Chewing Pine

The (International) Noise Conspiracy: A Heedless Dissection

(This originally appeared in Skyscraper)

Whether you’re watching a film, reading a book or trying to deconstruct the meaning behind your favorite album, the best of creations include some sort of frame. Citizen Kane, while vastly overrated as entertainment, functions more than appropriately as a well told story. As a viewer, the summation of Kane’s life is already a foregone conclusion. He’s dead within the first few moments of the film, but his journey to arrive at his death propels the plot. Without the narrative frame, that film simply becomes another shot by shot account of a man’s life. And no matter how interesting his life may have been, linear narratives, even in film by 1941 had run their course.

So, in what manner can a band of any ilk work toward their own unique frame. How is one garage band different than the next? The Spits dress up in any variety of ridiculous costumes dependent upon their mood. The Mummies, dressed up, well, as mummies. And even earlier, the Monks all sported tonsures before disappearing into the annals of rock music. Given that these frames, née, gimmicks have been utilized in the past, what angle can now be appropriated to lend a band some mystical and unique quality?

Being proponents of situationism, which seems to either be easily disproven or just as easily accepted as the norm, the members of the (International) Noise Conspiracy really give themselves to the rhetoric of socialism in a very base sense. On every album that the group has recorded since the early ‘00s there’ve been countless tracks that aim to propel listeners towards some sort of realization that government should work for people and be based upon their needs. Of course, there probably aren’t too many folks who would disagree with that point of view and when one slaps that notion with the label of socialism, it becomes the frame that sets t(I)NC apart from their peers who ply the depths of garage at this late date. Of course, The New York Dolls and L.A. punkers The Dils may have utilized socialism for shock value as much as any other reason 30 some odd years ago, but t(I)NC fervently believes in it. And the belief that one has, or constructs, can become as good as the truth.

William Burroughs, who really seems to be as quotable as any other American writer, figures that as long as an individual appreciates this truth that has been constructed around him or her, outside obfuscations cease to matter. He stated that a bit more succinctly by saying, “Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.” Applying that to any band, but specifically here to t(I)NC, we can conclude that their persistence as a musical outfit, is to garner some sort of self fulfillment. When the band plays, they are filling the space that they aimed to occupy, sloganeering and all.

Front man Dennis Lyxzén believes that “the time of the great tribal gatherings of music and politics are over, but there is still a possibility to touch and affect people” and continues tirelessly work towards creating a better future for the world’s citizenry.

Given his reticence to believe that rock ‘n roll can any longer be utilized as an avenue for social upheaval, though, Lyxzén explains that “real social change comes from places other than musical youth cultures. But hopefully we can inspire some people to be a part of that real change and give them strength and hope by supplying some danceable music.”

Part of that inspiration actually works backwards and comes from his past. Lyxzén, coming out of the Refused as well as a number of other punk inspired groups, learned some of his defining philosophical points of view from the Clash and other populist bands. And on the band’s latest full length The Cross of My Calling (Vagrant, 2008), there are ample instances of t(I)NC using the standards that the Clash began to further its own ideological beliefs.

Both “Arm Yourself” and “Washington Bullets,” from this new disc, include readily identifiable segments of work by the Clash. And in keeping with the expanded sonic palette of Cross when compared to earlier efforts, there’s even a nod to The Rolling Stones on “Satan Made the Deal.” When asked about the appropriations from The Stones, Lyxzén plainly answers, “‘Satan Made the Deal’ is a bit like the Rolling Stones to start with, so why not accentuate it a bit extra?”

His nonchalant perspective on originality, though, is one that can only come during an age where information, of all sorts, so pervades our daily lives that breaking free of tradition seems an all too difficult task. That being said, the somewhat plain effort to shock on “Black September,” stands alone on an album rife with lyrical content that’s been contemplated elsewhere.

The vague poetry of that track alludes to the inhabitants of Gaza. In the lines “We’re just sacrifice/Born into a wasted life/Brought on by religious plight,” the author seems to simplify a dramatic situation. Lyxzén fails to take into consideration the militaristic threats made by Egyptian President Nasser during the ‘60s, who himself was a proponent of Arab socialism. Lyrically, the track also ignores the right of a nation to defend its citizens and its borders. Of course, no situation warrants rounding up a people and imprisoning them, but as the lyrics continue to unfold, the people of Gaza are referred to as “A surplus population.” But if the population growth rate gets even a superficial examination, the rate of Gaza’s population growth more than doubles the rate of the rest of the world.

Obviously, it’s everyone’s right to reproduce as they see fit – well except in China – but, t(I)NC’s lack of objectivity diminishes its utilitarian philosophies. As a band though, it’s used this frame of social equality to make the statement in a succinct rock track while simultaneously creating a product that they believe is valid as art as well as political commentary. Band members are functioning within the roles that they, themselves, have defined and are thusly contented.

That one song, though, despite it’s disconnect from reality, sports the most characteristic screaming from Lyxzén even as the music falls just short of the classic garage and punk of Survival Sickness (Epitaph, 2000).

On the band’s first pair of full lengths and the First Conspiracy compilation (G-7, 1999), t(I)NC engineered a sound more stripped down and aggressive than what can be found on either its latest effort or Armed Love (Reprise, 2004).

Perhaps due to the presence of original keyboardist Sara Almgren on portions of Armed Love as well as the band’s earlier recordings, t(I)NC then worked in short blasts of garage inspired pop constructions. The political content was as plain as it would become. And on the Bob Dylan inspired A New Morning, Changing Weather (Burning Heart, 2001), the unequivocal line “Take action, take aim and sing this new blues,” unmistakably points the direction forward, not just for the band, but for the down trodden.

Leaving during the recording of Armed Love, Almgren’s exit contributed to a period that Lyxzén refers to simply as a “weird time.”  It did result, oddly enough, in Billy Preston filling the keyboard seat for portions of that recording. The album, though, marked not only a line-up shift, but a drastic alteration in aural presentation. Armed Love became the dividing line of what t(I)NC was and would become.

Unfortunately, due to major label squabbles and shifting parent companies, Armed Love saw a drastic delay of its release date in the States which resulted in the album missing its chance to impact American culture. Partially due to that album’s lack of success here in the States, Lyxzén frequently encourages fans to download the album via the internet in lieu of paying for it.

“Well, that is a tricky question,” the singer begins when asked why. “I like the idea of file sharing as a political form of resistance – as a way of challenging the capitalist structure that we live under, to have an economy that is not controlled by the big corporations and such.”

The reasoning that moves behind Lyxzén’s advocacy of downloading media works towards further solidifying the frame that’s been used to characterize his band. And the fact that Armed Love is t(I)NC’s only album to be associated with a major label might contribute to why other albums by these Swedes have not seen the same request go out from the band.

Lyxzén continues by explaining the cultural import of his request, “Downloading, as the world looks today, also raises numerous practical issues for bands, filmmakers and cultural workers.” Advocating for the creative forces behind all of entertainment, he hypothesizes, “If we are not showing solidarity with the people that are creating the music, the movies and so on, there will be no more music to download and there will be no more movies to watch.”

The 2004 sessions that make up Armed Love, available for download on better interwebs near you, were the first meetings of producer Rick Rubin and the Swedes in a studio setting. A great deal of vitriol that earlier work swam in remains intact. And even the production by Rubin couldn’t subvert the grit in Lyxzén’s voice, the distortion of Lars Strömberg’s guitar or the propulsive quality in those organ lines, regardless of who was plying the keys. Even in this time of dramatic change for the band, it didn’t shed its political observances. Instead it began mixing its politics with a vision of love connected to its revolutionary posturing.

The lyric “When I think about the revolution you’re still in my dreams,” from that first collaboration with Rubin, stands firm with a foot in the sappy classic rock trope of love songs, but obviously also references the political hopes of Lyxzén and his band. This 2004 album might be the moment where the t(I)NC actually realized how to disseminate its subversive political message in a neatly wrapped package. Eschewing the stark imagery adorning the band’s first two full lengths, Armed Love is splashed with an inflammatory red, hinting at the clutch of love songs that the album holds within.

Even with this stylistic realization, t(I)NC always has and will continue to deliver their message of change in the English language. But why would Lyxzén choose to traffic in the tongue of the West’s two most powerful capitalistic societies?

One potential way in which to reason through that conundrum is to figure that considering English serves these two international powers, it also represents the citizenry that most needs to hear this message of change.

Regardless, though, it would seem that t(I)NC would still like to see this revolution of the common man in its lifetime. The consequences of that paradigmatic shift in economics as well as its social implications probably haven’t been laid out in detailed fashion by the band though. And really, upon any close scrutiny, the band’s lyrics call for insurrection, but decline to define how to go about it or what the results might be. The vague quality of this call to arms oddly mirrors what Obama was criticized for while running for president: lofty rhetoric doesn’t necessarily portend change. If in fact this world wide revolution came, t(I)NC as we know it would cease to exist. The frame of the socialist upstart would be shattered, leaving just another rock band.

Of course, that revolution isn’t actually afoot. There are countless grass roots organizations working towards social equality and the like in this country, but they hardly amount to a group powerful enough to overthrow the government. With Lyxzén’s predilection towards demonstratively characterizing the US as “a very juvenile country,” he continues to parade socialist rhetoric in an attempt to function as a revolutionary – a construction that he and his cohort have themselves created. But they are functioning. And according to Burroughs, as long as one functions within their own accepted boundaries, that person is happy. And happiness is that individual’s virtue.

Lee Perry x Ari Up x Dubblestandart

Now that Skyscraper has moved towards a distinct online presence, my drivel will be more readily available over there…

BLOGLOAD: Return from Planet Dub

Wooden Shjips: An Understanding of the Earth

(This originaly appeared in Skyscraper #29)

There is something indiscernibly different about San Francisco. You can’t head down any street in the Bay Area and not wonder what event transpired there that in some small way managed to unknowingly affect your life. Looking up at the row houses, ornamented and displaying a cache of personality not found too many other places in the US, one should wonder, “Who lived here?”

The answer to that question might not be one to shake humanity, but the city itself shakes alone. Precariously perched upon destruction, daily life sweeps the specter of earthquakes and fire underneath the constant activity of the city.

The Wooden Shjips, though, aren’t so easily dispensed. Birthed from equal parts of a by-gone ‘60s idealism and the dirty underbelly emitted from the dry prose of Dashiell Hammett, the quartet of Ripley Johnson (guitar/vocals), Nash Whalen (keys), Omar Ahsanuddin (drums) and Dusty Jermier (bass/trumpet) don’t seek to disrupt social or musical notions. They just want to play music.

A 2006 single, “Dance, California” b/w “Clouds Over the Earthquake,” commemorated the centennial of an early 20^th century quake that left San Francisco debilitated. But why would the Shjips dedicate two sides of a single to such an event?

Over the phone keyboardist Whalen recalls, “Earthquakes are one of those things that are just here. I first moved to San Francisco in 1989 – I experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake first hand and saw the destruction. There were dozens and dozens of aftershocks for months. Almost twenty years later, that whole experience stayed with me. I always just think about the power of the earth and what it can do. And how it really, if it wanted to shake things up and take us out – it could.”

In listening to the Shjips various singles collected on Volume One (Holy Mountain, 2008), there is a rather developed consistency that runs through not just this compilation, but the band’s Self Titled (Holy Mountain, 2007) album as well. The melodic concepts are virtually indecipherable from track to track, largely due to the great amount of reverb and fuzz doused on each note of the guitar. The uniformity found in each of the Shjips songs is actually just the band hinting at notes and dancing around discernable melodic lines. But it is very possible that Johnson and his cohort have some abstruse notion about how songs actually work.

A telling quote culled from the vast tubes of the internet finds Johnson explaining that his main goal as a member of this band is really to create dance music – something to make concert goers sway.

“We do have an element who come out and dance and it’s really great especially when they’re right in-front of the stage and your able to see them responding,” Whalen emotes, working to confirm Johnson’s direction for the band and its music.

This statement of purpose from Johnson rings true. From the initial bass thud that announces “We Ask You to Ride,” the opening track of the self titled disc, there is a non-stop rhythmic pulse ideal for dancing. Whether conscious or not, a great number of the titles from this same album hint at motion – riding, bending and dancing all encourage listeners to let go and simply allow the repetitive, simplistic statements to be physically manifested in dance. What again obscures the purpose of the music are its other elements.

The ceaseless low end pulsations driving dancers, guitar feed-back that imbues each track with texture and the indistinguishable vocals compound the mystical and undefined aura that surrounds the Shjips. But these aural inclinations, at least, have a very definite source: High Rise. Johnson’s professed admiration for the Japanese psych band and specifically the group’s disc entitled II, is instantly sensible given the aggressive guitar tones, fuzz and confusingly unclear vocals. Here too, acknowledging a concrete link to an esoteric act, which hasn’t released a recording in over a decade, Johnson explains the band in terms that few can readily conceive of.

Possibly amplified by Johnson’s references to obscure acts, Wooden Shjips have found themselves unable to escape from comparisons to the tripped out sounds that sprung from 1960’s San Francisco – or even the ‘60s in general.

Jefferson Airplane too frequently has been made a touchstone in this guessing game, linking the band to a bygone era. So too have the Doors, a Southern Californian group, whose only commonality with Wooden Shjips is the darkness that its sound exudes.

Yet due to cultural elitism, the Dead have some how managed to evade being thrown into this equivocal ring of comparisons. On the Dead’s eponymous 1967 debut, “Cream Puff War” sits one third of the way through offering some of the most aggressive and electric moments from the band’s studio history. Springing forth from this single track is the fuzz that current garage bands fawn over alongside political discourse masquerading as an interpersonal relationship. Here, Wooden Shjips can perhaps be figured to have been birthed. In the dominant discourse of current indie music, though, the Dead are too frequently marginalized. Of course, the comparison, like previous links to the past aren’t necessarily confirmed by band members, but it isn’t dismissed either.

“In our band, we have no distaste for the Dead,” begins Whalen.

“Ripley will still put on some bootleg from the ‘70s or ‘80s that he’s always liked and listened to for decades. It’s nothing that we’re afraid of,” he continues amidst some of his most assured rhetoric. “They were a melting pot of American music anyway. There were so many different elements in their music that it’s easy for us to draw from that and still draw from the Velvets frame work. I know that stigma, we don’t worry about that,” he concludes confidently.

While discussing the tendencies of the Dead to play loose with its song structures, Whalen is able to differentiate between his group’s studio efforts and its sound during live shows as he guesses, “I think that we do something different live, but it’s still true to the music. It’s just a live experience…I don’t think that we play our songs twice the same way.”

In noting differentiation in the band’s songs, Whalen again moves towards defining the group through the vagueness of experimentation. Not experimentation in the sense of something wholly different and new – Wooden Shjips are, after all, a rock band. But referring to a “live experience” serves to explicate the lack of totality in its musicianship. Songs may have structure, albeit unrefined, but given to live environs, the songs do as they please.

Further verbal dissections of individual songs lead to questioning how the process of song writing and the group’s creative tendencies actually work.

The notion of jamming seems to be recalled repeatedly by Whalen. Revealing that each song can’t have “too much or too little” of any one element. Whalen meanders to the point that, their process is almost a non-process: one where musicians are musicians and songs simply begin and end.

Everything about this band – its initial inclination to give away records for free, lack of domestic touring, and strict adherence to the most vague of musical codes – screams obscurity. Even the cover of its self-titled album depicts the quartet seated nonchalantly in front of a rather standard looking San Franciscan home replete with a short flight of steps up to the front door. Each band member’s face is ominously distorted so that no singular feature can be surmised. The drab black and white of the photo seems in direct contrast to the psychedelic music it purports. The album’s physical presentation is misleading, but so too are assumptions that may commonly accompany popular underground musical acts.

This vagueness persists in the uncertainty of much of Whalen’s discourse which eventually leads to his feelings towards the area that the band finds itself living and how the vast differentiation from other parts of the country affects the players in this ensemble. This realization, of course, comes through the back door of his collegiate studies in Geology.

“I have a great understanding of the earth now. And geologically. San Francisco is a unique place,” he proclaims. “There are very few places on the earth where there’s a fault that runs right by the city and could knock it all down at any point. It gives a different edge to things here,” waxes Whalen.

He continues unwaveringly, “When I’m in the Midwest – or even on the East Coast – I do feel that things are a little safer. There’s not the same energy coming out of the earth in that sense. It’s just a more stable place back there.”

This description of the Shjips home – or at least the discourse that’s utilized for it – plays on the notions that the rest of the nation may have of the Bay area and the people that call it home.

More importantly than cultural perspectives on music, San Francisco’s unique communities can alternately nurture creativity or stilt it as a result of ridiculous living coasts. Attempting to explain the intangible Whalen adds, “There’s a mystique about being from San Francisco that seems to help us.”

In Whalen’s use of the term “mystique,” he has at once defined San Francisco in ethereal terms, but again also explained the Wooden Shjips’ cultural import. They remain undefined. It might be that “mystique” that the band attributes to its relatively high profile for such a new act. The group, despite having released music over the last two years has as of yet to extensively tour the US.

“It’s nothing that any of us understand either.” Whalen begins. “Essentially, our first record came out last September and it seems that new people keep discovering it. There’s definitely a life to it that doesn’t come from us touring all the time.” If the band’s relative popularity has come mostly from its recorded efforts, it’s safe to assume that the Shjips hitting the road in the states will only help its cause.

“Right now,” reveals Whalen, “we’re in the process of trying to decide what we’re going to do next year. But we’d like to be doing a US tour.”

Exuding this hope to better explore the country in the coming months, Wood Shjips have finished recording a new treat for concert goers to pick up. “We’ve laid ‘em [the tracks] all down on tape. And right now Ripley and Dusty have been doing the mixing and getting ready to turn that in. So we’re hoping for February [to be the month of the record’s release].”

The Shjips, however, aren’t the only group to mine the fuzzy depths of this much loved genre. Two New York bands can claim a similar sound to that coming out of San Francisco. Both the Religious Knives as well as the Psychic Ills tout sounds that are in more than a few ways concurrent to the Shjips. There are obvious differences. But one similarity is that none of these groups seemingly have all that much a predilection for clearly enunciated lyrics. The Knives’ latest release, The Door (Ecstatic Peace, 2008), and the Ills’ last full length, Dins (Social Registry, 2006), seem instep with the Shjips predilection to focus on simple, pulsating rhythms accompanied by layers of distorted melody.

Some might be moved to proclaim a renaissance for this type of music, but not only would they be wrong, seeing as the stylistic flourishes have never completely receded from recorded music, but they would be missing the point. The four that make up the Shjips seem wholly unconcerned with comment from the outside. More so, the members seem enchanted by their fleeting chance to play music culled from their record collections. All the better, these sounds make the hips of the hippest concert goers shake like an earthquake – albeit a mild one that San Franciscans are accustomed to. That seems enough for right now. Maybe seeing the world fly by through the window of a van as they commence a fuller touring schedule will change their collective perspectives – but hopefully not.

Odd Nosdam – Pretty Swell Explode (Anticon, 2008)

(This originally appeared in Skyscraper)

The Cincinnati native and cLOUDDEAD founder brings out Pretty Swell Explode, not so much as a follow up to Level Live Wires, but as a summation of recent remixes and apparent ephemera. This collection comes in the form of a double cd. The shorter, second disc is comprised of drone induced ambient music with the only beat coming from the Boards of Canada remix “Dayvan Cowboy.” Even if this consistent blueprint gets chalked up to style, the main disc of this offering fairs only slightly better. What saves this album is the ability of Odd Nosdam’s tracks to imbibe an ethereal feel that easily marries his chunky keyboard melodies. That’s most likely why “Untitled Three” leads this disc off, but soon falls flat. Reinvigorating the aural traipsing through this affair is the half-way marker “Hollow Me”, which sounds distant and yes, hollow. The vast reverb on what is the snare-downbeat somehow recalls bees. And with the inclusion of what sounds like a melodica, this track almost seems out of place amongst the remix fodder. Considering though that this is not a proper album by the producer, the follow up to Level Live Wires can and will surely surpass what listeners will find here.

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Rodriguez – Cold Fact (Light in the Attic, 2008)

(This originally appeared in Skyscraper)

There isn’t one simple way to divide those artists that provide some similarity to Robert Zimmerman into a good and bad category while explaining why each effort has been relegated to either column. Everyone has an opinion on the Minnesotan turned counter-culture icon: he’s a good writer, bad at singing, has an interesting guitar style. But what litany can be used in order to gauge his talents and then aptly apply these criteria to other artists? Slightly psychedelic and occasionally forcing their poetic leanings, an ever abundant crop of musicians arrived hocking similar styles while claiming originality during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Detroit’s Rodriquez was one of these men. His first of two studio albums, Cold Fact, sports various members of Motown’s Funk Brothers putting in time and collecting a check that perhaps Barry Gordy was remiss in issuing. Needless to say, the instrumentation here is beyond a great deal of foggy hippy-folk rundowns of the era. Additionally, the serpentine production bringing forth hallucinatory sounds is amply supported by orchestration and buoyed by a well punctuated horn section. “Sugar Man”, the lead off track and most oft associated phrase with Rodriguez, sports all of these over-indulgent manipulations, and perhaps even despite them, would be sampled by Nas almost 30 years later. In complete opposition, the following track, “Only Good for Conversation”, pushed forward by distorted guitar, recalls a Blue Cheer riff or prefigures various stoner bands from the ‘90s. And while the next few tracks are easily on par with the opening expressions, the album seems to fall short beginning with the faux ‘50s of “I Wonder”. Perpetually lopping and almost embarrassing, lyrically this track examines the previous loves of a woman. Included is the surprisingly blatant lyric, “I wonder how many times you had sex.” This stark examination is somewhat shocking given the time from which this recording emanates. Beyond that though, there seems to be a misogynistic leaning in some of Rodriquez’s lyrics, finding that a number of tracks basically critique women that he has in some way known – carnally or not. “Crucify Your Mind” does this, but is softened by the percussion of a marimba, as does the closer “Jane S. Piddy”. Despite these limited lyrical aspects of his work, Rodriquez occasionally overstates his verbal talents, leaving arrangements too sparse, amplifying the pratfalls of mediocre verse. And surely, that is the division line. Dylan knew he was literary, whereas others were only under the impression that their words could be as powerful as song.

Jason Molina: Panning for Gold

(This originally appeared in the Spring ‘08 issue of Skyscraper)

From hearing the man’s songs, Jason Molina should be stoical and or perhaps, perpetually kinetic – unable to remain sedentary for more than a moment. Only the second is true.

Molina, who for the present calls London home, sounds eager to talk. Regardless of the fact that since the mid nineties, part of his job has been answering questions that strangers ask him, he never recedes from a line of discourse. Despite being in constant demand, since December Molina has taken time off, which might belie the perspective he on has on his career, which he perceives as a skill set – he is correct.

Molina is candid and unsparingly anecdotal. Assumingly this comes from touring for a decade. If Dylan wasn’t a mid-Westerner, Molina would be the mid-Western Dylan. And since Neil Young is Canadian, a fact that is endlessly confounding, I guess that could make Molina the American Neil Young. These comparisons aren’t original, but hardly are they fallacious.

Coming from places I know, he seems familiar, although I’ve never spoken with him. Growing up on the far west side of Cleveland has indelibly effected the outlook he possesses on life. At times it seems that the surroundings of his childhood are exaggerated, but I recall seeing Songs: Ohia flyers in my home town and only fleetingly felt that I lived in a wasteland. Molina is relentless on this topic, insisting that there was no sort of positive creative force at work in Northeastern Ohio nor rural West Virginia. I must concede the second point. But while Cleveland isn’t a hub of industry or creativity, it still has Dennis Kucinich. Adorable, environmentally friendly gnomes must count for something.

During the hour I spent on the phone with this gentlemen, who has created a life-time of work in just over a decade, one subject that didn’t arise organically was that of his bassist. Evan Farrell, who died late last year in a fire, left behind his wife and two sons. Molina implored that some mention be made of this and pointed me to a memorial fund for the man who he described as someone that, “just never stopped doing music from the minute his feet hit the floor in the morning.”

Evan Farrell Memorial Fund

I have an idea of the landscape that you grew up around. There are a lot of place names in your songs, or they’re related to landscapes in some way. Is that something that you cultivate? Are you trying to write about setting as opposed to girls and cars?

Well, girls and cars need a place to go, don’t they? I definitely concentrated on the idea of putting a place into a song. Just because mentioning a word or a place doesn’t mean that that’s what the song’s about. It might be about a very specific sliver of time and it’s maybe about something that happened there or an impression that I got. And I travel so much and I move so much. I guess if you pick it apart, I’m more firmly grounded in the songs, which are these intangible things and not so much connected to one specific place, because I’m always really on the move.

You’ve always been compared to uniquely American singers. Do you see yourself in some sort of progression from Woody Guthrie to Ramblin’ Jack to Dylan?

I look at it this way. I’m not a music historian by any means. I don’t really keep up on many contemporary bands, and it’s not because I want to lock myself away and be a hermit. It’s just that I find if I’m listening to a lot of contemporary stuff, I gravitate quickly and a little too easily to accidentally sounding that way. If you want to look at it as a progression, I feel comfortable in a line of songwriters. And I happen to be an American songwriter, but it’s entirely beyond my imagination to see how exactly that progression really goes. It definitely helped me, I just wrote songs out of the blue since I was a small kid. I didn’t grow up around a musical family, no one showed me how to play the guitar. I have no strict concept of how a song should sound. I never sat down and tried to learn other peoples songs. I never learned cover songs.

Then how did you acquire knowledge if you never paid attention to other musics? Or does that not even matter?

It has a lot to do with being very isolated. So, people who are from bombed out towns or middle of nowhere towns or places where there is no spark of any artistic scene – these are the places I grew up in. Getting music was like searching for the Holy Grail, because we didn’t have record shops. None in Lorain and definitely none in Southern West Virginia. Some teenager would have a seven inch from some SST band. We would make these mix tapes of all of this music and it was all over the place. It was pretty much any music that you could get that wasn’t the shit on the radio. At that time, I was specifically rebellious about things like Hank Williams Jr. and that kind of stuff because, the stigma of that, especially in the mid to late eighties, was pretty heavy.

There were many hundreds of hours sitting around a turntable, late at night in someone’s basement, plowing through all these classic rock records to find a song that was really great instead of really stupid.

You mentioned SST. Apart from Sonic Youth, I’m hard pressed to think of another popular band that uses alternate tunings.

Well, My Bloody Valentine.

I guarantee if you walk down the street and ask random passers by who My Bloody Valentine is, nine outta 10 people would have no idea. At-least Sonic Youth was on the radio in 1994. But how did you get into using different tunings?

Well, I still do. My first guitar was a little Harmony acoustic. My parents picked it up at a garage sale or something. It sat in the house and I never saw anyone play it. But as a kid I started to mess around with it. This thing was so beat up and had been neglected for so long, you couldn’t actually tune it. The tuning pegs were so rusted and bent, the gears were totally shot to hell. I got a can of WD-40 and sandpaper and toothbrushes. I tried to get the keys to turn a little bit and had to use pliers to get them to turn. And when I could get it to a relatively decent sounding open tuning, I’d leave it like that until, on its own it changed. Probably, with the same set of strings, I played it for 10 years, just learning how to invent melodies and strange chord progressions out of what I had to work with. I was fascinated with that. I would even use really weird tunings when I played bass guitar, which was my primary songwriting tool for a long time.

I’ve got an answer, but I’ll go the long way.

I was at the Salvation Army in Chicago, dead of winter. Snowing like crazy and I’d never found that Holy Grail instrument that people say they find in pawn shops. I bought some book and it was like 60 cents. I reach into my pocket and as I’m getting money out to pay for this book, I look above the head of the clerk and on a shelf, behind a bunch of decorations and shit is a Harmony Sovereign, which is an excellent mid-grade guitar. Jimmy Page used them. They’re a great sounding guitar. I was like, ‘Holy shit, how much is that?’ It was 40 bucks or something. The guy gets it down and the thing is a fucking train wreck: someone pulled the bridge off and using big wood screws, screwed the bridge back into the guitar. It split the body and the neck was all warped. It was a disaster. But I strummed it and it was in this insane tuning, ya know? The most rusty, destroyed strings – the thing hadn’t been played in years and years, but this tuning was amazing. I paid the 40 bucks and ran out in the snow with this guitar with no case and sat down and wrote a song without touching the tuning.

Axxess and Aces, which I was listening to yesterday or the day before, is all in one tuning right?

Right, the first record is all one tuning, although there are a handful of different instruments. It sounds as if there’s one guitar, but sometimes there’ll be a tenor guitar and an acoustic guitar – they sound very similar because of the way it was recorded. Sitting around a microphone, it bleeds together and makes it sound very complicated, but it’s actually not. Axcess and Aces is one tuning all the way through. Actually, most of them are except for Protection Spells.

When you tour, are you restricted by what you can bring with you?

Absolutely, I can bring pretty much one guitar. The Magnolia songs are basically in standard tuning and it’s just by necessity. But if we get to point where we can each have several guitars in working order, I’d be able to introduce a lot more material into the set.

There are a lot of things to overcome. Especially when you’re playing with a traditional bass-drums-guitar arrangement, there’s no way you can switch guitars for every single song unless you have a guitar tech and you have some serious backing. I’m not trying to make spacey music, I’m trying to make it tight and melodic. It’s not like I’m hitting the distortion and strumming an open chord, I’m trying to make it sound fluid and it should naturally sound that way. So it’s difficult in a live setting to do a lot of Songs: Ohia material.

Part of that problem is that you release an album every year. You must constantly be working with your instrument. Can you keep the same kind of output going until you’re 70?

I could, if I had the desire. I think so. I mean it’s January 17^th. So, I’ve written 40 songs since January 1^st. That doesn’t mean that I feel like I should record 40 of them and do complicated demos of them or work up arrangements for the band.

Immediately before that I hadn’t written a ton, since I’d been on tour so much. My last show, last year was December 15^th. Magnolia toured a lot and then I toured solo a lot last year – literally went around the world. When I’m on the road I just write lyrics, nothing really gets finished. There’s no time on the road, it’s work. Trying to find an hour where I’m not obligated to be doing amps, moving gear, shit like that – just finding a place to be alone to work is a huge thing that’s almost impossible to find.

Do you need isolation to write? Do you need to be sedentary to finish an entire song?

I need peace and quiet. I can’t just sit down with a guitar in a loud club, where there’s music going, it just doesn’t happen that way. I prefer to write very early in the morning. My ideal writing situation is I get up at about four and just write for a few hours. Sometimes it’s just like mechanical exercises, I’m just writing, there’s no song in mind. After an hour or two of that, I start to concentrate really hard and pick out what seems interesting. That’s the time that I sit down at the keys or get the guitar. Then I ignore the song that I just wrote, the lyrics. I try to see if I can come up with something musically interesting. So, I’ll try to see if they fit together and if they don’t, I just give up right away. I move on to writing a new song, because the best songs, for me, were a quick and easy match.

I was just completely blown away that you said you get up at four am. I don’t know how many other musicians can say that, but it almost sounds like farm work to me.

Yeah, it’s definitely like that. It’s sorta like farmer’s time. I’m lucky because I don’t have to work nine to five. The reason that I’m able to do music is because I keep doing music. This is me going to work. It’s a tool that you need to keep sharp and if you don’t, you have to take a lot of steps back to get it sharp again. After doing this for many years now, I’ve trained myself. If I have a free hour, and I don’t have to run across town to do something crazy, some weird errand or something, I can sit down and start to have something if I just concentrate. I have tons of ideas already just sitting there.

Does that perspective on work make it less fun?

Songwriting – there’s a tremendous amount of joy that I get out of being able to do music and I’m always surprised by it and excited by new things that I come across. I wouldn’t call it fun. It’s not like riding dodge ‘em cars or something like that. Like that’s fun.

I do approach it like work, but it’s my name over the door. So, it’s not like I have to report for duty everyday and do something that I don’t want to do. This is something I want to do and something I need to do. This is a skill I’ve developed and now I’m putting it to use. I never wake up and say ‘Awww, now I have to write a song!’

You did the artwork for the Sojourner box-set. Is the process for you doing visual art the same?

Yeah, it is. Although, the little paintings in there aren’t really representative of what I do. Normally, I do more abstract stuff. I wanted these to be specific images that paired up with the music. That’s why I used some noticeable images like people. There are actual objects: there’s a canoe and there’re animals. But the way that I do that is pretty much the same. I start with no idea. I don’t say that I’m going start with a picture of a house. I don’t work that way. I just start drawing and maybe a house will come out of it and maybe something else will. It’s the same process.

One way that I’ve explained it to myself is that it’s so difficult to produce the same level of artwork as music, because it comes from the exact same place and it’s so draining to do either one. I have to say, ‘Today I’m just going to do art.’ The idea of picking up a guitar and writing a song after working on something all day and night, is just mind numbing.

You’ve been in England and traveled around Europe for while now, has that been beneficial for the process that you’ve mentioned – creating stuff; music or art? Or does it not matter as long as you have time?

It doesn’t matter so much as long as I have time. I put a lot of value in just having a little notebook and writing. It could be as simple as starting with the name of a town. I’ll see that we’re 20 miles outside of some town and I know that we’re going to stop to get gas or eat or something. I’ll get out of the van and try to see as much as I can about the town. Grab a local newspaper, go into the local coffee shop and listen to what the people are talking about in that town, see what they’re driving, see what their houses look like. 30 minute later, we’re back on the road. But out of that I get an impression of something. And that goes in the notebook.

I mentioned this before, you’re seen as a uniquely American figure. But, you’ve been taken out of your natural setting. Are you as comfortable in London as you are in Chicago?

There’s no comparing London to Chicago. I love Chicago and I wrote so many records there. Actually most of the material I’ve written over the years was in Chicago. I don’t know what about that place made me write so much, but a part of it is that, everyone there in the musical community is always working. No one ever seems to be just sitting there. All the Chicago bands are always gone ‘cause they’re internationally and nationally touring bands. There’s a high standard set for doing good work, getting it out there and working your ass off.

I’ve always said, it didn’t matter if I lived in a city or the country, I’d still be writing songs. I maybe sometimes more happy in the quiet or the calm of the middle of nowhere, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop writing.

I haven’t been here very long, I don’t really have a sense of how the local and regional musicians work. Culturally, it’s night and day. In that way it’s a very difficult adjustment. I’m burying myself in work, because that’s a good way to adjust to the change. Pretty much every time I’ve done a record, it’s been right on the cusp of a move to another city, to another state, to a different apartment.

There is a small community of people here that I’ve gotten to know. I live just a couple of blocks away from Rough Trade. I go in there and kinda have gotten to know some of the people who work there. They’ve shown me some good records. Like I said, I just moved here, so it’s hard to really say. We’ll see how it goes.

When you went to the record store, did they know you?

I’ve been recognized on the street here a few times. And at Rough Trade there were a few people who recognized me. It’s not totally surprising, because I play in London once in a while. Also based on what I buy, they probably figure, ‘O.K., this guy buys shit loads of folk and special orders obscure blues and country music. It’s probably that guy.’

dälek – Deadverse Massive Vol. 1 (Hydra Head, 2007)

(This originally appeared in the Summer ‘07 issue of Skyscraper)

The February release of Abandoned Language has been quickly followed by the odds and sods collection that is Deadverse Massive. Interestingly enough both releases have been distributed by labels that mostly specialize in devious strains of rock. Unfortunately, even with the exposure to a wider and different audience Dälek hasn’t seemed to find the acceptance that other underground rap acts have found. Regardless of their fortune, this collection spans a 7 year period and includes a few remixes created just for this release. The lead off “Megaton” has been placed at the head because it exemplifies the groups sound, but apparently prefigures any major release. Sadly enough, between that first track and the following instrumental “Angst” with its slightly less abrasive sound and bigger groove seem to be the highlights. Obviously, with the lyrical ability of dälek there are noteworthy tracks and lines like “speak the truth in question/jagged tongue is weapon” from “Desolate Peoples”. A female vocalist appears on a couple of remixes. Without any notation as to who she is, one can only ponder her identity as well as why the group decided to include such an exploration. This all contributes to the catalogue that dälek and Oktopus have been building for a decade, but only points to where they were going as opposed to exhibiting their previous glory.

RJD2 – Third Hand (XL, 2007)

(This originally appeared in the Spring ‘07 issue of Skyscraper)

Everything that I read about the 3^rd proper full length from RJD2 shat all over it. Occasionally in a nice way, but frequently in a manner that could not be spoken to the guys face. What we have here are 12 tracks of what RJD2 wanted to create and three tracks of what everyone else expected. Basically, in the past when an artist/producer comes to the forefront of a genre and releases something that no one immediately pounces upon, it ends up being heralded a few years later as genius. Eno, Lou Reed, whoever. No, RJD2 is neither of those gentlemen, but he has over the past few years created a body of work that no misstep can revoke. And while, for whatever reason, he sings on a vast majority of tracks, “Rules for Normal Living” sounds like Michael Jackson with some electronica at the end. This won’t climb the charts, or launch hundreds of emulations, but the minimalism of “Paper Bubbles” needed to exposed to everyone that had purchased a RJD2 recording in the past. What this slab proves is two fold. First, RJD2 doesn’t care what you want, think or expect. And second, to be a good DJ, you must understand and utilize every genre of music you can get your hands on.