You quietly released some synth music over the pandemic on a small label called Good Glass. I feel like everyone grows up in bands, then goes solo, and gets a synth in middle-age. Why synths right now?
Yeah, that's a great question. I had a band called Hydropark in 2013. My friend, Chuck Sipperley, and I started getting into the Berlin School/kosmische music. That was when it became a thing, and I was learning the parameters of these cool instruments. They make sounds that seem unattainable. Klaus Schulze has always been somebody I liked. In my late teens, I was getting into Neu!, Tangerine Dream, and Can. I was listening to those records and then going to see Shellac and The Jesus Lizard. I never thought I would be making music with keyboards. I didn't think 15 years later I'd be in a band with two keyboards, a drummer, and a bass player. I had a friend growing up that had a bunch of synths, and it was sort of nerdy. Around 1994, there was a split where people in punk bands in Michigan started going to raves and listening to only drum and bass. These were people I lived with and was friends with, and I watched that transformation. There was always a back of my mind fascination with that. The first time somebody played a note on their synth with a cutoff sweep, I thought that something you could only do if you were in Funkadelic. They unlocked a sound only accessible to aliens and spirit beings, and now it's right here in my basement. It's an endless well of cool sounds, and trying to figure out how to have a voice of your own with those sounds is a huge challenge.
In your work you focus a lot on finances. On ECOATM, there's the track "Stimulus Check." On Changer, you sing about student loan feelings. It seems like finances are often at the front of your mind.
I didn't go to college, so I do not have student loans. I have all the financial stress of being someone who could not afford to go to college and couldn't afford the medical things I needed to get done. For most people, myself included, money is a constant stressor. There's an element of escapism in music where some people are like, "Let's forget about student loan feelings for a minute and talk about how fun it is to party and dance." My songs are more about processing events, even if it is not my lived feelings. I don't need to necessarily have gone through something that someone I care about went through to relate to it or understand. Maybe they're not my student loan feelings, but they might be my unpaid bill feelings. I definitely have them!
I was talking with a friend who would buy synth gear in college and then be out of grocery money for the month. What instruments will you starve for?
[laughter] I'm the opposite of a gear person. I sent you a photo of three synthesizers, amp, and a $100 acoustic with nylon strings. That's all I have. I always borrow people's gear. I love going to studios [with nothing], showing up, using whatever is there, and seeing what can come of it. I do have a [Roland] SH-101. I've had and sold a bunch of synthesizers and guitars. I'll probably hang on to the SH-101 in perpetuity, because it's such an amazing all breads, all butters, all in that one box. I don't know if there's anything I would put a lien on the house for. There's so much gear out there and it's amazing that people own it. It's like it's in mini libraries, because most of the time the gear is not being used. That's a weird part of consumerism; You have this thing, but it's not being utilized to its fullest because you're the only person who has it.
I'm from modular synth culture, and that is not the MO of the world I inhabit. It's like train collecting.
[laughter] I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't have a moralistic judgment on that. Whatever people are into; that's cool. For me it makes me a little bit dizzy. I can't tell you how many times I've been like, "I'm going to get this pedal and then I'm going to be a good musician." Then I buy it, I still suck, and I sell it two weeks later. "Like this was going to answer all my questions and unlock all my potential. The potential is already unlocked. It's just a matter of working with it and figuring myself out a little more.
You did send me that picture of your minimal studio. What hardware have you got in there?
I am huge into 4-tracks, of course and I've got my Tascam 424 fixed by Jack Saturn at Recursive Delete [Audio/Visual]. I can't recommend him enough. I have a Peavey Valverb reverb unit; it's something I had to hunt down. It's what we used on all the Saturday Looks Good To Me recordings years ago. Warren Defever [Tape Op #9] from His Name Is Alive was the producer on a lot of that, and that was his in-house, cheap, rack-mounted reverb. Nothing else sounds like it at all. What I have been doing recently is recording drum samples with super reverbed-out snares and hi-hats. I'll record a single microphone drum track through the reverb unit, which sounds crusty and lo-fi. I can program drums in Ableton and it isn't anything like a drum machine. I also have a Fender Princeton reverb amp from 1968 or 1978. I have a Sequential Prophet-5 that was reissued a few years ago. Those are the hardware items I use.
How many projects are you on right now? Or is that even worth asking?
[laughter] I'm not paying super close attention to that, just because it's a little bit "as needed." I've been playing drums for Tyvek since 2017, but Friday is going to be the record release show for the record we just finished and probably my last show with the band as their regular drummer. I don't have a lot of time; I have a family and I have things I need to do. I can't necessarily be in 17 bands anymore. I love Tyvek, and I'm sad to be stepping away. I play guitar for my friend [Dr.] Pete Larson whenever he calls me. He has this interesting style of, "Hey, what's going on? The gig is tonight. Can you do it?" That's the way he's always been. I used to babysit his child in the 1990s. We go way back. Idle Ray is my main pop music band. I'm still doing projects under my own name. ECOATM is a continuation of the ambient work I did.
Do you ever feel pressure to be on social media and do things like dance on a TikTok?
[laughter] No, I don't have a TikTok. I have Instagram, and that is demoralizing enough because I'm not on there a lot. I'm there as an artist trying to get the word out, but I have friends who are on there as people living their lives in that public arena. That's how people communicate these days. That's how political ideas are shared. But it's also how fiction gets written off as reality. I try to keep grounded as possible.
One commonality you have with Tape Op founder/editor Larry Crane is interning at his Jackpot! Recording Studio in Portland.
