| It's always been a bit of mystery for me to figure out David Grubbs' work.On one hand, he would easily craft sweet melodies and vocals but upon closer inspection, these were hardly crooning love songs but the kind of freewheeling psychedlica that comes naturally to a member of the fabled Red Krayola.With the sorely missed Gastr Del Sol and now embarking on his solo career, Grubbs surrounds his sublime songforms with seemingly incongruous backgrounds which he managed to resolve nevertheless.Now wouldn't you want to find out what makes a guy like this tick?I'm still happy to know
today.PSF: Who were some of your early music influences
(that made you want to pursue music yourself)?The first groups that I loved were Kiss, the Who,
the Beatles, the Rolling Stones.Rolling Stone and picking up local fanzines at record stores
when I was twelve or so.Clash as the embodiment of rock and roll spirit and Public Image and the
Gang of Four as dangerous dismantlers of the rock tradition.Who would
want to dismantle rock music?Rock music as the enemy?PSF: Could you talk about your time in Squirel Bait?Squirrel Bait started in 1982 as a hardcore band,
thrash beats and all.Britt Walford and Brian McMahan were the Squirrel
Bait alums who graduated to the sublime Slint.How did you
find the music scene there?Musically, that proved to be friends who made jazz, improvised music, contemporary
classical music, and noise accessible and informal.PSF: With Gastr Del Sol, what type of band were you
looking to form?Gastr del Sol came directly out of the band Bastro.In its first incarnation, Gastr del Sol consisted of John McEntire,
Bundy Brown, and myself.Somehow, across the space between these two groups,
there emerged the sense that the latter was only provisionally a band.The group
now had a core, two people, and I felt for the first time that marvelous,
adult freedom to collaborate casually with lots of people, all kinds of
people.It became a very consuming thing.And we were quite tight as friends.Because we were trying different approaches not only
from record to record but from track to track, it never struck me as much
of an evolution.PSF: Did you find there were any major turning points
as the group went on (in terms of dynamics or with your own work)?Right before we started writing that record, we had both
played on the Red Krayola's
Hazel.PSF: How did you see your solo work as being diff
from Gastr?What kind of freedom do you now have?The first solo recording
that I did, Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange, thus was
born of the strict conceit that it be a record of solos.PSF: Since you've brought Krayola up before, it seems
that this was a very important, perhaps shaping, experience in your work.How would you describe the effect that being a member of Red Krayola had
on your work?How would you describe your rapport with Mayo?I've been seated at
the table.When I talk about the Red Krayola I always have to temper the
urge to say things like "The greatest ongoing saga in modern music" and
things like that.Everyone should be so lucky as to know such a friend and such a heavy,
heavy interlocutor.I'm
perpetually developing private, increasingly intuitive standards that take
other works that I've done as their horizon.And that's a good feeling,
not unnecessarily fretting and comparing oneself to others.I'm thinking of Albert and Markus Oehlen and Stephen
Prina and their fearlessness in making records, films, paintings, etc.I'm thinking of people who get their shit together and make movies
(how can it be done?I'm thinking of people who are not tortured artists.PSF: The most fascinating thing I find about your
songs is that there is a seeming incongruity between your vocal melodies
and the background textures of the songs.One of the biggest challenges with Gastr del Sol
was to work words into the mix.I'm glad that there was not a decision
at the start for it to be instrumental music exclusively.I'd like
that incongruity to be resolved, before your ears, moment by moment.PSF: Are you a fan of tropicalia?PSF: It does seem to me that vocally, there is a
distinct tropicalia flavor to your recent record.Do you feel this has
had an effect on your work?Caetano and Gilberto Gil's ability to
transfix with just guitar and voice.Red Krayola's collaborations with Art and Language, e.Also the evident joy of the whole thing.PSF: What do you think readers would be surprised
to learn about you?It's an interesting and difficult question,
because I'm dubious about the possibility of people getting to know me
through records I make.I'm just not sure of
how expressive records I've made are of me, or to make a broader statement,
how expressive records are of their makers.This,
however, might be the minority opinion.Recorded in July and September, 2001.Recorded July 1997 by Braden King and Joseph Ferguson at Truckstop, Chicago.David Grubbs currently resides in New York.David Grubbs has participated in the Red Krayola since 1993.Rourke), an acclaimed reissue label, Grubbs presently runs the Blue Chopsticks record label, with releases from Luc Ferrari, Van Oehlen, and Mats Gustafsson.Guess At The Riddle' is released on FatCat in June 2004.David Grubbs Interview Online.Didier Petit, Thierry
Madiot and Yves Robert.But, Quentin being Quentin, the schedule was changed
at 3 a.Montreuil waiting, by which time it was too late to go along.Quentin's wonderfully chaotic apartment in Belleville, to take David Grubbs
out for a late breakfast.Warburton: Tell us about the Rectangle album.Coxcomb signifies the Swede's resiliency,
and there's a description of him walking in a snowstorm.One was a coxcomb not to die in it.Basically, in Fort Romper, Nebraska, a snowy
night, a Swede walks into a hotel and is terrified of his surroundings.I'm going to be killed before I can leave
this house.Well, I didn't do anythin', did I?Laughs) I'm playing this weird instrument called the Hohner Organa, which
is a plastic reed organ with a fan on the inside.The end result sounds like I'm playing an analog synthesizer.In last fall, and Quentin kind of...You have to do a record for Rectangle.Did you have a conventional musical education as
such?The guitar came in when I wanted to be in a band,
when I was twelve or thirteen.I'd been playing piano for about five years,
and guitar was really easy to pick up, and I started a punk rock band immediately.When and why did you move to Chicago?Well this is going to be a bad gig...There was nothing
we could do to put a stop to that.I'd have more control over the sound.Where does your guitar style come from?I'd say playing with Jim for four or
five years had a great influence on me.He has a really individual style.I'd learn to play guitar on the basis of the kind of music it was.So we practised once or twice and it was awful...Basically it became just me and Jim, because Bundy and John
were concentrating on Tortoise.Jim, as the strong personality, kind of crowds
people out of bands, and I think Bundy felt like, OK, three's a crowd...But shows in Chicago could have up to eight or nine
people.Explain the name, for our less erudite readers...Chicago are so incredibly generous with their time.McEntire is one of the busiest people I've ever met, and yet he always has
time to play on a Gastr Del Sol record, or on any record of mine.I'll like that gamelan record, and what
about that West Coast Jazz?How does a song come out?I've stopped working with Jim, and Gastr Del Sol is,
to all intents and purposes, inert.Gastr Del Sol, but the idea becomes
less important.Pause) This has been a time of making lots of records.September or October on
Drag City.EMI record that came out in about 1970.Ferrari is my favourite.I'd been out of town for two weeks, didn't even know he was
there.Sound (as apart from Music Composition), and I've taught it in History
of Recorded Music in the LP Era.He's an incredibly sweet person.The economics of selling CDs makes things much easier.Was it through Jim O'Rourke that you met Tony Conrad?Jim played with Tony at a festival in Holland, I think.For the box set, I think it was probably Table of the Elements.Gastr Del Sol did a couple of shows with him, and I play with him any
opportunity I can.When I think of what is intellectually interesting
about minimalism, I don't necessarily think about minimal music.Michael Snow, and there's some very strange rhythmic use of different
film stocks and lighting techniques...Being in Buffalo, did Tony have any contact with
Morton Feldman?He was a little creepy, kind of hyper nerd...When he was a student he saw Feldman giving a talk once, with
two pianos and a brick to keep the pedal down...Why do you think his music has come back in fashion?It's because it's so fucking good.And because there's
so much work.It would be the same if there survived only five Feldman pieces,
but there's so much work.His music is really meant to be at the
threshold of audibility.Do you mind if I move your speakers a little bit?He jumped up and cranked up the volume and started
it again!Feldman on our
site...I've never studied the scores, and I don't know the pieces inside out.Rectangle are an invaluable resource.And Didier Petit is just fantastic
on the cello.Tell us about your record collection.It fits very comfortably along one wall.I'm trying to select which Feldman.I'd probably find a job in a grad school in
Utah or Georgia or somewhere, and I know I'm just not going to do that...What is your doctoral dissertation on?Sounds like a great subject for a dissertation!It's the Big
City you move to when you come from Louisville, Kentucky.I've actually been thinking about spending a lot more time in Europe, preferably
Paris.Gastr Del Sol album where you're recording some French kids
setting off fireworks and refusing to speak English...Laughs) But no, I studied
French for five years!I'm still based in Chicago though, and it would be
difficult to move...Would you say there is anything specifically American
about your music?Interview copyright 1998 by Dan Warburton, Paris
Editor.Assistant Professor of Radio and Sound Art.Sound from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.David Grubbs was a founding member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait.Grubbs contributed music with Matmos for Thierry Jousse's 2005 feature film Les Invisibles.He composed the soundtracks for Angela Bulloch's installations Z Point and Horizontal Technicolour.His music appears in two installations by Doug Aitken.He created the radio piece Coney Island, July and October, 2001 for ORF Kunstradio (Austria) and the radio program Hit the Trail for WPS1.The United States of Poetry, Hal Hartley's film The Book of Life, and Doug Aitken's film The Diamond Sea, which premiered at the 1997 Whitney Biennial.In 2005, Grubbs completed a Ph.Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording.Zeitung, and his criticism has appeared in Conjunctions, Bookforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Purple.Click here to listen to Thorow, Part Three by Susan Howe and David Grubbs.One would be hard pressed to find a musician with a career as versatile than that of David Grubbs.On the rock end of the spectrum, he has crossed paths and collaborated with the likes of Jim O'Rourke (with whom he formed Gastr Del Sol), John McEntire (who drummed for Bastro), Brian McMahan (with whom he played in Squirrel Bait).In addition to recording, he also runs his own label, Blue Chopsticks, whose 2001 release by Workshop was a Dusted favorite.There was a lot of hit and miss at this festival, but the most exciting thing I saw was a 1965 West German television film of a Merce Cunningham company performance with music by Cage, David Tudor, and Gordon Mumma.The gritty, grimy live electronic music makes so much sense in this context.Silo and Roy, male chinstrap penguins who live at the Central Park Zoo and seem to be very much in love.You have to see it with your own eyes.Bruce Nauman, Terry Fox, Mike Kelley, Beckett, Cage, etc.Thomas, Henri Crolla, Eddy Louiss, Django Reinhardt.Own David Grubbs Today!Best known for his work as a core member of the now defunct Gastr del Sol (as well as his membership in Squirrel Bait and Bastro, plus work with Richard Buckner and Will Oldham's Palace), David Grubbs has shifted his focus to his already healthy and expanding repertoire of solo material.Since the end of Gastr del Sol, Grubbs released his own project.Thicket , featuring Gastr crony, Tortoise percussionist and multidimensional super man John McEntire, in addition to the acoustics of Ernst Hirsch on trumpet, Jeb Bishop on trombone and Tony Conrad on violin.In a recent solo performance at Empty Bottle, David exemplified the album's "very warm and open sound" through such the soothing tunes and unmistakeable vocals of "Foot Summons Train," and "40 Words on Worship."Though he will be spending the next six weeks in Europe, expect to see David Grubbs back at the Bottle, by late summer. |
