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Ian Williams is the guitarist behind the band Storm & Stress, a parallel
universe of Don Caballero which stands as one of today's most adventurous
statements on the future of rock music.
Can you give me a quick overview of your life as a guitarist? from the
beginnings to S&S. Including influences, models, teachers, etc.
I haven't studied with anyone. "doing it yourself" is something i took
from punk rock, though i believe that's a pretty bankrupt myth, that one
does it themself. when we all do it ourself, we're all doing it, aren't
we? but on the guitar itself, someone told me once that they play their
amp more than their guitar. i think when i began, i played distortion more than
the guitar. the results of my
strumming. now i play the twang of the string, which is a lot closer to
the source of the sound making.
Can you comment on Don Caballero vs S&S? What prompted you to start
a parallel project? What can you do with S&S that you could not do with
DC? Is S&S now your main and only project?
The idea of the band is becoming more of a foldable, interchangable, and
disposable idea. it was a big deal when ron wood joined the rolling
stones, but i don't think anyone would notice if pearl jam got a new guitarist.
bands are now more like business cards. people have them as hobbies,
identify themselves in the local community through them, etc. i mean, no
one works for one company anymore. you're somewhere for a few years, and
then you leave. american commentators always ridicule the japanese as
being outdated because of company loyalty. 21 year olds that work in
coffee shops don't want to admit it, but their system of "being in a band"
is working the same way.
How did you pick the partners in S&S? Can you also briefly comment on
their skills/personalities?
I think there's a lot of naivite and hubris within our mix of
personalities. that's probably our worst crime. i keep wondering what
a "mature" record means.
I am not technical enough to ask you questions about your guitar technique
but I would appreciate if you could elaborate on what makes your guitar
so different from any other rock guitar I've heard in my life.
I've always been a tapper, as in, on tables, school desks, my legs and
chest. i've eventually been able to figure out how to move that to the
guitar.musically, there was that linear looping line playing on doncab
2. that's where i
started writing with the band. i didn't think of it as such at the time,
but then i realized, oh the minimalist composers in the 60's like reich,
riley et al. have already worked this stuff out, and it's been much more
developed. i think recently african stuff has been seeping into my
influence also. hitting more neutral stances in terms of harmony and
melody is more attractive than finding resolution and everything. it's got
nothing to do with 12-tone serialism, but i see an affinity in that
attempt to neutralize to composer and this attempt to achieve a detached
feeling. so of course, there is intention on the part of the writing,
though it wants to create the impression of tapping into a music that's
already out there. it's a negotiation between being a human that can act,
do anything, and create reality, and acknowledging that there is a reality
out there independent of the human.
Did Jim O'Rourke have any influence on the album? Why did you pick him?
With his perspective on music, i think we're a band that's pretty
easy for him to see. there's not the danger that the engineer will just
say, "this is esoteric and i don't understand it so i better disapper
from the process of putting this on tape." his influences were mostly,
"i liked that take," and trusting his opinion at moments like that since
you're so close to the music, perspective gets difficult. i remember on
the song with jim black, we wrote it in the studio. o'rourke said he
thought my part was too jammy, and why not a line that extends over
several measures? so i came up with one. that was probably the closest
that the term producer came into play. comparing it to the previous
record, albini has a positivist approach. the electrical-magnetic pulse
you put on tape equals song. whereas jim seems to take it as, each song
has a mysterious secret within it waiting to be brought out via a special
mix. i see no right or wrong in either approach. i feel lucky to have
worked with both.
Reprint of the Tuba Frenzy interview:
First off, tell us about your youth ... some of your favorite bands or
mindblowing musical experiences...
I think one of the most boring things is a person's taste. Its exposition
is usually someone's pathetic appeal, asking "Am I OK?" It's nothing I
find that interesting and usually don't talk about, just because I feel
weird assuming strangers Would want to read about it. But I guess the
premise of doing an interview with me is that, ves, I am interesting.
So ... I'll try.
When I was fifteen someone took me to a Cro-Mags/Half Life show at
the Electric Banana in Pittsburgh, which was a really good introduction
for me. I can't really describe how hard of a break from all my known
realities that was and how exciting it felt. All of the glitz of mohawks,
tattoos, and slamdancing really hooked me. Its easy to see how
grassroots hardcore scenes that still exist are such good farming
leagues for people that are avid music listeners. It gets a young kid's
attention, asks for a thorough dedication to a different lifestyle, etc.
What kind of stuff did you listen to before you got introduced to that
world of underground music and punik ideals?
My story is pretty common and I don't know how revealing. Kiss
from 1st to about 6th grade, mostly for the maximization of flash. Kids
like the circus. But there was a large period of time that I lived ir
Malawi, so the influences came from two sources: Pennsylvanian
working class steel workers' kids and British expatriate kids whose
parents really belonged to this weird community of government wo
and college professors that went from one Tbird World country to
another on contracts for their whole lives. A weird melange of inter-na-
tional types. It would only be proper to say they were British, but the
way you would say a Mexican restaurant in the U.S. is Mexican. There
was a weird compensation for being detached from one's homeland, and
you tended to be a weird exaggeration of it. Like pictures of the Taj
Mahal in Indian restaurants. So that was probably the measurement of
British influence. When I got back to the U.S. in the middle of the 6th
grade, people no longer liked fire breathing clowns in make-up and
instead liked girls and music you could dance to with girls. They'd say
things like, "We don't listen to AM anymore. It's FM." I'm speaking
from the boy's perspective here, but then you probably could at this
point ... pursuit of music was pretty much a boy thing. So there was some
confusion for me. I began trying to reclaim flash in music, but through
other means. Maybe towards a slighty higher pedigree of metal. And I
remember the extra-musical issue that hot girls in junior high-dug top-40,
which always had to be dealt with. But I can't really be sure. People
always remember themselves as having been involved in a lot of things
that they really weren't and only see nostalgia films years later, claiming,
"It was just like that for me!" I think I listened to rap. At least it seems
like I sure did when I hear the Beastie Boys.
When did you start playing in Sludgehammer? I loved the "Dynamite
Lady" seven-inch when it came out...
Karl fhendricks] and I were in Sludgehammer when we were 18 and
19. 1 played drums when Karl and I couldn't find a drummer. I couldn't
really play. I just faked it. Now and then, I had moments of greatness,
but I never ki-tew how to duplicate it consistently. A leamiiig experience
for both of us.
Were there any other bands before Sludgehammer?
No, that was pretty much a first band experience. I remember the
feeling of, wow, I can play a whole song! Then, wow, I can play on stage
and people will watch. Then, wow, I can make a record. A discovery of
various forms of existence. All necessary first steps for me before I could
imagiiie going about making music with a critical perspective.
How did you meet up with the Don Caballero guys? Tell us about the
inception and early days of Don Cab...
In '91 Don Cab started plaviiig, though it was just a three piece,
without me. At the same time, I started Rocco Raco, played one show,
then the drummer quit, and I asked Damon [Chel to play, which he did.
We practiced for a few months together. Now Don Cab and Rocco Raco
were both playing on similar terraiii, but DoiiCab was more established
(and also better), so they just asked me to play with them and I became a
fourth member. No one in Pittsburgh liked them at first ann-wav, so it
seemed natural that 1, their roadie, would join. It's at this point that I'd
like to say mean things about people in Pittsburgh, but I don't think I
have the sufficient energy for it to sound mean enough.
What about people in Chicago [where Ian now lives] or New York
[where Storm and Stress dnunmer Kevin Shea lives)?
There are certain towns where self-consciousness seems to be at such
an extreme low level, and that's where "types" come from. Whether
that type is an intellectual, an artist, a music critic, a graffiti
writer, or advertising executive.
In Chicago, with its detached midwestern
sobriety, graffiti tags often get the response, on bathroom walls of
someone writing, "ooll, a tag!" to make fun.
In New York, it's perfectly reasonable to expect to meet a 42-year-old
with 3 kids who tells you he's recently become a graffiti artist.
I like both towns for both of those reasons.
How did Storm and Stress come about and what did you have in mind
when putting the band together?
Storm and Stress started playing in 1994.
I saw Kevin playing with his improv outfit fortystories.
Fortystories is Kevin's band with Micah Caugh?
Yes, they play together still. They usually go under the name Gaugh
now. My friend said something about this terrible band playing at a
party, but within about one minute of them beginning, I think I thought
about music a little differently. I was ripe from DonCab touring and ill a
reactionary phase to all of the rock band stickers oil smelly bathroom
walls that assault the senses and make you plantour around using
the bathroom at Deiiny's so that you wont hai-e to use the one at jim's
Rocl-n-Roll Palace. I asked Kevin to play with me right there. Storm and
Stress was quite a low profile project for a long time. I don't think many
people in Pittsburgh even knew about us. We actually played with bar
bands in white trash bars so that no one would know about it. I forget
their name now, but we did a little tour with one cover band playing
Whitesnake, etc. - just around Pittsburgh working class neighborhoods. I
really wanted a band upside down from Don Cab. From being a band
that got along with each other, to playing quietiv through a full stack of
amps, to never knowing what the time signature was. We didn't actually,
play a real show until DonCab stopped playing. I ended up using Storm
and Stress riffs on DonCab 2 because DC was making a record and S&S
was really just in laboratory phase.
I had to find another reason to play music because Don Cab was
relatively successful for an instrumental band at the time, but I wasn't
very happy. Surely we could have had more success, but it felt like it
was only a matter of degree and nothing would have been substantially,
different.
Storm and Stress did a lot of concept shows at first, like not playing
music, etc. Just trying to frustrate people. Well, not trying to frustrate
people, but it seemed we always did. Our first show where people came
to see us, we put all of the amps in front of the stage while we stood
behind them, so of course we couldn't hear what we were doing- Things
became more serious as we decided we wanted to make a record, and it's
a problem a lot of people on the more improvised end of the scale talk
about
a recording becomes a permanent version of something that is never set.
So realizing that the music on the recording wouldn't be able to evolve
any further, we set music as songs that became the record on Touch and
Go.
I didn't want to sing, but to be in another instrumental band would be
like I was becoming a "type" of musician or something, so some singing
was needed. The closest I'll ever come to using the horrendous term
11 post" is to admit that the singing isn't really my idea of singii-tg, but
maybe my idea of other people's ideas of singing. I wasn't really
interested in singing, but it seemed like a prerequisite for being in a band
in the classic sense, so imitation seemed appropriate. I was really
interested in having the band have all appearances of normalcy, in hopes
that it would be taken normally. Experimental music is a really-powerful
concept that can control where a
band is placed. - My god, what are
they doing onstage? They're just
experimenting. Oh, ok, everything is
alright then. - It somehow can
take the artist out of the total
space they're interested in
working in. It's marginalizing.
Not that I really imitate particular
people, but I think I use general
styles. There's maybe a little bit
of, "what if this was Steve
Malkmus singing?"...and certairdy
"what if this was Stephin
Merritt?". Those are a few
archetypes of 90s-style singing.
The girl is more vulnerable and
beautiful and the gorilla more of a
giant beast when King Kong holds
the girl in its hand. It's about the
distance between grace and shit
and how important they are for
each other.
The rock guy/electronic girl
lyric is a good example of it. The
planned outrageous line on the
record, right? Isn't that, in the
end, how most quotable lines end
up being made? I wanted a record
that you really couldn't
conceptualize, at least easily. So it
avoids, "oh yeah! I like ambient,
spacey" and automatically you
can predict each successive noise
with little surprise. I don't think
experimental records are
supposed to have that toile of
voice. So I put a logic alien to the
song in the midst of it, just to keep
things kind of honest. You can't
just react, ,oooh, noise improv!"
One of the most alluring things
about pop music is how fragile it
seems, and how vulnerable,
because it exposes itself so simply,
and is so easily understood, that
it's practically inviting you to
come and invade it. Destrov it-
Totally sexy. So sure, it's fucking
a style and hopefully raping a generation and all the hopes and dreams it
ever attached to its collection of 45's. But it's not that I'm a bad person for
wanting to do this. The form itself asks to have it done. It's exercised in
other ways. More familiarly, any pop/punk song with the a/b pretty
part/heavy part- That kind of prop-it-up-then-take-it-away tease is even
evident on the intro to "Smells Like Teen Spirit", pre distortion pedal
and post. Two dramatic ways of thinking about music today, pop and
fey vs. earnest and important, actually dislike each other so much they
hurt when juxtaposed. So that was the idea, hurting those ways of
thinking. It's funny how the rock guy line actually served as a hook in
the pop sense, in that it seems something people comment on all the
time. It fulfilled all its duties.
You mentioned that some of the riffs on Don Caballero 2 are actually
Storm and Stress-derived- Let's go ahead and delve right into Guitar
Player-style interviewing: could vou talk about how your guitar style/
technique has evolved [changed over the years] and how it differs
between the two groups? Along those same lines, how would you
further compare and contrast each group's overall "sound" and
internal dynamics.
Don Cab uses machine logic, even if we try to program the machine to
behave in ways that would make you think it must not be a machine. So
the guitar has to be pretty functional and cog-like in relation to the other
parts. Behave ii-i meters, follow a rational blueprint of a functioning
structure. And its development has pretty much followed the develop-
ment of computer chips - get quicker and smaller. We take what we
have and then try to figure out how to fit more in. But this is where it
gets interesting. Parts - riffs and
rhythms - become more
recognizable as patterns as you
get further away from them, the
way the block your house is on
looks less like where you live
and instead part of a design
when you look at it from an
aerial photograph. So as the
Tiffs and meters shrink from
your viewpoint, the individual
units matter less. It's like those
infamous modernist apartment
building designs, where each
apartment looks really drab, but
when you step back and
consider the whole thing where
windows and balconies just
make up a pattern, you see a
really-well composed whole.
But, man, the individual is
neglected --- they live in this
alienating place. The riffs, if
considered as individuals, only
serve to comprise a picture of
the whole. By downplaying the
individual, personality is also
reduced. There's not as much
emoting going on. The New
York City skyline has a million
windows, but you don't care if
the person in one particular
window is crving because they
are onlv a dot.
But there's a plus to all of
this. Seeing patterns reveals
underlying structures of control
and explains why Presidents are
shot and whv mv grandmother
goes to Flori@a every winter.
The music includes everyone
like sociology. It's an umbrella
for all of the possible human
interest stories that could
happen. Its really a beautiful
tear-jerking experience, like a
slow-motion summary with
"Nobody Does It Better" playing
to absolutely everything that has
ever happened to people.
Because the Storm and Stress sound is less dense, the guitar is about
the space around the notes as much as the notes. You can hear their
attack and decay.
You can almost feel them as objects around you that
You could reach out, touch, and move around because they're not
screwed into the ground. They're not showgirls lined up on stage
performing for you, kicking their legs together, distant and untouchable.
It's definitely, in keeping with the German schtick in the band's name, an
exposition of the Subject. Emoting and saying, I am.
But Storm and Stress is a contemporary version. Balanced with the
attempt at emotion is a lack of feelings. Basically like a character in any
Bret Easton Ellis novel. So it's a tension between those poles: old and
new, retro kitsch and hating those sorts of punk rock sticker in the
bathroom games.
More typical pop music invites you in, says, "Let me tell you a story. I
have a personality and am very knowable. We can be friends and you
can hum me." S&S music is still a person, but a person frozen over,
turned into a photograph.
Comparing it to the Don Cab model, the nots are not those people packed into
building that are controlled by planning. They're the people walking around
you on the sidewalk. Unknowable except for your ability to generalize them into types.
They're just sort of posters for the life you imagine that person to have.
Is rock as a genre/style defined by formal/musical elements or by other
extra-musical elements, whether aesthetic, cultural, political, socio-
demographic, or some of all?
I think more the latter. As for the former, rock's definitely a thing
because lines in the satid have been drawn, but like the car
advertisement that said its car was like punk rock a few years ago shows,
the sanctity of aiiyoiie's definitions will be laughed at soon enough.
In the press kit you refer to late 50s modal jazz and Euro serialism -
how much was Storin and Stress influenced by such things? Or was
this a connection you made after the S&S sound became m'anifest? I
seem to remember you saying you were not all that familiar with those
musics and that they weren't conscious influences on S&S's formative
development.
I wasn't trying to say either of those things were present in our Music
or an inspiration (though I'm a faii of some of both)- I was only
guessing, With words I doubt Miles Davis or Arnold Schbiiberg woulci
have used, that part of their necessity to create their music was an anti-corny impulse (which were different reactions for both of them because
of their different situations).
Could you talk a little bit more about why you think that what S&S
does "seems like ... the only honest way to play music right now,
without being hokey?
I'm not sure. It might have something to do with grunge and the
victory of the loud guitar. There are pretty diminishing returns now
with playing loud rock in a 200 capacity dub when Bush or whoever
does it on MTV to millions. Those claims of being more authentic bore
people after a while and they start staying home to watch The X Files or
going to rockabilly shows which obviously could care less about being
real. It's hard to get that feeling of pushing against something or
resistance when that thing has gone to the top. If you stay in that arena,
you've automatically failed at that genre unless you have several A&R
reps from major labels courting you. Only then does the dizzying,
anything-could-happen potential come back into the music. "These guys
could be huge!" But it's obviously a different kind of genre now, because
the name of the game is fame, and not those more interesting and strange
goals that exist in between the typical worn categories. I guess it's an
attempt to achieve the dizzying, anything-could-happen potential again,
without the sides of the dice consisting of buzz clip, Letterman
appearance, or commercial failure.
Continuing with the press kit angle, can you be more specific about
S&S's 'innocence' and its problematic relationship to "intention"? Is
this another way of saying that you are looking for some sort of
musical freedom, in the same way many so-called free improvisers are
looking for it?
A majority of the melody on the record is sort of cold and
unemotional, but done in a very live, soupy, human way. So it's a
tension of those two opposites, which gets back to the joke of the pre-
modeni romantic and nt day man done up with a Gary Numan
outlook. So the emotion you get is the kind of emotion you receive from
a person in a photograph. It has a melancholy and distant nostalgia
because it's visible but unreachable. The lack of intention in the music is
actually tied to the frozen personality of the music.
Am I OK in assuming that you equate S&S's mission with -the past 20
years or so of punk rock- and "what the Ramones were about in the
70s' for the reasons we already discussed, i.e. doing violence to pop
form, etc.?
I just meant that it was for the people.
You went into detail about the psychology and reaction-against-
DonCab reasons for wanting to play with Kevin. I'm curious ... when
you started jamming with Kevin, did you already have any of the
musical of Storm and Stress in your head or did those just sort of
flow unto you "in progress", while jamming?
I think Kevin really influenced the way I saw the music. Crashing,
quiet to loud.
How did you actually go about turning the Storm and Stress set into
composed 'songs" and how did that modify (if at all) the original style
of the band and the way that you create music?.
Sort of written like a picture would be drawn with a blindfold oil. It's
still thought, but blurred. Less conscious analysis and manipulation, un-
DonCab. You know, like back when everything was natural, simple and
life was just less complicated and we were all free.
This might sound ridiculous, but to me, the interplay between you and
Kevin slightly recalls the wild spiritual tumult of Coltrane and
Rashied Ali on Interstellar Space and in my head I can hear Storm and
Stress working really well as a duo. What made you want to bring
another musical voice into that equation?
Well, there was always a bass there from day one, so there was never
a question. If there wasn't a bass, it might be easier to make that
comparison (though I still wouldn't). But I think satisfying that
expectation gives us a much more familiar rock feel, which I sort of want
to give the impression of. The bass gives us context. If you scat sang,
someone might say, oh, they're scat singing. But if you were the
President of the United States and scat sang during detente discussions
between the Israelis and Palestinians, people would have a lot more to
deal with, in terms of your scat singing. Eric, you know, really gives us
that extra edge.
Now that I've accidentally brought up the dreaded "jazz"
subject, could you talk a bit more about Storm and Stress' odd
relationship with "jazz"/"improv" and who you think your
audience is?
That's been interesting. There is no jazz "scene", and
unfortunately those people and shows are more defined by a
lack of regular infrastructure than one. Or maybe that's a good
thing in some respects. Things regaling in their freedom might
not want regularity. But I bet if you asked a lot of people if there
should be more Knitting Factories, they'd say yes. I consider
S&S pretty lucky to be able to fit into the branches of rock. One
nice thing about S&S is that the audience is made up of such a
weird group of people of all styles.
One surpising genre in our audience is "hardcore." The word
seems to have been revised. The record labels that rose right
around the time the phrase -Indie Rock' gained currency,,.vhich
I'd date fTom'88 to'91, have solidified and institutionalized
with the currently dominant notion being that music today is
either post-rock/electronica or americana (that which is country,
blues, folk etc.). But that neat split has left a lot of
youngsters disinterested and a whole new realm is opening up
to fill a demand for fresh guitar rock in the cracks and crevices
below. It's not surprising that it's rising from channels that we
can only vaguely recognize as hardcore and DIY, which were
the same words to describe the one-two-three-four hardcore
thrash beat from its older incarnation. The rise and fall of
alternative music is only a remote influence on the way 18-years olds think today.
Tuba Frenzy (PO Box 576, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA)
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(Translation by xxx/ Tradotto da xxx)
Ian Williams è il chitarrista che sta dietro alla band degli Storm & Stress, un universo parallelo dei Don Caballero che oggi si presenta c ome una delle più avventurose realtà del futuro della music a rock.
Puoi darmi una rapida visione d'insieme della tua vita da chitarrista? da gli inizi agli S&S. Compresi le influenze, i modelli, i maestri, ecc.
Io non ho studiato con nessuno. "doing it yourself" è qualcosa che ho preso dal punk rock, quantunque io creda che è il mito del fare da sè sia attraente ma fallito. Tutti facciamo da soli, lo stiamo facendo, non è vero? Riguardo la chitarra, qualcuno mi ha detto u na volta che loro suonavano più il loro amplificatore che la chita rra vera e propria. Credo che quando ho cominciato, io suonavo più le distorsioni che la chitarra stessa. I risultati del mio strimpellare. Ora faccio risuonare le corde, il che è molto più vicino a lla fonte del creare suoni.
Puoi fare un commento sui Don Caballero rispetto agli S&S? Qual è stato l'impulso che ti ha indotto ad avviare un progetto parallelo? Cosa puoi fare con gli S&S che non avresti potuto fare con i Don Caballero? Gl i S&S rappresentano ora il tuo principale ed unico progetto?
L'idea della band sta diventando qualcosa di più di un'idea di rip iego, intercambiabile e monouso. È stata una grande operazione qua ndo Ron Wood si è unito ai Rolling Stones, ma non credo che in alcun caso farebbe notizia se i Pearl Jam rec lutassero un nuovo chitarrista. Oggi le band sono sono più simili ad un biglietto da visita. La gente le considera alla stregua di hobbies, si identifica nella comunità locale per mezzo di esse, ecc. Vogli o dire, nessuno lavora per una compagnia per troppo tempo. Tu sei da qual che parte per pochi anni, e poi te ne vai. I commentatori americani ridic olizzano i giapponesi per essere antiquati a causa della loro fedelt&agra ve; verso la compagnia. i ventunenni che lavorano nei coffee shops non vo gliono ammetterlo, ma il loro modo di "essere in una band" sta seguendo la stessa strada.
Come hai scelto i partners per gli S&S? Puoi anche commentare brevemente le loro abilità/personalità?
Credo che ci sia molta ingenuità ed insolenza entro il proprio mix di personalità. Il che è probabilmente la nostra colpa peg giore. Io continuo ad essere meravigliato di quello che significa un disc o "maturo".
Non sono abbastanza un tecnico per farti domande riguardo la tua tecnica chitarristica ma apprezzerei se tu volessi aggiungere qualche particolare su ciò che rende la tua chitarra così diversa da ogni altr a chitarra rock che io abbia ascoltato in vita mia.
Sono sempre stato uno che batte il tempo, sui tavoli, sui banchi di scuol a, sulle mie gambe e sul torace. Alla fine sono diventato bravo nel capir e come trasporre tutto ciò alla chitarra. Musicalmente, c'era quel la struttura di looping lineari suonata con i Don Caballero.
Questo quand o ho cominciato a scrivere col la band. Non mi occupavo di ciò in quel periodo, ma poi mi sono reso conto dei compositori minimalisti degli anni Sessanta come Reich, Riley ed altri. Ho elaborato questa roba, che è stata sviluppata maggiormente. Penso che recentemente anche l'es senza africana sia filtrata tra le mie influenze. Raggiungere atteggiamen ti più neutrali in termini di armonia e melodia è più ; attraente che scoprire scomposizioni e tutto. Non c'è niente da fare con la dodecafonia, ma io provo un'attrazione per questo tentativo d i rendere vano il comporre e di raggiungere sensazioni distaccate. Cos&ig rave, naturalmente, c'è uno scopo nel partecipare alla composizion e, sebbene ciò possa creare l'impressione di attingere ad una musi ca che sia già fatta. È una negoziazione tra l'essere una p ersona umana che agisca e faccia qualunque cosa, ed essere consapevoli de ll'esistenza di una realtà esterna indipendente dall'essere umano.
Jim O'Rourke ha avuto qualche tipo di influenza sull'album? Perch&egr ave; hai scelto proprio lui?
Con la sua prospettiva musicale, io penso che gli S&S siano una band abba stanza facile da capire per lui. Non c'è pericolo che l'ingegnere del suono debba dire, "questo è esoterico e non lo capisco, quindi è meglio che sparisca nel corso della registrazione del nastro." I suoi interventi erano per lo più del tipo, "mi piace questa vers ione," e fidandoci della sua opinione in momenti in cui si è cos&i grave; coinvolti dalla musica, la prospettiva presenta difficoltà. Ricordo che il brano con Jim Black, l'abbiamo scritto in studio. O'Rourk e disse che pensava che la mia parte fosse troppo ripetitiva, e perch&egr ave; non variarla di più?. Questa è stata probabilmente la modifica più stretta che il produttore ha apportato al suono. Face ndo un paragone con l'album precedente, Albini ha un approccio positivist a. La pulsazione elettro-magnetica che metti sul nastro equivale alla can zone. Siccome Jim sembra prenderla come viene, ogni brano ha all'interno un segreto misterioso che aspetta di essere tirato fuori attraverso un mi x particolare. Io non vedo ragioni e torti in entrambi i tipi di approcci o. Mi sento fortunato per aver avuto la possibilit&aqgrave; di lavorare c on entrambi.
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