The Correspondences: John Fell Ryan
Part 1: January 2006
J Kaw
John Fell Ryan
J Kaw
John Fell Ryan
J Kaw
On one hand, the difference between Excepter and The No-Neck Blues Band is clear, as the latter seem to rely largely on the relatively-simple editing-together of recordings of different live performances or studio takes; and, yet, Excepter also distinguish themselves from much Electro-Acoustic music by concentrating on both improvised live music and studio recordings. I can only think of a few others: Yoshihide Otomo, Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke, as well as, in a less impressive way, several of the so-called "lowercase" artists. Of course, even with these artists, we must make reservations: O'Rourke has apparently left behind the long-form electro-acoustic works of his earlier days (Scan or Rules of Reduction, for example) and in Fennesz's work a clear line divides live improvised performances from studio records. Moreover, the music on your records begins with live, improvised music made in the "studio," only to go through long editing processes, so as to arrive at records which for me do not seem like performances at all. As the group has refined its approach, and with the recent line-up change, has there been a shift toward the records, instead of live performences, defining what Excepter is, or do you prefer to see it as a project that is continually in flux? John Fell Ryan
Actually, I think the recent line-up change has improved our live act tremendously and more than ever the live show is the end-focus of the band. Sunbomber was recorded live in one hour with editing only to separate the tracks. Alternation also features live tracks. I hate to say it, but much of the heavy editing used on Ka and STREAMS 09-19 was because I thought our continuous live material wasn’t really up to snuff. One of the problems that arose out of our band conceit, with me editing and reconstructing material that the band freely improvises, is that it produced a perception within some members of the band that I had undue control. This led to certain members over-compensating for their perceived lack of control by over-playing or drowning out others with distortion, which in turn led to even more editing by myself. It became a negative feed-back loop that necessitated the removal of certain members to save the group. Ka was edited down from twelve hours of original material to less than 40 minutes! With Self Destruction, we were working with multiple tracks, so much of the editing was just mixing people’s parts in and out and paring things down, although the tracks on the second side did receive the kind of “stack editing” I used on the second side of Ka. Now, with Alternation, I tore down the original tracks only to build them back up again through over-dubbing, so expect a less “minimal” result. At points we have like 14 tracks of vocals going! J Kaw
Yet, at the same time - and this is where I see similarities to Excepter - because he has to carry less weight, Smith is able to vocalize more freely; his singing can be more extemporaneous, less affected. In such a situation, the singer's part could eventually be more akin to a "field" recording of someone singing to himself, working out the possibilities of a melody, rather than a finished studio recording of a thought-out vocal performance. Given this perspective, I think Smith's later style could be seen as prescient of the vocal work of, say, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Will Hart of Circulatory System, Tim Rutili of Califone, and Will Oldham, all of whom you could say, as the musical arrangements which accompanied their songs got more dense or complex, began to explore the space between song and conversation, to the point of even mumbling or whispering songs. Excepter's vocals too can sound at first like random vocables, mutterings, or disconnected sentences and phrases. I think there are also similarities in style and timbre between your voice and Smith's in The Fall's later music. John Fell Ryan
J Kaw
In turn, recently I came across an old book from the 1960's about popular music, The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural Revolution, and in particular an essay by Frank Kofsky about the mass appeal of Rock and its eclipse of Jazz and other options as the preeminent popular music. Analyzing Rock's "innovations," he notes that "the audience feels able to respond to the performance," while in Jazz the best musicians did not enjoy such intimacy and ease with their audiences, because they had "decided that their music was art rather than entertainment; and accordingly, they adopted a performing stance that they felt was more appropriate to that of an artist." He finds the historical roots of this shift in the rise of nouveau-riche of capitalism, who used "art as a weapon in the campaign to establish themselves as the social equals of the hereditary landed aristocracy, winning the artists over to their side in the process." Both the artists and their patrons developed "elitist ideas," notably "separating music from its hitherto ever-present partner, the dance," which was overall seen as a low-brow form of entertainment. Jazz musicians and their audience, Kofsy claims, had taken a similar stance, because it was the only model available when they sought a way to distance themselves from mere entertainment; they were "hypnotized (as are all good middlebrows) by the European idea of what constitutes 'culture'" and thus "eager to repudiate dancing so as to demonstrate that jazz was as 'refined' (i.e., white and European) as 'serious' or 'classical' music." In contrast, Rock at that point in its history, with its "shared ethos [binding] artist and audience together in a shared endeavor," encouraged a "visceral response" to music, and thus had brought dancing back to the fore.
A similar process has occurred in Rock music, at least that which has come out of Punk-Indie, broadly defined. While the decline of Rock as a popular, dance music has in part come at the behest of its artists and their listeners, it has been caused to a greater extent by the rise of competing dance musics - generally speaking, Rap and Disco-House-Techno [of course the roots of these musics lie partially in Motown and Funk, which more comfortably fit into an entertainment role than Rock]. What is intriguing about seeing Excepter as part of this historical development is that you use programmed beats and other kinds of sequencing; echo and other obvious effects; and, at least on "Vacation"/"'Forget Me'" and Self Destruction, what on the surface seem like straight-up, accessible synthesizer melodies. These aspects stand out in what is after all complex and nuanced electro-acoustic music. They are like phantoms of a dance-oriented music, taken from one context - appropriated or co-opted - and put into another. The influence of Dub on your music has just come to mind. I am not implying, though, that Excepter's relationship to dance music, or to the listener, is negative and confrontational. I wonder too if you would prefer more of a physical response from your audiences. John Fell Ryan
Jon Nicholson
First, a few straight-forward questions. I have found it hard to decipher which of the male vocals on Excepter's earlier works are Calder Martin and which are you - as both of you are listed as vocalists, and there does seem to be differences in the male voices I hear on the records. For example, is the droning voice which runs through "Shattered Skull", the first track on Ka, Calder, and the scream which constitutes a sort of climax of the track, you? or the opposite? or are both voices you? The same question goes for the especially intense passage on side A of Obedience.
The confusion comes in part from our tendency to imitate each other - even the Beatles did this. If Calder had cut his beard, you would have an even harder time telling us apart. The two-note vocal drone that runs throughout “Shattered Skull” is a slowed-down loop of Calder’s voice and the screams are mine. I grumble the title of the track at the end, while Calder says, “Flip the switch.” With Obedience, I assume you’re referring to the Techno-ish track with the 4/4 808 kick we call “Are U War 2?” (A remix is featured on a K48 magazine M P 3 mix). On that track we’re both screaming together. Then again, on “Interplay: Your House,” I don’t appear at all.
Excepter has made use of divers kinds of media in releasing its music: the debut C D R, Ag; a live cassette, Obedience; an L P, Ka; a 12-inch 45, "Vacataion"/"'Forget Me'"; M P 3's of gigs made available on your web site (and C D R's of these M P 3's); and finally C D's (the joint reissue of Ka and "Vacation"/"'Forget Me'"; the C D/L P Self Destruction; and the C D Throne). Was this largely a pragmatic course, or would you like to continue as such, exploring other options, like Minidiscs or D V D's?
The various formats are usually the result of our agreements with our various record companies. Fusetron only wanted to do vinyl at first, Temple of Be Saint 777 only wanted to do a cassette. So we made the different projects fit those formats. Ka was sequenced as a two-sided L P, with poppy vocal experiments on side one and the heavier, beat-oriented noise stuff on side two. Throne is designed to be listened as one long piece, so we didn’t do a vinyl edition of that one. M P 3 is perhaps the most exciting format, mainly because of the speed of transmission. For example, STREAM XX, we recorded, edited, and posted for download all in one evening, just in time for Christmas. Once you’re finished with a C D or L P, it takes about five months for it to make its way through mastering/pressing and distribution channels. Distributors take the longest. You have to be placed into their bureaucratic “street date schedule.” Boxes of records sit in warehouses for months sometimes. Of course, with M P 3's, you don’t make any money; but C D's and records don’t make us any money either, they just get us more famous because more people’s money and attention are involved. We’d like to break the 80-minute mark with an M P 3 some time in the future. Minidisc is too esoteric a format for which to really create a release, though we use them for recording. D V D, we’re working on (top secret!).
I wonder if there is a conflict between Excepter as a live, improvising, collective enterprise and Excepter as the moniker for carefully crafted recordings. Though the number of performances I have either attended or heard through your Web site is small, and thus I do not have much to draw upon here, the only case where I have noticed music from gigs ending up on the records is on the Obedience cassette, where parts of what became "Vacation" and "'Forget Me'" appear on Side A and what became Throne on Side B. Do you prefer to keep the two separate?
I would say the two sides of Excepter flow into one another and feed off each other; and there is more than one binary involved. You have on-stage and in-studio, improvised and programmed, live-to-stereo and multi-tracked, planned and surprised. We will use programmed beats, sequences, and samples again and again on stage and in the studio, improvising on top off them, searching for an elevated sound. “Vacation” and “'Forget Me'” were in the process of being assembled through multi-track over-dubbing in the studio for the single release when a pre-show stereo practice recording suddenly out-paced everything we were working on and became the released version. No recording of a “song” is ever really finished. The differences between the various recordings using the “Jrone” sample-loop illustrate our approach, and in this way we are similar to the Dub producer, using choice material again and again in fresh ways.
Jon Nicholson
When we talked about The Fall before, I was skeptical when you praised their early-1990's records, where among other changes the use of electronic sequencing became prominent. However, recently, especially in listening to Code: Selfish, not only have I begun to realize that the musicians' contributions are not so bland as they seemed, but I have been intrigued by the differences in Mark E Smith's vocals in that period, compared to those in The Fall's music through, say, Bend Sinister. Despite Smith's infamous contempt for musicians, lest they show too much skill and make the music too complex, the other Fall members in this period dominate the music more so than they did on the earlier records. The regularization of the beat, the perfunctory fullness of the music - in terms of the wide range of frequency - and the less complex timbres... these factors give Smith less room to move, and make it so he is not, at least superficially, the center of attention, and does not strain to accomplish as much, lyrically and sonically, in his singing. Indeed, a common complaint about this period of The Fall is that Smith's work seems sloppy, with not much thought put behind it.
The difference in Smith’s pre-'90 and post-'90 vocal style I think you can also chalk up to the difference in recording the vocals live, along with a Rock band in the studio, and recording the vocals alone, in isolation, with headphones on. When you can really hear yourself, you get into the details of your voice, as opposed to making it fit into a raging, full-on band experience. It’s a more intimate, however less immediate, style - maybe more about interacting with yourself than with others. Also, the more electronic you get, the less “bleed” between instruments you get in multi-track recording. This can result in a cleaner, “rounder” sound. You can certainly hear this difference in Self Destruction, in which all the instruments and voices are isolated into distinct tracks, even though they were, for the most part, recorded together, live. Of course, people used to hearing “rock” recordings, which have historically been recorded more live-in-the-room, might object to the “colder” sound, but I think the excitement lies in the chaos and distortion being transferred away from the recording and into the realm of audience perception. The confusion we aim to project is then not in the recording, but in the mind of the beholder - even more invisible. An ironic thing is when Smith returned to a raw, in-the-room sound with Are You Are Missing Winner, he gets pilloried in the press again! I like both styles, and in Excepter we try to mix it up. "Vacation"/"'Forget Me'" was recorded live, in-the-room, with the monitors on and loud, and everything bleeding together. The same method was used for Sunbomber. “Shattered Skull” was recorded with headphones on and the monitors off. “Be Beyond Me” shows you what happens when everyone is wearing headphones and no one notices that the drum machine is ten times as loud as everything else and clipping like crazy! We had to use some compression on that one to keep everyone’s stereos from breaking. For the next album, Alternation, we’re mixing up various approaches. Some of the record is recorded live on stage, right off the board; some off it in a 24-track studio, with vocal over-dubs done with headphones on in the home studio.
During the July gig at Rothko, when the new, quartet version of the group debuted, I felt the urge to dance - not necessarily the kind of dancing you see at a nightclub, accompanying House-Techno or some other kind of dance music, but experimental/ avant-garde/ modern dancing (a la Merce Cunningham). Either way, the crowd there, as with most audiences at Rock shows and virtually all audiences at experimental- or improvised-music gigs, was dead-set on standing and watching only.
I’ve always been a dancer, whether being the front-row enthusiast at Rock shows as a youth, or a performer with No-Neck, or at disco house parties, or in Excepter, so for me there’s a natural connection between music and movement. But I also appreciate the less-danceable, more-intellectual forms found in the music of, say, cats like La Monte Young or Earth. As far as the audience goes, I have no real requirements from them. I resent Rock-dance crossover bands like !!! actually telling people what to do at their shows, giving verbal orders to people to “shake their asses,” or whatever. That shit should be in the music. We’re not here to help the up-tight get over themselves. If anything, we’re trying to give the up-tight more problems! Let them try to piece together their shattered reality on the Internet if they can. I can see parallels between Excepter and 1930's night-club Jazz in that we’re both providing a crossover between the pop and art worlds, as well as moving dance from the floor to the stage. I’m probably one of the best dancers in the city, and I think it’s enough for an audience just to watch. Then again, it’d be cool if we got a sort of freak scene going, but don’t expect us to take the place of Crash Worship or anything. I always considered the real audience action in Excepter as taking place at home in front of the stereo, when you can do what you like with yourself without all the pressures of society around. In many ways, we’re fundamentally an anti-social band. We don’t make party music.
