Posted on

Optical Atlas Interviews with Hilarie Sidney (High Water Marks), Chris Parfitt (Vince Mole & His Calcium Orchestra), and Jim McIntyre (Von Hemmling)

These 3 “6 Questions With…” interviews are with ex-members of The Apples in Stereo, all of whom were around in Elephant 6’s formative years. Hilarie Sidney’s pop project with Per Ole Bratset is The High Water Marks; she left the Apples not long after the interview was conducted. Like Hilarie, Chris Parfitt and Jim McIntyre played on the original Apples recordings, when the band was just “The Apples.” Chris fronts the Elephant 6 band Vince Mole & His Calcium Orchestra, and Jim’s experimental recordings are released under the moniker Von Hemmling.

6qwhs

Hilarie Sidney/The Apples in Stereo & The High Water Marks: July 27, 2006

Hilarie Sidney has been the drummer and co-singer/songwriter of The Apples in Stereo since the formation of the band, and her voice has been prominent on all of the Apples‘ releases, contributing memorable tracks such as “Winter Must Be Cold” on the band’s debut, Fun Trick Noisemaker, “20 Cases Suggestive of…” on 2000’s The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, and “Rainfall” on 2002’s Velocity of Sound. After that last album, she found a new outlet for her songwriting skills in The High Water Marks, a collaboration with Per Ole Bratset of Norway’s Palermo. (She seems to enjoy creative collaboration with others, having co-written songs for years with Robert Schneider, and splitting composition duties with Lisa Janssen in the short-lived Elephant 6 band Secret Square.) Hilarie agreed to shed some light on her various projects, past and present, with Optical Atlas.

1) Are you involved in the post-production process on the new Apples in Stereo album, New Magnetic Wonder? Can you describe how this album will compare to the previous Apples albums?

Actually, I haven’t really been involved at all. This is the album that I have been least involved with. In the past I have been much, much more a part of the creative process. I think it is a natural progression for The Apples in Stereo. It has a little bit of everything. I think it sounds great and I think people are really going to like it! The songs are ultra-catchy.

2) I loved Songs About the Ocean. Can we expect another High Water Marks album in the near future?

Yes, actually we are finishing up our new record. It is called Polar, it has 13 songs, and it will be coming out in February. I am really excited about it. I recorded the whole thing myself, and I will also be mixing it. I’ve never done it before, so I’m nervous, but it’s OK because I am not too concerned about fidelity and the technical aspect. It has been a labor of love, and it’s taken us a long time to finish it, since between the time we started it and now, my husband and I had a baby who is now 7 months old.

highwatermarksband

3) How did High Water Marks first come together?

Per Ole and I met at an Apples show in Oslo. We talked for a long time after the show. We loved a lot of the same music, so we had a lot to talk about. He gave me a CD of his songs, and I was blown away. We started emailing and decided to record through the mail. The post office was a little slow, and we lost a couple of packages along the way, so we decided our best bet would be to get together for a week and get as much as possible done. Soon after that, Per Ole came to live in the US, and we recruited Jim Lindsay and Mike Snowden to join us on drums and bass. They were the live band, and the record was only me and Per Ole. The new record is all four of us though, so it’s been super cool.

4) There’s a select society of us that are big Secret Square fans, even though there was just a single and a full-length and the band is pretty definitively dead. Can you explain how Secret Square came about, and why it ended?

Secret Square was me and Lisa Janssen. She was my best pal at the time. We worked together, and loved a lot of the same music, and were obsessing over a lot of the same stuff. We used to call in to work together and meet at my house and record on the 4-track. It was such a lot of fun, and we decided to make a 7-inch and then a record. We put out the records and even played live a couple of times opening for TFUL, with Jeff Mangum on drums and Robert Schneider on bass. Lisa moved away, and we fully intended to keep recording and making music, but time and distance never really panned out, unfortunately. I think we both wanted to, but it was too hard.

5) How does the Lexington music scene compare to Denver’s?

Denver’s rock scene is more of a typical big city rock scene, whereas Lexington is more of a small town college-type scene. In Lex, you find a lot more noise, jazz, experimental-type stuff, and although there are plenty of rock bands it seems a bit more diverse to me. I haven’t lived in Denver for a few years now though, so I can’t honestly say for sure. I love Denver, and there is a lot I miss about it, but I find Lexington music to be a little more interesting I suppose.

6) What was the first album you ever bought?

My first album as a gift was Magical Mystery Tour from my big brother when I was 8 years old. I probably bought the Human League record a year or so later… you know, the one with “Don’t You Want Me Baby?” So, yeah, I think that would be it…Human League.

* * *

6qwcp

Chris Parfitt/Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra: August 27, 2006

Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra is understandably one of the more obscure Elephant 6 bands: its catalog exists entirely on vinyl and cassette. But that seems appropriate, suiting the lo-fi fuzz-rock contained within. Lead singer/songwriter Chris Parfitt spent time with The Apples in Stereo during that band’s formative years, lending his distinctive electric guitar to the Tidal Wave EP, and on tracks like “Motorcar” you can hear the aesthetic of noise that would come to define Vince Mole‘s songs, in particular the heavy, churning “Nothing,” and the exhilarating riff of “It’s Raining in My Mouth” (both on the self-titled single released by Jonathan Whiskey/Happy Happy Birthday to Me). Now Parfitt–who recently reconnected with some old Elephant 6 friends at the Os Mutantes reunion in New York–is planning the return of the Calcium Orchestra (bandmates include Kingsauce members Rich Chodes and Kevin Swope), and obliged Optical Atlas with a brief history of the band and a preview of what’s to come.

1) Can you sum up your history with the Apples? It seems you were in the band for a short period of time, until 1993, correct?

I met Robert [Schneider] in roughly July/August 1992 when he answered an ad my friends and I had put in Denver’s Westword looking for a bass player. That didn’t work out, but he and I hit it off over our mutual love of the Beach Boys and Pavement (among other things). Before long he introduced me to Jim McIntyre and Hilarie Sidney, and the four of us started the Apples. The original idea was to have a kind of quirky lo-fi pop band but with big fuzz/noise guitar atop. To my ears the best Apples recordings were the ones we did straight to boombox in the rehearsal space: rough as hell but they rocked like nobody’s bizness. The backing track to “Haley” on the first EP is from those tapes, incidentally. At any rate, various dramas both within and without the Apples kind of fucked everyone and everything up. My reaction to the situation(s) was unfortunately to crawl inside a bottle of beer. Eventually, after starting to record Vince Mole songs (all by my lonesomes on 4-track…an E6 cassette called Friends, Psychics, Visionaries…Lend Me Your Hair allegedly existed but the sands of time seem to have dissolved all copies…all I have is an old dub myself), I left the Apples, my then girlfriend, and the city of Denver, by popular demand. I headed for Coney Island where I, the esteemed Kevin Swope, and my childhood plague/bass player Rich Chodes hunkered down in an absolute shithole and recorded….

2) How did you come up with the name Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra?

“Vince Mole” is the name of a fake actor in a bit from the Firesign Theater record Dear Friends. If you haven’t heard them do yourself a favor and buy all their late 60’s/early 70’s LPs pronto. Greatest comedy records ever made.

1994 front

3) The first Vince Mole 7-inch EP was entitled Spend the Future in 1994. From the title can we imply that the recordings actually date back to ’94?

Some of them, yes. “Hitch,” “Droopy,” and “Show Up” were definitely recorded that October in Coney Island. I subsequently moved back to my home state of New Hampshire where we re-recorded a lot of stuff, but nothing could touch those versions for feel.

4) Do you have any particular recording technique that you identify with Vince Mole? It seems that the vocals are usually mixed pretty low and there’s a very loud and raw (and by that, I mean wonderful) sound in the instruments, particularly on the “Nothing” single–probably my favorite of your songs.

A lot of that is just me disliking my voice. Or sometimes my lyrics. But there’s also something to be said for confusion/murk. I dig the buried vocal/meaning. That sense of sort of floating in the sound. Or maybe I’ve listened to too much early R.E.M. and MBV! Not to mention Dinosaur…in fact, don’t mention them…

5) How often do you find yourself songwriting or recording these days?

Not as often as I’d like, but that’s likely to change as my home studio is just about finished, finally.

6) Will we see a Vince Mole album in the future, either a compilation of past singles or new material?

The short answers are yes and yes. The singles comp will definitely happen, but I’d like to finish up the 2/3-done full CD and put that out first. Exactly WHO will put any of this out is anyone’s guess; we may reactivate our once fledgling Former Brothers label.

* * *

6qwjm

Jim McIntyre/Von Hemmling: June 7, 2006

The best way to begin this interview with might be with an extensive excerpt from a band bio of The Apples in Stereo written by Robert Schneider: “I (Robert S.) had just moved to Denver in late ’91 and I met this guy Jim McIntyre on the local commuter bus from Denver to Boulder, where we both attended university. I (being, according to Jim at the time, pathologically friendly) chatted with him daily and he would try to avoid me, as he is not a morning person. One day I asked him what kind of music he liked, and in that heyday of grunge and hard rock he thought a safe way to end the conversation would be to tell me his favorite band: The Beach Boys. Little did he know I was a certified lifelong Beach Boys nut and, as you can imagine, the conversation picked up after that. (I had not met anybody outside of my few best Elephant-6-to-be buddies who ever claimed the Boys as his/her favorite band. Nor had Jim.) Jim introduced me to Hilarie Sidney, his roommate, who also loved Beach Boys and the Beatles too, and also loved Pavement‘s singles, the Tall Dwarfs, the Unrest and other great underground stuff which turned out to be right up my pop-obsessed alley. They were both also heavily into the Velvet Underground, oldies radio, psychedelics/psychedelia, punk rock, and four track recording (also right up my alley). And Jim owned a bass and Hilarie owned a drum set, which they ‘played’ in a bizarre ‘band’ called Von Hemmling with their various friends, including a guy called John Hill. Quickly becoming best friends, we tossed around plans to start a band and a record label.”

McIntyre left The Apples in Stereo early on, although he contributed to all of their singles in the pre-Fun Trick Noisemaker days: notably he wrote “Touch the Water” and “To Love the Vibration of the Bulb” (which in itself sounds like a Von Hemmling title), and co-wrote “Stop Along the Way” with Schneider. (These early Apples recordings were compiled on the superb Science Faire CD on SpinArt Records.) In their Pet Sounds Studio in Denver, McIntyre hung around as engineer and contributor to some Apples records, but his original project, Von Hemmling, continued in the form of a track here, a track there, often during off-hours while other bands, like Neutral Milk Hotel and The Minders, were out of the studio. He released a 7″ in 1997 on Elephant 6, and the J.W. Kellogg EP followed in 1999. It wasn’t until 2005 that the dam broke and a flood of his recordings were heard, on a self-released full length compilation. Among the 26 tracks on Wild Hemmling are contributions from members of Dressy Bessy and High Water Marks, but don’t be fooled–this isn’t bubble-gum pop, but fiercely experimental and painstakingly assembled pieces of art.

1) I’d like to piece together the history of Von Hemmling. When did you first start recording music? Were you in a band prior to the Apples in Stereo?

Well I started recording at 8-9 yrs old with one of the 1970’s-style portable cassette recorders. You could hold the Play, Record and FF buttons down at the same time to make slow speed recordings. The playback would be pitched up, sped up. Great for making sound tales about insect or robot invasions. I was super into doing just that, bouncing from one tape deck to another. About a year or so later I got a 1/4 inch two-track open reel. I’d steal my sister’s tennis racket, tape a mic to it and play “guitar,” adding distortion and sound on sound tape delay. I thought I sounded like Hendrix. I got a Fostex X-15 four-track cassette in high school in like ’84 and went nuts on it until we established Pet Sounds studio (those recordings make up half of the unreleased CD La Guerre Est Meurtre 2002–my masterwork, to be presumptuous and pretentious). Apples was my first band other than three or four shows Hilarie and I did as Von Hemmling in very early 90’s. Those first gigs were all improv, VH live has always been big on improv. I played fucked-up guitars–one with a bridge made out of a coat hanger, another in which the neck had been snapped off and poorly nailed back together. The whole neck worked like a tremelo bar. I’ve always wound up doing things in a naive, isolated way. I obsessed with music and sound very early but didn’t hang out with other musicians until I was in my early twenties. I didn’t even realize there was a standard tuning for guitar until I was 21!

In ’92 in Denver I met fellow Southerner (I’m from Alabama) Robert and his friends Will [Hart, Olivia Tremor Control] and Jeff [Mangum, Neutral Milk Hotel] and Bill [Doss, Olivia Tremor Control] too (I think, maybe I just met Bill’s music then). We (including Hilarie) were all at the same place creatively, starting to take ourselves seriously as artists, and being part of this family strengthened my resolve to pursue my musical idiosyncrasy. The first officialVH release was the cassette in ’93 (one of the six or so cassettes that were featured in the first, and only, E6 mail order catalog). In ’95 I moved into a great space; it was a former fish market and storefront with a couple large rooms and high ceilings. I had a roommate at first but he attacked me and split my head open and subsequently departed, allowing the recording gear to move in. The first time I was in the building, the landlady showing me around, I saw the future. I knew what the studio was gonna be (although I didn’t foresee the head-smashing part). Anyway I started working on the 1/2-inch eight-track in-between the recording of E6 albums and got real busy by myself. The first vinyl release came out in ’97, the My Country Tis of Thee single. I made all the covers myself during the NMH Aeroplane sessions. There are four or five basic designs (they are construction paper), but each one is unique color-wise. Sometime in ’97 I recorded the J.W. Kellogg EP, which came out as a one-sided 12-inch on Eric Allen’s Shrat label. In ’98 Hilarie convinced me it would be a nice change to make a real band with real people.

I’d gone to Connecticut, recorded a couple of my songs with the Lilys and learned I felt confident directing musicians to play my music. I got a fabulous band together, my musical soulmate Rich Sandoval on guitar and a very progressive rhythm section of Dane Terry on drums and Rob Greene on bass. We played some great shows and recorded our stuff. A couple years later Rob left to concentrate on Dressy Bessy so Robert played bass for a year. This version of the band was very adept at four-hour practices in which we’d spend 20 minutes playing and the rest conversating (we did, however, partially record another set of songs). Next I moved to Kentucky, polled the locals to determine the best, most interesting musicians in town, convinced Mike Snowden, John Ferguson and Trevor Tremaine to play with me, played for a year or so, recorded an album’s worth of songs and got too sick to keep the band going (although I was able to compile and release my first CD, Wild Hemmling, an anthology of “singles” ’95-’04). My songs, while roughly executed, emphasize intricate instrumental parts and fairly complex rhythmic interplay. I’ve been blessed to play with some great, attentive musicians.

jim_singing_dots123

2) What prompted leaving the Apples?

The usual stuff. The actual prompt was the distress of a love triangle, but there was more going on. I was having a hard time being an Apple, putting too much time and emphasis into something that was a little too artistically constraining and foreign (creatively collaborative) to me. The band had changed after we parted with Chris [Parfitt, Vince Mole and His Calcium Orchestra] as well. It went from being a four-part rock band to more of a vision of Robert deal. It’s cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities. Everything worked out for the best because the breakup set the stage for the future. I got to spend my time on my music, we collaborated on the studio and Robert was able to reach his potential as band leader (although Hilarie was the driving force behind the band). The final thing is that I was very emotionally volatile when I was younger (well I guess I should say more emotionally volatile when I was younger); no one wanted to take a chance going on tour with me. People used to be freaked out about my temper and walked on a few proverbial eggshells around me.

3) Little Fyodor [of Little Fyodor and Babushka, and a friend to Elephant 6 in the early Denver years] posted a comment at Optical Atlas that he’s responsible for naming Von Hemmling. How did that come about?

It was a pisstake. I didn’t particularly like it at first, but kept it outta deference to Fyodor. Now I’m comfy with it.

Okay, so we asked Little Fyodor, who replied: “Pisstake? Funny guy. My memory is this, exactly. We’re hanging with our friend, Alan Smith, in his basement room, listening to music, kinda loud. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but Jim says something, and I couldn’t here him clearly and I said, “What’d you say? Von Hemmling?” And Jim rolls over laughing on Alan’s bed (where he was sitting) and goes, “No, I said, ‘Don Henley!’ But Von Hemmling, that’s great! That’s now the name of my band!!” Before that he wasn’t sure what to call his band (which was him and Hilarie). He gave me two tapes of his music before that, one was called Fluorescent Fish, I forget what the other was called. But he or they hadn’t settled on a name. From that moment on they were Von Hemmling. I can’t imagine why he thinks I would have cared if he had changed his mind anywhere from 5 seconds later to right now. It wasn’t my idea, just what I thought he said…Von Hemmling opened for my band two or three times before Robert showed up and Elephant 6 happened…I wanna add that Jim’s a great guy (if funny, like me!) and I wish him all the best!!”

4) My favorite track on Wild Hemmling might be “Carson City”; do you remember how you went about writing it and putting it together? (Or “China Star.” One of those.)

“Carson City”‘s from 1997, it quotes or paraphrases stuff a barber who used to cut my hair would tell me. He was an elderly dude who was really into atheism and making rubber stamps; his shop walls were covered in stickers and stamps denegrating Christianity. He loved talking about cosmology but didn’t know very much about it. He also had an incredible jukebox full of Western swing tunes. The instumental change after the second chorus sounds like a splice/edit, but actually it’s a mute, I loved those mute buttons. I’d pile on the tracks and mute out the main stuff to emphasize significant changes. Rebecca [Cole] from the Minders is the female voice; I forgot to credit her on the CD. Lovely performance by Rebecca. “China Star” (2004) was an attempt to write the stupidest dramatic lyrics possible. The dumbest idea for a rock opera I could come up with was one about a modern first Christmas/birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are on the streets of a modern city, desperately seeking shelter. Joseph is a junkie who makes the ultimate sacrifice of foregoing heroin in order to find a place for the Son of God to be born. It’s the whole “omnipotence of God mediated by human frailty” thing. Stupid shit. The title is taken from a Chinese food restaurant in Lexington. It’s east of my old apartment and for a couple of months after its opening I took my riches there and received otherworldly fast food salvation. Then it got real popular and the cooks became overworked and jaded and terrestrially mortal.

My most recent lyrics are formally conceptual. The lyrics to “Fear of Poor Sexual Perfomance” are actually presented loosely as matrices. I approached each verse as a matrix, which is operated on by the underlying narrative. The point was to transform each verse logically, instead of just writing a linear story. The effectiveness of this approach is debatable, but I’m happy with the results. The coda to the song is more straightforward (and makes the title explicit), although ambivalent as to the resolution being suicide or copulation. As for the music, “China Star” really illustrates my harmonic language. Obviously I neither learned nor was interested in standard music theory, just cobbled together my own sound. Too much naivete and Ives influence. And like all E6’ers I love 60’s pop art music dearly so I attempted to create catchy communications with strange foundations. A lotta “China Star” is based around moveable three note guitar chords, using bunches of major triads to produce a fuzzy sense of tonality. Eventually I realized my disinterest in standard theory was founded on my dislike of the standard tuning system (equal temperament). Now I’ve gone all the way to loving the just intonation, although I’m not necessarily interested in writing justly untempered music. Someone should mass produce just guitars. Online I’ve seen people who make their own, setting the frets differently for each string (Harry Partch made fretless guitars and painted the fret boards to delineate the stops [of course we’d need modified tuners as well, and some standardization of pitches]). Adventurous young musicians who want to use guitars should go this route. But please don’t rely on synthesized just tones. That’s a little too ironic to my mind.

vhlaguerrecover

5) You’ve mentioned that you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [“CFFS (Chronic Forking Fatigue Syndrome),” on the Wild Hemmling Bonus CD-R given away with copies of the album], and have written a song about it; has this affected your work in music, or has music helped?

Music definitely doesn’t help. All effort makes me sicker. The crux of this illness is an intolerance of any exertion, even mental. The other prominent symptom is an extreme chemical intolerance. The song is about being literally paralyzed by the sickness, or more precisely by something I was taking for it. It took a long time to piece together exactly what has been going on. Right now I’m again doubly fucked up as I’ve had a serious reaction to some other medicine prescribed me over a year ago. Unfortunately it looks like it’s gonna be quite awhile until I’m well again. I’m optimistic someday it’ll happen.

6) Have you retired Von Hemmling, or will there be any new material (or rereleases) in the future?

I’m done with the kinda stuff I’ve been doing, I’m into other things now. I’ll keep the name for whatever creative output comes though, it’s my brand. As for my new direction I want that to be obscure until I finish something, but I’m working when I’m physically able. Rereleases or releases of unreleases? If someone is interested, they can go for it. I did Wild Hemmling myself and sold less than 50 copies before I got extra sick. The rest are in a box at Robert’s house.

* * *

Posted on

Optical Atlas Interview with Dark Meat

Another one from the vaults: here is my interview with Dark Meat, the Athens, GA band active from 2004-2010. (An article on the band’s sudden rise and fast, hard breakup is at Creative Loafing.) As they were about to release their first record, Universal Indians, I spoke to Jim McHugh and Ben Clack. This was first published on November 11, 2006.

darkmeatcy

Originally from North Carolina, Dark Meat founders Jim McHugh (guitar) and Ben Clack (bass) launched the Athens band following the Elephant 6 ethic of DIY and picking up a few E6’ers along the way (John Fernandes and Eric Harris of Olivia Tremor Control have played with the band, as has B.P. Helium from of Montreal).  But existing separate from the Elephant 6 collective, Dark Meat forms a collective of its own.  Their live shows feature a large onstage crowd of talented musicians and singers, including the Vomit Lasers horn section and female backing vocalists known as the Sub-Tweeters.  As for the sound, it’s a swamp-stomping blend of a catalogue of influences (psychedelic mysticism, Motown, blues, punk, garage, etc.) that shouldn’t blend seamlessly, yet somehow do.  Their first record, Universal Indians, will be released November 21 on Orange Twin Records.  Recently Optical Atlas spoke with Clack and McHugh to set the stage for the upcoming release of Dark Meat‘s sweaty, exhilarating debut.

darkmeat03

Optical Atlas:

How long have you two known each other?  The press release for the band says you’re both from North Carolina, and seems to indicate that you put the band together while working at a restaurant.

Ben Clack:

We first met back in 1996-97, my senior year of high school and his freshman year of college.  He was playing in a grindcore band called President’s Choice and his bandmates went to college with my best friend.  I met him at a show they played and I went pretty wild and thrashed their guitar player’s gear (in enthusiasm).  After the show we hung out and we’ve been buddies ever since.  I ended up going to college in Greensboro, and he transferred there his sophomore year. We ran into each other in the cafeteria one day, and we used to hang out a bunch and go record hunting together.  Our friendship grew out of that, and about 2,000 beers later we’re best friends.  We moved down to Athens in 2004 knowing only two people or so here and started playing music and making friends almost immediately.  We worked at a few different restaurants and after about a year I started working at 5 Star Day with Jim, Forrest [Leffer], Kris [Deason], Charlie [Estes], Becky [Noble] and Jeff [Tobias].

Jim McHugh:

It’s true. Ben and I met at a show that I was playing at a biker bar in High Point, North Carolina; he was buddies with the drummer and bass player of my band President’s Choice.  President’s Choice was a three-guitar thrash band with noise interludes and a goofy ‘tude; I played guitar along with my cousin Mike and this weirdo Republican hippie we knew named Sam, who now does some braniac abstract hip-hop shit out of Chapel Hill. It’s not like it was “movie magic” or anything, but I remember exactly the very first moment I met Ben: my cousin and I were smoking weed behing a bush and he walked up wearing–this is how I remember it, though I don’t know if it’s true–all white.  That night we played and he went bananas and started thrashing the joint, and everybody joined in, and first our songs, and then our gear went down in the process; in duress, we turned to a remedy that Dark Meat now utilizes: the amorphous, exhaustive noise jam. Ben and I got to know each other because I transferred to UNC-Greensboro, where he was a freshman.  We both worked at the radio station–he did the Free Jazz Show and I did the Accoustic Delta Blues Show–and we both checked out all the rad punk rock shows that went on around Greensboro then: awesome, energetic, nihilistic house shows that lasted till 3am: people so drunk that they could barely stand in the wind of the music.

It was almost like performance art, these shows: Lightning Bolt, Los Crudos, Black Dice, His Hero is Gone, Blownapart Bastards, Oi Polloi.  Ungodly loud and fierce, in a feral environment where anything went.  We were there, big-time. We both lived there for about six-seven years.  We were record-buddies, and our tastes were always expansive: free-jazz, the classic rock we both grew up on, psych, garage, the punk rock that was coming through.  In school, he was an art major and I studied creative writing.  I think one reason we got along so well, besides our mutual enthusiasm for music, is that we both came from small towns, and had been forced into a partial state of disinterest regarding the cultures of our upbringings by our burgeoning interest in art and music, our interest in a type of intelligence that couldn’t be found in Reidsville–where I’m from; a tiny town of 12,000 in the foothills where my family has lived for generations–or Rocky Mount, where Ben’s from: small town in the desolate sandhills of NC, where, likewise, his family has been forever. Anyway, we came up together in that sense: grew our balls, so to speak, artistically, and in a sympathetic manner because of our similar backgrounds.  I played in tons of bands in Greensboro, and ran a space called the Onion Cellar that housed awesome touring bands for about four years: we did shows for Arab on Radar, Young People, Wrecker, Devil Music, Usaisamonster…way too many to count.  Ben did flyers and shirts for my bands and for the bands that played at the Cellar, and he was way into doing huge drawings and plaster-casts and sculptures.  Greensboro was really cool back then–a cohesive community with really cheap rent, the continuing DIY house-show ethic, and awesome local bands that have gone criminally unnoticed: Facedowninshit (who have just recently started putting out records on Relapse Records, though I lost touch with them and they now are in a drastically altered form than when I fell in love with them in the various basements of Greensboro), Mercury Birds, the original Cherry Valance (actually from Raleigh, but I saw them so much in Greensboro and elsewhere, that they definitely formed the shape of my brain and I regard them dearly in my memory as a local band), and, finally, the almighty All Night (best band you’ve never heard; Blue Cheer meets The Rolling Stones; Google them or something; their live shows were incomparable and Ben and I saw them basically on a biweekly basis).

In North Carolina, I was in these bands, who shared bills and members with all of the above, and just bills with a lot of the great touring bands: The Childrens, Great Falls, The Burning Downs (“Dead Man” is actually a Burning Downs song; me and my cousin’s band from years ago), The Shivs, and about a million other bands and projects that lasted one or two shows.  Ben was known around town for his guerilla performance art and his noise projects, not to mention his huge drawings and sculptures that he’d display places. For multiple reasons, Greensboro ran out of gas, and Ben and I found ourselves, once again, feeling mutually about the scene: mutually miserable.  A lot of our friends had become drug casualties, and we were both pretty bummed.  We packed up and came to Athens, on a somewhat-arbitrary whim, though I know that Ben had been accepted into a design program that was bulldozed on account of red-tape.  First-off in Athens, I played with some dudes I knew from NC that had moved here.  Musically, it wasn’t really my bag, but they were my buddies and I felt committed, and I wanted it to work. Back then, I wore a pretty noticeable pall of lethargy and darkness.  Ben, one night, lectured me about how I needed to get off my ass and start writing songs and lyrics again–about how much it disappointed him to see me play halfheartedly this music I took little interest in, when he knew what I could do as far as songwriting goes.  He was characteristically Dostoevsky-serious about it, and I took it to heart; I was bummed.  A little later, I was kicked out of the band I was playing in–called Disband–and then Ben and I moved into this huge blue house on Pulaski Street and I had to move all my gear from Disband‘s practice space into our front room, and we had all this shit in the house, and–though I don’t know how we avoided it through the years–Ben and I started playing together.  I got him a job at the restaurant were I worked, and then we enticed our coworkers, all of whom played in different bands, to come start a Neil Young cover band with us to make some money.  We started playing together.

darkmeat04

Ben Clack:

One day we all went out to Orange Twin to catch the Olivia reunion gig, tripped our asses off and started the band the next day, fleshing out jam sessions Jim and I were having with our project The Bonermen.

Jim McHugh:

We all went to the Olivia Tremor Control reunion gig, and we all ate handfulls of mushrooms, and through the night, it dawned on us fully: what all of us could achieve as a unit if we just opened ourselves up to the potential of our different personalities and tastes–how expansive our music could be if we JUST LET IT.  Next practice, we were playing new songs I had written that week.  I resurrected a few old songs of mine, too, so we’d have some shit to jam on next to the new songs we were coming up with: “Dead Man,” as I said earlier, and “Well Fuck You Then” (by the Childrens, aforementioned).

Ben Clack:

After a few practices we saw there was a lot else there and it kinda took off with a few of Jim’s tunes and a few songs fleshed out of the group.  It’s really a synthesis of musical and performance ideas we had been tossing around since our early days of knowing each other, but this is the first band we’ve been in together.  The expansion of the group came about very organically, with other co-workers and friends coming over to jam out and share a beer and dip in our record collections.  It’s stretched out because of the chemistry we have musically and most importantly in our friendships.  Everyone in the group comes out of different musical backgrounds, so it can be very exciting to arrange Jim’s tunes.

Jim McHugh:

Tons of musicians lived on Pulaski, and they’d pass by our big blue house and hear us, and ask to come and jam.  We never said “no.” Eventually, we played a show, and people caught wind of our vibe and were attracted to it and wanted to come join.  Like I said, we never said “no.”  Here we are today: one year and 30-plus shows and a millon practices and some mezcal and some beer, etc., later.

darkmeat07

OA:

There are a couple of Fernandeses on the record…how did they get involved?

Ben Clack:

John is a friend of ours and we all just kinda started playing together. One day he brought Sophie and Kiran to the studio, and they’re brilliant children and they sang right along you know.

OA:

Is one of the children providing the “Ohhhhh yeah!” in “Well Fuck You Then”?

Ben Clack:

That’s Sophie singing.

darkmeat11

OA:

How did it come about that the band would form these sub-groups onstage, the Vomit Lasers and the Sub-Tweeters?  Both the horn section and the female backing vocals are powerful and overwhelming on the record.  There’s also a great variety to the female vocals–some in the Motown mold, but not all.

Ben Clack:

It all kind of just happened. Around the time of the group forming it seems that many of us were going through huge, huge, huge periods of change in our lives, and so there was a gravitas towards the expansion of things.  Kris [Deason] had played with Al [Daglis] in another group and they had grown up together.  Al is extremely talented and he was the first sax player to come by.  We had known Charlie from Greensboro, and he hadn’t played his trumpet in years.  We nudged him to pick it back up and he blew us away.  Aaron [Jollay] had been involved since the beginning and he’s played in hundreds of groups over the years on both trombone and coronet.  Jeff hadn’t played sax seriously in years and he is a fucking virtuoso with any instrument, so his energy and abilities in music theory added much to the group arrangement.  Nick Canada was our buddy and we needed another trumpet to round out the section, and he had just left Phosphorescent, and so he stepped right in.  John sat in with our other group Thunder Thighs one night and our chemistry was immediate.  Everyone in the Vomit Lasers have particular strengths and they work fantastically as a sub-group.  Their internal communication is astounding and really helps in the organization of the arrangements.  As for the title of the section, it’s a term we were throwing about after a night of hard boozing, and it’s funny and stuck.  The Sub-Tweeters come out of a couple of different places.  Heather [Heyn-Leffer] is Forrest’s wife and she’s the Tina Turner vocalist.  She sat in with us on our first show, and it worked instantly.

darkmeat10

Page [Campbell] was a friend of ours from around town.  When she was on a break from Hope for Agoldensummer and we started Thunder Thighs (me on drums, banjo; Jim on guitar and vocals; Kris on guitar; Aaron on drums, bass, trombone; Page on vocals and guitar) and her voice is a natural harmony voice to Jim’s so she was a perfect compliment to Heather’s soul shouts.  Claire [Campbell] is Page’s older sister and she is the third harmony to Jim and Page.  It’s all very organic.  As for their name,  it came out of their work on their choreography and vocal lines.  They were the first to dress as a section.  One day after all of this we looked around and all of a sudden we had a giant loving human keyboard playing our tunes and arrangements.  The great thing is that everybody is such a complete badass at their instrument that it was as if we were all one giant mind.  It’s a loving group and it all runs very smoothly, which allows us to completely lose our shit live and improv together with very little worry.

OA:

What is the snippet of singing heard at the very start of the album, before the first song begins?  It sets just the right kind of mood.

Ben Clack:

When we were recording the record we were all at the time furthering our interest in the early 60’s British folk scene.  I had come across the anthology of Anne Briggs after reading about her associations with Bert Jansch.  In Thunder Thighs we cover several British Isles traditional tunes, most of which we’ve learned from various interpreters (Renbourn, Jansch, Davy Graham, The Collins Sisters, Sandy Denny, etc.).  I brought the record into the studio, and the next day when recording “Freedom Ritual,” Page goes into the studio bathroom and tracks the last verse of the song acapella.  It was a nice happening that really sets off the tune’s Irish roots (among many others), and really helped to synthesize the several sonic qualities we were shooting for with the recording of the tune.

OA:

Given the number of people crowding onstage, has anyone ever been injured?

Ben Clack:

No injuries except for psychic damage, and all of our ears are quasi-fucked. It is a graceful tiptoe blast on stage, cords die often, and things keep going.

OA:

I like how the record is so high-intensity that it has these low-key moments, the “field recording” tracks, as a way to give the listener a breather.  And with the chatter and sounds of a group of musicians hanging out, it also fills in the gaps to complete a portrait of Dark Meat as this creative collective.  On the other hand, the songs themselves have a really elaborate production.  Are you satisfied that the record is a fair representation of what the band is, and have you started thinking about the next one?

Jim McHugh:

One thing I want to emphasize is this:  we’ve never thought about Dark Meat much, we’ve just DONE it.  Ben naturally assumed the role of designer and visual-coordinator and “idea man” as far as performances goes because that’s where he’s coming from.  I write songs and lyrics because that’s what I do.  People in our group naturally step up in the fields where they feel strongest, and we remain open to that dynamic–to listening and not being tied down to one vision or one aesthetic–and the result is usually worthy, often beautiful.  For instance, we never thought about recording Universal Indians, we just set the wheels in motion, busted our asses for four months, and then took stock of what was there and organized it musically and visually into what it is, now, as an album.  That’s what I’m proudest of with Dark Meat: that, despite the tremendous scope and personnel list of the band, Dark Meat has never ever seemed forced or pushed; it is a natural outgrowth of our artistic inclinations as individuals and as a group; performance-wise, musically, visually, personally, artistically, we are all in our Natural Habitat. Dark Meat is the specifically-colored-and-textured electricity that has passed between my brain and Ben’s brain for years, brought to physical and musical fruition by our dear friends and fellow musicians who feel a harmony with it, and have become dedicated to it, and have sacrificed and worked in its name to achieve what we have achieved to this day. There’ll be more, too.

Ben Clack:

I feel that the record is a pretty complete picture of the past year of our lives. Currently we’re about 60% through with the writing of the next record. We hope to get into the studio in April to start tracking the follow up.

* * *

Posted on

Optical Atlas Interview with Heather McIntosh (The Instruments)

The delightful and talented Heather McIntosh has had a varied career, to put it mildly. Apart from playing on a large number of albums from the Elephant 6 crew, she’s performed on Saturday Night Live with Gnarls Barkley, and has transitioned into a successful career as a film composer, scoring the controversial Compliance (2012), the upcoming Manson Family Vacation (2015), and many others; she was shortlisted for Best Score for the 2013 Academy Awards. In my interview with Heather from July 2nd, 2006 she discusses her band The Instruments.

6qwhm

When Heather McIntosh, fronting her band The Instruments, opened for Elf Power in Chicago recently, it was following a rock band whose posse of local fans crowded the stage and howled for encores; the same folks seemed bewildered when Heather left the merch desk and took the stage with a cello and a skeleton crew including Pete Erchick (Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t) and Derek Almstead (Elf Power), opened a beautifully-bound journal which doubled as a setlist, and began singing “Lullaby.” Some adjustments were made in the audience, but thankfully by the end, an appreciative crowd had formed, pulled in by the mesmerizing music.

“Lullaby,” from Billions of Phonographs, The Instruments‘ debut album, could describe not just Heather’s set, but her entire catalog of songs. The vocals, reminiscent of Suzanne Vega, are often soft, as though she’s reluctant to get in the way of, well, the instruments, and truly some of the finer tracks on her latest CD, Cast a Half Shadow, have no lyrics at all. But at other times the instruments are an arrangement of voices beating up against each other like waves, such as on “When the Stars Shine,” where her voice is uniquely pitted against Jeff Mangum’s, or on “Through the Air,” where the title phrase seems to circle and float like a leaf on a breeze. With a supporting cast including Erchick, Almstead, and Will Hart, Hannah Jones, and John Fernandes of Circulatory System, Cast a Half Shadow has become one of the word-of-mouth musical treasures of 2006. But she’s kept herself busy with other projects, and doing much to promote experimental music, from co-helming the recent anthology of Athens avant-garde sounds, AUX, to an upcoming “integrated media arts day” in Athens. Heather recently spoke to Optical Atlas about the history of The Instruments, life on the road, and progress on the new Circulatory System album.

1) When did you first start writing and recording music, and how did the Instruments originally begin?

The first music I ever wrote was when I was playing bass in this kind of punk rock band called Year Zero around 1994-95ish (with Jon Lukens-vocals, Brandon McDearis-drums, and James Dunn-guitar). We practiced a couple of times a week and played a bunch of hardcore house shows in Athens and Atlanta. We also opened up a couple of times for The Makeup, which was pretty great, because I really loved that Nation of Ulysses, Rites of Spring, Moss Icon, D.C. stuff at the time (I’m still a sucker for it, I can’t lie). We recorded 4 songs in the studio and put out one split 7″ with this band Wheeljack during my time as their bass player.

After that, I started playing music with these folks I met in the composition program at the University of Georgia. We called ourselves Push Down Automata (Colin Bragg-guitar, Mark Fisher-moog and arps, Robert Duckworth-percussion, and me on cello) We played a bunch of openings, shows at Jittery Joe’s, and weird outside events with folks like the Medaglia d’Oro Orchestra, Dixie Blood Mustache, Melted Men, and Paul Thomas. That’s when I first met all the folks I play with now.

instrumentsheather

The Instruments stuff slowly evolved from that time. I was having a hard time sleeping and finishing my composition degree from the University around 1998-99. I was taking my juries (kind of like the equivalent of finals for composition and music performance majors) way too personally. I was writing these really concentrated, compact pieces that happened to stem from a really dark time in my life. Somewhere in the midst of not sleeping, I borrowed a friend’s 4-track cassette recorder and I started writing songs with this guitar that I borrowed from my mom, this upright magnus air organ I got at a thrift store in Pennsylvania, and a realistic microphone I got from my dad. It was nice to kind of come up with stuff and allow motives to roll together for a while and sort of just enjoy that, without the juries, without the criticism.

Over the course of the next few years, I started playing some house shows with friends and I was finally encouraged to make a record somewhere around the time I was living on Elizabeth Street in Athens, Georgia, and getting ready to go on that first tour with Circulatory System.

2) I’m in love with “Seems So Far.” This is the hit single, as far as I’m concerned. What was the inspiration, musically as well as lyrically?

That song is a weird one. I picked up the guitar cold after not writing anything new in a really long time and it just sort of came out. I guess it is sort of a meditation. For me, it reminds me of this time I was just driving over the hills in this amazing autumn North Carolina pre-dusk window, listening to this one Luciano Berio tape over and over again, and happy sing-yelling to mix tapes, and just sort of this warm memory of that.

3) The artwork on Cast a Half Shadow is credited to Bridget Mullen and “old paintings by children.” Where did you or Bridget find these? And can you explain the “dream about a wingnut” that inspired the album title?

The title of Cast a Half Shadow came from this dream Bridget told me about one morning when we worked at R. Wood Studio (a pottery studio in Athens) together.

I didn’t remember the whole dream, but the image of this object casting a half shadow really stuck with me. I asked Bridget about any other details from the dream and she went through her notebooks and found this. I’m going to give you the whole entry, just because it’s kind of funny.

The dream about the wingnut dated June of 2002:

In the dream I was driving my roommate’s car and was waiting for a friend to return. I was with B and asked him if there was anything that I had borrowed from him. I had been looking at the lens cap on my camera and it reminded me to ask him. I realized I had borrowed a level for the coffee percolator and a wingnut that cast half its shadow. We had been sitting on the curb, facing the parked car a foot from our faces, when I hear my friend coming back. I knew she was approaching because she was wearing parachute pants that swished when she walked.

castahalfshadowinside

Here’s the scoop from Bridget regarding the artwork itself.

The paintings were given to me by Phillip Chen, my printmaking professor in college. He had acquired a large collection from the estate sale of an elementary school teacher in Des Moines.

I could find no signatures on the paintings that I included in the Instruments CD art, but on one of them I did find a date of 1935.

I wonder how much more vibrant the watercolors were when they were painted. Why were they saved? Are the artists (who would be in their 80’s now) still alive? It’s strange to think it’s possible that one of the artists could see the Instruments CD and remember his/her painting!

My part in the artwork is the added black, white, and grey figures. They are from a series of spotlighted tar paper cut-outs entitled “Quick Cuts.” The collaboration was inspired by Heather.

4) How did your recent U.S. and European tour with Elf Power go? (I understand your tour van was broken into in Chicago.)

Aside from the van getting broken into, no luggage-having situation, it went pretty well, actually. It was a whirlwind. We did the entire U.S. in around 3 weeks. I think we had 3 days off, which were mainly driving days. It was different to open shows for Elf Power, in comparison to Circulatory System. With Circulatory System we would kind of take over the whole evening. Instruments would play, then Pipes You See, Pipes You Don’t, then Circulatory System. It was kind of a natural progression from quiet to rock, but on this tour The Instruments were kind of sandwiched between local pop/rock stuff, up-tempo kind of groups and the rock of the Elves. It’s hard for an audience to reacclimate to quiet after they have gotten used to yelling for a drink and shouting rock show crowd banter. I feel like it was a great lesson in devising the magic set list, working as a quartet (playing with Pete Erchick-keyboard, Derek Almstead-guitar, Josh Lott-drums), and keeping it together in general. I would have fallen apart under much milder circumstances four years ago.

Europe was pretty intense. We had a lot of big drives and we cut it close to many of the super early sound checks over there.

We had some really nice surprise visits with friends over there too. The promoter for our show in Brighton and his family were amazing, a friend of ours who does the Emmaboda Music Festival made it to our show in Kristianstad even though he lived pretty far away, we got to see Jamey Huggins [of Montreal] up in Stockholm, and our Scottish driver Keith was great too. Sadly enough, you never get enough time to see much of anything for longer than two seconds and we were still pretty delirious from our U.S. adventure. I wouldn’t be able to pull off seeing any of those places any other way, and I am also not sure what I would do with myself if we weren’t hauling it to another venue or trying to catch some trans-continental transport tunnel thing at the last minute.

instruments2006a_lg

5) Happy Happy Birthday to Me has announced you’ll be releasing a 7″ on their label of just Joy Division covers. Why did you decide to cover Joy Division, and what songs have you chosen?

I can’t remember if it was last year PopFest or the year before, but I had this really ridiculous conversation with Mike Turner from Happy Happy Birthday To Me about Joy Division and how I have always wanted to cover a bunch of their songs, but just cello and drums. I don’t think I could do Ian C[urtis]’s voice any sort of justice, but the cello seems perfect. It has been an idea I have been kicking around since high school, even before I had started playing cello in bands.

I have three pretty much worked out…”New Dawn Fades,” “Decades,” and “Passover” (minus drums). Mike Turner had mentioned I should try to do “Ice Age,” which I think would be fun. We’ll see how much we can cram on that 7″.

6) How is the new Circulatory System record progressing, and how do you think this will this compare with the previous album?

The new record is coming along well. We did a lot of work on it with Gary Olson [The Ladybug Transistor] at Marlborough Farms before Derek and I went on tour with the Elves this past spring. I think it was a really productive time for all of us. Just to really make a checklist, and determine what needs to happen on what song, and to really listen to things together. Mixing is just a complicated process and this is a big project. I don’t have any perspective on the new record yet. I am still kind of taking it in right now. It’s hard for me to compare it to the last one. All I know is that I am excited every time I hear the mixes.

* * *