Cryptacize Interview

Here is my interview with 66.6(repeating)% of Cryptacize, who I mentioned in my last post, and who are still on tour. This interview took place 2008-10-24 Fri in a car motoring from Oakland to San Francisco over the San Francisco Bay, by way of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I rode shotgun while Chris Cohen (guitar, vocals) drove. Nedelle Torrisi (guitar, autoharp, vocals) sat behind me, opposite our friend Yasi. Percussionist/harmonica enthusiast Michael Carreira stayed in the East Bay.


So... how's it going?

NT: You've never done this before, have you?

I hear that you've been working on a record lately?

CC: Where'd you hear that?

I dunno, from the internet.

CC: You heard it from me.

So how's it been going? So you're recording in your mountain hideaway?

CC: We recorded in a lot of different places. We recorded at Nedelle's parents in Nedelle's brother's old room in Vacaville. We recorded in our closet. We recorded at my parent's house in L.A. We recorded at their cabin too, near Yosemite. We haven't had our apartment, so we've been traveling around and living in different places and recording where we could.

Are you recording onto laptop, I guess?

CC: Yeah, we've recorded it all in ProTools. Our friend calls it "Blow Tools". I don't think it blows, I like it.

So how is this album shaping up compared to the last one?

CC: Pretty bad. No, I'm just kidding.

NT: It's good. I think it's better.

CC: It's better? Are you asking when you say "shaping up", do you mean good or bad, or...?

Well, just in terms of, is it a new musical direction, or is it more of the same?

CC: It's a lot thicker. It's the same direction in a lot of ways, but it's been executed more thickly.

Like in terms of more overdubs, or in terms of using distortion this time...?

CC: Well, there was lots of distortion on Dig That Treasure.

NT: It was accidental distortion, this time it's intentional.

CC: We got new fuzz pedals. But yeah, there's a lot more overdubs, and kind of like a more fantasy approach, where we didn't know how to play the songs beforehand, except for a couple of them. The last time we recorded, we knew how to play all of our songs, pretty much, and then we recorded them together.

I understand [drummer/percussionist] Mike [Carreira] wasn't along for these various trips?

CC: Mike came out to the cabin to do his drum tracks a couple different times. He did a couple trips. And then we would show him stuff after we did it, periodically. Mike didn't really do any overdubs. A lot of songs actually just started with the drums, and Mike never really went back and did another pass at a song, he would pretty much do one take.

He was perfect from the start?

CC: Yeah, you might say.

So I guess the songs had to retain the same structure as your initial take on them because of that?

CC: No, because we chopped it up a lot after. A lot of the structure of the songs totally changed since Mike recorded his drums. And we did a lot of things that were actually loops and stuff, although you wouldn't necessarily know that.

So what stage are you at now? You've recorded all the stuff, have you mixed it yet?

CC: Yeah, we've been mixing it for almost two months or something. We're not quite done.

Is it gonna come out on the same label as last time?

CC: Yeah, same label, Asthmatic Kitty. We're gonna put out a 7", hopefully before the album comes out. We're working on something with Burning Star Core. He's gonna edit our album down to a couple minutes, so it's gonna be like a highlights reel, and that'll be a sneak peak of the album. A 'sizzle reel'. One side of it's gonna be that, and the other side of it hopefully, if everything goes as planned, is gonna be... well, it's a surprise.

And that will be on the same label?

CC: No. Actually, we don't have a label to put that out yet; we're shopping.

What are you doing for the videos?

CC: We're gonna make some ourselves; we got a camera. We were watching these squirrels at my parents' house. My parents bought a bird feeder and they filled it with sunflower seeds, and they put it on their back porch. But my dad was too lazy to hang it up in the tree, so he just left it on the porch, and then all these squirrels have come to eat it, and the birds can't get at it. These squirrels have these super-macho power struggles over food, and we have a lot of footage of that we're considering maybe somehow using.

NT: I was gonna make them lip-sync to one of our songs, because when they're eating their mouths are moving really fast, but if you slow it down, it can look like they're singing.

CC: Also, there are some really cute ones, like there are these little baby ones. There's chipmunks and squirrels.

NT: And they also do some dance moves sometimes that are really cute.

CC: And we also have some other videos maybe in the works. Our friend Darren Keen, a.k.a. "The Show is the Rainbow" is going to make one and this dude Donovan Vim Crony is hopefully gonna make a video for us too.

What exactly is the deal with this Danielson tour? You're gonna be in their backing band?

CC: We're gonna be involved somehow. We're not really exactly sure.

NT: I know we're gonna wear some cool shoes.

CC: Yeah, we saw pictures of the shoes the other day.

NT: Specialized shoes made by John Fluevog for Danielson.

But are you guys are gonna be playing as part of the Danielson band?

CC: We asked them if we could open for them; we have the same booking guy. Erik, the booking guy said that Daniel's putting together a new band, because the family can't go on tour so I was like, maybe we can offer to play in his band, as an incentive, if we played in the band for free.

Have you been listening to all their CD's just in case?

CC: Yeah, he gave us a list of the possible songs, so we're trying to learn all the words.

NT: I'm trying.

CC: Nedelle's trying. I'm gonna cram at the last second, cause I have to finish mixing our record...

NT: You should listen to the CD nonstop on the flight to the East Coast. I'm excited.

So that's the situation for the whole tour? You're opening for them?

CC: Yeah, he's taking us along for the whole tour. We're very grateful to him.

So what's the future after this next tour? The album comes out in...?

NT: April. We're just gonna try to get jobs again, and work on some videos and 7"'s and just fun things, but kinda just wait for the record to come out.

Did you have a lot of extra songs that you wrote and aren't using?

NT: We had one extra song, which hopefully we can arrange in a way that pleases all of us.

CC: And we have lots of tiny parts that we threw out.

You kind of have a bucket of those sitting around, that you can string together into songs?

Yasi: How tiny?

CC: Pretty tiny.

Yasi: Like a bar?

NT: Everywhere from a bar, sure, definitely... Like a little riff...

Yasi: Less than a bar?

NT: Oh, Chris probably has some that are less than a bar.

CC: No...

NT: Really? But you have real short things.

CC: They go by fast.

NT: Mine are mostly whole chord progressions. Chris has a lot of riffs.

CC: I have one that I can show you right now. Actually, this one hasn't been thrown out yet though, and it actually might already be a song, I'm not sure. I've been kinda working on it. It goes like [sings]... I think it might be stolen from the breakdown in "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer. Like [sings]...

NT: No, that's not it, [sings]...

Do you have that problem a lot, where you write something, and then you're like, "oh wait, that's Ghostbusters", or something?

NT: I think we've had moments like that, not like ripping off "Ghostbusters" per se, but...

[Yasi whispers something to Nedelle.]

NT: No way, really?

CC: You've ripped it off?

NT: How did Conor just pull that out?

Yasi: Ghostbusters? I don't know, we didn't talk about it.

NT: That's weird.

What?

CC: Nedelle thinks that I ripped off the NPR theme.

NT: Yeah, the "All Things Considered", it goes [sings]...

Yasi: Yeah, yeah.

CC: It sounds like it when you sing it, but when you hear it, it doesn't really...

Yasi: No, I wasn't saying "yeah", I was saying "yeah" like, "I love that song".

CC: I actually don't love that song at all, but I guess...

NT: We had to take that part out of the song.

So do you see yourselves doing any other musical projects besides Cryptacize?

CC: I don't see myself doing anything other than Cryptacize.

NT: Nor do I.

CC: I see myself sitting in the chair in front of the computer for 20 hours.

What about The Curtains, is that ever gonna come back?

CC: The Curtains is like if I wasn't doing this. Cryptacize is kind of more fun.

Are you guys are planning on doing another headline tour in the spring?

CC: We're hoping that some band will take us on tour with them. For our booking agent to book shows for us, he makes like what you would make working at McDonald's, setting up shows for us. He is willing to do it, and he will do it if no one else wants us to open for them. But yeah, hopefully someone will come along and swoop us up, and present us to all of their fans.

Are there any bands that you've noticed have been influenced by you guys yet?

CC: No. I've noticed a lot of bands that have influenced us. I don't know, James Brown probably is our biggest influence. As far as inspiration of the greatest, the most untouchable, the most hardcore, he's the ultimate musician to me.

Bailter Space Interview

While on summer vacation in 1995, I interviewed Kiwi (via NYC) space/noise/drone rock band Bailter Space before their show at a coffee house in Moorhead (across the river from Fargo). The text of the interview has had a lonely outpost on my website since that time, but I'm moving it here for greater exposure, and for archival purposes. After not having heard anything out of camp Bailter for many moons, I assumed they had broken up, but just checked their MySpace (how appropriate), and it turns out they're playing the Bowery Ballroom in NYC (though with a new bass player) this Saturday, the 23rd of August!! I expect a show report from any NYC NAP correspondent(s) who happen to be reading.



Bailter Space played at the Coffee Club in Moorhead, Minnesota on July 17, 1995. They all turned out to be extremely nice, and were nice enough to allow this, my first attempt at an interview. j = John, a = Alistair, b = Brent. Transcribing the interview was more difficult than I imagined it would be, and it was very difficult to tell by listening who exactly was answering, but here's what I typed out:

First of all, who's in the band and what do they play, and that sort of thing?

j= This is myself, I'm John, and there's Alistair, and there's Brent, and Brent plays the drums and he plays samples, and Alistair plays guitar and a little bass, and I play bass and a little guitar and sing and that's it.

Ok, when and how did you get started as a band?

j= We started playing together under a different name in 1980.

The Gordons?

j= Yeah. We played for 18 months or so and then sorta kinda went various directions and ended up in 1987 or 88 or around there, we became and worked together as Bailter Space and we've been playing as a three piece.

So, were the Gordons, was the sound the same as Bailter Space?

j= No, that was like... they had some similarities, but it was like a different band, really. It was a different concept, and a different period of history and it was like a new thing. When we formed Bailter Space it was like a new thing. We weren't trying to... in any way trying to recapture the past. It was not an interest.

What is the concept, would you say, behind Bailter Space?

a= What kind of magazine do you have?

It's gonna be a zine, he's just starting it up. He's into philosophy and music and the interrelation and that sort of thing.

a= Because yeah, you know, we can answer in many different ways to the last question, and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like a --

[rudely interrupting]: Well I guess in a musical way, mainly, or aesthetic or whatever.

a= So, can we have that again?

What is the concept behind Bailter Space, as you see it?

a= [chuckles] There are many. There are many varying and shifting concepts, like something that's in orbit, you know. It changes, you know, the form of it changes, but the concept being the orbit of the star or what, you know, the sound or whatever, and then the sun is in orbit.. [asks Brent] ...does the sun orbit?

b= Well, yeah, but we're kind of orbiting the sun.

j= Yeah, we're orbiting the sun.

a= Anyway, we're in orbit, basically. I was trying to make a parallel, but it tipped out a bit, you know.

j= Is the sun orbiting [unintelligible]?

a= But, the orbit being the main concept... the forces of gravity. We have a concept of sound sometimes, where we talk about how we're going to make a textural sort of production. And, the song kind of speaks for itself more, in concept. It's not like we make a law for a concept, so finite is that it's more like the listener conceptualizes with the song.

j= Every song extends, in some way, the concept. Every song we write is like another step forward.

What initially made you want to start making music?

a= It would probably vary for each three of us.

j= We all started playing music when we were really young, and we hadn't met each other at that point. I'm not sure what it was for me. It was just like hearing music and just realizing I loved it. It had a lot of power. I don't know. I guess it had a lot of influence on my life as a youngster, and I just gravitated towards it. And as soon as I could get my hands on a guitar, I did, and I taught myself and never thought about it from that point. It was just something I loved doing, so I kept doing it.

You're from New Zealand, right? (them: Yeah) And you're living in New York? (them: Yeah) How do the two compare, as far as, in general and musically speaking?

a= Musically? I don't know, it's a lot different, it's like three times the size of New Zealand, so there's three lots of New Zealand there. We're there, and there's a lot of music going on. It's great. Maybe you have to wait for things more in New Zealand, whereas in New York, if there's something you wanted to see and it's not there, then you can probably come up with another idea about something else you might want to go and absorb. So I think that that would be one of the things mainly different.

a= Yeah, time runs on a different kind of... it's a faster pace, really a lot louder. Faster food. [laughs]

b= Faster cars.

j= Not really; we've got pretty fast cars over there too.

How's your tour been going? When did it start, how long will it last, and where are you going after Moorhead?

j= That's like good, good, good, yes, good, and yes. [laughs] It started about two and a half weeks ago and the U.S. part lasts six weeks, and after Moorhead we're heading to Seattle, but I think we've got one show before Seattle.

b= Missoula.

a= Missoula, Montana.

j= And two weeks after the tour we go to Europe for a month, so it's the start of a bigger tour.

How do you like touring, anyway? Do enjoy playing live?

a= Yeah, playing live's great. The road runs you down from time to time.

j= It's like the point of our existence at the moment. When we moved from New Zealand, all three of us dedicated ourselves to the band, as being the main drift of what we were wanting to do. So, when we finally get out on the road and tour, it's like we're fulfilling part of what we're doing. That's what we do. We're in a band, we are musicians, and we've had a great opportunity to stay together as a band, and most of the time just be musicians. And touring's a great way to keep playing. I mean, we've been on the road for two weeks, and I feel like we've been on the road for a couple of hours. I think I could do it forever, and probably will.

For some bands, it's kinda hard to tour.

j= Sometimes you can have a bad day, I think, and you go "arghhh", you've had enough, but the next day...

a= Getting tired is tough.

j= It's nice to have a day off occasionally, and have a good sleep and catch up.

a= The driving...

j= The luxury of being in your home, surrounded by things you like doing. But it's a small compromise for what you...

a= We'll be back home in like three weeks. We'll be able to hang out all we want then. But at the moment it's fine.

So what type of venues do you normally play? Is it kinda like this, or bigger, or?

a= It varies. From this to larger warehouse type places. No stadiums or such on this tour.

j= There's been a few larger 500 or 600 capacity rooms, not that we get that many people.

How have the audiences reacted to your show?

j= They like us. We get a lot of people that have never heard of us, never seen us, who just happen to be there that night. They really get surprised and go, "wow, this is really cool". But apart from those people, we occasionally have the hardcore fan thing happening around America.

How big do you think is your fanship or whatever in America?

j= In America? Well, we don't know. Matador has never really told us how many records we've sold.

a= But every night we play, we're playing new towns to new people, and if we play good or people like it, well you're always adding to that. So we're in a way doing the groundwork. But even before we came to New York in '88, was the first time; even before we arrived here there was a pocket of people in each city that were familiar with our music through Flying Nun Records releases. So now that we're signed with Matador, and we have domestic releases, that's really helped us a lot to get through to a larger audience.

How did that signing thing happen? Did they find you, or did you find them?

j= Well, it was a bit of both. We were working with Gerard from Matador before Matador existed. He used to work for Homestead and we were thinking about working with Homestead, but it was really because of our respect for Gerard. He's just a great guy, and he's done a lot of good things for the music industry.

What is Matador like, as far as promotions, and how much creative control do you get and that sort of thing?

j= They're great, as far as that goes. They really give us complete creative control, for one because that's the reason they signed us. They like the way we operated. Before we were working with them, we were largely independent and we managed to survive for quite a few years and build our own thing, and they liked our record covers, they liked our songwriting approach, they liked our overall direction. They don't really tamper with that, at all. They just leave us to our own devices, and that's one of the reasons why we like Matador too, because we don't want to be told how to dress or when to go on tour too much.

How many tours have you done in the past, and how do they compare with this one?

j= Countless. I wouldn't be able to count them. First off, we toured New Zealand too many numerous times to count, and toured Australia three times, and this is our second national tour in America, but we've done a lot of minitours on the east coast over the years, and Europe we've toured I think four times, and we're going back there again very soon.

What's your following like at home, in New Zealand?

j= It's one of our biggest audiences, and it's actually grown out of proportion since we've left the country. From reports that we get, it's like we've become... I think New Zealand is whipping up a patriotic storm about Bailter Space while we've been away; they see us as carrying the flag, or something like that, so they're kind of proud of us. Even though, they think we're a lot bigger here than we actually are. It's grown in their imagination.

How do your live shows compare with your studio recordings?

j= I think they can be pretty close, because we've always recorded in a similar manner to how we actually perform live. We play all the instruments at the same time, except for vocals, which are standard because vocals have to be done separately. Otherwise, you get lots of instruments going through your vocal mic. And occasionally we do a guitar overdub, but we didn't even do that on the last album; there's no guitar overdubs.

Really? Because, it sounds really layered, a big thick sound.

j= We were very pleased with the producer we were working with. He immediately understood what we're trying to do, and he didn't try to change us into some other kind of band, and he just went straight to it and got the sounds we wanted. And we hardly even had to produce it, because it was already sounding good before it was produced. We just got it on the tape sounding good, through careful microphone placement and taking a bit of time before we laid the tracks down. So it's no problem for us to play our songs live. Some people say our live performances are better than our records, some say the other way around.

Tell me about the new album. I've heard it isn't as noisy as previous ones, but I haven't personally heard it. What are your feelings on noise in general in music?

j= Well, I think it has a little more space in it, here and there. Less overdubs. But I think there's definitely moments where there's plenty of noise going on. It's not lacking noise. But it's true, I think some of our previous albums were more layered with overdubs. But we wanted to, with the new album, we just had a quick talk before we wrote the songs and recorded them, about the direction we wanted to take, and we decided that we wanted to get to the heart of what Bailter Space is. We didn't want to do any fancy overdubs or anything like that. We wanted to record the songs directly onto the tape, as honestly as we could, and see how it worked out. And we did that, and we're very pleased with it for that reason, because it somehow catches the freshness of the songs, that were brand new songs, and that were recorded in a lot of cases just as the first take. Sometimes we did a lot of takes to get the right take, but most of them were very early takes. So they're recorded before they had become overplayed and before they been toured ten times and got sick of them, so they're still new and exciting to us, and somehow that excitement was retained in the recordings. That's what I feel, anyway.

Are you more of a texture type band or a song/melody type band?

j= Both, I think. We definitely have songs that are quite melody strong, but are also heavily into texture. That's one of the main elements we play with. That, and harmonic overtones and all the instruments ringing together as a whole.

What's your favorite Bailter Space album and song?

j= It varies on the week. There are times when I just don't want to put on a Bailter Space record. Sometimes it's too close. We're all in the band and you don't always want to play your own music. Sometimes it's hard to be objective and take a step back. At the moment I'm a lot enjoying playing the new album. I like "Retro", I like a lot of songs off that album. But, I like "Thermos" as an album, a lot. Which, actually, it's going to be re-released very shortly, including "Tanker". "Tanker" and "Thermos". And that catalog is going to come out on Matador label.

Yeah, I just bought them in London for too much money, I didn't think they were available over here.

j= Yeah, they're not available, but however your money is not wasted, because what you would've bought is the original pressing, whereas it'll be a different product by a different company. I mean, it's the same master tape. But, if you're interested in the collective value of it, maybe the import will be worth more eventually. But that's one of the reasons why we like the idea of having a domestic release in America is because the prices are more fair. We don't want to be expensive, we want people to be able to afford to buy records. The more people that buy our records, the more people that get to hear it. It's a good thing for them, it's a good thing for us.

Are you ever going to be distributed through Atlantic?

j= That's always a possibility. It has been loosely discussed at different points, and that could happen, but it's up to both parties. For a start, it's up to them to come forth with the idea, and up to us to decide whether we want that, or whether we want to stay more on the indie type label.

What do you consider your influences to be?

j= I don't think our influences have really been largely from other bands, and I've never been able to understand why that should necessarily be the case. For instance, everyone on this planet walks around, and we're all influenced by common things and by different things and everything around us, being the cycles of the moon or television or makeup or your mother, all make up part of what you become, what direction you take in your life, so I don't see why you have to necessarily be directly influenced by another rock band. Why can't it be the sound of a vacuum cleaner or something like that? All three of us listen to very different music from each other, and undoubtedly different things have influenced us at different times, but I honestly couldn't think of one specific band that we could say, "that's our main influence", it just wouldn't be correct.

Do you listen to music much, and what are your favorite bands?

j= Well, while we've been driving along in the van, we've been listening to John Coltrane, just while we're driving here today, and Can, and we've been listening to some Schoenberg and a little rock stuff. Early this morning we just picked up a big box of CD's from Amphetamine Reptile. We know [? (probably label head Tom Hazelmyer)], so we visited him, and he gave us a box of those. We don't even know what's in the box yet, but we'll probably end up playing some of those. So we're open to listening to anything, any form of music. I know Alistair at the moment is listening to Latino kinda beats, like Tito Puente. We're all listening to an incredible variety of different things.

What makes you want to continue making music?

a= How derogatory is this question meant?

Oh, it's not derogatory. Like when you walk up in the morning, what makes you say, "oh I want to pick up my guitar again"?

a= I love music, and very much enjoy playing and working in a group. You're learning about music all the time.

j= I think you hit on it there, Alistair. I think it's mostly just the personal satisfaction of it more than anything else. It's not so much like a job, even though we have to be professional and work in a professional manner. It's not a job to us; we love it, we like what we're doing. Otherwise I don't think any of us would bother.

a= It's great fun to be in a band.

Do you want your music to affect what your listeners feel, and if so, how?

j= Yeah, we would like to think that people are going to be moved in some way, that everyone is going to be moved in a different way from another. For instance, lyrics could be interpreted any way whatsoever. You can write a song for a specific meaning. One person will take it right, and then someone else will have a totally different idea on it, and sometimes it gets back to us what someone thinks a song means, and some of it can be really interesting. Even just the name of the band, Bailter Space, traveling different parts of the world, people ask us what it means, but just as many people tell us what it means to them, and that's really interesting to find out.

What does it mean, anyway?

j= I don't know. It's an open-ended sort of name. The "bailter" part of it you won't find in any dictionary, so it's kind of like a blank for people to fill in whatever way they've been touched by the music, becomes what the name means to them. It's their space, the "bailter space".

How do you go about writing songs?

j= That varies with different songs, too. They often start with guitar, sometimes just with a simple riff, sometimes they start with a sample.

a= A melody, a harmony.

j= Sometimes with a whistling sound in your head.

a= There's various different kinds of approaches, and various different kinds of inspirations.

j= It's not as though we've got a pet formula, where we know we're going to write a song like "this". We like to approach each song as they come up. Sometimes they just emerge, and other times we're really working on them in a more...

a= Going for a sound, maybe.

j= Yeah, or a concept, an idea, or a kind of a beat.

Do you all work on the songs together?

j= Yeah, as much as we can.

a= We check every song we have as by the band. It's the way that we choose to work, to write together.

~~~~~~~~

At this point, the opening band, Bossk, started playing extremely loudly, and we ended the interview. The crowd was pretty sparse when Bailter Space took the stage. Apparently few in Fargo had heard of Bailter Space, and fewer still wanted to be exposed to new music. I think Bailter Space were a bit disappointed by this and the non-demonstrative nature of the upper-midwesterners who did stick around to see them. They put on a good, albeit short, show despite frequent difficulties with Alistair's Rickenbacker going out of tune and subsequently having to switch guitars after every song.

After the show I briefly talked to John a bit more. For guitar geeks amongst you, John plays his bass through a Marshall guitar amp. He does this so that the chords aren't muddled in the way they would be through a bass amp. He uses a Ratt distortion pedal on a couple songs. When he plays guitar, he mainly uses a Fender Jaguar. Alistair mainly uses a Rickenbacker with a Ratt distortion pedal and a Boss digital delay pedal. He plays through a Marshall amp and a Fender amp at the same time.

Among other things, I really meant to ask more about their use of a sampler, which they didn't use live. After having heard "Wammo" for myself, I can report that it is quite an excellent album, although my favorite remains "Robot World". Thanks again to Bailter Space for letting me interview them.

Curious Jorge

(photo by Lars Knudson)

Like me, Jorge Boehringer moved from Texas to California late last century to pursue graduate studies in music at Mills College. He composes under his given name, but usually performs as Core of the Coalman, producing a potent sonic brew that is the result of the mangling and manipulation of viola, keyboards, and vocals by electronic means. He recently moved to Prague, and is planning to tour Europe in September. We spoke via Google Chat on August 6, 2008.

So hello there Jorge, if that is your real name.

You said this was a Christian magazine, right?

Yes, trying to spread the Gospel (His Word) across the land. We hear that He is especially into metal these days.

OK great, just wanted to make sure. We can begin then, if this is really the beginning.

In the beginning there was light... and this question: How would you advise someone to proceed in trying to tell another person about your music, a person who has never heard it before, but might be cognizant of certain music reference points which could be used?

Well, wouldn't it take just as long and be more descriptive to play it for them?

What if that wasn't an option? Also, people nowadays are so busy running to and fro, with their modern active lifestyles. Sometimes you just need to make a 10 second pitch in the elevator.

Hmm. It seems to me that slowing down is an option. One slows down when one listens to LPs, because they need to be played in the home, or at least on turntables. LP records encourage listening, in these contexts. One is encouraged by the medium itself to sit the fuck down on the couch and actively participate in the sounds by listening. This is how I enjoy music and what I am making music for, though I am sure there are other uses for it and I am not against anyone using something however they see fit.

Certainly that's true. It's also true however that nowadays people are inundated with so many musical choices that music which isn't easily described can sometimes fall through the cracks, i.e. people never hear about it. But I know that you hate trying to describe your music in these sorts of ways, so I'll desist and proceed to the next question. You have a number of musical aliases, although "Core of the Coalman" seems to have been your main nom de muzak for a while now. When did you start using that name, and why the switch from previous identities?

Core of the Coalman is the name of my solo project, though at times it ceases to be a solo project. This is the name the live electronic music I make changed to, coincidently, when I de-emphasized the use of the computer in live performance. Before that, I was using the name sevencentralandmountain.

I've been using the Core of the Coalman name a lot recently in the last few years because it is the name of my solo project, and since I have been traveling a lot for extended periods, and oddly I even felt that I was traveling before I left for Prague the first time. I had been traveling or moving in some way, as the I Ching was suggesting to me at the time, being in a state of "having somewhere to go".

Anyway, when you are going somewhere you can't force others to come with you. Sometimes you don't want others, but in my case that wasn't it, though I write a lot more when I am alone; my concentration and body rhythms change really. But I wasn't trying to be alone, I was just moving and so I took my solo music with me and that is what I have been doing.

I need to say one other thing, which is that often Core of the Coalman pieces begin as sketches for other things, ensemble pieces for instance, or just as electronic ideas or conceptual ideas I want to try. I bring them in some form, sometimes at a very early stage, in front of an audience this way and see what happens, then I develop them, sometimes in multiple media, sometimes outside of Core of the Coalman entirely.

There are other things about that name as well. It has a dark heart to it, a dark human heart, and it references material from the heart of the earth. I am extremely drawn to minerals, and some of my sounds and music have components of their structures that for me are analogous to a mineral sort of situation. Also there is some Rip Van Winkle in that name. An old miner, believed dead for 200 years, suddenly emerges into the Utah sun. His mummified skin evaporating under the desert sun like the mummy in that new, disappointing Indiana Jones movie... or something. Have you seen pictures of the men who worked those mines? They were covered in that shit! Immersion in a texture, for real.

Here in Oakland, Core of the Coalman appearances were typically at shows in the noise scene. There are parts of your music that totally fit in with the music of others in that scene, but there were other parts, sometimes with more of a minimalist/Steve Reich kind of vibe, which I really dug, but that was unusual for that situation. Do you feel like that was the most appropriate venue for your music here, and how does the situation compare in Europe?

Well, Europe is a big place and I don't really think I understand all of its attributes by a long shot. To answer your questions in reverse order (though I won't answer them backwards, sheriff, because I am not that little guy from Twin Peaks)...

I have so far been performing most of my Core of the Coalman things here in Europe in the form of tours, so shows occur in short bursts with many performances grouped together followed by months of conceptualization, composition and rehearsal. In Oakland I generally perform pretty often. So that has obvious differences for how the music evolves. In the live setting I get a strong indication of what is working and what isn't and I adjust it. In California I do this in an ongoing way, in daily practice punctuated with regular performances, whereas here I do that on the fly, on the road often. Maybe in that way the improvisational aspects take on a different sort of rhythm in the large scale, in relation to how the compositions work. I don't recompose the structures on the road but maybe I alter the surface more than I would when I am based in California. Partly this is because I am living in Czech Republic and I wasn't performing as often here as in some other countries nearby, though this may be changing. I have performed here quite a bit more recently, since I have returned here, which brings me to your next question. However, first I will say that I would hate to lose the solitude I mentioned earlier, and part of that is having these long, rather isolated breaks between stretches of performance. It's a different landscape, a different rhythm of working, and it is conducive to bringing out aspects of composing and of asking questions that I really enjoy. If you have too many performances, it is easy to stop feeling that there is time to ask as many questions. After all, that is what I am interested in.

[As far as] what I feel is the appropriate venue for my music, I don't really like to use the word "appropriate". Of course, it's great to have a good sound system. That seems "appropriate" to certain things in a certain sense. I don't want to neutralize a place though. When I am performing I try to address the space, such that the sounds can become site-specific. I do this in a rigorous way when I do installation work and things like that, but in my performances it is there too, in "music" it is there. It is part of the improvisation and has to do with listening, and I think many musicians do this. I think maybe more should. I like visiting places I am unfamiliar with and am always glad to be invited, and I want to feel and hear what is happening there. So neutral, well-equipped venues are great, but so are odd places, squats full of personality. I would love to perform and install my pieces in museums, or some of them at least, but I often think museums should be more like certain disused architectural or natural phenomena I come across, where the focus is thrown back onto the idea, the questions being asked.

I enjoy presenting work alongside artists working with noise, and I am working with noise and this is because this addresses the basic material, it addresses a listener through the body, physically, through the mind in a way where one needn't operate inside of a frame of preconceived musical structure (anything, theoretically, could be permitted here, whereas at a musical form whose genre is very well defined the material as well as the audience response is to a large degree determined a priori, leaving little space for questions or newness of any sort really). Further, the material's noise itself, and tones, address the basic materials of sound at the disposal of people: percussion, basic and complex synthesized sounds, recycled sounds from the world's musical and unmusical past and present, to make a sound of the future...everything can come in, and the focus is on listening into the sound, to its grain, to its envelopes and its long term movement (THAT envelope), and the physicality bridges between the "noise" being made physically with these materials, and the room which is responding to it (undeniably part of the "music" in this context) as it makes its way to a listener, who is free to move about in the best circumstances, free to make decisions about what or where the music is, to, again, ask questions and determine their own experience. Some argue that the intent of the artists in this context is lost, but I think it is in fact lost not more than in other music, where the artists intend music submit to a frame imposed by musical structures external to their own invention, which signify emotional, conceptual and even political structures already so loaded with meaning so as to paralyze any new expression. In fact, here the artists and audience interact on equal terms, and find themselves asking many of the same questions.

What do you mean by "asking questions" in your work? What are some examples of these questions?

There are two types of questions for the most part. The first deal with questions of a basic curious inquiry (what would happen if ...? what would it sound like when ...?). On another level there are questions I ask about the structure of textures I observe in operation and interaction in the world or in my and, by analogy, I hope, our bodies. From this I formulate concepts. This fuels the next stage which has to do with questions of design, which, as Charles Eames said, addresses itself to a need. These are questions of how something is done. The results then feed back into the first stage, in two ways: on a very practical level the results of my application of my designs to the ideas I am working with reveals to what extent a created situation is successful, in terms of construction and function; second, and maybe more importantly, this made situation I have created is now part of the world, part of the situation I was exploring in the first place. Then I am free to observe these interactions, and ask more questions.

But maybe you want a specific example.

Okay, one example of a conceptual level of inquiry could begin with my inquiry into the interaction of some systems of textures in the world at large, for example an ecological inquiry, "why does this population of cypress trees reach its thickest density at this point, why does this grove of trees have this specific shape, and what other systems are acting on this?".

The next step is to analyze this system; this is done because it is interesting. That may take the form of data or some type of model. It can take the form of mathematics: a curve, say, or some statistical model of structure, or it may be vaguer: an idea from which to draw an analogy.

However, the mapping of textures and systems of interaction onto some new media (even the mathematics mentioned earlier is a new media, no? it isn't dirt and wood and insects certainly!) begins to reflect the attributes of this new system, the system devised to understand the first. What I mean is that one's model takes on a life of its own, the measurement apparatus and transformative mechanism becomes part of the experiment and affects one's observation. A problem in science, maybe, but this is not science in that sense, it is art, and so I can be free with it wherever I damn well please! As such I am open to odd discoveries, accidents and aspects of chance that can be very surprising, and I enjoy surprises. They can be quite horrible...

In any case, sometimes one can end up with a map of some texture of system of interaction that reflects nothing in particular, and I think many popular mainstream artists working with scientific materials sometimes fall into this situation, where there is some museum piece, generally very technologically stunning, that reflects little or no inquiry. Maybe only information, but often very little of that even, and to me this falls a little flat, this isn't so interesting for me. In fact I feel a little ripped off, like they are even selling [the] phenomena they are dealing with in the first place short, like as if it is an attempt to piggyback crappy art on the back on an interesting phenomena or technology, rather than really asking any questions or revealing anything. Turning the lights up on something taken for granted would be enough.

Thus when dealing with the transformation of information derived out of the study of some phenomena (that is the results of the first question, THAT grove of trees) into some form from which it can be understood or which prompts some use in a new media (like sounds), it is important that the questions continue. Curves of populations of THOSE trees may well look like curves of energy expenditures in Chicago in 1989, or the state of the NYSE markets between May and October 1992, but that doesn't say much about anything (though this itself is an interesting occurrence, no?). When it becomes interesting is when the question can then come to regard the application of these materials. Lately, I have been increasingly comfortable with treating this stage with utmost freedom (another thing physical scientists often can't afford to do; they are doing research, I am just creating situations, by analogy). So I can apply this freedom to these stages and maybe this is a sort of poetics or something, I can make many versions. Its up to the author and the listener at that point. Things can be adjusted and the questions then become, at that stage, "should I sample and hold these keyboard notes and modulate them with that sine wave, should at add noise to the signal and how much...".

Perhaps at this point you could tell the home viewers a bit about some of your recent releases, how to obtain them, and about any future releases that might be in the works?

Sure, my last two releases are available directly from the record labels, both of which are small and dedicated entirely to experimental, and largely electronic, music. Resipiscent has recently reissued my recent CD release "Anxiety". BOC has very recently released "AsoltMusket", a sort of sequel to the Resipiscent release. A wealth of earlier releases, as well as the more recent viola and electronic continuum "rrrr" and Paul Moth Baker & my DVD "Energy Patterns", are available from SauceJuice. A few copies of a cassette release called "Carnasie", released by the beautiful Custodian Color Zoo Containers, may still be available from Aquarius Records in San Francisco.

More music and claptrap available on:
http://opakptak.blogspot.com
http://www.myspace.com/coreoggthecoalman
http://www.virb.com/coal
http://www.last.fm/music/Core+of+the+Coalman
http://www.last.fm/music/JorgeBoehringer
http://www.myspace.com/opakptak
http://www.last.fm/music/Jorge+Boehringer

Thanks for speaking with the NonAlignment Pact!

Thanks for having me!