This Interview originally appeared in Safe As Milk #2, reprinted
by permission
Minus Interview: 5/31/95
D: Dave Trenkel (Bass, Electronics)
H: Henry Franzoni (Drums, Metals)
M: Mark France (Guitar)
T: T. Day (Stoopid fanboy)
T: Dave e-mailed me a short bio of your group in which he mentioned that "although all members write for the group, performances, since May of 1994, have focused solely on spontaneous playing." To start out, I guess I am looking for some clarification...
M: We've rehearsed stuff but actually we haven't performed any pieces that we've rehearsed
T: Well, I think I've heard "Threading the Needle" several times, though.
M: The version on the maurice compilation is the same as the one on the cd; it's from the same concert.
D: I think what it is is that there are certain rhythmic moves and things that we do in our music that probably reappear as we're improvising. All the performances we've done as a band have been free improvised but there's certain rhythmic places that we get into, certain textural things that, you know, remain consistent from gig to gig and may eventually get codified as compositions.
H: It's the old infinite number of monkeys playing on an infinite number of typewriters and one day they make the works of Shakespeare.
T: So what is the difference between writing and improvisation? I mean it's an idiot question, but...
H: Ummmm, songs. Yeah, that's the difference.
M: Well, let's say this. We didn't begin with the intention of being a solely improvised band and I don't think that's the intention now, but as our rehearsals have gone on in time, and we have REHEARSED specific pieces written by Dave and Henry and started to shape things into form, but I think we've mutually decided that at this point our improvisational stuff is better than a lot of pieces we'll put together and maybe it's just a matter of time before we'll learn how to maximize our abilities in a composed piece.
D: In fact, I actually feel like we're coming up to the point where we're gonna probably start writing material. I think you sort of develop a band dynamic from improvising together. I think that's kind of what we've gone through in the past year and I feel pretty confident in our ability to go out and improvise. But I think that there's also things you can do compositionally, there's places that you can go to that you couldn't by improvising. We're going to start looking for those things at some point.
H: Yeah, all of us have been in other bands; all of us are in other bands that play nothing but written material
D: Actually, not me!
H: Not Dave, but Mark and I are. I believe in writing for a band, I do. That's the old Duke Ellington idea of actually writing for particular musicians, but that's the sort of rut that I do.
D: I think we're three, good or bad, pretty highly individualistic musicians and whatever sound we get comes about from the three of us doing the wierd thing that we do to our instruments at the same time.
H: We're gonna write tunes one day, though, I know it. We're gonna write tunes for this band.
T: So am I right in assuming that nothing on the CD is written? written down?
H: Yes.
D: Yes and no. Written down? No. The way the material on the CD came together was that last May we recorded for a day at Dave Storr's studio (Califas) and we also recorded a gig that we played at the Java Rama in December. I took the master tapes for those an put them onto my computer and sort of whipped them into shape in a certain way. While the material was all improvised to begin with, I think we sort of put a compositional spin on it afterwards. There are two pieces on the CD that are very heavily restructured and I think it's pretty clear that's what they are. The other pieces are pretty much just linearly what we played except there were sections that didn't work and sections that went on too long that we pared down. So it's kind of like, most bands go through the thing of writing a bunch of songs, practicing them, recording them and then releasing a record. And we just kind of did it backwards. We recorded the CD first and then we'll write the songs.
T: I hope you don't take offense at this next question.
H: Why? (adopting a rather indignant tone)
D: Should we?
T: I don't know if you will or not. So the topic being improvisation, here's the question. How does your improvisation differ from what the Grateful Dead does, in a live show, in a 40-minute version of Dark Star or whatever?
M: We play several songs in that space.
H: The amount of ideas that we go through in two minutes is the same amount of ideas that you'll get in two 40-minute versions of Dark Star.
T: Ummm, good answer!
M: We haven't had the luxury of having as long a concert as they do.
H: We don't get those 4 hour gig slots...
D: ...and the people who listen to us aren't nearly that forgiving. They won't follow us around for 5 years to hear the GOOD set...
H: ... short attention spans. That's our band, the Short Attention Span Theater.
D: I think the really polite way to say this is that improvising comes about from individuals and people having individual sounds. We come from a very different place than they do. To return to your question about composition vs. improvisation, I think it's too easy to look at them as being two distinct spheres; it's a continuum. In fact, I've been asked after gigs sometimes about how much is improvised and how much is composed. That's really a hard question to answer because there are so many levels of composition. There are certain habits that come about, like I mentioned earlier about certain rhythmic things that we do or playing a stupid metal groove for 5 minutes. Which although we came up with it on the spot is probably something that we've all done before. Then, on another hand, you can write conceptual pieces that govern improvisation where the note-to-note structure is improvised but the overall organization is composed. So, it's really a wide gray area.
H: Big, big puddle. Here's my 2 cents, Allan Gowan had a band called Gilgamesh in the 70's out of the Canterbury scene and he wrote music in such a way that his goal was that you wouldn't be able to tell the written parts from the improvised parts. And I wouldn't say that we actually share that ideal as an artistic aesthetic but something like that happens. We develop a language, we have familiar riffs that we recognize, familiar moods, sounds that work well together. This is the kind of stuff that we actually wind up structuring. We do actually rehearse, we sit around and improvise and after a while you get a sense of "oh yeah, Mark's doing that and Dave's doing that so I'll do this kind of thing." One day we'll play songs, thank you very much.
T: But, when you become so familiar with one another does that ever threaten to settle you into certain ruts? (Henry makes a rather unsettling sound at this point)
D: I don't think so, in fact I think that some of the most interesting improvised music is stuff that comes from people who have developed that kind of long term relationship. Like the guys in AMM have been doing for 30 years now; there's something really refined that comes out of that. Same with Anthony Braxton's quartet which has been together for like 11 years now. So much of the improvised music scene revolves around these instantaneous combinations. A group gets together plays once and maybe a recording is released (e.g. the Company sessions centered about Derek Bailey); it's this constant spinning thing. I think that as you play together over time you start to develop a deeper langage. You're not so willing to play all of your hot licks up front and you can really find different areas that you can go to. Even though we've only been together for a little over a year now, Henry and I have played together for about 5 years (see: das Neonderthrall) and Mark and I for about 7 years. I think that there are levels of communications that have come about from the time we have spent together.
(the entire group nods sagely at this point)
T: Next question. Dave is listed as performing on electronics. What all does that encompass? ...anything that has electricity in it?
H: Yeah, it's a catch-all. He did alot of digital editing as he described of the actual performances. Sometimes that digital editing was just taking things out, other times it was performing musical operations. And then certainly I think on some of this stuff you use your box of sampled gizmos. You know, Dave has a vast electronic sound machine. (Pause for emphasis) It's full of sounds. So it [electronics] serves as both editor and neat- sound generator.
D: I've gone through playing keyboards, electronics, synthesizers, samplers, computers and whatnot. I think even though in this band I primarily play bass, I do alot of processing. Both Mark and I have looping samplers that allow us to capture sounds in real time and layer them. To me, electronics is something beyond just playing the bass. It is just kind of a catch-all way to identify this other thing, this extended instrument.
H: Yes, the electronic instrument. Soon, you won't be able to tell the difference between Dave and any other musician.
D: Yeah, it's like I have my John Zorn preset...
T: Do you ever sample something that Mark did, do some processing on the fly and then spit it back out?
D: Not in this band. Actually, in my other band Sleep Deprivation I do that kind of stuff. I've wanted to do that kind of stuff with us; I've written this computer software that controls various samplers and synthesizers for live real-time interaction. Thus far I haven't brought it into this band because for one thing it's alot of gear to carry around...
M: ...we already have gear
D: ...and I also like the live on the fly dynamic that we have here. The problem with electronics and I've learned this after dealing with it for years is that you have to spend hours and hours programming for like a minute of interesting possibilities. So you spend all this time outside of the gig creating all these possibilities that you might or might not use in the performance. It got to be fairly frustrating. By using the computer and whatnot you can get around that but it's still a less spontaneous form of playing.
T: Anything that you want to say, Mark? I could direct a particular question to you.
M: Yeah, let's hear it.
T: Who would you claim as influences for your work in this band?
M: Ummmm...
D: Everyone who's ever played guitar...
M: ...definitely Keith Rowe (of AMM). I saw the AMM show almost a year ago. I hadn't really listened to him before and seeing him live definitely opened me up as far as... This sounds kind of shallow but it actually almost said "Go for it!" like I'm being too conservative at this point in time because he was doing all this stuff that I was aware of but I hadn't really integrated yet... literally prepared guitar for a whole show. I've experimented with that combined with more conventional playing but I think seeing that opened new avenues for me. Elliot Sharp definitely. And I still haven't listened to him alot just as far as his recordings but the times that I've seen him live really opened me up ... seeing what the instrument is capable of. Every time I've seen him has been so radically different ... from the rock group version of Carbon to plying solo and computer pieces to playing with Jin Hae Kim on komungo. Then there are obvious influences like Jimi Hendrix or...
H: ...Yngwie!
D: ...that harmonic minor metal thing...
M: Seeing Painkiller was definitely a big kick between the eyes I needed. I think they're in a simialr place where we'd like to be as far as our sound right now... they totally improvise and they do similar dub things... just really over the top. There really was not much hesitance about what they did. I would also have to include Derek Bailey.
T: Ok, I have a question for Henry. How did you get connected with two guys from Corvallis?
H: How did that actually happen?
D: I think it was through Eldon (also of das Neonderthrall).
H: I think it was through Eldon also. Did I meet you and Eldon at the same time? No, I met Eldon first.
D: You probably met Eldon first. I met you at a Tone Dogs show.
H: Yes, I met Eldon and Eldon always talked about "Dave"
M: And I met Dave at a W.A.S.P. concert
H: Yeah, that's what it was. Eldon Hardenbrook, fabled Corvallis punkster would go to alot of shows of my band (the Tone Dogs) and he would talk about "Dave" and how I should play with him and "Dave". So, I met Dave and he was of similar spirit and it's hard for me to find musicians to play with. There's only a couple dozen on the West Coast that I'm compatible with; I'm an incompatible musicican, I don't fit in many bands. There's a couple of weirdos in every town, what was it?, the 1 in 10,000 ratio?
D: Yeah, it's a genetic defect. 1 out of every 10,000 births has this weird music obsession thing...
H: ...really partial to odd music and some become players, so you're dealing with a real small gene pool here.
T: Mark was telling me that Henry had done something with John Cage at one point?
H: I did. I did the American premiere of _YLEM_ in 1979.
D: That was Stockhausen.
H: That was Stockhausen. Oh no, I was a practice drummer for Merce Cunningham's dance troupe for awhile. As you know, Merce Cunningham was John Cage's boyfriend and live-in lover for 30 years and all the music at Merce Cunningham's shows was John Cage performances, usually live. And I was the drummer for the dance troupe as they practiced. I don't know if that counts as doing something with John Cage or not.
D: You were sort of like John Cage's stand-in for the rehearsals.
H: Yeah, I would play with a beat and then they would go out and do the performance with no beat; it was strange. This was at the City Ballet in New York City in I guess 1984-85. That was my New Music period where I was more into John Cage, before I thought he was old hat and boring. But, you know, it's all relative.
THE END