skyscraper magazine 02.00

Perhaps they're aiming to prove the universalism theory - that all things, all matter, all media, and all thoughts are related to the same social pattern, such that the same technology can have very different effects when used in similar ways. I Am Spoonbender treat the creation and deployment of their music the way others compose film, literature, theater, or computer programs. But of all things, their music refers most strongly to the thread connecting telekinetic showman Uri Geller, Gary Numan, William S. Burroughs, Stereolab, Luis Bunuel, Extropianism, popular culture ad nauseum. Teletwin, the San Francisco audio-collage group's second release (a triple-sided 12" EP and CDEP out on Little Army Recordings), is a more pop-laced and cohesive effort than its debut, Sender/Receiver (released on GSL in early 1999). Keyboardist/vocalist Cup plays a more prominent role on this outing, which includes a reworking of the Berlin classic "Metro", in which she mimics the vocal inflection perfectly but alters the chorus lyric to: "where did all the words go?" The razor-sharp rhythm section and production team of Dustin Donaldson and Brian Jackson provide an ever-shifting musical narrative of electronics, drums, sound loops, bass, and vocals. Live, the band is equally seamless. With semi-recent addition of keyboardist Marc Kate, the band segues through a range of sounds and styles from jarring and angular to soothing drones, without a moment's respite. I Am Spoonbender's resulting episodes are an exceptional bond of anthemic instrumental overtures, pop tunes, and post-punk rhythms as if they were naturally connected.

Late one October night, Dave Clifford met with Dustin and Brian (Cup arrived late, midway through the conversation) to discuss telepathy, pop music, art, and just who this Spoonbender really is.

Dustin: Yes, that was the idea of our band from the beginning - to take all these unnatural events for us... like, I'd never touched a synthesizer in my life, Cup had never played a synthesizer, and Brian had never been in an actual recording studio. We just wanted to do these things which were unlike anything that we'd ever done. And here's this new thing for us. It is anybody's call whether it's new or not new(in the larger sense). The limitations being there, I think creative acts are borne ultimately of some limitation - whether it's your perspective on the way social systems are running or any of those kinds of things. It's your way of trying to challenge a limitation. And I've found that when there are no limitations, it's harder for me. I like to have something to fight against, some structure to rip apart.

D: Yeah, and the correlation between just sitting at home with your four track and you really wish you had twelve tracks. And so you make do with what you have and something cool comes out of it. If you have this limitless recording studio and access to gear, I think it's harder to be creative. I have an easier time working on any project when I can say, "alright, I'm only going to use this." Like, for example, a drum set. "I'm only going to use a bass drum, snare, and hi-hat on this song, instead of trying to do it all at the same time."

Brian: You get lost in the possibilities. We have to have a set approach to what we're doing, because we can kind of do anything with the equipment we have at our disposal. We could record all day and never finish anything unless we decide to focus in on a certain direction.

D: There's an idea for this band. That's the thing that needs to be understood about this band in talking about the actual process of writing music: it's not really a free-for-all, because everybody could go off and do different things musically. There was a conceptual idea, "sonically", for the band - which was to limit the instrumentation to just drums, bass, and synthesizers - right from the beginning. So, therefore, there were ideas set up for the sounds involved: synthesizers will sound this way. Of course, a synthesizer, like any electronic instrument, can me manipulated to make all kinds of sounds - like, you could have a keyboard with string sounds, and that can be your sound. I personally like what I tend to think of as ‘telekinetic’ synthesizer sounds, which is best exemplified for me on our records and on the The Pleasure Principle (Gary Numan). Just that really, really fat, layered-octave synth sound of really simple lines that just move around. So, there were all of these ideas that were set up for what synthesizer sounds we were going to use, and those were built.

D: Yeah. But, there wasn't so much of a conscious effort to emulate a particular era's sound, but rather to capture a sound that is from a specific time. If that distinction is clear? Specifically, I don't think the sound that was used on The Pleasure Principle got enough time. Because, specifically, he (Gary Numan) changed that sound right after that record. I thought it would be interesting to pull out that sound, and with all the playing differences that we inhabit, and the new technological approaches to recording. It wouldn't sound like 1979, it would sound like 1997. That's what I thought was interesting - to grab this one little artifact, sonically, and pull it here. So, yeah, there was an effort to grab an era of sound, but just for one instrument(the synths). As far as recording techniques and all that, we have no particular like or dislike for analog or digital. Whatever makes the sound that we appreciate and think is good is what we're going to use.

D: Yep. Primarily, being a drummer since I was fifteen, I tend to start with rhythms. The band is really an attempt at juggling rhythms, textures, and simple melodies. Melodies are a very important thing to us. Something that's on top of, maybe, some weird rhythms, but with very straightforward melodies that anyone can hum and anyone can remember. So there's these layers happening: on the surface, it appears to be somewhat listenable. If you want to get into it further, there are all kinds of ear candy: subliminal little things in there to make people happy to find those little audio Easter eggs.

B: I was really fascinated with his books for quite awhile. It's tricky in terms of the ability to hide a message and people will do that thing.

D: Is that what you mean by subliminal? Influencing someone's behavior?

B: I think there are some more insidious possibilities. But those aren't quite what we're talking about in this sense. It's more like things that are just under the threshold of perception. It is affecting you, or the emotions of the song, but you may not know why. There's all these subliminal things going on in our songs that add to the overall quality of it. You have to really listen for them.

B: "Sex" written in every ice cube.

B: It's completely absurd.

D: I think subliminals in music are a subjective thing. But, do they work? I mean, are we going to put messages in every song, like, "buy more Spoonbender records" or something? I really think that ultimately it is bullshit. It's interesting, but one certainly can influence people's perceptions. That's what art is: influencing people's perceptions and, in a sort of fascistic way, controlling something you want to get across. And, hopefully, altering their state of consciousness to the point that they're involved in the music. A lot of things that we do, like the use of repetition and then making abrupt changes... our music is a weird mish-mash that is asking people to listen carefully, and then accept something that comes very quickly and randomly seeming. Ultimately, altering consciousness is what I'm most interested in, on many levels. Through music, if some guy is just washing dishes while listening to a Spoonbender record, I don't think he's going to get as much out of it as he would sitting in the middle of a stereo field intently listening to it.

B: This is going to sound kind of insidious, but it's definitely possible to emotionally manipulate someone, rather than rationally. Like they did in "The Exorcist": people were throwing up for no apparent reason, then they found out that there were all these subliminal sounds in the soundtrack. That's when that stuff really became popular. So, that way you can get someone to feel a certain way, and they don't know why. Then, in corporate advertising, they've learned how to shove a product at you after they've manipulated how you feel. In terms of music, especially with what we do, it's not like that.

D: There are many, many things that we put in our songs that are what we would call "audio bizarreities" that are there just to be weirded-out by. We spend a lot of time crafting this stuff. And, it's helped along that we can digitally move around information and make loops, and just force things into time.

D: To be perfectly honest, the band is, in a way, a pop experiment. And, I mean pop in the Warhol sense. A pop experiment of presenting something that has larger ideas behind it that sort of is meant to lead you by the hand towards. We're very up-front about our intentions. We want to lead people to a large perspective on things and, at the same time, taking a much closer look at everyday objects around them which people take for granted. The use of cutlery in the images is a very direct message in my mind: appreciate the things around you. I think the fork is a very beautiful object. No one thinks about it. I didn't think about it until I was twenty-four years old, then one day it just struck me: this is a very beautiful design. This is a functional object that also is art.

D: Sure. We're interested in many things that have to do with music. Whereas a lot of people get hung up on composition, not working toward the benefit of the sounds themselves. Like people who make MIDI files all day, they have these insane compositions but it sounds so fucking bad. A lot of that stuff drives me crazy. We are very sound oriented. There are moments on our records that are just about the sound, and then there are moments that are just about the composition. Sometimes I wish we had somebody to hold people by the hand and say, "this is what we meant by this part." You can't do that.

B: The aural equivalent of Pop-Up Video.

D: [Laughs] Yeah, like, "here's a pop song: this is the point where you're not supposed to worry so much about some revolutionary structure or sonic-freakout, it's just about Cup's cool voice." But the next song might be all about the rhythm and the fragmentation of frequencies, things like that. So, in that way, I think we're difficult, but in that way I also think we're rewarding for people who want to spend the time. It gives us a lot of places we can go.

B: We're just so into the sounds themselves, as just sort of another vector to approach music. Whereas, traditionally, there's only been harmony and melody: either up or forward. And this way it's a whole different approach to time. Time has been expanded or contracted to the sound itself. We can stretch a sound out and it becomes a rhythm, or vice-versa.

D: Which is certainly nothing new. That's what the whole revolution of the Fifties was with Cage and Schaeffer and all of the experimental musicians were doing, ultimately.

B: Absolutely.

D: But then the Beatles came along and fused the whole thing, and from then on out it was pretty much anything goes. I don't feel that we need to wear it on our sleeve that we've all done our homework on all these different kinds of things. It doesn't matter. And there's a certain amount of appeal to the pop experiment thing - like my favorite artists are people that have reigned in all these different things to try to form something that is a sort of glossy compendium of all these ideas. That's the goal for me: to never be mistaken for anything else.

D: Yes, iconic - like Cup's logo (the Spoonbender logo). We all recognize the Black Flag logo instantly, or the Einsturzende Neubauten logo- it is what it is. At a certain point you don't need to see the band name anymore - there's just that thing, and it represents an idea. And I Am Spoonbender is ultimately about an idea.

D: I would like to see that happen more, just to see what happens. Because there was this controlled element to this band, and maybe it's not even over yet - like, here's this thing and I explained it to everybody and they seemed to want to do that. But now we are functioning as a unit, a one-mind thing where everybody understands the sonic concepts.

B: The different kinds of songs have a different approach to how they were recorded too. All the drum tracks and bass stuff for Teletwin consists of material we had recorded for Sender/Receiver.

D: Yeah, in a way, I think of Teletwin as a B-Side of Sender/ Receiver because they're all from the same sessions.

D: We basically have two sets. The set is conceived with almost straight film-language: this scene dissolves into this scene. There's the crazy rock scene, which dissolves into the vocal scene, and then there's the textural scene. And then there's, like, the car chase at the end [laughs]. But, as far as the comparison of our music to, say, experimental film, I tend to think of it related to "exploratory" film. I do not think we're experimental at all. There's nothing that we're ever going to do that hasn't been done before. We're not inventing any wheels. We're re-contextualizing certain things, but I don't think that's experimental. What I mean when I say exploratory film, is film that is constructed according to rhythms, using shading, dream sequences. That's what I think of when comparing our music to film.

B: It's not uncommon for me to hear a song and start picturing a scene that would go to it. Both Dustin and I have talked about wanting to do soundtrack music for films. So, the fact that people pick that up in reviews of Spoonbender is really accurate.

D: For a long time - and I decided against it because I thought it would be way too pretentious - I wanted to give Sender/Receiver a subtitle as the soundtrack to an imaginary film. One of those kinds of things.

B: Oh, how arty! [laughs]

D: God, we're a fucking art-rock band, aren't we? I don't want to be that. Not that I don't like things that are considered "art", but I want there to be an element of people feeling sweaty about hearing or seeing us. I want there to be an emotional response to our music, that people feel that their hearts get broken by our songs, you know? As opposed to this sort of intellectually detached, "this is art" kind of thing.

D: They're another great example, conceptually, of what we are working with. Once again, people who don't want to spend the time "figuring out" I Am Spoonbender, I want to make something that's there for them too. It's populist music. As opposed to the elite, snob kind of thing (like a lot of the Chicago stuff).

B: Low-brow is all part of what's possible.

D: There's no such thing as low-brow. Well, there is (as it's been defined as such), but I don't make those distinctions between, say, Dali and the homeless guy out on the street making a collage. It's all about me in the end - whether I'm attracted to it or not.

B: We're not really out to be associated with something called low-brow as being our thing. That's different from cutting it out from our style.

D: We're not lo-fi, low-energy, low-brow. I think that's the final frontier: Devo's "dare to be stupid" motto. I would love to make music that is stupid - all it takes is not being afraid to be stupid.

D: Well, yeah, it makes perfect nonsense to him. In his mind he's right.

D: I think this discussion about art and ideas, that's something that is important to me in all of this - talking about the ideas of what is possible. You know, opening up discussions. Everything is possible. Nothing should be taboo. I get really strong reactions against the ideas of telepathy when it comes up. Like with our band name, most people that aren't close friends tend to think that the name is some kind of ironic joke about Uri Geller. Like, "that's so funny you named your band after that con-artist." As if I'm right with them. Not that I'm not, I think he is a con-artist.

D: Exactly, it doesn't matter if he's a con or not. What matters is the perception, and the end result is that it appears that he is (doing what he claims).

B: It's still all about perception. And that's the interesting thing that you'd bring up the word "perception". The minute you look into it, you're at the crossroads of art, science, music, religion... it the essential crux of human experience. There's nothing in the human experience that perception isn't related to. For a lot of modern Americans, especially, we're so shut down to things that most people don't pay attention to.

D: Like forks.

B: That's the job of the musician, the scientist, artists: to point out the things that are around us all the time.

D: I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea that somehow I "know something". Yeah, I can point out a lot of things that the average person doesn't notice, but they'll just think I'm crazy. It's like, "have you ever written down the number of times the phone rings when you're thinking about someone?" And maybe they'll say, "yeah, I have." But they've never gone any further than wondering why that happens. Then it gets weird and goes into religion, and so on... Cup is one of the most incredible receivers I've ever met. We'll wake up in the morning and she'll start talking about a dream I just had. Just the other day, I woke up and had a dream about yellow submarines. She says, "I got you a Yellow Submarine poster." Nothing was ever spoken about it before then. She does that to me all day long.

B: You could pick any one of those and say it's just a coincidence or explain it away, but look at the pattern of how these things come up.

D: One of my favorite ones involving Brian and I is one time I was on a long seven week tour and called him to pick me up at the airport when I came back. So, we get in the car, driving back to San Francisco, and Brian says, "oh, I got you something." And I said, "is it a Heath bar?" I was being totally flippant and he says "yeah, it is a Heath bar."

B: It's significant because we're both really into Heath bars. But who would've ever thought...

D: We're both also really into Italian horror movies, too. So, why didn't I say, "is it uncut Phantom of the Opera?" Those coincidences are just as real to us as individuals as somebody else who has to get up every day at seven-thirty and they see the same person on the corner every day going to their job. Is that significant to them? Is that weird? No, it's just what happens. Well, that's just what happens with us. We're linked in a way that seeming coincidences present themselves.

B: You can rationalize it, but you can't rationally explain it. It's prior to rational thought; it's post-rational thought.

D: It exists outside of the intellect. We will someday get to a point where we can locate the coordinates of every event that led up to something in a way that we can understand it.

D: Exactly. That's one of man's goals, if that's some primordial goal.

B: It's a little bit metaphorical to refer to it as an organism, but the psyche is like an organism. How do all your blood cells know to move at the same time? The heart tells them to move, but they don't know about the heart making them move. And, likewise, we're not the end-all be-all of the universe. Obviously, we're embedded in a larger system. The word "meaning" is what makes most people hesitant to start paying attention to synchronicities and coincidences - because then [coincidences] must mean something. People ask me that all the time, "what does it mean to you?"

D: That's why I feel free from the whole thing, because I don't think anything means anything. I don't think there's anything other than the attachment we put to it according to our desires.

B: The way that quantum physicists are looked at as mystics.

D: I never argue it. It's pointless. All I'll argue is trying to present my feeling that anything is possible. That's the whole thing with us using the telephones live [instead of microphones, Cup and Dustin sing through modified telephone receivers] and also linked with appreciating the everyday objects around us. But these coincidental things that happen around us are probably just physics. Just magnetic energies.

B: Whatever magnetics is. You know, gravity has existed for so long…

D: But, what is it? [laughs] You know what I mean? All these things around us that we just take for granted. People take telephones for granted all day long - like it's not something completely unbelievable. They'll accept a telephone but they can't accept that Uri Geller can bend a spoon? What's wireless technology? That's transmitting information. So, what's the difference, maybe? But, anyway, I think if we infiltrate this whole idea of the possibilities of telekinesis to a more front-of-the-mind way that average people think of the world, I think it would generate some positive effects; maybe in feeling that we are closer to animals, or stop thinking of ourselves as not animals. And that there are all sorts of ways that information is transmitted. I think a lot of people made the mistake in not realizing that telepathic communication is just really, really subtle. Taking it back to the band, the telephone is what started the whole telephone microphone thing on stage. Cup lived in Vancouver, I lived here, and we used to talk on the phone. Since we weren't with each other all the time, coincidences with us happened around the telephone. That's a really good place to look for instances of telepathic events.

B: I think it happens to people all the time, but they ignore it. Not because they want to ignore it, but it's just another thing. Maybe not that they don't notice it, but most people don't want to talk about it. Especially women - they're more apt to talk about telepathic phenomena than men are.

That's like men asking for directions - we can't, we've got to know the way. We've got to be able to explain exactly how things operate and how we know things.

B: Whereas I've lost count of how many times my mom has mentioned weird things about mother's intuition.

D: Yeah, what about terms like that? How is that different from clairvoyance or telepathy?

D: Yeah. I'm uncomfortable being pigeonholed in any way. Most people who will be into Spoonbender might never know any of the other things I've done, and that kind of bugs me. But we don't take the whole thing too seriously. It's anything. If at the end of the day people call us the telekinesis band, it's better than calling us the Blur rip-off band or something.

D: Whatever this band ends up being, it will be undeniable. If people hate us, they're right. If people love us, they're right. Of course they're right, because that's what they think. So, yeah, we've been talking a lot about pop. And we could call ourselves an experimental, avant-garde art project. But that means we'd play art galleries to nobody; to people that would be there to see their buddy's shit display, some guy's shit smeared on a canvas, titled "The Space Shuttle Disaster" or something [laughs]. Or, we can call ourselves pop and play rock clubs with bands from GoGoGo Airheart to Cibo Matto.

D: Yeah, they were an experimental pop band.

D: They did, I forgot about that.

B: Right.

D: Yeah. We might have broken the rule of magic: never show the audience how it's done. But even after you've shown the audience how the trick is done, you're still the one that can do it.