Chaos.Control 007
Chaos.Control 007
Autechre
by Bob Gourley
"Most of the music that we make is something we would
buy," says Sean Booth, one half of British electronic duo
Autechre. "We're driven by the urge to be as good as the
people that we really admire."
From the sound of "Incunabula," (Wax Trax!/TVT),
Autechre's first full-length US release, it seems as if the
group has achieved its goal. The instrumental electronic
soundscapes bring together analog and digital textures in a
very unique way. Listening to the album brings several ideas
to mind of who those people are that Autechre are driven to
as good as, but it is clear that Autechre has succeeded in
bringing together many electronic styles into their own
unique sound.
Autechre is comprised of Booth and Rob Brown, who met
through a mutual friend six years ago and started DJing
together before starting up the band. The group had its
first release at the end of 1991, though they got ripped off
by their first label.
Autechre's break came along when they approached Warp
and got onto the "Artificial Intelligence" compilation. That
release was put out to show the public the potential of
experimental electronic dance music, and it did succeed at
opening up the doors for new styles.
"At the time, the dance scene was going really bad, it
was all disjointed," says Booth. "There was like garage and
there was break beat techno and there was nothing else other
than the stuff that was drifting through from Europe or
America occasionally."
Autechre's music brings together their electro and acid
influences, with a desire to avoid thinking about music in
traditional terms. Within the band, neither member has a
specific role. In fact, some of the tracks are created
solely by one member and put out under the band name.
"It's totally free style, we just do whatever we feel
like," says Booth. "It literally depends of what bit of gear
you're setting up when you're writing, whatever you feel
like messing with, you mess with. So if Rob's got a drum
pattern I might do the chords and key shifts, and it might
be totally the opposite on another track"
Most of Autechre's music is created with a combination
of analog, sampler, digital and drum machine sounds. The
group is not so concerned about the equipment itself, as
they feel too many artists focus on the sounds rather then
creating an interesting song to use them in.
"It's trendy to get a 303 or a 909, so everybody's
going to do it," says Booth. "They're not just doing it
because they like the sounds, they're doing it because
they've heard the sounds on other records. We do use analog
gear, I'm not saying that it's all crap, and we use digital
gear. But we try to use it well, as opposed to just using
it. A lot of bands are just using analog gear and thinking
that makes them good."
Despite the increased popularity in analog
instruments, Booth doesn't see it leading to overkill
anytime soon, since there is so much that can be done with
the machines.
"You can program an infinite number of sounds on a
piece of equipment that's truly analog," he says. "You turn
the knob a millionth of a millimeter, and it will make a
difference. There are no limits to analog gear, so no one's
ever going to reach its full potential."
Autechre's desire to push the technology to the limits
comes through in their live show, where the music is harder
and more improvisational than their studio work. The group
doesn't care about how they look on stage, preferring the
audiences to concentrate on the music. Autechre also doesn't
care about performing in a traditional sense and prove that
a truly "live" set can be performed without actually playing
any of the parts.
"We don't physically touch keys," explains Booth. "Some
of the work's done because the sequences are in the gear.
When we get on stage we completely improvise what we've got
in the gear. We're good at jamming off each other because
that's how we work in the studio. It's different every time.
We just sort of mess around with the sequences and do
whatever we can with them."
Eventually, Autechre would like to do 2 hour long live
shows, though they are currently limited by their equipment.
The group enjoys playing out, but prefers to be in their
studio recording. As a result, they do mainly one-off shows
and don't see themselves doing a full-scale tour until at
least a few years from now (Autechre recently did a short US
tour that also featured The Orb's DJ Lewis).
Musically, the group's live sets are completely
different from their studio work. The tracks are much
harder, and in order to keep the show special, Autechre do
not release any of it.
Sifting through all their material to select what they
do want to put out can be problem for the band, as they are
highly prolific in the studio. Autechre will try to release
as many singles as possible so that they can include bonus
tracks, but they still find themselves with material left
over. However, the group has no plans to start releasing
under pseudonyms, like artists such as Aphex Twin have.
"There's no point," says Booth. "There's various
reasons for that, but we just don't see the point in
diluting yourself like that."
Autechre have a new EP coming out soon, as well as some
plans they are currently keeping secret that involve
collaborations with other artists.
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
DDT
by Lila Lieberman
What is the fate of an "industrial" band when it is
forced by circumstance to exist within the electronic music
vacuum of Boston, MA? Noel McKenna (drum programming and
vocals), Elaine Walker (keyboards and sequencing) and Lisa
Sirois (drums, samples and most recently, vocals) know only
too well. The trio have been together for over two years
now, and have watched as their music and persona have
evolved while the rest of the scene continues to stagnate.
The origins of the band lie in the meeting between Lisa
and Noel at Cambridge club Manray. Elaine, who graduated
from Berklee College of Music with a music synthesis degree,
joined later. From the beginning DDT was an industrial band.
"You're influenced by the music you like best," says
Noel. "And in our case we all really liked, and we all still
really like industrial music. And we wanted to emulate that.
And being a young band, we tried to imitate it."
The influence of prototypical industrial bands
initially permeated both their music and stage show. Says
Elaine, "I used to wear a fake machine gun, a machete in my
boot, and we would have fake skin and fake blood, and we
looked like burn victims."
"We used the typical gas mask stuff," adds Lisa. "We
didn't use something if we didn't think it was industrial,
so we ended up using all of these things that were already
used by every other band, which of course, we didn't know."
Things are different now. "At the beginning, I think we
tired to be a certain way," says Lisa. "Then we forgot what
we were trying to be, so we just ended up becoming our three
personalities instead of something that we tried to be."
This metamorphosis has allowed the band member's
individual influences to emerge more forcefully.
"We come from different backgrounds and I think we
have different attitudes, but it works together," says
Elaine.
This eclectic mix includes Elaine's classical
music training, Lisa and Noel's art background, and Noel's
interest in techno music.
"What happened was the whole rave/techno scene, and
Noel really caught onto that and he really likes it," says
Elaine. "And I hated it, with a passion, and Lisa just
didn't care. She just thought it was funny. So Noel wanted
to go in that direction and I was almost fighting it and I
finally found a way to make it kind of work were I didn't
hate it so much. Actually, I like the sound we've
developed."
"Now we're being influenced by techno and house," adds
Noel. "I mean if you look at it, it's very closely related
to industrial as far as I'm concerned. If industrial didn't
exist and people didn't start making music with computers,
techno and trance and house and all of the rest couldn't
exist either."
How have these genres impacted upon DDT's music?
"There's a lot of beautiful music being made by a lot
of techno bands - a lot of legitimate, beautifully produced,
beautifully orchestrated music being made. And I think that
it would be really innovative to create a hybrid between a
lot of this really beautiful, beautifully layered music,
really euphoric, and add a touch of the aggressiveness and
the ugliness of traditional industrial music. It creates
kind of the perfect contradiction of something being very
beautiful and angst-ridden at the same time."
Is Boston ready for this? Elaine claims that, "There
isn't a music scene as far as our stuff goes."
Noel adds, "As far as being an 'electronic band' in
Boston, Boston is both good and bad. It's good in that
you're kind of one of a kind and you're kind of a novelty.
But very quickly the novelty wears off and you're just
ultimately met with a lot of prejudice. Boston is a very
traditional city as far as music goes. It's a city that's
prejudices against electronic music which is really bad and
the one thing that is probably the most discouraging thing
as far as being around here. It's kind of like a rock-n-roll
hell."
While DDT still intend to play in Boston with a new
stage show beginning mid-summer, they will be concentrating
upon larger and more appreciative audiences elsewhere, both
on a national and international level. They would like very
much to get signed, and have recently completed recording
four new songs. They continue to evolve.
"I think we've gone in a new direction, but we haven't
finished figuring out what that is," says Elaine. "We know
we're different and we have an idea of where we're going,
but it's not finished."
Lisa adds, "Well, we have a long way to go, but if we
were really finished then the band would be finished too. If
we had everything figured out then why even be in a band?"
DDT can be heard on Re-Constriction's "Shut Up Kitty"
compilation. An electronic DDT press kit can be found at all
of the same Internet sites as Chaos Control, as well as
American Online. For more info, email DDT at
ddt@world.std.com.
Irresistible Force
by Bob Gourley
Since his start in pirate radio a decade ago, Mixmaster
Morris has been a driving force in the British underground
dance scene. Being both a DJ and composer/performer, Morris
has seen both sides of the DJ-driven industry.
As resident DJ for the Shamen from 1989 to 1991, Morris
went out with the band for five tours. Now he is focusing on
his own music, released under the name Irresistible Force.
When acid house first hit, Morris was one of the first
performers to play it live, and he did over 300 shows
before taking a break from playing out two years ago. Now,
with an upgraded arsenal of equipment, he is getting back
into live performance.
What are your feelings on the current state of the British
dance music scene?
For the last couple of years, the things that boomed it was
the acid house explosion, the independent techno label
explosion. And everyone was trying to jump on the techno
bandwagon, but it got that you had to make music to please
DJs, because otherwise it wouldn't sell. So everything got
very much the same. In the last year, I think a lot of
people have broken out of that and it's been the success of
people like me and The Orb and the Aphex Twin in particular,
that have liberated people from having to make records for
DJs. Within the last year, the whole techno market has
switched over dramatically, from Vinyl 12 inches to CD
albums, which has also had a definite impact. Which one is
the cause and which is the effect is hard to say. People are
becoming aware of a history that goes back to beyond 1986
and starting to listen to German electronic music and early
Kraftwerk in large numbers, which they never did before.
What first attracted you to the music?
I've been into avant garde music for about 10 or 15 years,
and I've never been interested in pop music. It was never
enough for me. I suppose a key point was when I went to see
Steve Reich in 1983 and I suddenly thought 'I want to be
doing this.' This has got all the things that I like in
music and none of the things that are boring.
What impact does being also a DJ have on your music?
It's vital. In England, DJs have had all the importance, DJs
are the taste-makers. Without DJs' support, you won't get
your music heard. It did occur to me a year ago that nearly
all the worthwhile techno music coming out wasn't getting
heard, because DJs didn't have the bullocks to play it.
They're so concerned with making people dance. For the last
three years I've totally thrown this idea out the window,
and of course, I've been doing rooms where nobody's dancing,
everybody's all lying down, which opens up far more
possibilities for what type of music you can play. I've been
playing a much, much wider range of music, and I guess
although Alex will get the credit for the first chill-out
room and use of the word, I've got the credit for inventing
a way of mixing all this music, which basically to use modal
music and have it all annotated by keys, and to mix keys
together instead of beats. And now I'm seeing a whole new
generation of DJs all copying this.
You've been making your own music for quite a while. What
was it like in the beginning?
I started off with one-man synthesizer music and went on to
one-man sampler music, and I used to go out with instruments
that would only hold one sample at a time, so each track was
just one sound, very minimal. But then I got an Emax in '85
and have been using that ever since.
How do you feel about the renewed interest in analog
equipment?
Part of it is a vote of no-confidence in the current
equipment, for a lot of people it's saying 'we need the
knobs.' It was something that I predicted, and it's got to
such a state in England that the prices of analog
synthesizers have got completely ridiculous. They're about
three to four times what they are state-side, which is why I
buy mine in the States! Britain's got a lot to catch up,
quite honestly, because all of Europe, especially Germany,
has a type of music called electronic music. In England,
they don't. They have obviously pop-electronic and
industrial and stuff like that, but there really is no
equivalent to German electronic music, and there are really
no electronic music studios in the whole of England, apart
Peter Gabriel's, which is surprising.
Why do you think Europe has been quicker to embrace this
style of music?
I don't know, but music in England is very different from in
Europe. In Europe there are lots and lots of different
marginal musics that co-exist happily side by side. In
England, it's very tribal, one thing is in and everything
else is out, and the press always concentrates on one thing
at a time. It used to be even more hysterical than it is
now. In a way, now the audience has fragmented because
techno and rock have their separate identities. England's
music industry is quite different from the rest of the world
somehow, and somehow it works and does produce good things.
Did the media's latching onto rave culture play a big role?
It massively popularized the rave and made it the moral
panic of the day. Without coming to England, it's very hard
to imagine how large and how all pervasive the house and
techno scene is. It's the dominant mode of music, it's not a
marginal music. It is pop music, and everything else is
marginal now. There are so many forms of it. I do get the
feeling that America is the last country to have understood
it and has the least understanding of it. People who haven't
been here can't know what we're talking about, because it is
so big over here.
Did that hurt the scene, because of too many people were
trying to cash in on it, or help it, by opening the door for
new talent?
There's always bad commercial stuff coming out, and when
there's money involved, bad commercial people will get into
it. House music, of course, was commercialized to death, and
really is in a sick way. Nowadays, it's ambient music.
Eventually the same thing will happen, but at the moment
it's still very, very healthy. There is a flood of records
coming out, but most of them are not on major labels and are
actually very good.
Are the fans smart enough to seek out innovative material
rather than being satisfied with the commercial stuff?
I think in the last year we've created a discerning, indie,
alternative techno audience. People are looking for techno
that is clichŽ-free and is very distinctly removed from
either hardcore or garage, because both those are now very,
very narrow and boring and drive me crazy. I think a year
ago most people didn't understand the difference between
techno and hardcore and I guess this year they've learned
it. Hardcore is really despised by all but a tiny minority
at the moment - those people have pushed themselves off the
end of a cliff, really.
Do you think the smaller size of England making it easier
for the indie labels made the music catch on faster than in
America?
I think it's because of the power of magazines. Because
magazines like NME, Melody Maker - they don't have the power
they had in the 70s, but they still have the power to break
a label if they get behind a DJ or band or a label. They
will break them more often than not. So it only really takes
one mad person on the music papers to back you. To fix all
the radio stations in America, you have to have an awful lot
of money, and in England there are people who will back a
band just because they believe in them. The bigger the music
industry is and the more money there is in it, the more
vested interest they have in preventing any sort of change.
Of course, they've got lots of money vested in boring, old
fashioned artists and the change is coming now. It only
really took a little bit of unscrewing the hinges and then
the door fell off. I think now we're going to see a real
explosion of truly liberated music this year from Europe as
a result of the ambient explosion. It won't just be a load
of Aphex impersonators or Orb impersonators or Morris
impersonators, it will be something new and original.
Does the length of ambient tracks present a problem in
marketing it?
Well, obviously, it's not three minute radio-friendly music.
It's 70 minute, lie-on-the-floor music. It doesn't have a
lot of teeny appeal, but on the other hand it's proving to
appeal to all age groups. We're selling records across the
board, in all sorts of different shops: dance shops, indie
shops, and hippie and new age shops.
What is your approach to live shows? Do you use DATS?
There is a place to use DATs as a sound source, but rather
than that, I'd just put things on CDs anyway. When I used to
do my live shows, I used to use turntables and CD players as
part of the live gig, and that's a different thing entirely,
because I wanted to completely blur the boundary between
live performance and DJing. I used to perform live stuff out
of the DJ booth, and the idea was no one would know which
one was an import record and which one was a track. So if
they couldn't tell the difference, then it meant that my
tracks were good as the Chicago tracks.
What do you think of bands that rely almost entirely on
DATs, not playing or manipulating anything live?
I think the record companies will soon be trying to promote
the pretty techno acts. They'll be trying to sell some sort
of Marky Mark of techno. With acts like that, they won't be
making the music anyway, so there's no way they could be
performing it live. They'd just be miming it and it would be
horrible, we could go boo-hiss and them.
I hold a strong view that techno belongs to the people that
actually make it, not to the accountants and record
companies and even DJs, really. It belongs to people who
actually know something about computers and technology and
for too long these people have been making records for
peanuts, for famous DJs. And these people have got to break
out and do their own things now.
What is the next stop for electronic music?
The big next technological change will be in the abolition
of tape, because people are going towards direct disk
recording, and it's definitely going to have effects in ways
that we can't foresee yet, given that it allows you to do
lots of non-destructive edits. I would guess it would allow
a lot of more improvisation and choosing the best bit, a lot
more added to the process. Like with sampling, people will
also find boring things to do with it that we haven't even
thought of yet that are tedious and dull.
New things have got to happen in the digital domain. I'd
like to see new types of digital processing, not just
emulating reverbs and delays.
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
The Other Two
By Bob Gourley
With New Order's Bernard Sumner in Electronic and Peter
Hook in Revenge, it was only natural for Gillian Gilbert and
Stephen Morris to also do a side project. Released under
the name The Other Two, their "The Other Two and You" album
is probably the strongest of all the New Order side
projects. Unfortunately, the collapse of Factory Records,
the loss of the cover art and other unforeseen delays made
it come out two years late.
Now, the album has finally been released by Warner
Bros., and the group feels relieved to finally get it out.
"It was like, 'for god's sake, let's get this thing out
so that we can get on to some new stuff,'" says Morris. "In
the intervening two years, we'd gotten nearly enough stuff
to do another album. It was really a matter of 'please, when
can we get it out.'"
With Hook and Sumner off on their other projects,
Gilbert and Morris had spent their time creating soundtrack
music for television. Most of it was for British programs,
though they did re-work some music for "America's Most
Wanted" as a favor to a director they knew. The soundtrack
work led them to start up The Other Two.
"We were quite happy doing that [soundtrack work], but
like anything, really, you get a bit fed up with it and it's
not really an ends in itself because nobody buys the record,
we're on TV for like 30 seconds for something," says Morris.
"So we thought we've got all this stuff we'd written for
television, let's turn it into an album. But we didn't sit
down and say 'let's write an album."
The first Other Two single, "Tasty Fish," came out in
Europe in 1991 and was the band's only release until the
album came out in Britain just before Christmas. The album
had been previously scheduled for release twice, most
recently in early 1993.
Within the band, Morris handles the computers and
programming, as he says that "Gillian has the innate ability
to make any computer running a sequence program crash, it's
uncanny." Gilbert comes up with ideas on a four-track set up
and then the two get together to fit the pieces together.
The Other Two have been recording in their home studio with
Morris doing most of the engineering, though in the future
they hope to work in outside studios with others behind the
board. Gilbert says that this will give them more time to
work together and focus in on the music itself. But keeping
things simple has come as a relief to the band after
spending so much time working within New Order.
"In New Order, there's four people so everything's got
to be a compromise," says Morris."Bernard writes his own
vocal lines and quite a lot of the music, so really you're
waiting for him most of time. What is kind of a fun thing
about the Other Two is that it's just us two. With New Order
you go on tour and there's hundreds of people involved with
it and little simple things seem to get unnecessarily
complicated."
When they started working on the Other Two material,
they had intended to bring in someone else for vocals. The
duo couldn't figure out what type of singer they wanted and
found themselves with a bunch of completed tracks in need of
vocals, so Gilbert decided to fill take on the task herself.
"I never wanted to be a singer, it was just purely by
accident, really," she says. "Stephen Hague had encouraged
me to take singing lessons, but I don't think I've ever sung
in front of any more than two people! It's going to be a bit
strange. When we did the New Order tour, I thought 'god, I
could never do what Bernard was doing.' So I don't know what
gigging will be like."
Gillian and Morris have been writing material all along
and would ideally like to have another album out within the
year. The group is at the stage now to start adding lyrics
to the new material, but the delay in the release of "The
Other Two And You" has been holding them back.
"It's hard writing anything new, because we just wanted
to see how well this one would do and how people like it,"
says Gilbert. "It keeps you going to have feedback from
other people, so we can't really get it out of the way until
it's been out. When it's been out and we've got some singles
off of it we can get back into the other lot."
Gilbert and Morris have yet to play out as The Other
Two but they hope to do so this year. While Gilbert is
nervous about singing live, the group is eager to perform
some of the new material. Nothing is firm yet, but the group
has started thinking about how they will present themselves
live.
"It's really a bit difficult deciding how to do it,
whether you should have a band or just be two people," says
Morris. "I'd like to do it a bit different, with oil lamps
and computer projection, something visually interesting."
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
_7#-ø(~ø&$&$&$&$&$&2J&|&|&|&|
&ý&-&-ƒ'xx&|'d ((5*(_&$(5(&(5(5(_(5(5(5(5(5(5 On "Acid
Technology" (Instinct), New York's Prototype 909 prove how
powerful old analog instruments can be when used creatively.
While every techno band in existence seems to use the Roland
TR 808 and TB 303, few use the equipment to its full
potential. P900 take the machines to create a flowing, ever
changing sound that couldn't exist without them. P909
is a trio of Taylor 808 (Havoc Music, Human Mesh Dance),
Dietrich Schoenenamn (X-Out) and Jason "BPMF" Szosteck
(Decameron). The following interview with the band was
conducted over the Internet.Was the material on the album
thought out beforehand or did it all come out of
experimenting with the equipment?BPMF: Not "thought out",
but conceived in general terms knowing that the process will
ensure, spontaneous, unthought of moments of artistic
syncronisity.TAYLOR808: right, ok.DIETRICH: It was thought
out a bit, but the idea of an album came to us half way
through. We decided to hook the analog gear up that day,
knowing that with only using these certain pieces we would
be restricted to a certain sound.TAYLOR808: yeah, it was
basically our first time using the gear in this way, so it
was a lot of experimentation. this album was unlike
anything we did before.Mark Gage told me the Vapour Space
track "Gravitational Arch of 10" came about from a mistake
made in wiring the analog gear together and wouldn't even
admit to how long it took to create (since it was so quick).
Have you ever had similar happy accidents?TAYLOR808: sure,
we get them all the time. those types of mistakes are
inherent in this kind of music.DIETRICH: The OThis is AcidO
track was the first P-909 track ever done. Taylor and i had
the JP-6 arpeggiator going and the 303 going with itOs tempo
almost all the way up. We tweaked both of them and played
with the mix. ThatOs what started it all.Do you have
specific roles within the band? BPMF: At first we just
rotated stations, i.e. Dietch would be on the 808, I would
be on the Jupe, T would be on the 303 and then the next
track we would all cover different machines. Gradually we
began to specialize, but committed less to the machines and
more to elements, as in; T808 on production and rhythm,
Dietch on sounds/rhythm and 303, and I focus on melody and
chords etc.. Still there are no clear cut "walls" we are all
free to inject ideas into any elements, we really produce by
committee more than any project I've ever been involved in.
We're on the same wavelength as it were.DIETRICH: taylorOs
the one who wakes up first. i sleep the latest and jason
makes the buckets of cappuccino.TAYLOR808: *laughs* ...we
only have set roles when we play live.. not really in the
studio.DIETRICH: sim city 2000 What is Prototype 909's live
show like? BPMF: IT SLAMS!! As much as possible, we program
"on the fly". I have headphones and monitor the sounds and
sequences -TAYLOR808: the szosteknologies device.001 !BPMF:
- I program into the SH 101s before Dietch is given the OK
to put them in the mix (if he even wants to) at his
discretion. Meanwhile T is putting sounds into the 808, 606,
909 patterns and mixing them in and out, while Dietch
changes from 303 groove to groove. Amazingly, we do this all
with almost no plan, little communication, we really become
ONE, one acid making machine. Basically we agree on a
handful of 303 patterns, and I right down what keys they're
in, and Dietch warns me before we go to another one, that
way, I have time to program SH lines in the right
keys.DIETRICH: i like to think of it as three people on the
same vibe doing what they do best.TAYLOR808: bleep. From a
technological stand point, this music could have been made
over a decade ago, yet no one was doing it back then. Why do
you think that is? BPMF: Technologically driven music was at
a reactionary stage in the early eighties. Desperately
seeking acceptance by the mainstream, a futile succession of
hapless artistic compromises were sought in which artist
tried to "humanize" their music by taking the tech out of
the techno. To me the whole process was maddening!
Technology is the ultimate expression of humanity. Mankind
expresses its unique capacity to reason, to dream through
technological advances. I always heard the SUPREME
expression of man's longing in technological music. I feel
that only since the acid house movement of the late eighties
had it been feasible to express the unabashed joy of techno
experimentation and be understood by a generation that
requires no excuses.TAYLOR808: well, guitars were invented
before rock and roll.. i think itOs just an evolution
thing.BPMF: ...and long hair before heavy metal.DIETRICH:
i donOt think the latest technology defines a certain timeOs
sound or how people use it. it is hard to believe that no
one circa 1983 used a 303 like the way people do today.
iOm still trying to find a new wave song with a 303 bass
line.TAYLOR808: if anyone finds one, please let us know!Will
P909 always remain completely analog? BPMF: No, as a point
of fact: we never were. As T likes to point out, there are
little digital "computers" inside all our
machines.TAYLOR808: yeah.. true... i mean, weOll remain 90%
analog when we play live, but there is just way too much
cool gear out there to limit ourselves to just analog in the
studio. we did the analog thing, we did it so it sounds
like no one else, now weOre going to move on. the analog
gear will always play a big role, it just wonOt be the only
thing we use. we would like to do separate albums based on
certain types of a gear. do an Oberheim album with the
Ooberheim systemO. the DX, OB-8, DS-X... etc.. that would be
cool... do an ARP album... weOve been doing some crazy
analog ambient stuff lately that will hopefully show up on
our new album.. using the sample input circuitry as a sound
source... weird stuff.DIETRICH: weOre not restricted in any
way. half our gear is digital.. the other half analog.. we
realize now, with the collaboration and all the gear, that
we really have no limits.TAYLOR808: the KPR slams though.
What is in the future for the band?TAYLOR808: more
gear.DIETRICH: well, weOre trying to obtain about.. 7 or so
303Os.. and then we have this great plan: we want to smash
one, or light it on fire at a gig.. but, we need 7 so we can
spare one. and we want to do it at a big gig, Mayday in
Germany or something so lots of people see it...TAYLOR808:
seriously! weOre really going to do this.. we just have to
find 7 303Os... or at least enough to the point where we
donOt need another one.. maybe 5.... and of course weOll
still have the damn thing plugged in sending sound to the
DAT so we can record itOs last squelch.DIETRICH: i want to
see peoples faces when we do it.TAYLOR808: weOll have to
base an album around a burning 303.DIETRICH: *laughs* BPMF:
the future? BLISS, everlasting harmony with the human
spirit, or something.TAYLOR808: the future? you murdered
the future...MC EARTH ANGEL: oh, great.contact P-909 on
internet: taylor808: t808@mindvox.phantom.comBPMF:
BPMF@delphi.commc earth angel interruption (counter
decremented to zero) courtesy of the imagine nation in
cahoots with the crash dummy syndicate and the square wave
fetish team under license from and c 1994 havoc music. any
inquiries about his appearance can be directed to the crash
dummy syndicate @ 35 connecticut avenue greenwich, CT
06830. or CIS: 72521,266. or angelzero@aol.com Othe future
is on sale; invest now with the crash dummy syndicate.OuS$H
d
`UU56IKMá ID56bc_`"ùAAFGD¥•“/0_7#N$$$$$2 RRRR
\
ffƒHxRA …*/$”/SpiceLabby Bob Gourley Twenty-four-year-
old Oliver Lieb truly represents the future of electronic
music. Under the name SpiceLab, the German musician has
created "Lost In Spice," a collection of long, instrumental
electronic tracks that don't really fit into an existing
genre. The songs have definite elements of ambient, but
there is also heavier, more industrial-like sonic
experimentation. Most importantly, it's an album that can be
enjoyed outside of the club setting. Lieb first got
involved with music when he bought a bass guitar at age 15
and started experimenting with jazz, funk and soul. Soon, he
became tired of both the instrument and styles of music he
was working with and moved on. "I sold that equipment
and started making electronic music," says Lieb. "I like
being able to play complete songs and wanted to get a record
contract." When asked if there were any particular bands
who influenced him to get into experimental music, he says
that he was "very much into Pink Floyd stuff." Lieb's
first release was 1989's "System" (Abfahrt/ZYX), which was
recorded under the name Force Legato. In 1992, he teamed up
with DJ Jorg as Psilocybin and put out three releases. Later
that year, Lieb signed to Harthouse and put out the
"SpiceLab" EP. Originally, Lieb wanted to call the
project Space Lab. He didn't think he could legally get use
of that name, so he looked to a favorite movie ("Dune") and
changed it. SpiceLab's debut album, "Lost In Spice,"
came out in Germany last year and just got a US release in
February. Usually, Lieb just starts composing tracks
and later decides which of his many projects it will be used
for. But in recording "Lost In Spice," he was making a
conscious effort to create a collection of electronic tracks
that people could listen to at home. Having a strong sense
of direction allowed him to make the LP in only nine days.
"I made up my mind long before I started, because I wanted
to have the idea of what I will do," he says. "Then the
rest, getting sounds and putting the songs together, doesn't
take that long." Like many electronic musicians, Lieb
strongly favors the older equipment. His particular
favorites are the Juno 106 and Pearl Syncussion. For the
live shows, Lieb will sample most of his old gear, then use
the Juno, samplers, sequencer and a master keyboard for the
performance. Lieb does not use DATs, and he looks down upon
those who do. "They shouldn't play live, " he says.
"First, they shouldn't bother playing live, second they
shouldn't put up that type of faking. The people don't know
and they think they're a good live band, but all the songs
are the same as the records." Lieb will re-work his
tracks so there is room for live keyboards, and then he will
also work at the Juno to vary the sounds. He says that his
live sets sound a lot like his maxi-singles, but there is
always room for the human element. Though SpiceLab is
currently his main project, Lieb will continue to record
under different names. He may not have time to continue all
of his musical endeavors, but being able to do other styles
on the side is important to Lieb as an artist. Lieb has
done many shows in Germany, Norway, Austria and England, and
has done a few dates in the US. In the future, he hopes to
do a full-scale US tour. The musician has several
projects coming up in the next few months. Ambush, his more
tribal project, has a new LP coming out in April. Lieb will
also be working on some EBM, with a new German writer adding
vocals. Copyright 1994 Bob
GourleyuAzo/ø7o/`+N,¥+~.e¥l0lWwp9_~UU¦.e¥l0lW~56y¥-sö
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b"ü_'ü~'ü~-'üYE`x1†oThe Orb
by Bob Gourley
The Orb has never been known for being normal, so it
comes as no surprise that they have released a double live
album, something virtually unheard of for an electronic
band. "Live 93" brings together tracks recorded from three
separate dates last year, and the often radically different
interpretations of the songs makes it essential for any Orb
fan's collections.
Leader Dr. Alex Paterson calls the LP "a stop gap,
really," as the group mainly wanted to get something out and
was being held back by legal hassles with their record
company. The Orb felt that Big Life wasn't treating them
fairly, so they decided to take them to court in an effort
to get off the label. Ultimately, they settled out of court,
but the whole incident lasted from October 1992 to November
1993.
"It was literally two weeks before the album was
actually released that we sorted the whole thing out with
the live album," says Paterson. "We could have been put in a
position of releasing an album without signing a record
contract or signing away from a record contract. But we were
quite prepared to just go ahead and break all the rules,
because they seemed to be able to break them anyway and get
away with it."
Paterson says that since Big Life had top ten hits
with re-releases of "Perpetual Dawn" and "Little Fluffy
Clouds," it looked like they would re-release "The Orb's
Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld" and put out a "greatest
hits" compilation. The Orb are strongly against that, so
they see "Live 93" as a way to "just sort of bury the past
in a nice way, as opposed to letting them take control of
the past and put out all these re-issues."
Another major problem The Orb had with their old
label was a lack of support for an American tour planned for
early last year. All the shows were ultimately canceled.
"It got to the point where they were telling us that
our records were selling 100,000 copies and getting a gold
disk, but 'sorry you can't tour because there's no money',"
says Paterson.
The group made up for this by doing a short, five-
date tour in the late fall. Paterson says that with all the
US fans have been put through, from "The Orb's Adventures
Beyond The Ultraworld" being watered down to a single album
to the cancellation of the last tour, "to get a reaction
like we did in October was brilliant!"
For the live shows, the Orb added an additional bassist
and drummer (ex-Killing Joke member Paul Fergusson recently
joined to take on that role). There are various keyboards,
turntables and effects on stage, and all the sequences come
of three ADATs running though a 24-track mixing desk.
"There's four of use on stage and we can basically re-
arrange the whole multitrack, so we get a live mix every
night," says Paterson on the set-up. "It's quite bizarre,
really, but it works."
According to Paterson, there were several reason for
culling the material for the album from several different
shows.
"We were under lot of pressure from the management to
release the Glastonbury set, but we didn't want to fall into
the syndrome of putting out a Glastonbury album," explains
Paterson. "So we decided to do an Orb live album and take
some stuff from the Glastonbury set, take some stuff from a
really small club in Tokyo and then from the Copenhagen gig,
because that one is very special to us. It's nice to put
that on the album so people will always remember it, and
those who weren't there, we can always tell about it."
That legendary Copenhagen gig took place on a small
island, with the Orb doing a set at sunset and one at
sunrise. The Orb played on a stage in the harbor that
Paterson describes as a "massive ghetoblaster on water" in
front of 4,500 fans. Eight days of preparation were needed
to set everything up.
The island contained an old fortress, where Paterson
says Napoleon had lost use of his arm. According to
Paterson, Jean-Michael Jarre had wanted to do a show on the
same island but was refused permission.
"The let us play there because they thought we could
exorcise all the ghosts from it," says Paterson.
Though he refuses to give any details, Paterson says
that The Orb has begun working on doing similarly special
shows in other parts of the world. He says that there will
definitely be something big in America in the future, as
doing unusual performances that people will be willing to
travel to beats trying to go everywhere with a traditional
show.
The Orb are currently working on a new album, which may
be finished by the end of March. Paterson says it will
probably take a little longer, as the group has just put the
finishing touches on their own studio. The LP will feature
more live instruments, and have a slightly different sound
than the Orb's past releases.
""I think we're growing up a bit," says Paterson. "The
third album is going to be moodier, after our experience of
the last year and a half. It's quite bizarre."
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
Xorcist
by Bob Gourley
With a growing number of American industrial bands making
guitars figure prominently in their music, Xorcist's sound
comes as a nice change. The solo project of Bat, who also
runs the CyberDen BBS, Xorcist creates highly structured,
entirely electronic, "cyberindustrial" dance music. The
songs are highly aggressive and manage to avoid repetition
without adopting traditional musical techniques. Xorcist
currently has an album out, "Damned Souls," as well as an
ep, "Bitches." The CD version of the latter also includes
"Smells Like Teen Spirit," a cover of the Nirvana song that
Bat did for the Re-Constriction "Shut Up Kitty" compilation.
Bat recently completed the second Xocist album, "Phantoms",
and took the time to do the following interview by e-mail.
What made you start recording as Xorcist and what type of
musical background (influences/experience) did you come
from?
What made me start recording was the desire to merely get my
music out there. I wasn't too concerned how many people
would think it sucked or was great, but was more interested
in creating something from scratch. Taking it to completion
without any outside help. Xorcist is pretty much just
myself, not because I don't want to work with anyone else,
but because if you want something done right, you better do
it yourself.
Influences range from that dark period of time known as 'New
Wave' to classical to punk to soundtracks to ... it's all
over the place. I was even at the 2nd US Festival... and NOT
on New Wave day.. Heavy Metal day... another dark page from
Xorcist's past.
Experience has drawn from just that. Hanging out and
talking, working with people in the field, be it keyboard
techs, performers, sound designers, etc.
How many releases have you had?
Official? 2.5 - Damned Souls CD, Bitches EP and the Bitches
CD w/Smells. Unofficial? (Demo tapes, compilations, etc.)
Somewhere around 15-20.
This style of music doesn't seem radio-friendly enough to
becomemainstream, but then again noisy indie guitar rock
didn't seem like it would either but has. Do you see
aggressive electronic music as something that will come up
from the underground in a big way? Do you even want it to?
Every dog has its day. People are getting bored to death of
the grunge/rap thang and this kind of music always pokes its
head out once in a while only to be replaced by another form
of 'alternative' rap or grunge... I think it's going to have
to be a situation where a station just has to play it, for a
few hours a day here and there. But before some major FM
station does this, LA will have to look a lot more like
Blade Runner.
What made you cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?
It was suggested to me at approximately the same time I was
thinking of actually covering it. The 'spirit' aspect had a
natural Xorcist ring to it, and I already had samples for it
from 6 months ago during a sample-fest... so when Chase from
Cargo suggested it, that got me off my ass to record it.
Do you play live at all? If so, is it a problem adapting the
music to the live setting?
I did play quite a few shows. Toured from S.F. to San Diego
and back twice. It's a blast. But Xorcist shows are
technically taxing as well as physically. Adapting the stage
to the correct environment has always been my motto... but
each show has been different in a way... The place is
usually a mess by the time the show is over... things like
broken bits of statuettes, smashed keyboards, burnt bible
pages, cylume light paint... etc...
Regarding your live show, do you use other musicians? What
type of instrumentation do you use and how do you deal with
the sequences (live or DAT)?
The first Xorcist show(s) were just myself on stage with my
entire studio with drum pads, 5 keyboards, and an Atari
ST... It was live sequencing and playing nightmare complete
with head mike...
From there, I had other musicians help out, giving them
parts to play that I would drop out of the arrangement and
if they ended up improvising a bit, that was cool as it gave
things it's live feel. The last show equipment wise,
consisted of 3 members.
Luz Sid: EPS + Juno 106 both live
Mr. Meanor: EPS live. 2 Drum pads to central PM-16 & a
cymbal.
Bat: EPS + ??? (could be a SY-22, DSS-1, whatever I feel
like draggin) live.
4 Drum pads linked to central PM-16.
Rhythm Stick linked to PM-16 Midi In
PM-16 MIDI out routed to THRU
PM-16 THRU routed to Bat's EPS for live triggering of
sounds
PM-16 MIDI THRU Split to Atari ST which was programmed to
display graphic images depending on the instrument
triggered. (Video Drums)
DAT : Yes, this beasty provides the backing tracks. About 40-
60% of the material. It's more reliable then a sequencer.
Spoken words samples seem to play a big part in your music.
Do you have any favorite sources? When in the song writing
process do you select the samples? Do you ever actually
write around them?
Samples are/were a big part of some songs, yes. Sometimes,
I'll come across samples that sound either so intense or so
silly that they must be used. I usually find the sample
first and stock up so to say. 50% of the samples are just
pulled because of their content, and then others are pulled
as they inspire. Writing around samples is kinda a given, I
think. It sounds pretty weird to just plop samples randomly
into a song with no real meaning...
Do you tend to dedicate equal time to Xorcist and CyberDen?
Yes, but usually not at the same time. Right now, CyberDen
is the main focus as it needs to be really stabilized,
although I'll take 24 hour breaks to work on new Xorcist
material, such as the new stuff for Phantoms I am working on
now which should be done this week.
Do you see advances in the "information superhighway" making
traditional music distribution obsolete? If so, will this
have a positive or negative effect on the artists?
Not while we're alive. It's gonna be 100 years before we're
really going to be able to easily, inexpensively and with
little hassle, be able to log onto a network, stick a disc
into a drive and tape a few buttons to then be presented
with a band's latest CD 5 minutes later. The technology to
do that is too expensive right now. Sure, it can be done,
but not for the consumer Joe... Anyways, where would we be
able to hang out if not at the local record store?
What is your full name?
Peter Stone, but I adopted the name Bat after doing a show
with another band who also had a singer who went by a name
that was often truncated to "X" - Since people knew me as
Xorcist, (Also X), it got real confusing that night. Hence,
Bat was assigned to me because of my love for the creatures.
How did you go about getting signed?
I spent hundreds of dollars making my own demo tapes, duping
them, printing and meticulously cutting out my own tape
inserts, etc.... and sent them everywhere. I finally got a
call back from a legitimate person, Don Blanchard, who
ironically had found my tape at the bottom of his backpack 2
months after I gave it to him. He told me he was interested
in starting a label and wanted to use Xorcist as its first
release. The rest is history.
Also, the reason I say legitimate is because there were a
lot of shit heads out there who didn't have a clue... be
careful out there.
Autechre
by Bob Gourley
"Most of the music that we make is something we would
buy," says Sean Booth, one half of British electronic duo
Autechre. "We're driven by the urge to be as good as the
people that we really admire."
From the sound of "Incunabula," (Wax Trax!/TVT),
Autechre's first full-length US release, it seems as if the
group has achieved its goal. The instrumental electronic
soundscapes bring together analog and digital textures in a
very unique way. Listening to the album brings several ideas
to mind of who those people are that Autechre are driven to
as good as, but it is clear that Autechre has succeeded in
bringing together many electronic styles into their own
unique sound.
Autechre is comprised of Booth and Rob Brown, who met
through a mutual friend six years ago and started DJing
together before starting up the band. The group had its
first release at the end of 1991, though they got ripped off
by their first label.
Autechre's break came along when they approached Warp
and got onto the "Artificial Intelligence" compilation. That
release was put out to show the public the potential of
experimental electronic dance music, and it did succeed at
opening up the doors for new styles.
"At the time, the dance scene was going really bad, it
was all disjointed," says Booth. "There was like garage and
there was break beat techno and there was nothing else other
than the stuff that was drifting through from Europe or
America occasionally."
Autechre's music brings together their electro and acid
influences, with a desire to avoid thinking about music in
traditional terms. Within the band, neither member has a
specific role. In fact, some of the tracks are created
solely by one member and put out under the band name.
"It's totally free style, we just do whatever we feel
like," says Booth. "It literally depends of what bit of gear
you're setting up when you're writing, whatever you feel
like messing with, you mess with. So if Rob's got a drum
pattern I might do the chords and key shifts, and it might
be totally the opposite on another track"
Most of Autechre's music is created with a combination
of analog, sampler, digital and drum machine sounds. The
group is not so concerned about the equipment itself, as
they feel too many artists focus on the sounds rather then
creating an interesting song to use them in.
"It's trendy to get a 303 or a 909, so everybody's
going to do it," says Booth. "They're not just doing it
because they like the sounds, they're doing it because
they've heard the sounds on other records. We do use analog
gear, I'm not saying that it's all crap, and we use digital
gear. But we try to use it well, as opposed to just using
it. A lot of bands are just using analog gear and thinking
that makes them good."
Despite the increased popularity in analog
instruments, Booth doesn't see it leading to overkill
anytime soon, since there is so much that can be done with
the machines.
"You can program an infinite number of sounds on a
piece of equipment that's truly analog," he says. "You turn
the knob a millionth of a millimeter, and it will make a
difference. There are no limits to analog gear, so no one's
ever going to reach its full potential."
Autechre's desire to push the technology to the limits
comes through in their live show, where the music is harder
and more improvisational than their studio work. The group
doesn't care about how they look on stage, preferring the
audiences to concentrate on the music. Autechre also doesn't
care about performing in a traditional sense and prove that
a truly "live" set can be performed without actually playing
any of the parts.
"We don't physically touch keys," explains Booth. "Some
of the work's done because the sequences are in the gear.
When we get on stage we completely improvise what we've got
in the gear. We're good at jamming off each other because
that's how we work in the studio. It's different every time.
We just sort of mess around with the sequences and do
whatever we can with them."
Eventually, Autechre would like to do 2 hour long live
shows, though they are currently limited by their equipment.
The group enjoys playing out, but prefers to be in their
studio recording. As a result, they do mainly one-off shows
and don't see themselves doing a full-scale tour until at
least a few years from now (Autechre recently did a short US
tour that also featured The Orb's DJ Lewis).
Musically, the group's live sets are completely
different from their studio work. The tracks are much
harder, and in order to keep the show special, Autechre do
not release any of it.
Sifting through all their material to select what they
do want to put out can be problem for the band, as they are
highly prolific in the studio. Autechre will try to release
as many singles as possible so that they can include bonus
tracks, but they still find themselves with material left
over. However, the group has no plans to start releasing
under pseudonyms, like artists such as Aphex Twin have.
"There's no point," says Booth. "There's various
reasons for that, but we just don't see the point in
diluting yourself like that."
Autechre have a new EP coming out soon, as well as some
plans they are currently keeping secret that involve
collaborations with other artists.
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
DDT
by Lila Lieberman
What is the fate of an "industrial" band when it is
forced by circumstance to exist within the electronic music
vacuum of Boston, MA? Noel McKenna (drum programming and
vocals), Elaine Walker (keyboards and sequencing) and Lisa
Sirois (drums, samples and most recently, vocals) know only
too well. The trio have been together for over two years
now, and have watched as their music and persona have
evolved while the rest of the scene continues to stagnate.
The origins of the band lie in the meeting between Lisa
and Noel at Cambridge club Manray. Elaine, who graduated
from Berklee College of Music with a music synthesis degree,
joined later. From the beginning DDT was an industrial band.
"You're influenced by the music you like best," says
Noel. "And in our case we all really liked, and we all still
really like industrial music. And we wanted to emulate that.
And being a young band, we tried to imitate it."
The influence of prototypical industrial bands
initially permeated both their music and stage show. Says
Elaine, "I used to wear a fake machine gun, a machete in my
boot, and we would have fake skin and fake blood, and we
looked like burn victims."
"We used the typical gas mask stuff," adds Lisa. "We
didn't use something if we didn't think it was industrial,
so we ended up using all of these things that were already
used by every other band, which of course, we didn't know."
Things are different now. "At the beginning, I think we
tired to be a certain way," says Lisa. "Then we forgot what
we were trying to be, so we just ended up becoming our three
personalities instead of something that we tried to be."
This metamorphosis has allowed the band member's
individual influences to emerge more forcefully.
"We come from different backgrounds and I think we
have different attitudes, but it works together," says
Elaine.
This eclectic mix includes Elaine's classical
music training, Lisa and Noel's art background, and Noel's
interest in techno music.
"What happened was the whole rave/techno scene, and
Noel really caught onto that and he really likes it," says
Elaine. "And I hated it, with a passion, and Lisa just
didn't care. She just thought it was funny. So Noel wanted
to go in that direction and I was almost fighting it and I
finally found a way to make it kind of work were I didn't
hate it so much. Actually, I like the sound we've
developed."
"Now we're being influenced by techno and house," adds
Noel. "I mean if you look at it, it's very closely related
to industrial as far as I'm concerned. If industrial didn't
exist and people didn't start making music with computers,
techno and trance and house and all of the rest couldn't
exist either."
How have these genres impacted upon DDT's music?
"There's a lot of beautiful music being made by a lot
of techno bands - a lot of legitimate, beautifully produced,
beautifully orchestrated music being made. And I think that
it would be really innovative to create a hybrid between a
lot of this really beautiful, beautifully layered music,
really euphoric, and add a touch of the aggressiveness and
the ugliness of traditional industrial music. It creates
kind of the perfect contradiction of something being very
beautiful and angst-ridden at the same time."
Is Boston ready for this? Elaine claims that, "There
isn't a music scene as far as our stuff goes."
Noel adds, "As far as being an 'electronic band' in
Boston, Boston is both good and bad. It's good in that
you're kind of one of a kind and you're kind of a novelty.
But very quickly the novelty wears off and you're just
ultimately met with a lot of prejudice. Boston is a very
traditional city as far as music goes. It's a city that's
prejudices against electronic music which is really bad and
the one thing that is probably the most discouraging thing
as far as being around here. It's kind of like a rock-n-roll
hell."
While DDT still intend to play in Boston with a new
stage show beginning mid-summer, they will be concentrating
upon larger and more appreciative audiences elsewhere, both
on a national and international level. They would like very
much to get signed, and have recently completed recording
four new songs. They continue to evolve.
"I think we've gone in a new direction, but we haven't
finished figuring out what that is," says Elaine. "We know
we're different and we have an idea of where we're going,
but it's not finished."
Lisa adds, "Well, we have a long way to go, but if we
were really finished then the band would be finished too. If
we had everything figured out then why even be in a band?"
DDT can be heard on Re-Constriction's "Shut Up Kitty"
compilation. An electronic DDT press kit can be found at all
of the same Internet sites as Chaos Control, as well as
American Online. For more info, email DDT at
ddt@world.std.com.
Irresistible Force
by Bob Gourley
Since his start in pirate radio a decade ago, Mixmaster
Morris has been a driving force in the British underground
dance scene. Being both a DJ and composer/performer, Morris
has seen both sides of the DJ-driven industry.
As resident DJ for the Shamen from 1989 to 1991, Morris
went out with the band for five tours. Now he is focusing on
his own music, released under the name Irresistible Force.
When acid house first hit, Morris was one of the first
performers to play it live, and he did over 300 shows
before taking a break from playing out two years ago. Now,
with an upgraded arsenal of equipment, he is getting back
into live performance.
What are your feelings on the current state of the British
dance music scene?
For the last couple of years, the things that boomed it was
the acid house explosion, the independent techno label
explosion. And everyone was trying to jump on the techno
bandwagon, but it got that you had to make music to please
DJs, because otherwise it wouldn't sell. So everything got
very much the same. In the last year, I think a lot of
people have broken out of that and it's been the success of
people like me and The Orb and the Aphex Twin in particular,
that have liberated people from having to make records for
DJs. Within the last year, the whole techno market has
switched over dramatically, from Vinyl 12 inches to CD
albums, which has also had a definite impact. Which one is
the cause and which is the effect is hard to say. People are
becoming aware of a history that goes back to beyond 1986
and starting to listen to German electronic music and early
Kraftwerk in large numbers, which they never did before.
What first attracted you to the music?
I've been into avant garde music for about 10 or 15 years,
and I've never been interested in pop music. It was never
enough for me. I suppose a key point was when I went to see
Steve Reich in 1983 and I suddenly thought 'I want to be
doing this.' This has got all the things that I like in
music and none of the things that are boring.
What impact does being also a DJ have on your music?
It's vital. In England, DJs have had all the importance, DJs
are the taste-makers. Without DJs' support, you won't get
your music heard. It did occur to me a year ago that nearly
all the worthwhile techno music coming out wasn't getting
heard, because DJs didn't have the bullocks to play it.
They're so concerned with making people dance. For the last
three years I've totally thrown this idea out the window,
and of course, I've been doing rooms where nobody's dancing,
everybody's all lying down, which opens up far more
possibilities for what type of music you can play. I've been
playing a much, much wider range of music, and I guess
although Alex will get the credit for the first chill-out
room and use of the word, I've got the credit for inventing
a way of mixing all this music, which basically to use modal
music and have it all annotated by keys, and to mix keys
together instead of beats. And now I'm seeing a whole new
generation of DJs all copying this.
You've been making your own music for quite a while. What
was it like in the beginning?
I started off with one-man synthesizer music and went on to
one-man sampler music, and I used to go out with instruments
that would only hold one sample at a time, so each track was
just one sound, very minimal. But then I got an Emax in '85
and have been using that ever since.
How do you feel about the renewed interest in analog
equipment?
Part of it is a vote of no-confidence in the current
equipment, for a lot of people it's saying 'we need the
knobs.' It was something that I predicted, and it's got to
such a state in England that the prices of analog
synthesizers have got completely ridiculous. They're about
three to four times what they are state-side, which is why I
buy mine in the States! Britain's got a lot to catch up,
quite honestly, because all of Europe, especially Germany,
has a type of music called electronic music. In England,
they don't. They have obviously pop-electronic and
industrial and stuff like that, but there really is no
equivalent to German electronic music, and there are really
no electronic music studios in the whole of England, apart
Peter Gabriel's, which is surprising.
Why do you think Europe has been quicker to embrace this
style of music?
I don't know, but music in England is very different from in
Europe. In Europe there are lots and lots of different
marginal musics that co-exist happily side by side. In
England, it's very tribal, one thing is in and everything
else is out, and the press always concentrates on one thing
at a time. It used to be even more hysterical than it is
now. In a way, now the audience has fragmented because
techno and rock have their separate identities. England's
music industry is quite different from the rest of the world
somehow, and somehow it works and does produce good things.
Did the media's latching onto rave culture play a big role?
It massively popularized the rave and made it the moral
panic of the day. Without coming to England, it's very hard
to imagine how large and how all pervasive the house and
techno scene is. It's the dominant mode of music, it's not a
marginal music. It is pop music, and everything else is
marginal now. There are so many forms of it. I do get the
feeling that America is the last country to have understood
it and has the least understanding of it. People who haven't
been here can't know what we're talking about, because it is
so big over here.
Did that hurt the scene, because of too many people were
trying to cash in on it, or help it, by opening the door for
new talent?
There's always bad commercial stuff coming out, and when
there's money involved, bad commercial people will get into
it. House music, of course, was commercialized to death, and
really is in a sick way. Nowadays, it's ambient music.
Eventually the same thing will happen, but at the moment
it's still very, very healthy. There is a flood of records
coming out, but most of them are not on major labels and are
actually very good.
Are the fans smart enough to seek out innovative material
rather than being satisfied with the commercial stuff?
I think in the last year we've created a discerning, indie,
alternative techno audience. People are looking for techno
that is clichŽ-free and is very distinctly removed from
either hardcore or garage, because both those are now very,
very narrow and boring and drive me crazy. I think a year
ago most people didn't understand the difference between
techno and hardcore and I guess this year they've learned
it. Hardcore is really despised by all but a tiny minority
at the moment - those people have pushed themselves off the
end of a cliff, really.
Do you think the smaller size of England making it easier
for the indie labels made the music catch on faster than in
America?
I think it's because of the power of magazines. Because
magazines like NME, Melody Maker - they don't have the power
they had in the 70s, but they still have the power to break
a label if they get behind a DJ or band or a label. They
will break them more often than not. So it only really takes
one mad person on the music papers to back you. To fix all
the radio stations in America, you have to have an awful lot
of money, and in England there are people who will back a
band just because they believe in them. The bigger the music
industry is and the more money there is in it, the more
vested interest they have in preventing any sort of change.
Of course, they've got lots of money vested in boring, old
fashioned artists and the change is coming now. It only
really took a little bit of unscrewing the hinges and then
the door fell off. I think now we're going to see a real
explosion of truly liberated music this year from Europe as
a result of the ambient explosion. It won't just be a load
of Aphex impersonators or Orb impersonators or Morris
impersonators, it will be something new and original.
Does the length of ambient tracks present a problem in
marketing it?
Well, obviously, it's not three minute radio-friendly music.
It's 70 minute, lie-on-the-floor music. It doesn't have a
lot of teeny appeal, but on the other hand it's proving to
appeal to all age groups. We're selling records across the
board, in all sorts of different shops: dance shops, indie
shops, and hippie and new age shops.
What is your approach to live shows? Do you use DATS?
There is a place to use DATs as a sound source, but rather
than that, I'd just put things on CDs anyway. When I used to
do my live shows, I used to use turntables and CD players as
part of the live gig, and that's a different thing entirely,
because I wanted to completely blur the boundary between
live performance and DJing. I used to perform live stuff out
of the DJ booth, and the idea was no one would know which
one was an import record and which one was a track. So if
they couldn't tell the difference, then it meant that my
tracks were good as the Chicago tracks.
What do you think of bands that rely almost entirely on
DATs, not playing or manipulating anything live?
I think the record companies will soon be trying to promote
the pretty techno acts. They'll be trying to sell some sort
of Marky Mark of techno. With acts like that, they won't be
making the music anyway, so there's no way they could be
performing it live. They'd just be miming it and it would be
horrible, we could go boo-hiss and them.
I hold a strong view that techno belongs to the people that
actually make it, not to the accountants and record
companies and even DJs, really. It belongs to people who
actually know something about computers and technology and
for too long these people have been making records for
peanuts, for famous DJs. And these people have got to break
out and do their own things now.
What is the next stop for electronic music?
The big next technological change will be in the abolition
of tape, because people are going towards direct disk
recording, and it's definitely going to have effects in ways
that we can't foresee yet, given that it allows you to do
lots of non-destructive edits. I would guess it would allow
a lot of more improvisation and choosing the best bit, a lot
more added to the process. Like with sampling, people will
also find boring things to do with it that we haven't even
thought of yet that are tedious and dull.
New things have got to happen in the digital domain. I'd
like to see new types of digital processing, not just
emulating reverbs and delays.
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
The Other Two
By Bob Gourley
With New Order's Bernard Sumner in Electronic and Peter
Hook in Revenge, it was only natural for Gillian Gilbert and
Stephen Morris to also do a side project. Released under
the name The Other Two, their "The Other Two and You" album
is probably the strongest of all the New Order side
projects. Unfortunately, the collapse of Factory Records,
the loss of the cover art and other unforeseen delays made
it come out two years late.
Now, the album has finally been released by Warner
Bros., and the group feels relieved to finally get it out.
"It was like, 'for god's sake, let's get this thing out
so that we can get on to some new stuff,'" says Morris. "In
the intervening two years, we'd gotten nearly enough stuff
to do another album. It was really a matter of 'please, when
can we get it out.'"
With Hook and Sumner off on their other projects,
Gilbert and Morris had spent their time creating soundtrack
music for television. Most of it was for British programs,
though they did re-work some music for "America's Most
Wanted" as a favor to a director they knew. The soundtrack
work led them to start up The Other Two.
"We were quite happy doing that [soundtrack work], but
like anything, really, you get a bit fed up with it and it's
not really an ends in itself because nobody buys the record,
we're on TV for like 30 seconds for something," says Morris.
"So we thought we've got all this stuff we'd written for
television, let's turn it into an album. But we didn't sit
down and say 'let's write an album."
The first Other Two single, "Tasty Fish," came out in
Europe in 1991 and was the band's only release until the
album came out in Britain just before Christmas. The album
had been previously scheduled for release twice, most
recently in early 1993.
Within the band, Morris handles the computers and
programming, as he says that "Gillian has the innate ability
to make any computer running a sequence program crash, it's
uncanny." Gilbert comes up with ideas on a four-track set up
and then the two get together to fit the pieces together.
The Other Two have been recording in their home studio with
Morris doing most of the engineering, though in the future
they hope to work in outside studios with others behind the
board. Gilbert says that this will give them more time to
work together and focus in on the music itself. But keeping
things simple has come as a relief to the band after
spending so much time working within New Order.
"In New Order, there's four people so everything's got
to be a compromise," says Morris."Bernard writes his own
vocal lines and quite a lot of the music, so really you're
waiting for him most of time. What is kind of a fun thing
about the Other Two is that it's just us two. With New Order
you go on tour and there's hundreds of people involved with
it and little simple things seem to get unnecessarily
complicated."
When they started working on the Other Two material,
they had intended to bring in someone else for vocals. The
duo couldn't figure out what type of singer they wanted and
found themselves with a bunch of completed tracks in need of
vocals, so Gilbert decided to fill take on the task herself.
"I never wanted to be a singer, it was just purely by
accident, really," she says. "Stephen Hague had encouraged
me to take singing lessons, but I don't think I've ever sung
in front of any more than two people! It's going to be a bit
strange. When we did the New Order tour, I thought 'god, I
could never do what Bernard was doing.' So I don't know what
gigging will be like."
Gillian and Morris have been writing material all along
and would ideally like to have another album out within the
year. The group is at the stage now to start adding lyrics
to the new material, but the delay in the release of "The
Other Two And You" has been holding them back.
"It's hard writing anything new, because we just wanted
to see how well this one would do and how people like it,"
says Gilbert. "It keeps you going to have feedback from
other people, so we can't really get it out of the way until
it's been out. When it's been out and we've got some singles
off of it we can get back into the other lot."
Gilbert and Morris have yet to play out as The Other
Two but they hope to do so this year. While Gilbert is
nervous about singing live, the group is eager to perform
some of the new material. Nothing is firm yet, but the group
has started thinking about how they will present themselves
live.
"It's really a bit difficult deciding how to do it,
whether you should have a band or just be two people," says
Morris. "I'd like to do it a bit different, with oil lamps
and computer projection, something visually interesting."
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
_7#-ø(~ø&$&$&$&$&$&2J&|&|&|&|
&ý&-&-ƒ'xx&|'d ((5*(_&$(5(&(5(5(_(5(5(5(5(5(5 On "Acid
Technology" (Instinct), New York's Prototype 909 prove how
powerful old analog instruments can be when used creatively.
While every techno band in existence seems to use the Roland
TR 808 and TB 303, few use the equipment to its full
potential. P900 take the machines to create a flowing, ever
changing sound that couldn't exist without them. P909
is a trio of Taylor 808 (Havoc Music, Human Mesh Dance),
Dietrich Schoenenamn (X-Out) and Jason "BPMF" Szosteck
(Decameron). The following interview with the band was
conducted over the Internet.Was the material on the album
thought out beforehand or did it all come out of
experimenting with the equipment?BPMF: Not "thought out",
but conceived in general terms knowing that the process will
ensure, spontaneous, unthought of moments of artistic
syncronisity.TAYLOR808: right, ok.DIETRICH: It was thought
out a bit, but the idea of an album came to us half way
through. We decided to hook the analog gear up that day,
knowing that with only using these certain pieces we would
be restricted to a certain sound.TAYLOR808: yeah, it was
basically our first time using the gear in this way, so it
was a lot of experimentation. this album was unlike
anything we did before.Mark Gage told me the Vapour Space
track "Gravitational Arch of 10" came about from a mistake
made in wiring the analog gear together and wouldn't even
admit to how long it took to create (since it was so quick).
Have you ever had similar happy accidents?TAYLOR808: sure,
we get them all the time. those types of mistakes are
inherent in this kind of music.DIETRICH: The OThis is AcidO
track was the first P-909 track ever done. Taylor and i had
the JP-6 arpeggiator going and the 303 going with itOs tempo
almost all the way up. We tweaked both of them and played
with the mix. ThatOs what started it all.Do you have
specific roles within the band? BPMF: At first we just
rotated stations, i.e. Dietch would be on the 808, I would
be on the Jupe, T would be on the 303 and then the next
track we would all cover different machines. Gradually we
began to specialize, but committed less to the machines and
more to elements, as in; T808 on production and rhythm,
Dietch on sounds/rhythm and 303, and I focus on melody and
chords etc.. Still there are no clear cut "walls" we are all
free to inject ideas into any elements, we really produce by
committee more than any project I've ever been involved in.
We're on the same wavelength as it were.DIETRICH: taylorOs
the one who wakes up first. i sleep the latest and jason
makes the buckets of cappuccino.TAYLOR808: *laughs* ...we
only have set roles when we play live.. not really in the
studio.DIETRICH: sim city 2000 What is Prototype 909's live
show like? BPMF: IT SLAMS!! As much as possible, we program
"on the fly". I have headphones and monitor the sounds and
sequences -TAYLOR808: the szosteknologies device.001 !BPMF:
- I program into the SH 101s before Dietch is given the OK
to put them in the mix (if he even wants to) at his
discretion. Meanwhile T is putting sounds into the 808, 606,
909 patterns and mixing them in and out, while Dietch
changes from 303 groove to groove. Amazingly, we do this all
with almost no plan, little communication, we really become
ONE, one acid making machine. Basically we agree on a
handful of 303 patterns, and I right down what keys they're
in, and Dietch warns me before we go to another one, that
way, I have time to program SH lines in the right
keys.DIETRICH: i like to think of it as three people on the
same vibe doing what they do best.TAYLOR808: bleep. From a
technological stand point, this music could have been made
over a decade ago, yet no one was doing it back then. Why do
you think that is? BPMF: Technologically driven music was at
a reactionary stage in the early eighties. Desperately
seeking acceptance by the mainstream, a futile succession of
hapless artistic compromises were sought in which artist
tried to "humanize" their music by taking the tech out of
the techno. To me the whole process was maddening!
Technology is the ultimate expression of humanity. Mankind
expresses its unique capacity to reason, to dream through
technological advances. I always heard the SUPREME
expression of man's longing in technological music. I feel
that only since the acid house movement of the late eighties
had it been feasible to express the unabashed joy of techno
experimentation and be understood by a generation that
requires no excuses.TAYLOR808: well, guitars were invented
before rock and roll.. i think itOs just an evolution
thing.BPMF: ...and long hair before heavy metal.DIETRICH:
i donOt think the latest technology defines a certain timeOs
sound or how people use it. it is hard to believe that no
one circa 1983 used a 303 like the way people do today.
iOm still trying to find a new wave song with a 303 bass
line.TAYLOR808: if anyone finds one, please let us know!Will
P909 always remain completely analog? BPMF: No, as a point
of fact: we never were. As T likes to point out, there are
little digital "computers" inside all our
machines.TAYLOR808: yeah.. true... i mean, weOll remain 90%
analog when we play live, but there is just way too much
cool gear out there to limit ourselves to just analog in the
studio. we did the analog thing, we did it so it sounds
like no one else, now weOre going to move on. the analog
gear will always play a big role, it just wonOt be the only
thing we use. we would like to do separate albums based on
certain types of a gear. do an Oberheim album with the
Ooberheim systemO. the DX, OB-8, DS-X... etc.. that would be
cool... do an ARP album... weOve been doing some crazy
analog ambient stuff lately that will hopefully show up on
our new album.. using the sample input circuitry as a sound
source... weird stuff.DIETRICH: weOre not restricted in any
way. half our gear is digital.. the other half analog.. we
realize now, with the collaboration and all the gear, that
we really have no limits.TAYLOR808: the KPR slams though.
What is in the future for the band?TAYLOR808: more
gear.DIETRICH: well, weOre trying to obtain about.. 7 or so
303Os.. and then we have this great plan: we want to smash
one, or light it on fire at a gig.. but, we need 7 so we can
spare one. and we want to do it at a big gig, Mayday in
Germany or something so lots of people see it...TAYLOR808:
seriously! weOre really going to do this.. we just have to
find 7 303Os... or at least enough to the point where we
donOt need another one.. maybe 5.... and of course weOll
still have the damn thing plugged in sending sound to the
DAT so we can record itOs last squelch.DIETRICH: i want to
see peoples faces when we do it.TAYLOR808: weOll have to
base an album around a burning 303.DIETRICH: *laughs* BPMF:
the future? BLISS, everlasting harmony with the human
spirit, or something.TAYLOR808: the future? you murdered
the future...MC EARTH ANGEL: oh, great.contact P-909 on
internet: taylor808: t808@mindvox.phantom.comBPMF:
BPMF@delphi.commc earth angel interruption (counter
decremented to zero) courtesy of the imagine nation in
cahoots with the crash dummy syndicate and the square wave
fetish team under license from and c 1994 havoc music. any
inquiries about his appearance can be directed to the crash
dummy syndicate @ 35 connecticut avenue greenwich, CT
06830. or CIS: 72521,266. or angelzero@aol.com Othe future
is on sale; invest now with the crash dummy syndicate.OuS$H
d
`UU56IKMá ID56bc_`"ùAAFGD¥•“/0_7#N$$$$$2 RRRR
\
ffƒHxRA …*/$”/SpiceLabby Bob Gourley Twenty-four-year-
old Oliver Lieb truly represents the future of electronic
music. Under the name SpiceLab, the German musician has
created "Lost In Spice," a collection of long, instrumental
electronic tracks that don't really fit into an existing
genre. The songs have definite elements of ambient, but
there is also heavier, more industrial-like sonic
experimentation. Most importantly, it's an album that can be
enjoyed outside of the club setting. Lieb first got
involved with music when he bought a bass guitar at age 15
and started experimenting with jazz, funk and soul. Soon, he
became tired of both the instrument and styles of music he
was working with and moved on. "I sold that equipment
and started making electronic music," says Lieb. "I like
being able to play complete songs and wanted to get a record
contract." When asked if there were any particular bands
who influenced him to get into experimental music, he says
that he was "very much into Pink Floyd stuff." Lieb's
first release was 1989's "System" (Abfahrt/ZYX), which was
recorded under the name Force Legato. In 1992, he teamed up
with DJ Jorg as Psilocybin and put out three releases. Later
that year, Lieb signed to Harthouse and put out the
"SpiceLab" EP. Originally, Lieb wanted to call the
project Space Lab. He didn't think he could legally get use
of that name, so he looked to a favorite movie ("Dune") and
changed it. SpiceLab's debut album, "Lost In Spice,"
came out in Germany last year and just got a US release in
February. Usually, Lieb just starts composing tracks
and later decides which of his many projects it will be used
for. But in recording "Lost In Spice," he was making a
conscious effort to create a collection of electronic tracks
that people could listen to at home. Having a strong sense
of direction allowed him to make the LP in only nine days.
"I made up my mind long before I started, because I wanted
to have the idea of what I will do," he says. "Then the
rest, getting sounds and putting the songs together, doesn't
take that long." Like many electronic musicians, Lieb
strongly favors the older equipment. His particular
favorites are the Juno 106 and Pearl Syncussion. For the
live shows, Lieb will sample most of his old gear, then use
the Juno, samplers, sequencer and a master keyboard for the
performance. Lieb does not use DATs, and he looks down upon
those who do. "They shouldn't play live, " he says.
"First, they shouldn't bother playing live, second they
shouldn't put up that type of faking. The people don't know
and they think they're a good live band, but all the songs
are the same as the records." Lieb will re-work his
tracks so there is room for live keyboards, and then he will
also work at the Juno to vary the sounds. He says that his
live sets sound a lot like his maxi-singles, but there is
always room for the human element. Though SpiceLab is
currently his main project, Lieb will continue to record
under different names. He may not have time to continue all
of his musical endeavors, but being able to do other styles
on the side is important to Lieb as an artist. Lieb has
done many shows in Germany, Norway, Austria and England, and
has done a few dates in the US. In the future, he hopes to
do a full-scale US tour. The musician has several
projects coming up in the next few months. Ambush, his more
tribal project, has a new LP coming out in April. Lieb will
also be working on some EBM, with a new German writer adding
vocals. Copyright 1994 Bob
GourleyuAzo/ø7o/`+N,¥+~.e¥l0lWwp9_~UU¦.e¥l0lW~56y¥-sö
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b"ü_'ü~'ü~-'üYE`x1†oThe Orb
by Bob Gourley
The Orb has never been known for being normal, so it
comes as no surprise that they have released a double live
album, something virtually unheard of for an electronic
band. "Live 93" brings together tracks recorded from three
separate dates last year, and the often radically different
interpretations of the songs makes it essential for any Orb
fan's collections.
Leader Dr. Alex Paterson calls the LP "a stop gap,
really," as the group mainly wanted to get something out and
was being held back by legal hassles with their record
company. The Orb felt that Big Life wasn't treating them
fairly, so they decided to take them to court in an effort
to get off the label. Ultimately, they settled out of court,
but the whole incident lasted from October 1992 to November
1993.
"It was literally two weeks before the album was
actually released that we sorted the whole thing out with
the live album," says Paterson. "We could have been put in a
position of releasing an album without signing a record
contract or signing away from a record contract. But we were
quite prepared to just go ahead and break all the rules,
because they seemed to be able to break them anyway and get
away with it."
Paterson says that since Big Life had top ten hits
with re-releases of "Perpetual Dawn" and "Little Fluffy
Clouds," it looked like they would re-release "The Orb's
Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld" and put out a "greatest
hits" compilation. The Orb are strongly against that, so
they see "Live 93" as a way to "just sort of bury the past
in a nice way, as opposed to letting them take control of
the past and put out all these re-issues."
Another major problem The Orb had with their old
label was a lack of support for an American tour planned for
early last year. All the shows were ultimately canceled.
"It got to the point where they were telling us that
our records were selling 100,000 copies and getting a gold
disk, but 'sorry you can't tour because there's no money',"
says Paterson.
The group made up for this by doing a short, five-
date tour in the late fall. Paterson says that with all the
US fans have been put through, from "The Orb's Adventures
Beyond The Ultraworld" being watered down to a single album
to the cancellation of the last tour, "to get a reaction
like we did in October was brilliant!"
For the live shows, the Orb added an additional bassist
and drummer (ex-Killing Joke member Paul Fergusson recently
joined to take on that role). There are various keyboards,
turntables and effects on stage, and all the sequences come
of three ADATs running though a 24-track mixing desk.
"There's four of use on stage and we can basically re-
arrange the whole multitrack, so we get a live mix every
night," says Paterson on the set-up. "It's quite bizarre,
really, but it works."
According to Paterson, there were several reason for
culling the material for the album from several different
shows.
"We were under lot of pressure from the management to
release the Glastonbury set, but we didn't want to fall into
the syndrome of putting out a Glastonbury album," explains
Paterson. "So we decided to do an Orb live album and take
some stuff from the Glastonbury set, take some stuff from a
really small club in Tokyo and then from the Copenhagen gig,
because that one is very special to us. It's nice to put
that on the album so people will always remember it, and
those who weren't there, we can always tell about it."
That legendary Copenhagen gig took place on a small
island, with the Orb doing a set at sunset and one at
sunrise. The Orb played on a stage in the harbor that
Paterson describes as a "massive ghetoblaster on water" in
front of 4,500 fans. Eight days of preparation were needed
to set everything up.
The island contained an old fortress, where Paterson
says Napoleon had lost use of his arm. According to
Paterson, Jean-Michael Jarre had wanted to do a show on the
same island but was refused permission.
"The let us play there because they thought we could
exorcise all the ghosts from it," says Paterson.
Though he refuses to give any details, Paterson says
that The Orb has begun working on doing similarly special
shows in other parts of the world. He says that there will
definitely be something big in America in the future, as
doing unusual performances that people will be willing to
travel to beats trying to go everywhere with a traditional
show.
The Orb are currently working on a new album, which may
be finished by the end of March. Paterson says it will
probably take a little longer, as the group has just put the
finishing touches on their own studio. The LP will feature
more live instruments, and have a slightly different sound
than the Orb's past releases.
""I think we're growing up a bit," says Paterson. "The
third album is going to be moodier, after our experience of
the last year and a half. It's quite bizarre."
Copyright 1994 Bob Gourley
Xorcist
by Bob Gourley
With a growing number of American industrial bands making
guitars figure prominently in their music, Xorcist's sound
comes as a nice change. The solo project of Bat, who also
runs the CyberDen BBS, Xorcist creates highly structured,
entirely electronic, "cyberindustrial" dance music. The
songs are highly aggressive and manage to avoid repetition
without adopting traditional musical techniques. Xorcist
currently has an album out, "Damned Souls," as well as an
ep, "Bitches." The CD version of the latter also includes
"Smells Like Teen Spirit," a cover of the Nirvana song that
Bat did for the Re-Constriction "Shut Up Kitty" compilation.
Bat recently completed the second Xocist album, "Phantoms",
and took the time to do the following interview by e-mail.
What made you start recording as Xorcist and what type of
musical background (influences/experience) did you come
from?
What made me start recording was the desire to merely get my
music out there. I wasn't too concerned how many people
would think it sucked or was great, but was more interested
in creating something from scratch. Taking it to completion
without any outside help. Xorcist is pretty much just
myself, not because I don't want to work with anyone else,
but because if you want something done right, you better do
it yourself.
Influences range from that dark period of time known as 'New
Wave' to classical to punk to soundtracks to ... it's all
over the place. I was even at the 2nd US Festival... and NOT
on New Wave day.. Heavy Metal day... another dark page from
Xorcist's past.
Experience has drawn from just that. Hanging out and
talking, working with people in the field, be it keyboard
techs, performers, sound designers, etc.
How many releases have you had?
Official? 2.5 - Damned Souls CD, Bitches EP and the Bitches
CD w/Smells. Unofficial? (Demo tapes, compilations, etc.)
Somewhere around 15-20.
This style of music doesn't seem radio-friendly enough to
becomemainstream, but then again noisy indie guitar rock
didn't seem like it would either but has. Do you see
aggressive electronic music as something that will come up
from the underground in a big way? Do you even want it to?
Every dog has its day. People are getting bored to death of
the grunge/rap thang and this kind of music always pokes its
head out once in a while only to be replaced by another form
of 'alternative' rap or grunge... I think it's going to have
to be a situation where a station just has to play it, for a
few hours a day here and there. But before some major FM
station does this, LA will have to look a lot more like
Blade Runner.
What made you cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?
It was suggested to me at approximately the same time I was
thinking of actually covering it. The 'spirit' aspect had a
natural Xorcist ring to it, and I already had samples for it
from 6 months ago during a sample-fest... so when Chase from
Cargo suggested it, that got me off my ass to record it.
Do you play live at all? If so, is it a problem adapting the
music to the live setting?
I did play quite a few shows. Toured from S.F. to San Diego
and back twice. It's a blast. But Xorcist shows are
technically taxing as well as physically. Adapting the stage
to the correct environment has always been my motto... but
each show has been different in a way... The place is
usually a mess by the time the show is over... things like
broken bits of statuettes, smashed keyboards, burnt bible
pages, cylume light paint... etc...
Regarding your live show, do you use other musicians? What
type of instrumentation do you use and how do you deal with
the sequences (live or DAT)?
The first Xorcist show(s) were just myself on stage with my
entire studio with drum pads, 5 keyboards, and an Atari
ST... It was live sequencing and playing nightmare complete
with head mike...
From there, I had other musicians help out, giving them
parts to play that I would drop out of the arrangement and
if they ended up improvising a bit, that was cool as it gave
things it's live feel. The last show equipment wise,
consisted of 3 members.
Luz Sid: EPS + Juno 106 both live
Mr. Meanor: EPS live. 2 Drum pads to central PM-16 & a
cymbal.
Bat: EPS + ??? (could be a SY-22, DSS-1, whatever I feel
like draggin) live.
4 Drum pads linked to central PM-16.
Rhythm Stick linked to PM-16 Midi In
PM-16 MIDI out routed to THRU
PM-16 THRU routed to Bat's EPS for live triggering of
sounds
PM-16 MIDI THRU Split to Atari ST which was programmed to
display graphic images depending on the instrument
triggered. (Video Drums)
DAT : Yes, this beasty provides the backing tracks. About 40-
60% of the material. It's more reliable then a sequencer.
Spoken words samples seem to play a big part in your music.
Do you have any favorite sources? When in the song writing
process do you select the samples? Do you ever actually
write around them?
Samples are/were a big part of some songs, yes. Sometimes,
I'll come across samples that sound either so intense or so
silly that they must be used. I usually find the sample
first and stock up so to say. 50% of the samples are just
pulled because of their content, and then others are pulled
as they inspire. Writing around samples is kinda a given, I
think. It sounds pretty weird to just plop samples randomly
into a song with no real meaning...
Do you tend to dedicate equal time to Xorcist and CyberDen?
Yes, but usually not at the same time. Right now, CyberDen
is the main focus as it needs to be really stabilized,
although I'll take 24 hour breaks to work on new Xorcist
material, such as the new stuff for Phantoms I am working on
now which should be done this week.
Do you see advances in the "information superhighway" making
traditional music distribution obsolete? If so, will this
have a positive or negative effect on the artists?
Not while we're alive. It's gonna be 100 years before we're
really going to be able to easily, inexpensively and with
little hassle, be able to log onto a network, stick a disc
into a drive and tape a few buttons to then be presented
with a band's latest CD 5 minutes later. The technology to
do that is too expensive right now. Sure, it can be done,
but not for the consumer Joe... Anyways, where would we be
able to hang out if not at the local record store?
What is your full name?
Peter Stone, but I adopted the name Bat after doing a show
with another band who also had a singer who went by a name
that was often truncated to "X" - Since people knew me as
Xorcist, (Also X), it got real confusing that night. Hence,
Bat was assigned to me because of my love for the creatures.
How did you go about getting signed?
I spent hundreds of dollars making my own demo tapes, duping
them, printing and meticulously cutting out my own tape
inserts, etc.... and sent them everywhere. I finally got a
call back from a legitimate person, Don Blanchard, who
ironically had found my tape at the bottom of his backpack 2
months after I gave it to him. He told me he was interested
in starting a label and wanted to use Xorcist as its first
release. The rest is history.
Also, the reason I say legitimate is because there were a
lot of shit heads out there who didn't have a clue... be
careful out there.
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