to take you from, if you walked in sad and watched a happy band then you leave happy or if you walk in happy and watch a sad band, then you leave sad. You’re supposed to lose it, and punk was so not about losing it.

Can you contextualize for me what The Van Pelt were? What world did you fit into?

So, we had two albums. The first album was a real fanboy album.

What does that mean?

Like young kids who are sucking up as much music as possible.

What were you sucking up?

Everything from Seam to Gastr Del Sol to Kraftwerk to whatever cassette was really cheap on tour at a gas station in Kansas, which might have been Procol Harum, and who knew they had other songs? So, absolutely everything. But we were all in agreement that we wanted to make anthems, we really wanted to kick out the jams. And this is a contextual thing because nineties New York were not about bands. That was for the rest of America. You had Jon Spencer and Sonic Youth and you had bands like that but they were in a whole mega league; they were not DIY. We would have aspired to their sales and notoriety but we were DIY [do-it-yourself or independent] through and through, to a fault.

That’s one of the reasons sometimes people would call us emo. Your choices were to go indie and work the 21-and-up circuit playing all these bars and you have a booking agent and everything is pretty legit. Or continue with DIY and do the 18-and-up circuit or play anyone’s basement anywhere and also play bars but book it yourself and hop in the van, make everything happen the way you want it to happen and just because you’re doing it that way, they want to call you emo because that was the predominant DIY genre at the time.

So you don’t feel like you fit into that or you were that?

I don’t feel like we fit into that at all. What, you do?

I don’t know, maybe a little bit.

Maybe a little bit, sure. But not exclusively. We just wanted to make music. The second album was after a bunch of lineup changes; we’d just finished college. There was a huge blizzard in New York. We’d all just broken up with our girlfriends, so that was really pure. That one was like ‘This is what’s happening. No one is going to like it, but this is what’s happening. And it’s a bummer and this music sucks.’ Of course, that’s the record people like. So, who were we? We were just kids figuring out who we were.

Were you punk? Did you think of yourselves as punk then or no?

No. We thought of ourselves as DIY.

What’s the difference?

Punk has constraints.

So does DIY by its definition, no?

There’s no aesthetic or sonic restraints.

Oh, I see, I see. Where were you playing and who were you playing with? Who were your peers at the time?

We were playing at Brownies on Avenue A and 11th Street all the time.

RIP. [Brownies, an East Village rock/punk/indie club, closed in 2002].

I know, RIP. We never played Brooklyn. There was nothing there. Where else were we playing?

Did you ever play in New Jersey?

We played a Knights of Columbus in Wallington on the Passaic River, which was great. We would play colleges. We played The Cooler, all the time.

Who were you playing with? You were playing with emo bands, I’m guessing, even though you were not.

If we weren’t the booking agent. If it was a bill we booked, we would play with one of my brothers’ bands, Chisel or Radio Saturn. We’d play with Garden Variety. We played with Dahlia Seed. Their new band is playing with us in D.C.

Promise Ring? Texas is the Reason?

We didn’t play with Texas too much. We were all friends, but we didn’t cross with them much musically.

This isn’t the first time The Van Pelt has reunited. How do you feel about it now?

Great. This is basically the third time.

What made you reunite the first time in 2009?

Because an old friend of ours from Austin was like ‘Hey, I’m putting together a nineties bill for SXSW this year, please play.’

The Van Pelt perform in June 2009 at Coco 66 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Had you entertained the idea before that?

It never really crossed my mind, honestly. No one even asked us, really. So, we all agreed to do it, and it was really cool. But it was a year after I stopped playing music.

Didn’t you write a novel in there somewhere, too?

I wrote five.

Didn’t you write five novels in there somewhere, too?

So, we did it. My relationship with music in general was weird. It was more about meeting these guys that I shared so much with back in the day. But when bands break up, it’s like breaking up with a girlfriend; it’s never perfect.

So you had no real misgivings about reforming?

I did. But for me on that tour, I had misgivings about playing music and playing Van Pelt music, but I wanted to play with those guys. I wanted to get back on track and bury every and any hatchet that could possibly be still hanging out there for no good reason. And we succeeded in that. Sonically the theme wasn’t clear to me in my head.

Does it fit sonically with who you are now or what you’re interested in?

That’s one of the things I love in revisiting these songs; some of it really does.

Would you listen to that now as a man your age?

The second album yes. The first album not so much, but I have fun playing those songs. And some of them we’ve kind of done adult contemporary style and we’ll be doing some of them that way for these shows. The point is, that was really cool in 2009, but it didn’t bring everything together in my mind that I was hoping it would. So then, we release what was supposed to be our third album, and in doing so we get offered to play this huge festival in England. It was one of the ATP festivals [Jabberwocky, 2014]. By that point everything is cool between The Van Pelt guys, thematically everything is settled in my head. We go and play these shows, and it was fucking amazing. We were really good.

The beauty of your vocal style is that your speaking voice doesn’t change that much.

It’s a little deeper now.

With the exception of maybe ‘We Are the Heathens’, you can kinda do most of it, right?

I can do most of it better.

I assume your upper register is gone though.

Yeah, it’s gone. I think sometimes it sounds better now though. So musically those shows were great and it was super fun. So then, the record label that releases that was like ‘Ok cool, that was a success. Let’s re-master and release your first two records. But you gotta play more shows.’ And we said, ‘Ok, cool.’ So, in the sense of like, do I need to keep revisiting old Van Pelt songs? No, I don’t. But, when we were rehearsing in 2012 and playing old songs, it was really hard to not write new songs.

So you’ve written new songs.

Yes, and we’re going to play some of those.

What do they sound like?

I dunno. We’ve only written three so far. We all have these little pieces we’re tinkering with.

So you have songs that are now five years old?

No, basically in 2012, in between playing old songs we would tinker with stuff and a song would come together and then we’d say ‘Oh fuck, we can’t do this right now. We gotta get back on track with relearning these old songs but my god it would be so much fun to flesh this out.’ So then, that’s the way we rationalize these new shows. So, now let’s spend some time fleshing these things out.

What percentage of the set will be new material?

Maybe we’ll throw in one or two for the shows. And hopefully we’ll have a new album in 2018.

You’re kind of like Linklater’s ‘Before’ trilogy. Every decade you do something.

Maybe. I love playing with those guys.

Do you find it bizarre the music you were doing then can live beyond its initial time?

No, because back in that time I was digging deep into the racks looking for stuff from twenty years earlier, and it fit the context of that time.

What were the primary sources? Sonic Youth, Velvets, Galaxie 500?

I didn’t listen to Sonic Youth much, only because that was such the sound of the time you almost didn’t need to listen to it. I didn’t listen to it a lot, but yes, I love Sonic Youth.

With the first record, we really wanted to make anthems because we were living in this time where the guitar players were no longer making anthems. And there weren’t many guitar players. They were all going the route of the deejay. So, it was like all the guitar players are getting weird as fuck, and we liked it. But we wanted to give a go at making an album of anthems.

I was listening to a lot of the Dustdevils. An interesting thing, we discovered a lot of bands by who people said they imagined we were listening to. People would say we must have listened to a lot of Bedhead, and we said no. And then we’d go listen to Bedhead. And even The Fall. I didn’t listen to The Fall until everyone said we sounded like The Fall. Which could bring us to Parquet Courts.

How do they relate to you?

You don’t think they sound like us?

Ooh, yes. I do.

So many people are like ‘Are you going to sue them or what?’

They seem very knowledgeable in what they’re doing. I think they’re very steeped in music history. [Full disclosure: I once saw Andrew Savage at a DS-13 show in Brooklyn wearing a Turning Point shirt. The Hi-Impact Turning Point shirt. That is fairly legit to me. I also like them a lot, probably because they remind me of The Van Pelt.]

Maybe that’s the case, and if it is, then they should give us a shout out. If it’s not the case, the world is so weird that I can believe it not being the case. Anyhow, I love it. I do love them.

You kind of got me inebriated. Who else were your influences?

Eric B. & Rakim were a huge influence, to the idea of speaking and saying intelligent things and putting it to a repeating riff.

Can you estimate how many shows you played when you were around?

It had to be over a hundred. We were just talking about this.

Did you enjoy being in a band?

Everything about it except the actual show. That part I wasn’t so into. Traveling, late-night drives, post-sound check hanging out at the bar during happy hour when no one’s there. A sticky, stinky bar. I loved that stuff. Meeting people from all around the world. I loved being in a band and touring.

When it comes to the music and the recording, was the intention to have the music serve your voice? To me, the music is behind you on the recordings.

I rarely write the lyrics with the music; I can’t do that. I’ll have a bank of lyrics. Even right now I have tons. That’s constant. When we start to tinker with a song, I’ll think about what lyrics will fit with the mood of the song.

Do you care what people take from your lyrics? Do people ask you what your lyrics mean?

I do get asked from time to time. I hope people take something from them. When people usually ask me, I like to say in the least snarky way possible, if I could articulate them in another way, then I wouldn’t have made lyrics out of them. This is the art form. It’s not a redundant art form. The reason poetry and lyrics exist is because it fills an articulation gap.

Did you put a lot of emphasis on them at the time or are they quick musings?

No, I sweat them out. To write lyrics for The Van Pelt, I would get on my bike, and I would have pen and paper, and I would loop Manhattan. I would go from Wall Street all the way up to Hell Gate Bridge [near Astoria, Queens]. And anytime something would come together, I would stop and write it down.

Do you recall ever having people really wanting to know exactly what you meant? Punk commonly demands black and white lyrical subject matter. How did you deal with it?

Yes. I probably dealt with it poorly, but I don’t remember. It can’t fit into a perfect dialogue; if it could, it wouldn’t be music or lyrics. It’s not regular dialogue, it’s an art. For example, when I go to a museum, I want to take the lengthy explanations off the wall and throw it in the trash. I hate the idea of a little placard telling me what a painting is supposed to resemble. I want to look at the painting and enjoy it, period.

Sultans of Sentiment…this is a Dire Straits thing?

No, it came from Twin Peaks. By the way, one of the things you asked before, I don’t think I answered it fully. What do I want from these shows? I really hope we can reach a few kids. That would make me so happy. Like if the version of us that was flipping through records at Kim’s in the early nineties, just finding obscure shit from 20 years earlier, if that kid finds us and we’re part of some thread.

Is The Van Pelt considered obscure now?

I think we’re super obscure, no? We don’t make any lists of bands of the early nineties.

Hmm. Did I not ask you anything? Oh, I know, are your lyrics about any real-lived events?

Yes. ‘Do the Lovers Still Meet at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial?’ I was dating a girl who was half-Irish and half-Chinese and her Irish dad died, and her Chinese mother remarried a Chinese guy and they lived in Taiwan. And so I went to Taiwan a couple times during college, and I was not ready for the culture shock at all. It was really a lot for a kid in his twenties to take. Sometimes I would just need a break from the family and all the cultural things I just couldn’t accept, so we would meet at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. It’s a huge giant white-and-blue pagoda, and old people would do ballroom dancing outside of it. And we would meet there, and we’d go out to clubs there and escape the madness of the culture clash that eventually proved to be too much for us. Eventually I left Taiwan with her prematurely on one visit, and I had a big argument with her family. I said ‘I’m done with this; I’m taking her out of the country. I’m done with this.’ It was just a huge battle. Pretty intense times.

Well, I’m glad I asked that. Ok, we’ve talked forever. Let’s end it. Thanks Chris.

#chris leo #the van pelt #the lapse #PENTAX67 #pentax #Tri-X 400 #new jersey #Jersey City

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braced-music · 8 years

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“I have no opinion on what other people think about me” - Anton Newcombe

Originally published on Drowned In Sound, 12th January 2017

Most artists promoting a new album probably wouldn't take the time to instead speak about how the world seems to be teetering precariously on the brink of war, or talk about their somewhat unflattering portrayal in a cult documentary released 13 years ago. Thankfully the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe is not most artists.

Speaking to Anton from his Berlin home about the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s latest album, Third World Pyramid, just before the US election result, his train of thought is racing far beyond Hilary and Donald’s impending doom. During the hour-long interview he barely pauses, careering fitfully from one subject to the next, apart from to occasionally say an ever so slightly intimidating, ‘Do you see what I’m saying?”

He talks in hurried detail about why geopolitics, a hemmed in Russia, and an expansionist China are marching us towards conflict. To cope with these unstable times he’s reached a “very Zen realisation” of being more accepting in his own life. Third World Pyramid, a record partially inspired by the current climate, he shockingly reveals is not the band’s best record and will be eclipsed by the forthcoming release of an “indefinable” double album entitled Don't Get Lost. However if you’re a Q reviewer, don’t expect a copy in the post any time soon.

Still keen to set the record straight on Dig!, Anton stresses how the producers “fucked up” and had to re-edit the original Sundance Film Festival cut for a less libelous and more compelling narrative centred around his flammable persona. As to whether he has any regrets about the excess around that time he’s characteristically defiant, joking that if he’d continued down this needle and bottle strewn path he’d be living with a Ferragamo model in Connecticut right now.

Instead these days he’s busy in his Berlin studio creating a soundtrack for a new Philip Johns’ film, looking forward to working with Melody’s Echo Chamber, and completing a documentary shot on the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s last UK tour about one of his roadies. Thank God for sobriety.

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On Twitter you’ve frequently used the hashtag #fuckwar. Do you truly believe a world war is going to happen?

Anton Newcombe: What I think is this has been a long time coming for several different reasons. I was talking to my friend from Israel about the things that have been going on even since 2000 and people just continuously block those things out - it’s like mass hypnosis has taken effect. He said, ‘it’s a survival mechanism’ and it made so much sense.

If you go back even farther to the seventies and eighties, Brzezinski talked about the grand chess game with Russia, this is during the Soviet time, and how they’d ultimately defeat them by squeezing them in. There was the whole thing where Papa Bush talked about the New World Order, basically making everything a federalist system like the EU and having business and trade supercede all the old conflicts and shortcomings.

Do you think it’s a worldwide conspiracy?

No, it’s not a conspiracy. Nato’s moved aggressively all the way up to the edge of Russia, China has captured the whole of the south China sea and claimed it as their own – it is not a conspiracy. The United States owes more money to China alone than it can ever possibly pay as a debt and the whole system is based on debt. International financial services are overextended to such an extent it can never be undone. Post 9/11, with the neo-con strategy, set into course a series of events [where] there is no reverse.

The more you look at the events with Russia the more you know it’s not a conspiracy...I understand Syria’s fake revolution was started in London by a Thinktank with people behind the scenes: they’re not hiding out in Alepo, they’re certainly not in Damascus, it’s people in London and it’s non-governmental organisations' people who’ve kicked this off. It’s ironic that this whole thing started from one person getting shot for not being able to protest.

We’re still fighting like crazy in Iraq decades on and Afghanistan, we’ve been there since the seventies. This is like misadventure on a grand scale and I’m not against war specifically but this is geopolitics. The thing is now Russia understands they’re fully surrounded and they have major commitments to China and their alignments with Iran and it’s at a serious point.

As a father how does this make you feel about your children’s future? The current situation makes it seem like we’re doomed.

Penny Rimbaud used to be part of the Crass organisation and commune. I had the observation where at one point he was so involved with Crass’ records and the commune, label, libraries, and publications during the Thatcher times educating people on how you can be your own government. Now he’s on Twitter and he’s being like this Zen guy non-stop and it lead me to a realisation in my own life.

If you understand psychologically a lot of times in life people hate things because they’re not able to interact with them and they love them because they are. It’s that simple, a certain type of love and a certain type of hate. It’s led me to a very Zen realisation because the bottom line is that I care very much so I have to refocus to that and I have to be accepting. In this life and these times it forces me to focus on my art.

The album is called Third World Pyramid. Is it in reference to the current social and political situation?

It’s multi-leveled because I'm abstract. On one level I thought it was quite interesting the peaks of regions and time periods, whether it’s mass America or the Egyptian or even the pyramids in Babylon, the Ziggurats - all of these places are in the third world now.

I thought that was interesting, but then there’s also the human pyramid. If you don’t understand, on the back of the dollar bill there’s a pyramid. Here we have this Christian nation yet all the iconography is this Roman shit and this Egyptian shit. None of it is Jesus on a cross. None of it is a picture of a church someplace or a fish, it’s something else they’re talking about and it’s another God.

In this pyramid with the eye it’s a representation of the human pyramid and each block could be a cell, like a station. Your civil servants could be in one block and all these different people going all the way up; society answering to the next group or club above them and all of them working together becomes the all seeing eye.

The interesting thing about it is the foundation of the pyramid sees nothing. The foundation of the pyramid is below the sand: doesn’t see the sky, never seen the stars, it’s never seen a cloud, it’s just holding up the pyramid.

The tone of the album has a sense of melancholic desperation, but then seems quite hopeful. What was your mindset when you were writing it?

Well, the interesting thing is I wrote in a full spectrum of human emotion. There’s another album coming out [Don't Get Lost] and it has this almost kraut-rocky, PiL Limited steel box, dubby, dystopian...it just changes style every single song and it covers so much ground you can’t imagine from track-to-track - it’s a double record.

I just split the songs into two different categories and this album [Third World Pyramid] I wanted to be more understandable, as far as a pre-conceived notion that many people have of what we probably are as far as vaguely influenced by the sixties, shamelessly wearing our hearts on our sleeves. It’s going to hark it back to that repeatedly.

The other record will be indefinable, like something I’ve discovered. Like a UFO I’ve discovered and I’ve walked inside and start pressing buttons to work out how to fly it. I knew I was going to take the heat about this record because I don’t think it’s the best album, specifically that wasn’t my goal.

It’s a rare thing to hear someone say about their own album.

I’m going to qualify that statement - the thing is I split the songs in half. I didn’t specifically go: “Well, I’m going to put these ten great songs together”. I made two albums that work cohesively in this bizarre way – one short record and one double record – but they’re two totally different albums.

When I started sharing these privately, to Simone from Primal Scream or something, I was like: “No, no, no you have to listen to the first album first and then listen to the second album and then you’re going to understand something strange”. What you’re going to understand is that I just made 45 songs at a time and that’s how quick my brain works in a week and that’s how diverse it is. This isn’t me being: “Here’s a record I want to become this album” or: “Oh, there was a band in the 80s called Jesus And The Mary Chain, let’s fucking buy a leather jacket and sound like this – can I borrow your distortion pedal?”

With such a prolific output how do you even decide what makes it onto the final album?

Some friends helped me. Either it’s absolutely clear to me in this way that there’s like an invisible chord that connects everything...As one song gives way to the next it becomes harmonious with the previous one and the one that’s about to come. You can manipulate the listener’s experience that way just by the arrangement of the songs and the pacing. Sometimes it’s an awareness on a level that cannot be studied or premeditated, but it’s harmonious in your own workings of your mind.

The opening track ‘Good Mourning’ is sung by your wife and is about your son. However, it’s very sombre.

She asked me to write a song and I wrote one for her. It just happens, like some people can do that [laughs]. Ultimately, in a large body of work, it’s ok to reflect a full spectrum of emotions.

Would you ever consider being overtly political in your lyrics?

Only if it was true to exactly what I was feeling with the comments. I wrote a song called ‘Take It From The Man’ a long time ago and it basically breaks down what I was thinking and what I was feeling about splitting, about knowing and my awareness of everything - just calling it like you see it in a classic motif or whatever.

There’s no reason because what I’m going to explain to you is you can’t want for other people what they don’t want for themselves. That’s precisely why I’m not at Oxford station passing out socialist literature. On many levels people have got it the way they want it.

I always think when you go to the ‘90s when you first started and artists had the time, space, and money to grow and live cheaply. Do you think as a band you could start out now in the same way you did back then?

We had to fight. We were already in an economically expensive environment in San Francisco - an environment now that’s the most expensive in America. We had to fight principles of collective socialism in the arts where you share a rehearsal space, you borrow a car, you borrow amps, you do whatever you have to do. Because we had to rent out Masonic Temples to play we would do our own promotion, so we had to step completely out of the system. That’s the only advice I’d have for anyone else to fully understand that.

At that time everyone was against us, you’d have other bands tearing down our flyers - we were such a threat to everyone. I could never understand that, obviously none of those people have bands any more. People are so competitive and you really can’t look at other things in that light; you need to foster an eco-system to support yourself whether it’s the record store or the venue. A lot of people don’t understand that, you have no competition as a band.

A lot of new bands starting out who admire Brian Jonestown sometimes take more interest in the rock n roll element, like the drugs...

They fucked up Dig. I don’t want to dwell on it, but they didn’t have an ending so they had to compile a story out of the footage. A few things get in there but they’re not backed-up, they’re not qualified - you don’t really hear me speak. My responses [in this interview] have been over 25 words, with syntax, and everything works right? You can understand what I’m trying to say and what I’m saying. There’s no example of that in the movie...it’s fucking scary listening to me from the very beginning, if you don’t share my viewpoint it’s fucking scary talking to me.

Anyway, the first thing that I say is: “We’re going to start a revolution and we’re going to teach you how to do it” and that was because I was navigating all the record companies in the world. Everybody was trying to go: “You’re the next Kurt Cobain and this is what we want from you”. I would say “no” and my band is going: “Fuck you! We’re starving to death, what are you doing? They’re buying us $6000 meals!”

I wanted to show people an example of how you could make your thing work and that alone would propel you to a greater level of success than the people who didn’t know how to market you and create something.

Do you think artists have greater control in the current landscape?

We’re fucked. It’s fucked because everybody is asleep. Here you had the opportunity with Al Gore talking about the internet and how great it would be and all this shit, this gift to humanity, and then you had Facebook completely usurp everybody and thinking that’s the way to market your stuff. Without paying Facebook your posts get suppressed.

Going backwards, what I wanted to do at the start of the movie, my only goal was to enter the popular lexicon. Basically be understood as this person who did this type of thing, for this reason. It’s really odd because Jimi Hendrix, when he entered the popular lexicon as being this free spirited electric guitar player one of kind, right? You can’t be Jimi Hendrix. There’s no clues that he left us of how to be him. Paul McCartney going on and on his whole life talking [Paul McCartney voice]: “Well, you know we had a lot of fun” There’s nothing that guy's ever said that can help you ever be him.

So, you’re saying you can’t be imitated?

There’s something really amazing about full reality, that if I leave enough clues and you try and emulate me what you ultimately become is you. Johnny Rotten did the same thing in this really odd way. The only thing when you copy Sid Vicious is you could become a derelict, but when you copy Johnny Rotten you couldn’t be Johnny Rotten but the thing was you became yourself.

The point I was trying to make is I never wanted permission from anybody or validation to do anything. My mom is a psychologist so she was like: “You’re going to fucking end up in a mental hospital or prison, because you are so belligerent." I had a job as a plumber’s apprentice when I was 16 or 17 and they were like: “Anton, we love you, we want to buy you your own truck, you’ll have a really good future with us”...and I was like: “Fuck that”. Could you imagine? Me being a plumber to some rich white people in Newport beach?

Do you ever feel like you’re imprisoned by your characterisation in Dig? You tweeted reviews of Third World Pyramid saying ‘They think they know me’.

No, that’s what they tried to say about this record...anybody who tries to critique me like a Q writer when they reviewed the recording. First of all, they didn’t even comment that I covered the ‘Assignment Song’ by Jane & Lorraine and that also Nina Simone did it; it’s a fucking epic song that nobody knows about, just attempting to do a 10 minute song like that is amazing. Now, what did I see in it that Nina Simone saw in it? I’m obviously not an idiot because then she wasn’t an idiot. I knew when they didn’t comment on that they didn’t listen to it.

I know they’re going to eat their words, because the next record isn’t like any of that shit - I hope they don’t bother to review it. The ironic thing in passing any mentions of the last song [‘The Sun Ship’] is it got to fucking number five in the UK.

I wasn’t fairly portrayed [in Dig!] and there were a lot of things that happened. The movie people saw entitled ‘Dig’ wasn’t the movie that won Sundance. The movie that won Sundance had all the spy camera footage of me dealing with all the record deals, the lawyers and those guys threatening – they’re basically the mafia. A lot of the people talking, the A&R people, are basically hookers with cocaine that they sent to try and talk us into it; the drug parties and all the shit that went down. None of those people signed off and I had it signed off. What they got is something less than that, they had to go back to the drawing board when it won and they sold the rights and they had to edit another movie.

It was always clear in my mind that that wasn’t the story, I was never a failure, I’ve always been friends with the Dandy Warhols and all this other shit.

Do you ever watch Dig!?

Never, I never watched it. I watched one version of the movie.

Now you’re sober do you have any regrets about your drug use at that time, especially as you’re creatively so prolific now?

I was always prolific. I did six records in 18 months in 1995 – six 18-song records – I’ve always written every day under every circumstance. I only got into smack the last two years of the decade, so we were actually filming before then. I mean I only got like, “This is a problem”. It’s a problem to start with. After that I started drinking to get rid of the smack and that took while to get rid of.

If I have hundreds of songs it really doesn’t matter either way. What can I say? I used to have a Ferragamo model as a girlfriend and I pretty much lost her as I was doing smack. Like, what, would I have her and live in Connecticut? It’s really hard to quantify. It took me until the mid-2000s to leave America for good and it never occurred to me to do that. If I had done that in the nineties in my late teens or twenties if I possible could have figured that out, would I even have a group?

You wrote the soundtrack for the film Moon Dogs released in the summer. Have you got any plans to work on other soundtracks?

I know this is going to be stupid and people always tell me to focus, but I’ve come up with two really good concepts for movies and two of my friends who are screenwriters have both said they’d help me do that in a second and Phillip Johns [Moon Dogs’ Director] said, “I’m in any time”. But then Phillip Johns has come up with another movie and presented the concept to me, which would be pretty cool; another Scottish film that would be pretty badass with Dean Cavanar writing it. I said I would do that.

Some people in Los Angeles sent me a synopsis about some fucking DMT duality thing. I want to record with Melody’s Echo Chamber, I want to do some work with some Belgium artists and I’ve been working with a Danish woman. There’s so much stuff I want to do, I’m recording a band from Germany right now.

I read you were going to make a film about a roadie on your last UK tour. Did that happen?

Yeah, I’m just worried my filmmaker friend didn’t do it the way I wanted it to be done. The problem is I couldn’t be the guy filming because the whole premise of the film is I’ve known the guy in the film for 26 years, but I don’t know anything about him and he’s really interesting guy...

We did film it and it looks spectacular I’m just worried we didn’t get enough of him in a very odd way. I want to make the whole thing in French subtitles, so it has to be a little bit weird enough to make absolutely no sense - it can’t be campy or weird. The concept is bananas because we’re playing to like 4,000 people in this old place and you’re only seeing it from behind. It’s all shot in this Anton Corbin black and white, ultra gloss, HD like crazy.

You’re often referred to as interview gold. Do you enjoy interviews?

I just try to listen to what’s being said and I answer honestly and I never worry about it too much. It turns out very consistently over the years. I’ve always had an interesting take on society and the motivations of people and where it’s going. An authority on all the stuff. I’ve always been counter culture...I have no opinion on what other people think about me or the way I behave [laughs].

Third World Pyramid is out now via A Recordings. Don’t Get Lost is released on 24 February 2017. Marie Wood

#brian jonestown massacre #anton newcombe #third world pyramic #don't get lost #dig #dig documentary #moon dogs #melody's echo chamber #drowned in sound

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