A dive down under and suddenly I'm in the wild wild West, David West. The WA sound slinger has rooted quite a bouquet of bandwidth. Ranging from hardcore punk outfit, Burning Sensation, the noise pounding of Whalehammer, to synth-pop peeks behind Lace Curtain, and the tone-deep bloomy pop of Rat Columns, its clear David has more than a pinchful of 'seeds'. Beyond all the luxe fret-work, and tuneful trail, I wanted to have a dig beneath the surface, give a little head-to-head—and as I already suspected, this pistol came firing with fresh-pulsed perspective and a grin of wit.
You reap what you sow. In no particular order:
Tudor House, Egypt, Burning Sensation, Lace Curtain, Grammatical Void, Dark Passage, Rank/Xerox, Liberation, Whalehammer, Total Control, Reform School, Frank & The Can I Speaklys, Pauline Manson.
Any of these ring a bell? Can you walk us through yr soundgarden?
Some of these random syllables go 'ding dong', for sure. I'd rather speak about the ones that would be completely unknown to a known underground type.
Egypt was a band that my friend Mike Harkin and I started in San Francisco. We didn't play any shows but we did record one album which I still think is really cool, that you can listen to on the internet. It's called 'Devoted Psychic Reading'. Mike is a writer mainly, known for musical journalism, though he played in a popular Bay Area hardcore band called Caged Animal which had a couple of notable Fog & Forest scene types in it, Tony from Ovens/Tony Molina, Matt from Violent Change/Rat Columns, Jackson from Cold Beat/Yi, Max from Face The Rail/Ecoli/Yadokai et al. Heavy scene band. Mike and I were conceptual in those days. Egypt mostly concerned mythology, in the main Greek and Hollywood via Kenneth Anger. Which makes it a bit of misleading and vaguely inflammatory moniker. 'It's all the same to us'. I read about 15 pages of a Robert Graves book to write my share of the lyrics. Our thing for Egypt was 90s indie rock in a heavy style. Mike introduced me to a lot of cool shit. He's a real head. He was my main SF dance music buddy. He knocked me out at the Knockout when he dropped 'Do Ya' by The Move one night. He moved to Hotlanta with his girlfriend.
Dark Passage is another musical project with a San Francisco buddy. Some of these projects mostly exist in order to generate excuses to hang out, and that's usually where the best music happens, I think. Dark Passage is Dan Newell and myself. You can hear it on the internet. Dan Newell, I met that dude when he got a job at the cafe that I worked at for years in San Francisco. It shall remain unnamed. Dan was a hot pickup at the java shack. Another literary type like Mike. Immediately I thought he was a cool kitty as he studied French Lit in France. 'Dayyum!' He must have picked up the intellectual urge during his formative years in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Dark Passage is spare synth pop created in a spontaneous and unfussy manner. Dan sings. He has the voice of a dark sexy angel. He moved to Los Angeles like everybody else but we still do music together when I'm in LA.
Liberation is a new dance pop project of mine. To be dropped in 2016, in a full length style, on the hot young label Night School straight outta Glasgow. Promotional warning, behind!
Whalehammer was the loudest improvised noise rock group in Perth for a good chunk of time. We spent a lot of time watching security/sound people's lips move and going to the amplifiers and doing that thing where you pretend to change settings. I'm more into conversational volume level these days but there's a place for extremity in this musical world. Lately I've been helping the drummer from Whalehammer with his lawn reticulation.
Reform School is in the main an excuse for me to hang out with Matt Picola aka Matt Birdflu, long-time Bay Area punk personality who now resides in New York City. We have one song so far called 'Very Lonely' and an accompanying video on the internet and two songs lurking inside of a tape inside of a cassette machine inside of a repair shop inside of the Big Apple. Fingers crossed on that. Our music is a kind of post-intellectual indie/classic rock. I met Matt through mutual friends in the Bay Area underground world. We are surf buddies. Matt rips in the water and in life, a charger in all respects. He plays in this band Surfbort that are really cool. Once he came along for the ride on a Rank/Xerox & Rat Columns tour of the East Coast. In Detroit we drove up the bridge to Kanada. We were sat down for a very long time and it transpired that Matt had been rejected from Kanadian waters due to some ancient teenage skirmish with the law that I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning. We carried on without him. He took a taxi back to Detroit, then a bus back to Ann Arbor where we had played the night before, found the venue, and the venue guy took him in and made him fish tacos. The next day he took the epic Greyhound to New York City, where we were going to finish the tour. While we were winding back to NYC he got a job at a diner in Brooklyn, and just stayed. He was living in California until then. Ultimate bad boy, much respect.
I heard 'surf' and my ears perked. I've always had an appreciation for surfers and motorcyclists. Its something of envy, really. There is a peace & total freedom there at the vast edge. I'll add tightrope walkers to this list. All involve balance, both literally & figuratively and of which I have none.
The popularity of various ashrams and zen retreats in the greater Californian area and beyond seems to suggest that balance can be learned, and I would agree. I would encourage you to get in the water, it is far softer than concrete!
It must be liberating to not care about being associated with any one particular scene—you've sort of spread yr seed everywhere so to speak—very much free to be yrself. Was that always the intent—is creativity a tyrant?
It's not my intent, I think it would be very pleasant and fun to be part of a scene. We could meet up to play pinball and discuss the scene every Thursday for instance. That sounds fun. I think I have kind of been a part of a few scenes. I'd say that I was in a scene of kinda underground punk and post-punk in Perth in the mid to late 2000's and a scene of, er, underground punk and post-punk in San Francisco after that. Local music scenes. They seemed like pretty scene-like. I was into it, making friends, playing shows, feeling some solidarity, I'm not against it! I've not really been a heavy part of any long-term scene though due to some odd decisions and skipping around cities and countries. Local scenes are real, but anything beyond that seems like media person stuff, history in its ongoing construction.
I suppose what I meant is rather than be pigeon-holed, its safe to say you've sort of garnered a free-range, multi-disciplinary reputation—which, I find refreshing in the sense that you are definitely not one-note. I mean, no one really is—but some people have issues with a need to define & associate themselves topically (there's only rock & roll, pins as badges, etc). Or sometimes artists that you come upon who try on genres for size just to see what sticks—perhaps fixated on 'success' (whatever that means) & riding the trend-train. There are many who are obsessed with how they are perceived rather than the birthing of their art. With you, however, it seems to come from a place of genuity, enthusiasm, an innate need & want to create. With the whole of yr projects, nothing seems contrived—that's all. Pinball next Thursday!
I'm actually pretty into the fading temple of tribalism in our world of subculture, even if subject to constant metamorphosis and redefinition. Whilst it may seem 'fake' to be J-Pop on Tuesday and P-Funk by Thursday, I think if you can own it, it's yours. Everybody sheds skins throughout their voyage, I think you could just do it with much less pseudo-permanent electronic exposure in the past. One could say that if being 'fake' is bad, then ergo, 'real' is good. But when I think about reality, it's not all roses, no?
Do we have a want or need for fantasy—the need to kill torpor?
I would agree with that wholeheartedly. Fantasy is the primary thing that keeps us going beyond the need to construct cells from kale salad or whatever, and using those cells to generate energy to make money to pay your spinach bills. I gotta look up 'torpor' in the dictionary. 'Dormant, numb, inactive, dull, apathetic'. Absolutely!
On that note, what’s killing your torpor lately?
Just being alive, the beach, the sky, luxuriating in freedom, recording, hanging out, movies, new season fruits, basic First World type stuff. I'm kinda going through a being dull phase right now though.
Do you think your music makes a good dose for curing modern languor?
My music has probably created more languor than it has cured. I thought languor was some kind of luxurious tiredness. Back to the dictionary, 'faintness, fatigue, inertia, lack of alertness, soft or tender mood or affect, slackness, dullness, drooping state, oppressive stillness'. Probably guilty, yeah. I would hope for the 'soft or tender mood or affect' side.
I know personally for me, I have more of a difficulty with finding gems within contemporary music. There's a ton to weed through, you know? That's the part I love, of course—but then that feeling when you get fortunate and find a song, a sound, an artist who perks yr hope in 'music-now' again. Its like fucking CPR sometimes. And yeah, totally soft and tender—affective, for sure—
I can relate to a perceived rarity of mind altering musical discoveries, but it still happens fairly regularly… maybe we have less spare time than in our formative years to get our minds blown? And less free space to blow. I'm all for a 'brain reset' function.
Raoul Hausmann says ‘all devices for relaxation are nothing but instruments of torture’ do you think that applies to pop music?
I don't know Raoul Hausmann but that sounds like the kind of thing one says at a party to be funny. Pop music when it is good is sweet torture. Pop music when it is bad is just torture, so yeah, OK, maybe he's onto something.
Then I hope I made you laugh! That being said… pop music = liberation or bondage?
Same thing, no?
I guess that depends on your perspective as either a willing or coerced participant... how do you like your melody, chained or unchained?
Chained, for sure. Pop music transcends attention. Really, you should be humming a great pop song without remembering having heard it. Pop is dream power in the waking world!
Sometimes we come upon people who seem to evoke some sort of semblance of a prior existence, or ’spirit’ of being—your music, and lyrically so, sometimes strikes me as a bit Rimbaudian—YOU strike me as a bit of a punk Rimbaud.
I really can't ride that pony, I think that the NYPunks of the late 1970s have put the lockdown on that relationship. I've never read Rimbaud and I don't know much about him, but I do know that he did a bunch of great stuff before he was 21, and that is something I can dream about, it took me a lot longer than that to do anything of half consequence!
Then turn to the side and let me at least do a black silhouette cut-out for slight resemblance sake...no, but really—its more about the sentiment of being born with a torch and setting sensuality and newfoundness all ablaze. I just think you have some fire about you.
Quite an image…I guess all one can say is 'thanks for the props'!
Poetry will no longer lend rhythm to action, it will be in advance.’ What sort of muses suit a pioneer?
Who is that quote from? The pioneers of today and the future will be inspired by themselves. Either directly, through the advancement of one's impeccably curated self/outward image, through finding your identical cell partner through technological efficiencies, or from us all becoming the same entity through the endgame of advanced marketing and identity management. The muse looks back at one through the perfect filter of one's choosing. Onanism, or just the collective unconsciousness being birthed, with no shortage of blood and guts.
….Rimbaud said it....you seem to have mixed feelings about the current trajectory we're on... it may not be healthy or productive to get caught up in the binary trap of pitting unmediated creativity against the digital wall, but do you think there is any possible way out of the self-referential ego-chamber nightmare/dreamscape you just described? Would it even be a worthwhile fight? Or is it allll masturbation?
Well, I didn't really mean it as a completely negative scenario. I think inspiration is like compost for roses, you might have put McDonalds or the golden apples of the sun into the dirt, but the roses are still beautiful. I do think though that collaboration with our fellow humans does add a certain spice to life, whatever the field in which you're planted. People will always be drawn to this sensation, I would think. It certainly has enriched my life. Nobody cracks the code completely on their own. If we are drawing from the collective unconsciousness, then every action and thought is a collaboration? Groove is in the heart. Some collaborations take place IRL, and some take place in the salon of dreams and memory, I think.
For me, I always liked the pistil of a flower, erect for creation—and for maybe obvious reasons, it always has me then think of a pistol (originally meaning 'to whistle, come'), and somehow I end the thought on epistle....its all poetry, symbology of the flower. I find them in yr work. What's the meaning for you?
That's very interesting about the pistol. I'm becoming more interested in this kind of paper trail. Flowers for me, 'pure beauty' mostly, with the spice of mythology and meaning lending a little hot corruption. From Hyacinth's blood flowing onto the ancient grass to Latin American sweatshops, what's more real than a flower?
Gold Discs?
Well, you know, our paper currencies just keep getting less and less valuable. Invest in Gold while you can!
Rivulet of Spores?
Throw them at the wall and see what sticks!
I’ve told you yr like a riddle. Digital dossier—what does privacy mean to you? Do you think yr DD has a clue as to the real you or do you think I have a better chance? Are you careful to sidestep any real footprints?
I'm more like staring at a blank page than thinking about a riddle. At least that's what I'd like to be. Privacy…the highly obscure don't really need to think about privacy…it's unconditionally guaranteed! Everything is real, and 'everything is fair' as Q-Tip says. At least that's how it seems to me.
Nomadicity coupled with ‘home on the range’—you seem to have a heavy streak of both in you—how does the ‘harvest’ tie in?
Well, I just work on farms for money during this busy period of the year, there's nothing spiritual going down. It can be highly pleasant though, and it is comforting to be in one's childhood zone for a little while to escape reality and make mad bank. Domesticity is a dream that I hope to wake up to in the future. I'd rather go to the kitchen than the Kathmandu outlet. The journey from being completely delusional to merely confusional is an exotic voyage in itself. What's your take on domesticity?
My take on domesticity? I want to live on an island to escape my wanderlust. I'm pretty nomadic in spirit and have always exorcised my energies into as many creative outlets as possible to maintain at least that kind of 'movement.' However, I do know I want real settlement in the sense of really feeling at home one day. Kitchens are nice. I've never been camping. I could never live on a houseboat—I think I would want true anchor. I just haven't found the right place. Home is where the heart is?
Kitchens are definitely the best. A kitchen party is the best kind of party. If home is where the heart is, what happens when you run out of milk?
I once lost all my sentimental things during a reckless period of my life & now I chronically take note of everything through lens, paper, pen....there's a romance in documentation, the process of capturing then, now, and later—how do you feel about memory object?
Having moved houses and countries a couple of times I am trying very hard to not become attached to objects. They suck you in, though. I rarely sell anything, but when I do it is such a joy and a feeling of release. Perhaps this 'bliss in detachment' is what truly keeps driving our capitalist supersystem? I spent a decent amount of time ignoring the past, in the past, and lately looking at old photographs has been terrifyingly evocative.
I suppose that's why I am only really chained to objects of sentiment—I'm hardly materialistic—yet, does it ever frighten you to think of living in a world where you are stripped of things that might be symbols of 'your reality' and have it be replaced with a sort of truly constructed & imposed 'already decided truths'? Not that we don't already inhabit a little plot of dystopian sci-fi already, but...this, I suppose is why I still have a fetish for real objects....I fear monoculture... Insofar as photographs, its interesting how they are real windows into the soul of a memory—with like this tri-time going on (past, present, future) in terms of how they make us feel.
Yes, photographs are freaky, I agree. A picture of a friend is a picture taken by you at a certain age which you have long since past of a friend who you don't have the same relationship with anymore (for better or worse) in a place which does not exist anymore depending on your vision of space and time. Every time you look at photo of yourself you're getting a sneak preview of not existing. It's all a bit much. They are still nice, though.
I'm not sure if we don't already live in a world of 'already decided truths'. Does anyone truly believe that they are individual? Maybe a hermit in Greenland, but there's probably another hermit over the hill. It could be cool for my carefully curated tokens of individuality to be replaced and improved upon by a more experienced reality construction agent. Not out of my ability to recognize but just slightly better than I could think of or afford. Perhaps there is money to be made in this service? Or does it already exist?
All photography has a peeping-tom quality about it—I especially like looking through your eyes, your lens, your aesthetic. What do you aim to shoot? Let's talk video, too (I couldn't get enough of DIÄT 'Hurricane).
'Pure beauty' is mostly my game, with a good dose of Confusion. I think I gravitate towards music because you can give it life without meaning. I'm against meaning to a certain extent. I'm a low artist, but I like ideas in other people. I'm interested in more cerebral artists, particularly in other fields. I would ideally like to make things that transcend intelligence. I am very interested in video though and perhaps it would give my work 'legs' to be more idea-centric, it's an idea worth thinking.
Well, you certainly appear to have a penetrative eye for beauty so I hope you get to running with that.Video is the closest thing in my opinion to recording our dreams, something I have always been interested in—I tend to dream in high-detail and always wished I had a playback button upon waking....more cerebral artists/other fields, who/what piques yr interest?
Artists of a more cerebral and non-musical nature, gosh, the list goes on. They seem way more future-proofed and sensible. Wonderful qualities. I could just pull some names from a hat. I love the work of Ryan Trecantin, Katherine Bernhardt, Tom Rogers, Megan Plunkett and the Kingsboro Press Posse, the owners and managers of high quality hippie grocery stores around the world, wetsuit R&D departments, the Paris Review daily web-log, Jackson Blumgart of the amazing 'Enthusiast' e-mail music zine, Andrew Murray, creator of the brilliant 'Perth's Best Architecture’ web log, Tally Ho, the Perth-based manufacturers of easily the best seasoned tempeh I've ever tasted on Earth, the list goes on. Not to say that these people are not ROCKERS!
Are you obsessive/what's yr obsession? I feel like you might be meticulous....
I wish I was meticulous! I would like to become more detail oriented. It might be too late. My friend Michael Harkin that I spoke of earlier and I coined a phrase for working when we were working on the Egypt record: 'toss it off and let it ride'. I'm neither obsessive nor meticulous, but I am very interested in these traits in other people.
Because I have to say it—you have, David, impeccable style. Talk to me about your aesthetic—head to toe—everything else.
That's nice of you to say, but what even is style in 2016? Sometimes I think a wall is the best-dressed thing in any room. If you dress too 'well' or too 'badly' you'll garner attention and to be honest I dress to blend in, not so much with the people in the room but the plants. Plants and flowers are my style inspiration these days.
Flora isn't a bad spur for style. I know personally, I very much appreciate the star-gazer, majesty palm or an easy monstera, & succulents always—they needn't even try.
Of all your projects, do you have a favorite child which tends to get more of your love & attention? Who might we be hearing more of soon?
My projects are similar to children in that when one proves difficult, I will ignore it until I forget the offense and welcome it back into the fold. I have a couple of LPs coming out this year; the first record, self-titled, from a synth-pop project called Liberation and the first platter for the wax format from my solo incarnation 'David West'. A real year of firsts! Also, Rat Columns is currently in the studio working on our 3rd LP but I couldn't say when that might see the cold light of day.
Thrilled—please do keep me in the loop.
So for now, its the land down under—but do you plan on coming back over? Touring prospects? I must see you LIVE. Nothing beats movement.
Yes, actually I'm going to be in the northern hemisphere for most of this year. As for playing live, as the lads from the north said, 'definitely maybe'!
Emory, icon, vein, twist, glimpse, sky, painted, secret, love. Think you can conjure up a chorus?
I can only think of one of Stephen Malkmus' greatest lines, of which there are no shortage, from 'Shady Lane'; 'this emory board is giving me a rash', and hang up my pen!
A secret.
As I think this has proved, I'm really an open book!
9 words: You today.
Scraping paint and sanding upwards the suburban friend house.