INTERVIEWS WITH FERRARA BRAIN PAN

Though Ferrara Brain Pan has made numerous radio appearances and live interviews over the years, only two interviews have appeared online or in print to date. Both of these discussions were conducted in typewritten question-and-answer format via email, and both are reproduced in their entirety below.

EQUINOXE Issue 24 - Summer 2004

Ferrara Brain Pan and Forms of Things Unknown may be names that only few are familiar with, as only one mini-album has been released under that designation - but there are more ideas within these thirty minutes than on some double-albums. In addition to this, Ferrara played on a Faust album in 1994 (you can read the slightly absurd story about that on his homepage), founded Darmstadt Pharmacy with Ure Thrall, worked as a mail artist some years ago, and has a great sense of humour. In his short autobiography (also found on his homepage) he tells of how his nose was broken by President Clinton while fishing and about his nearly fatal encounters with the FBI. You ought not to arrive at a conclusion of paranoia, however, because the presentation is so crazy and abstruse that it becomes quite obvious that it is tongue-in-cheek. In the following interview it becomes clear that Ferrara can also be serious, and, in times when interviews seem only to consist of pet phrases, it is great to talk to someone who has got his own unique opinions on quite a number of subjects.

The name of your project is taken from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which these words are spoken by Theseus: 'The poet's pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name'. Is what he says for you an appropriate definition of what artists do and of what the creative process is, and was the name chosen for that reason?

I think Shakespeare's metaphor is an apt approximation of the creative process and thereby serves well to describe any sort of artistic undertaking. Not forgetting the first part of the quote "And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown" I ought to emphasize that the works of art which I find most compelling are those in which the faculty of imagination plays the primary role, as opposed to art which is more concerned with description or interpretation. The vagueness of the phrase 'the forms of things unknown' holds intriguing possibilities and I had for a long time wished to make use of it as a 'band name', although my first acquaintance with it was not in Shakespeare but in the seminal TV science fiction series The Outer Limits (which ran for two seasons on US television during the years 1963-64). Similar in some respects to its more familiar predecessor The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits far outstripped the boundaries of morally simplistic science fiction, melding elements of suspense and Gothic mystery with paranormal and sci-fi themes, and setting a precedent for television drama that has seldom since been equalled. One of the most memorable episodes of the series was entitled 'The Forms of Things Unknown', a screenplay which was equal parts sci-fi fantasy, Hitchcockian murder mystery, and psychodrama in the manner of Roman Polanski. Highly recommended viewing. In any case, 'Forms of Things Unknown' suggests to me the changing and ephemeral outlines or appearances of what we take to be 'reality' - a reality whose essence is ineffable and mysterious.

Your work on the Drone-EP with Ure Thrall ('Premonition 9/11') seemed to have a rather political stance whereas Cross Purposes is somehow different. Where is the main difference between these two releases (apart from the fact that Cross Purposes is primarily you by yourself)?

Well, my participation on that record was no more than that of a 'session musician'. It's a good record, but all I can take credit for is some disconnected modal improvisations on a Middle-Eastern horn (the zurna, in this case) which Ure recorded and with much processing and editing expertise integrated into his own piece. While his political motivations and conclusions are laudable, I would not have approached the subject in such a literal or didactic fashion, were it my piece or had it been a collaborative effort. Apart from issues of theme and content, Ure and I have somewhat divergent attitudes toward composition (though we enjoy collaborating on occasion and I have learned much from our association). Ure tends to favour a schematic framework of building gradually to a climax of energy and then subsiding (using the template of sexual arousal, heightened stimulation and orgasm, one might say), whereas I try not to hold to any rigid or habitual compositional approach. I actually much prefer the B-side to Ure's record, which is a piece called 'The Traveller' that we originally worked on together in 1999. I was disappointed that he chose to replace my contribution (to our earlier version) with a performance by another flautist, though it is his record so I honour his decision.

What was the intention behind putting a vocal as well as an instrumental version of 'Mariam Matrem' on Cross Purposes?

I suppose that comes down to issues of indecisiveness and vanity. After recording the instrumental on which I played the lead melody on soprano recorder, I decided I would like to find a female vocalist to give voice to the lyrics. Once I found my singer and recorded the vocal version, I thought about keeping the instrumental for a future release, but I wanted to share my featured performance as part of the album. It's a short CD, so I thought, 'Why not include both versions'? In the end, I think it makes sense, in that the two versions of 'Mariam Matrem' mirror the two parts of 'Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit'. As the Hermetic dictum goes: As above, so below.

What can you tell me about the artwork on Cross Purposes?

Many years ago I had a job at a copy shop. Like most such establishments, there was a self-service area where customers could come in and make their own photocopies, and among our regular clientele we had a motley handful of deranged zealots who felt compelled to broadcast their warped ideas by committing them to text and image and making multiple copies for their own distribution purposes. (I have a small file of some choice letters and flyers, etc, that these unhinged characters left behind for me to collect). Apart from these photocopied creations of the mentally disturbed, there were inevitable mistakes and misprints by regular customers: faulty or rejected and discarded copies. The image on the front cover of Cross Purposes is one such aberration whereby the customer moved the original while the copier was scanning it, blurring and distorting the image. On the back cover of the CD is a photograph of Hassan, my feline companion of thirteen years who died during the recording sessions. I won't reveal what the image on the front cover actually represents, except to say it bears a contradictory relation to the figure on the back.

How did the short contribution by Babs Santini, i.e. Steven Stapleton, come into being?

In May of 2003 I attended two memorable performances of Current 93 in San Francisco. It happened that Steven Stapleton had tagged along with the group, not as a performing member but merely as an accomplice in need of a vacation, as he confided. I had the pleasure of chatting with him a couple times, we exchanged artwork, and on a whim I asked him if he would record a greeting on my voicemail. I don't carry a cell phone, but fortunately a friend of mine who was present loaned me his for the occasion, and Steven was happy to oblige. He is really a generous, agreeable and down-to-earth character. I later thought it would be a fitting acknowledgment to include his brief spoken ID on the CD which I was presently engaged in mixing, given the fact that Nurse with Wound has been a long-time source of musical inspiration for me. I contacted him and received his permission, even though he had never heard my music and had no idea of the context I wished to place him in. I did send him some copies of the CD after the fact, though I have yet to hear back from him. Hopefully he does not regret having given his consent (assuming he has listened to the release).

Having read about some of your favourite artists and having looked at your links section I get the impression that you have a preference for artists with a really distinctive voice (Scott Walker, Nico - one of my 'heroines' as well - and Robert Wyatt). You play primarily wind instruments. Have you ever sung or thought of singing yourself?

It's a challenge regarding which I have grave reservations. Singing is such an intimate means of expression. Like dance, you are using no external instrument but only your body to create the work, and for someone such as me, an introvert, generally reserved in emotional display, this raises feelings of acute discomfort. This is an issue with any kind of performing art, but it is simply more intense for singers. With practice I could no doubt learn to build up a tolerance for such performance anxiety (it is for me essentially the same whether singing for an audience or alone in my studio with the intent of sharing the recording with the world). But the subjective uncertainties are greater on some level. Having practiced and performed on my chosen wind instruments for a number of years, I have gained confidence through attaining to a rudimentary level of technical mastery. With singing (especially in pop, rock, or folk genres), one doesn't need any conventional technical expertise to be an expressive performer, innumerable singers with awful, deadpan or flat voices who are yet engaging artists skilled in self-expression attest to this fact. How I would know if I was 'any good' as a singer is an uncertainty which gives me reluctance to make the attempt.

As a matter of fact, though, I did once sing in public. It was in the one and only performance of Bad Alchemy, a dishevelled, half-baked goth/industrial project I briefly led in the mid-1980s. I drank so much gin for this occasion in order to get up the nerve to go onstage and sing that I actually blacked out. I scarcely remember the incident. A friend of mine videotaped the performance but I could never bring myself to look at it.

You create these scary soundscapes by using acoustic instruments. What is your attitude towards the ever-increasing number of so-called 'dark ambient' musicians working entirely with computers and/or keyboards? (I've just listened to a great track by your project Darmstadt Pharmacy on the 2001 CD Audio Odditions 1 which might be labelled dark ambient but has a very unique sound).

Well, there have been groups and artists who've used solely electronic keyboards for a long time now, don't you agree? From Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk through Suicide, disco, New Age, mainstream film music and on up to all the recent or current varieties of techno and electronica. You are right, however, in suggesting that the proliferation of personal computers and affordable music production software has greatly extended the range and numbers of musicians who depend entirely on this technology. That these instruments enable acolytes with virtually no conventional music training to create their own music is both an asset and a drawback. Simply listen to the range of music being produced and distributed by such people: everything from the most puerile commercially misguided drivel to perverse, groundbreaking experimental sounds and structures. It's a different set of skills, playing a 'musical instrument' versus operating a computer or music production station, both have boundless potentials, depending on the ingenuities and abilities of the person behind them. I'm not really too familiar with the current crop of what you'd call 'dark ambient' artists, I've listened to some of the releases on Cold Spring Records and of these the only one which strikes me as truly compelling is a project going by the name of Sleep Research Facility. As for (non-academic) electronic music in general, I'm a great admirer of the work of Ryoji Ikeda and Pan Sonic, and the Hafler Trio as well. My usual preference is for analog over digital sound synthesis. Most laptop or glitch-fixated work I find lacking in substance, both sonically and conceptually. There's a hollow, brittle quality to digitally produced electronic music that is irritating and fatiguing to my ears (in a bad way, that is, not in a good way, like vintage Industrial music such as TG or SPK is irritating in a powerful and evocative way, I think you know what I mean).

As for the Darmstadt Pharmacy track you mention, that was essentially an unrehearsed improvisation amongst Ure, me, and two accomplices (Kaos Kitty and the Fruitless Hand). It was, in fact, the first and only time those four people played together. It was one of those rare jam sessions where the elements meshed perfectly (thanks in great part to the live mixing by our cellist the Fruitless Hand). It was a magical session, for sure, in a sequestered and magical environment. I only wish that jam sessions in general were as rewarding and enchanted experiences as this one, I might be more inclined to collaborate with other musicians.

You said in an interview that you are not too interested in presenting conclusions. Do you like (your) music to have a certain kind of ambiguity (in the way a lot of (post)modern art, be it music, literature or film seems to refuse to give easy and clear answers)?

If I give a clear and unambiguous answer to this question I will only contradict myself. But yes, ambiguity is a quality (in art and in life) that I find intriguing. It is a greater challenge to try and 'make people think' than to seek to convince them of what they ought to think or believe. I'd rather raise questions than provide answers. (Perhaps I ought to be interviewing you!).

In the first place, I don't consider that I am wise enough to know the answers, nor do I subscribe to a single ideology which offers straightforward conclusions. Life is a mystery to me, and it is this quality of mystery which I hope to evoke in my music. (Once when Sun Ra was being interviewed, the interviewer began by asking, 'How would you like me to address you? Shall I call you 'Sun' or 'Mister Ra'' He replied, not missing a beat, 'Call me Mystery'). And even if I were so wise, a teacher or enlightened master does not casually reveal the answer to the seeker, but instead works to bring about the inner conditions of unrestricted receptivity whereby the answer arises from within the seeker's mind. Remember the Zen koan: Why did the blind man fart in his sleep? (He forgot to set his alarm).

That might mean that you are not too keen on 'preaching'. Are there any artists whose 'preaching' you could forgive?

It always helps if you are in agreement with the messenger. Yet this is part of what I find offensive about preaching (apart from the presumptuousness of telling others what to believe and how to live their lives): that in so many cases one ends up merely 'preaching to the converted'. I recently heard part of a radio broadcast of a benefit concert in protest against Bush's war on Iraq. It's a cause I fully support, yet listening to Ani DiFranco and Michael Franti denounce the Administration in music with didactic lyrics that spell it all out and leave nothing to the imagination to a sold-out room full of dyed-in-the-wool leftists, I can't help but question: Whose consciousness are we raising? Aren't we simply patting ourselves on the back for being on the right side?

Protest songs are a tradition in American folk music which serves a socially constructive purpose and a morally redemptive need in people, but on aesthetic grounds I am put off by it. In my younger days I was a punk rocker and I fully subscribed to the revolutionary diatribes of bands like the Dils and the Clash, etc (to their great credit, Crass took their preaching beyond the level of fashionable rhetoric into the realm of daily practice). I remain a lifelong leftist, but now I am embarrassed by my naivete at the time.

Two of the musicians whose preaching I forgive without reservation are Leonard Cohen and Robert Wyatt. Wyatt is such an admirable artist in that he can write an unabashedly political and issue-oriented song without being trite, because he conveys the message with grace, humour and wit, passionately but without bombast. Leonard Cohen, though the production quality of his latter-day records has suffered greatly, still knows how to craft a great song, effortlessly merging personal, political, and spiritual dimensions of his subjects. One of the landmark revolutionary 'rock' records for me is Henry Cow's In Praise of Learning (1975) it succeeds on all levels: as Marxist-Leninist propaganda, cerebral and emotive poetry, avant-garde composition and free improvisation. I like Brendan Perry's lyrics on most of the Dead Can Dance records. Some will no doubt find them pompous, but I think he uses myth and allegory eloquently to convey spiritual and existential truths. Recently I was relistening to John Lennon's first solo album (Plastic Ono Band), and that's another round of preaching that in no way compromises the artistic integrity of the work, because the substance of Lennon's message emerged in the raw from his own personal and cathartic experience and because he was such a great songwriter. Phil Ochs was a celebrated 'protest singer' when he released his album Pleasures of the Harbor in the late 60s, which marked a mature change of direction in his work from topical sing-alongs to lushly orchestrated extended ballads with florid lyrics. His audience would have been more supportive if he had done nothing but rehash "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore", but he defended himself by writing that 'In such an ugly time, the true protest is Beauty'.

You seem to have a sense of humour (e.g. the biography on your website, etc). Is that a necessary element too avoid sounding/being too serious or pretentious? (Adding 'n shit? to 'Black Candles & Pentagrams' seems to go in a similar direction).

You have surmised correctly. I try not to take everything so seriously. Life can be rather bleak, lonely, graceless and full of suffering. We all know this. Love is elusive. Fear is pervasive. Apart from an appreciation of Beauty and the occasional glimpse of Truth, humour is one faculty that makes it all a bit more tolerable. And with respect to those of us working or basking in the goth or industrial subcultures, it is easy to take this fascination with 'darkness' to ridiculous extremes. It would be easy to name examples of bands and musicians in these genres of 'dark music' whose total identification with and promotion of the macabre crosses the line into self-parody. I've always been interested in the occult and in perverse and forbidden systems of thought and behaviour. Nevertheless, I have no desire to be perceived as a poker-faced apostle of decadence or an evangelist for Satanism.

You have said that you like the work of Angelo Badalamenti. Could you imagine making music for films in general and for a film by David Lynch in particular?

It's an attractive proposition, certainly, although I have never done any soundtrack work. I suppose that to do film soundtracks on a professional level would require fairly advanced recording and editing technology, not to mention connections with effective marketing agencies, etc. Just the legal issues involved with licensing music for film or television are intimidating to me.

Lynch would be an admirable director to work with, Bela Tarr would be another. On some levels mainstream or high-profile independent soundtrack work allows for much greater freedoms (in terms of harmonic dissonance, experimental approach to sound, etc) than working in any genre of 'popular music'. Graeme Revell of SPK has made a very successful career for himself scoring Hollywood films, to the extent, unfortunately, that he has long since abandoned the potential he revealed as a musician doing his own self-produced work (I am thinking of the final SPK album Zamia Lehmanni and the two Musique Brut recordings).

In the selected discography on your website there seem to be long gaps between some of the releases. Were there times when you stopped making music or are there recordings that you'd like to forget?

The 1980s were something of a 'lost decade' for me. After a nervous breakdown in 1980, I abandoned music and lived on a commune for a while. Many years were misspent in fruitless self-destructive behaviours, crippled and tormented by demons of mental illness and the full range of substance abuses, hospitalization, homelessness, etc. During all of this I managed to attain to some insights and revelations and to produce some graphic art of lasting impact during a critical phase of 1986-87. Listening to music did provide some solace during these times but I didn't seriously take up an instrument again until moving to San Francisco in 1990, when I began collecting and learning to play a bewildering array of wind instruments. The 90s were by far more productive than the previous decade, I sporadically contributed to one or another project and co-founded Darmstadt Pharmacy with Ure Thrall in 1998. But Forms of Things Unknown is my first fully self-produced music project. It has taken a long time for me to refine my vision, find the confidence and attain the necessary focus to realize a body of music without the guidance or direction of another. It's still a struggle.

You've talked about putting together a new release. I find it difficult to imagine what it might sound like. Will it be a full-length release and what can be expected from it?

I'm shooting for a full-length release, and I'm hoping it will be a departure from Cross Purposes in substance and presentation, not because I've lost interest or affection for anything on the first CD, but because I don't ever want to confine myself to any stylistic ghetto such as 'dark ambient', 'neo-folk' (what a stupid label!), or what have you. The artists who have most enriched my imagination are the ones who refuse(d) to follow a predictable path: Marcel Duchamp, Faust (the legendary German group), David Lynch, LaMonte Young, Steven Stapleton. I have no shortage of ideas for new material for the next FoTU release. What I lack most is time, or, ideally, the independent means (i.e. cash) to delegate certain responsibilities (management, promotions, office work, website maintenance) to others and to quit a day job that sucks up altogether too much time and energy. I hope to have a new album ready by the year's end, even if I might lack the money to release it at that point.

What can you tell me about Jazz Trannies and Dromedary (concept, sound, planned releases etc.)?

Well, the Jazz Trannies started out as a joke and ended after one rehearsal. It could have been fun, the basic idea being to get a bunch of white boys together, dress up like women and pay tribute to the great Black avant-garde / free jazz players of the 60s. We had an all-star line-up: Olivia Newton-John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Pharoah Fawcett-Sanders (tenor sax), Hairnette Coleman (alto sax), Erica Dollfeet (alto sax, bass clarinet & flute), Frida 'Old Mutha' Hubbard (trumpet), and 'Roxanne' Roland Kirk (saxes, flute, manzello & stritch-panties). At the time I was too involved in producing the Cross Purposes CD to pursue this idea beyond the first jam session. Now it seems too frivolous to devote a great amount of energy to such a project. Dromedary is a tentative working name for a project I yet intend to develop which will focus on drones, ambience, and extended atmospherics, with the emphasis on electronic and sampled sounds, this will likely be of a decidedly minimalist and dark ambient nature. But I'm more inclined at the moment to focus on FoTU, so who can say when such as Dromedary will come to be?

You have worked in other genres (e.g. mail art). Are you still active in other fields?

No, not really. An acquaintance from the online Nurse with Wound discussion group is curating an art exhibit, so I have done one of my collages in the classic Max Ernst style for this venture, it is the first new graphic piece I have done in many years (apart from designing my CD covers).

Has the compilation on Psychochrist Productions with the new Forms of Things Unknown track already been released, and what does "Interrupted by Interior Design" sound like?

Stan Reed of Psychochrist tells me it will be out in March (2004), although it seems that it keeps getting postponed (he is seeking to raise money from the contributing artists to do a professional pressing as opposed to the usual limited CD-R run). "IBID" is an eight-minute piece in two distinct parts, the first being a 'sound art' composition using sine waves and sampled and processed sounds. Part Two is more of a psycho tranced-out trip-hop affair, with tribal drums, horns and spoken sound-bytes. The title 'Interrupted by Interior Design' refers to a mechanized erotic fantasy derived from ideas and concepts by Marcel Duchamp and J.G. Ballard in which sexual intercourse with the actress Parker Posey is prevented by an anatomical irregularity in her vagina.

Imagine you could put together some musicians (be they living or dead) to play with you in the ultimate band. Who would you choose?

It's a silly question, but I will indulge you, I suppose. If I ignore the fact that the musicians I am inclined to select are so advanced in technical expertise that a player of my rudimentary abilities would be wholly incapable of performing with them, I don't mind bringing up a few names. Art Tripp on xylophone, marimba & percussion (he played with both Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart during the respective peaks of both of their careers); Jack Bruce (bass and vocals); Keith Tippett on piano (his impeccably expressive playing in King Crimson ranged from lyrically romantic to atonal free jazz); Fred Frith (guitar); Stuart Dempster (microtonal drones on trombone); Allen Ravenstine on synthesizer (from Pere Ubu); Dagmar Krause (the great German vocalist from Slapp Happy / Henry Cow); and Charlotte Moorman (because no supergroup should be without a topless cellist!). I'd want Dominic Frontiere to handle the orchestral arrangements, John Cale to produce, and Steven Stapleton as mixing engineer.

What can you tell me about your knowledge of the German language?

I can tell you that it is embarrassingly meagre, if not altogether negligible. I studied German for a couple semesters at the Goethe Institut in San Francisco over ten years ago. Because I never sought out opportunities to practice the language in daily conversation, I have forgotten most of what I learned. I have always loved the sound of the German language (more so than any other European language), even if I do not comprehend it much better than I ever did. I don't mind mentioning that I was born in Germany, in Nurnberg where my father was stationed as a US Army sergeant. It is a great regret to me that my family returned to the States before I reached the age of two, so that I have no first-hand memories of your country.

In conclusion, is there anything you would have asked yourself?

What year is it? Who is the President of the United States? Do you hear voices? Do you have thoughts of hurting yourself or hurting others? Are you on prescribed psychiatric medications?...

Interview conducted by Michael Gottert for Equinoxe magazine - Issue 24 (Summer 2004)

Shifting Continuums and Paradigmatic Soundscapes - Deluge 30 December 2003
A Talk with Ferrara Brain Pan / Forms of Things Unknown

At the risk of sounding arrogant, I must express my dismay at the number of mediocre band interviews that zine editors are willing to print these days. What's worse is that few (if any) seem concerned about the endless string of mundane, noncommittal answers that run continuously from one interview to the next. It's only when they are confronted with a truly demanding set of questions that bands are forced to come out of their shell and start talking in earnest. However, there exists an exceptional minority of musicians who don't require a highly provocative, in-your-face set of queries in order to get the ball rolling. We are glad to report that Ferrara Brain Pan is one such musician. For the appropriate background info, be sure to check out our review of Brain Pan's latest project (Forms Of Things Unknown) and check out his website (http://www.formsofthingsunknown.com). Furthermore, it might help some of you to check out the New Gibraltar Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock (http://www.gepr.net) for relevant info on some of the more esoteric musical movements that Ferrara refers to throughout the interview.

1. People have probably been asking you this question for years, but curiosity is killing me, so here goes: how did you conceive the name 'Ferrara Brain Pan'? Does it have a specific meaning to you?

One day I was sitting in rehab eating a piece of candy, and it occurred to me that 'Ferrara Pan' would be a great name for a guitar god in a metal band (like, what ever happened to Mars Bonfire??). I don't play guitar, and the name seemed rather too flamboyant to take upon myself. But some weeks later, the turn of phrase 'brain pan' came to me in a flash: Ferrara 'Brain' Pan. After a considerable period of deliberation I decided to go with it. The name has not one specific meaning but rather a variety of differing levels of association. Of course, there is the goat god Pan (from whence springs 'panic'), but apart from that I was primarily thinking of the implications of the Latinate English prefix 'pan-', which means 'across' and 'all-inclusive of' the word and idea it modifies, in whatever particular instance ('pan-American' or 'pan-cultural', for example). Furthermore, there is the notion of the verb 'to pan' as it is used in the procedures of cinematography and stereophonic sound recording: to move across the (visible or audible) horizontal field in a range of focus or emphasis. Taken together with 'brain' in the phrase 'brain pan', it suggests the idea of making a shift in a continuum between the brain's left hemisphere with its assigned functions of logical analysis and deduction and the right-brain areas of intuition and creativity, at the same time attacking a binary 'either-or' point of view and notions of cerebral exclusivity. And on a more irreverent note, back in the ▒70s there was a series of anti-drug 'public service announcement' television spots, one of which featured an image of an egg sizzling in a frying pan with a stern voiceover admonishment: "This is your brain on drugs". 'Ferrara' is related to the Latin word for 'iron', so you end up with a cast-iron skillet to fry your brains in.

2. In my review of Cross Purposes, I noted that the album almost seems conceptual. For instance, there is an apparent religious dichotomy going on with 'Black Candles...' and 'Mariam Matrem'. Was this intentional on your part?

Yes, it was entirely deliberate, and implied as such in the title Cross Purposes (I didn't discover until later that Black Sabbath had previously done a record of the same name). I am very interested in developing a tension through conflict and contradiction. Ambivalence and equivocation are effective techniques for creating a sense of 'intrigue' ("Is that person a man or a woman?"), in that once you know (or think you know) where something/someone is coming from, it becomes much easier (in fact, it is the usual matter of course) to simply dismiss it and move on to the next thing. (Although sometimes - with lazy-minded folk - you get the obverse result: I can't pigeonhole it, it doesn't compute, so I'll just walk away from it). With 'Black Candles' and 'Mariam Matrem' I am clearly presenting opposite ends of the same spectrum. In the Howard Devoto cover of 'Stupid Blood', I am dealing more with ambivalence and moral ambiguity: "I'm afraid and I'm not afraid" or "My prick, my very spirit" (equating the vulgar with the sublime). I'm not too interested in presenting conclusions for the listener (at this point, anyway) - inquiry and uncertainty are in and of themselves rewarding states of mind and endeavour.

3. One of the devices you used on the album is called a 'kang ling', which (as you explain on the FoTU website) is a Tibetan wind instrument that is constructed from a human thighbone. How did you acquire such an odd artifact? Are there any other recordings you know of which feature kang lings?

It took a bit of searching. An inquiry at the Tibet Shop in San Francisco led me to a collector who sold me a genuine kang ling which was formerly in the possession of a yogi in Darjeeling back in the 1950s. (I later acquired another kang ling of dubious authenticity from Lark in the Morning, a mail-order musical instrument retailer). The bone itself may be much older than that - one can only speculate as to from whose skeleton it may have been derived, although I am led to believe that for purposes of ritual potency kang lings were often created from the thighbones of rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals.

The kang ling (often referred to as 'thighbone trumpet') has a quite specific and restricted usage in Tibetan Buddhist practice. There is an advanced rite known as 'chod', in which the lama or devotee is to sit outdoors in a charnel yard amid rotting corpses in the dead of night (eat your heart out, black metal fans!), chanting in prayer and blowing on the kang ling to summon forth 'hungry ghosts' in order to make beneficent offerings of appeasement to them, all of this in accordance with the general Buddhist goal of transcending all fears and desires (far from the morbid or demonic sorcery it might appear to be in the eyes of those who profess a one-sided morality of denial). The gentleman who sold me the kang ling warned me against casual usage of the instrument (this is not like a harmonica to be tooted on the street corner whilst waiting for the bus). He was very explicit in stressing that certain precautions should be taken before blowing through it ╜ if you are going to call forth 'hungry ghosts' you had better be prepared to feed them: an offering should be made (this is usually as simple as a chant or prayer) and then you must have a means of banishing or dispersing them at the rite's conclusion. I once made the mistake of permitting a stranger to blow the kang ling at a party (he was a trombone player and wanted to give it a shot). For several nights thereafter, I was awoken in the dead of night by a rapidly 'scuttling' sound which circled around the perimeter of the room at irregular intervals: rats in the walls. There had never been a rodent infestation in the house during the time that I was living there (my cats would never have tolerated such a thing). The next time I played my kang ling I observed the customary rituals and made the usual gestures of dispersement, and the scuttling in the walls never again recurred.

There are no recordings I am aware of which feature the kang ling in its traditional setting. Unlike the other horns, drums and cymbals which are typically employed in Tibetan Buddhist ceremony and devotional practice, the kang ling is used exclusively in the 'chod' rites, a private and solitary practice to which anthropologists with tape recorders are apparently not invited. The kang ling attained a modern notoriety some twenty-odd years ago when the instrument was used (some might say 'abused') by Psychic TV on their early records (listen to the Themes LP and Dreams Less Sweet) ╜ Apart from PTV, I am told 23 Skidoo's first record features an early recording of David Tibet on thighbone trumpet (though I must confess I've never heard it).

4. Your musical history includes sessions with the legendary German band Faust. After hearing the albums So Far and their 1971 debut release, I quickly came to the conclusion that these are two of the weirdest, most outlandish recordings ever committed to vinyl. Which albums did you appear on?

I am in complete agreement with your assessment (though I would go further to include The Faust Tapes and Faust IV as equivalent landmarks of perverse inventiveness). The original Faust (which existed from 1971 to '75) created a singular and bewilderingly imaginative body of work which stood far beyond and apart from everything else in progressive rock and the classical avant-garde up to that point. Those records don't sound the least bit dated thirty years later ╜ Faust were as divorced from past and current trends in music as were Captain Beefheart's Magic Band circa Trout Mask Replica.

I made my sole appearance with Faust on Rien, the 'comeback' album which Jim O'Rourke produced in 1994.

5. What do you remember of those sessions with Faust?

Here's what actually went down... Faust (a new line-up with two of the original members) did their first-ever American performances in May of 1994: a seven-date tour organized by the record label Table of the Elements. The San Francisco concert (which I attended) was followed by another performance ('event' or 'manifestation' might be a more apt description of the occurrence) later the same week in the desert location of Death Valley, California, on the portentous date of Friday the 13th. I traveled down there with a small entourage of devotees in Brent Pusser's van (Brent of Three Day Stubble). It had been a very traumatic week for me (owing to personal reasons I needn't discuss here), and, for better or worse, I brought along a bag of mushrooms for the trip. We got there, it was predictably hot, I stripped down to a loincloth and hiked up to a small ridgetop to watch the sunset. Dusk was falling when the mushrooms started to take effect ╜ Keiji Haino was scrabbling around the rocks below in his trademark black attire and sunglasses and making a clang and clatter with a pair of large hand cymbals, a didgeridoo was playing in the distance. I had my zurna with me (the zurna is a Turkish double-reed instrument, made from pear wood, with a cylindrical bore and flared bell, similar to the Indian shenai, what is generally referred to as a 'shawm'), and I started blowing these Arabic modal improvisations which (given my crude abilities on the instrument) sounded like some deranged Islamic call to prayer. After a spell of this I wandered back down to find out when Faust might be going on...

Fast forward to several weeks later, when the long-awaited Rien album is released. I buy the CD and take it home, put it on in the dark and lie back to listen. Track Four ('Long Distance Calls in the Desert') starts out with a field recording of wind blowing, footfalls crunching the crusty sand, faint mutterings, a didgeridoo in the distance - the next thing I hear is the sound of some badly out-of-tune reed instrument: it's me! Faust had recorded the event and put it out on their record. I felt a mixture of elation and embarrassment (flattered to be on a record with my all-time favorite band, yet embarrassed by my less than stellar instrumental abilities on this difficult instrument). When my performance ends on the record, Jean-Herve Peron (Faust's bass player who in this case was the one operating the tape recorder) says "You can't beat the silence" (perhaps this was a comment on my playing).

In any event, my appearance on the record is anonymous (I received no credit) and entirely fortuitous. But the fact is incontestable: I played on a record by Faust.

6. What about the project you worked on with the infamous Boyd Rice? I know it was never released, but can you tell us what the music was like?

I became friends with Boyd not long after moving to San Diego to attend college in 1976-77 (he answered a classified ad I had placed with the intention of putting together a Dada 'zine). In the course of producing my 'zine Cabaret Voltaire (named after the Dada performance collective of Zurich 1916, from which the British industrial group also took their name), I became involved in Mail Art, and began corresponding with creative people from around the world, including Genesis and Cosey of Throbbing Gristle, Richard H Kirk and Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire, and many others (I even got a letter from Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme of the Manson family who was in prison at the time for her attempted assassination of President Ford). As an avid Mail Artist, I received many invitations to submit work for Mail Art exhibitions in America, Europe and elsewhere. One of these was for a show of 'Audio Art' in Lucerne, Switzerland. Boyd and I collaborated on a cassette recording for the gallery presentation, which we entitled This Priceless Recording. It was comprised of mostly crude experiments with radio static, abused phonograph records and such (including a duet for two amplified metal combs). There is only one track on the cassette (a long piece which takes up all 45 minutes of Side Two) which merits repeated listening: it is a 'broken record' piece which juxtaposes repetition with unpredictable permutations to rather hypnotic effect.

7. There is a website called Hatewatch.org, which contains an archive of information on neo-Nazi rock musicians. I was surprised to see Boyd Rice's name listed in the 'National Socialist Experimental' section. I've only heard a few of his records, but I never got the idea that he was a Fascist. Do you know why he was listed as such? Misinformation, maybe?

Such rumors have long been in circulation, and Boyd Rice is a master at cultivating this sort of notoriety. I haven't had contact with Boyd in a great many years, but Boyd has always taken pleasure in keeping people guessing, wondering, suspecting┘ Aside from having dropped the name of Adolf Hitler in a praiseworthy light, he has apparently had some contact with Skinheads and various extreme-right characters who might be accurately described as neo-Nazis. I don't have an adequate understanding of the ideology of Fascism, and I am certainly not in a position to speak for Boyd or label him as such (Nazi or Fascist). Boyd has described himself as a "dyed-in-the-wool misanthrope" and has promoted a personal philosophy largely derived from Social Darwinism as well as Satanism. One may easily find points of agreement between things he has professed and such reprehensible ideologies as the White Supremacy movement, and Boyd is no doubt chuckling at such accusations and suspicions. During the time that he and I were friends, he was an agreeable, generous and trustworthy associate. But as Boyd Rice himself has said: People Change...

8. Were you born into a family of musicians?

Certainly not. My father was an accomplished athlete and bodybuilder, my mother a homemaker. My Dad was a great fan of swing-era jazz, though, and he did encourage my musical interests. As a minor below the legal drinking age, I would have been unable to gain admittance to some of the notable jazz clubs in Boston such as Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop. With his accompaniment, however, I got to enjoy such greats as Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, and many others.

9. What was the first instrument you learned to play?

Flute. I never played in 'band' in high school (I was too much of an outcast), but I took private lessons as a teenager. I was a great fan of Jethro Tull, of course.

10. At what age did you become interested in less conventional forms of music? Which bands/musicians inspired you the most?

The great awakening for me was at the age of twelve in 1970. Growing up on the outskirts of Boston, Massachusetts, I had the privilege of being in the broadcast range of WBCN, which at the time was one of the groundbreaking 'free-form' or 'underground' radio stations in the country. (This was before the mass-homogenization of commercial rock radio in the mid- to late-70s). In a single hour-long set one could hear a range of artists from Robert Johnson to Lothar and the Hand People to Ornette Coleman to Dmitri Shostakovich, and I was an avid listener. One dark and rainy Sunday my Dad took me along for a drive up to Nashua, New Hampshire, where he was competing in a bodybuilding contest. Along the way I took ill, and ended up spending the afternoon in a fevered delirium in my Dad's Ford Falcon outside in the parking lot, listening to WBCN on the car radio. At some point during the broadcast this deranged, dischordant music came on that shook me out of my senses: a collision of orchestral fanfares, TV-theme jazz, demented Dixieland, sound effects, voices speaking nonsense slowed down or sped up on tape to bestial effect. The DJ identified the record as Lumpy Gravy by Frank Zappa. I special-ordered the record at a local department store and it finally arrived about six months later. In the meantime I bought Weasels Ripped My Flesh, the latest record by the Mothers of Invention, at the Turning Point (a local head shop / record store), and started collecting everything I could by Zappa. I read interviews with him in which he spoke of Cage, Varese, Eric Dolphy and Cecil Taylor, which led me to the frontiers of free jazz and the classical avant-garde. Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground further expanded my awareness.

The next major revelation for me was hearing Side One of the first Faust record in 1973 on a tiny college station out of Providence, Rhode Island. I found a mail-order supplier of import records and ordered everything by Faust. (I had an after-school job which earned me enough money initially to support my advancing vinyl addiction, though it soon proved inadequate and I had to resort to shoplifting). Further investigations led me to Krautrock and the whole European art rock scene: bands which never registered in the States such as Can, Amon Duul, Kluster, Neu!, ZNR, Heldon, Etron Fou Leloublan, Samla Mammas Manna, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Henry Cow, Comus, Hatfield and the North, and so many others. While most of my friends in high school were grooving on Yes and ELP I was tuning in to the darker prog of King Crimson and esoterica such as Gong and Lol Coxhill.

The next wave of music to inspire me was (inevitably) Punk, New Wave, and the nascent Industrial Music scene: Pere Ubu, Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, SPK, the Pop Group, etc... In between Prog and Punk I was of course enamored of the arty representatives of Glam Rock: Roxy Music, Eno, and Cockney Rebel.

11. What do you listen to when you have time to sit down and enjoy it?

The Well-Tuned Piano by LaMonte Young┘

12. What are your five favorite albums?

Sing Me a Song of Songmy - Freddie Hubbard (composed by Ilhan Mimaroglu)

Faust - Faust (their first record, the clear one)

Force the Hand of Chance - Psychic TV

Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude - Nature and Organisation

Uncle Meat - The Mothers of Invention.

I guess limiting it to five means I'm not permitted to mention my many other favorites by artists such as Lou Reed (Berlin and Metal Machine Music), Nico (The Marble Index), John Cale (Paris 1919, Music for a New Society), Leonard Cohen (Songs of Love and Hate), Nurse With Wound (Thunder Perfect Mind, Soliloquy for Lilith), Robert Wyatt (Rock Bottom, Old Rottenhat), Scott Walker (Tilt), Wim Mertens (Maximizing the Audience), Tony Conrad with Faust (Outside the Dream Syndicate), Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks and other soundtracks), and all the others I fail to recollect at the moment┘

13. What can we expect from FoTU in the future? Are you planning a second release?

Well, my manager wants me to do an album of power ballads ("Be good fa ya kah-ree-ah, kid") - I said "Sure, I'll sing a duet with Melissa Etheridge if you set it up - We'll do a smokin' remake of 'Sister Christian!'"

But seriously, I am most definitely planning a follow-up to Cross Purposes. Material is in early stages of conception or development, though there is no projected release date as yet. I just finished mixing a new FoTU piece entitled 'Interrupted by Interior Design' (an homage to Marcel Duchamp and Parker Posey). It's going to be issued on a compilation CD put out by Psychochrist Productions, which should be available in February 2004 - look for updates at www.formsofthingsunknown.com. Apart from Forms of Things Unknown, I am mixing a new track by Darmstadt Pharmacy, a 'dark ambient' project I play in comprised of myself and Ure Thrall of Asia Nova.

14. Do you plan on touring (for either Cross Purposes or a future release)?

A tour is something that might happen at some hazy point in the future - certainly, there are no plans at present. I just recently bought some new gear so that I could put together a live FX rack with the objective of eventually doing one-off occasional performances in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. I still have to work out an effective approach for the 'FoTU Live' experience (since the CD was highly dependent on strictly studio techniques like multi-tracking and intensive editing). It will probably involve live looping, ambient atmospherics, and extensive improvisation as opposed to live performance of previously composed pieces - I'm not about to get up there and play a flute solo with reverb over the top of some prerecorded backing tracks in a slavish attempt to recreate the album tracks...

15. You've reached the end of this interview. Any closing comments?

I will simply encourage readers to check out the FoTU website at http://www.formsofthingsunknown.com. Listen to the mp3s (and buy the CD! so I can afford to put out another one), explore some of the fascinating resources on my 'Links' page, and get in touch by writing to enantiodromia23@yahoo.com for more information or to be placed on a mailing list. And in the words of one Noel Scott Engel:

"Let the great constellation of flickering ashes be heard..."

Interview conducted by Christopher Alfano for Deluge online music zine - Originally posted on 30 December 2003 at www.delugezine.com

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