First Interview of this year (2022). Today we know more about the experimental, noise artist: "KR Seward" from Somerset, Massachusetts.
https://krseward.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/krseward
https://www.youtube.com/user/kseward/videos
https://www.instagram.com/k.r.seward/
https://www.facebook.com/KR-Seward-394608890638038
https://audiokayness.tumblr.com/
- What is the meaning of your artist/project name?
I like the variety and inventiveness of project and artist names, but chose mine as being both vague and specific -- KR Seward.
The modernist poet, e.e. cummings, made a lot out of using typography and layout etc. in his poems. And this in the age of typewriters. He used all lower case letters in his name. I didn’t. My working artist name is KR Seward. – no specified gender – though I may possess one as a person, so what? Another modernist poet with a similar name is T. S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot, iirc), of course, also H. D. (aka Hilda Doolittle). But I dropped the punctuation for the initials K and R , just to make things cleaner and simpler and starker.
Like I said, I
like the variety of names others use, but I need something simpler and closer
to fact just to keep it all clear in my head.
- Which is the concept behind your music project, how you categorize your own music?
Once upon a time
I called my noise a form of Country Music.
This term drawing upon a lot of notions that float about in Country, like nostalgia and loss. Old stuff found or hanging around carries all that.
I used a lot of what I’d call “set-ups” (or to steal from Rauchenburg/borrow from farm equipment – “combines”) of goofy old ‘70s and ‘80s consumer electronics, much of it used Radio Shack stuff that popped in thrift stores. So odd repurposing of old then- fancy tech to make funky new sounds. I’ve moved on for many practical reasons and do similar things with current tech like phones and pads and such, and I’ve sidled away from circuit bent stuff, so I question or no longer fully embrace the whole “my noise is the only Country Music you might ever hear” thing. But that idea still floats around, like a ghost of past actions and their consequences.
Now, I mIght just be bland and simple and call it “noise”. Or “naws”. But nothing comes from nowhere. And if one were to believe the old joke/meme about the five or six kinds of noise improv players that play (say one kind with a laptop, another kind with a tabletop of circuit bent objects, etc. etc.-- with plenty of room for overlappping approaches), such a category mostly means no songs/melodies/harmonic structures and lots of textures.
I think also “drone” has a place as I don’t make too many radical changes and flow tends to predominate.
- Do you release music only under your main project? do you have other active or past music projects or monikers?
Looking to keep
things simple and coherent while changing. So mostly as KR Seward, overall.
Did contribute some sound
to The Red Ghouls to use. And some sounds
to {AN} Eel (probably came out as h{EE}l, this track or others). This sending
something along to use/mix in however they want. So not a real time
collaboration, just pitching in an unpitched manner.
And contribute many exclusive tracks to VA compilations etc.
- Favorite music genres??
I don’t even
trust my own tastes. I like whatever for whatever reason. Not a genre specific
thing.
The old old me
came along in the belly of the post punk beast. And tried to write accordingly.
That me may yet live as a listener (yet again with the nostalgia – remember, young ‘n’s: atavism is not what it used to be – and never was ), but I’ve since shifted, arguably toward noise and drone, things I make, etc.
- in what year did you start making music? which was your first band/project?
Maybe 1982 or so.
Maybe even before.
Bengal Burlap was the first project – naws, more or less.
But in ‘82, I’d heard too much art damage and had a couple or three cassette players. And a bass and a meh bass amp. And a flanger, and a compressor, and a cheap mic. And a very beat up acoustic that was barely slide worthy. And no band. So. The start of things.
Later with songs
accruing, sang & played guitar as one of two such people in a band of four.
Nobody Home, circa 1986.
- Which inspiration you have from the place where you live? There's some inspiration from your country in your music?
The early noise
stuff, Bengal Burlap (oh, hey, a
project/artist name), was hoping to pull in all the local crazyness with the not so local. Not a conscious thing,
just reaching for what’s near.
Below, as mentioned in an anecdote, “Hornets In The Elevator” got its name years later from nesting stinging flying insects living way up in the high reaches of a grain elevator where the conveyor belt motor was.
Many local places and old lore pop up later on in such as the above or “Weeds Behind The Rose Room” or release/track (also cover art) Scotland North or the 33rd Floor (video especially).
- Which are your favorite visual/plastic artists who inspire your work?
Early on it was
usual suspect musos/poets/storytellers etc like Laurie Anderson and Wm.
Burroughs.
Also many comics. One Southerner that went off the rails in good ways and
(later, bad) was Brother Dave Gardner. He might well be seen as sadly suspect
by some now, as he did some very broad
Butterfly McQueen style takes on southern blacks (and later got in deep with
grim bits of wite southern culcha), but taking the good from the bad, he’s
nuts. And gave others the choice of going nuts. In a good way that won’t steal
life from others. (Some might see him too as a cop of hip comic Lord Buckley.
Plus one can go forward with this comic nuttiness with the best of Jonathan
Winters, Robin Williams, Maria Bamford. While no kind of a comic myself, I like
to think of Laurie Anderson and William Burroughs as sorts of comics while
doing what they did.
I like a lot of visual artists. Too many to mention. One old friend, Catherine Carter, is a painter. I like a lot of photographers like Gerry Winogrand, painters like James Rosenquist and Franz Kline, Basquiat (like Burroughs and Anderson, a mighty hyphanate).
Plastic artists,
again, many. Yves Tanguy and Nikki de
Saint Phalle come to mind.
One artist who was
visual/plastic/conceptual is the often name dropped Marcel Duchamp. Sorry,
folks. Others, Robert Rauchenburg, Joseph Cornell.
- How do you see the current Underground music scene of the music genre that you are involved?
I lack the
knowledge and view to say more than the broad obvious.
Fish gotta swim.
Noise makers gotta make noise.
The likes of
Marcel Duchamp [yep—him again] have held forth on taste, good bad indifferent.
And aesthetes and critics have lots to say. I just keep thinking of something
Lou Reed said about working on an album for however long, quite a while let’s
say, and having Robert Christgau from Creem magazine give it a “C-minus”.
Sounds just like a pop star to complain of bad press, when we who make noise
are lucky to get any, but it still makes me laugh. Especially as I like Lou
Reed, love some of his songwriting with the Velvets (long ago a guitar player
in a punk band and I silently agreed – “Candy Says” is the greatest pop song
ever --- feel free to disagree/still love that song), and recall he was
laboring in the 70s to get more than a C-minus from RC, the world at
large. Something like context,
perspective, I guess.
- Favorite popular & also underground composers/music projects?
Some usual suspects: Pauline Oliveros, Charles Amirkhanian, La Monte Young, John Cage, Half Japanese, David Tudor, Nicholas Collins.
Also mentioned Lou Reed. Um, other somewhat known post punk popsters -- Pere Ubu, Wire, Red Crayola, Essential Logic, X-Ray Spex, The Go-Betweens, Josef K.
Will have to blame an revered high school friend, Mark, for turning me on to all that and more. What happened after also seems to be by association with sundry other humans who knew and heard way more than I.
Later mention Hal Mc Gee. Plus The Red Ghouls and an {EE}l/h{EE}]. Other folks I’ve had a chance to hear a bit of are folks thereabouts, Dylan Houser, Tomokie’s Cup, Girls On Fire (an adjunct of this vastness). So many good ones, really. Not even to get into the Internet Daemon roster.
- Do you make live performances? If you do, can you talk us about the experience?
No, not since
playing in “actual” pop bands.
It was fun, confusing.
Likely, too much for a clinician/recordist to really enjoy or do well that way.
Not enough of a muso/performer to perform.
Have done some live noise via video, still different as I likely worked alone, at most having some premade noise set ups work alone while I did other stuff. Cue joke/meme re kinds of noise performer . . .. ;-)
- Which is your favorite song/composition and album created by yourself?
Pre-song crazy circa Bengal Burlap – “Grunt Grunt Pig”. Visiting a friend, he introduced me to his sons as the author of “Grunt Grunt Pig”. So, if not that, then maybe “Hey Little Darlin’” or “Encounters With Insects”.
(Dunno. Tried making a one-off t-shirt reading “I am the author of Grunt Grunt Pig”. Such things are not really my strength. Not even as a rough proof of concept. But there, it happened.)
Song as song, not sure. Was thinking of “Outside My Door”, or maybe “Francis Bacon”, either one off of Mood Wring Reenactment, but the former mostly because someone’s band was nice enough to cover it live at a party.
Song as recording, also variable. “On The Fall Line” or maybe “Goin’ Down”, both from Ghosts Of New Jerusalem.
The non song
tracks are only recordings, mixes of things created, however live or not. And I
try not to keep them too close to avoid my repeating myself just to do “that”
again. But will think about it. Also
I’ll be surprised when listening back “oh, hey, not bad . . “ etc etc.
Following the anecdote below, maybe “Hornets In The Elevator”.
Or something from Scotland North or Marshwalk or S C R U NCH OVER. Dunno.
- Tell us about the concept & the creation process of one of your latest EP / ALBUM
Makes bad copy, but I really try not to
think and thereby create as a
bulwark against thought. The big names I drop and heavy concepts may make it
seem otherwise, but I reach for something close and don’t give myself a
lot ot time or room to think. I just do.
That’s the concept for
every release. Certainly the tracks. Plus I go back every year or so many
months and hear what I’ve done, what jumps forward. Very cold, very reductive
process of choosing and sequencing tracks. “Sounds good. “ “Works . . “ Or
“Nah.” “Doesn’t.”
I do that always. Then try to come up with a decent title, images for the release. A flow that means always for the best of what’s close by. How do I say what’s best? Ears. And for the design, eyes. And title, ears and mind, I guess. What says something, what says more, without misleading or distracting.
- Tell us about the underground music scene in your city, and which are your favorite artists from your country?
I am a hermit, and no longer in the thick of things. I know nothing of the local scene.
Closest I’ve come
is doing local poetry Zoom based open
mics hosted by local poets who had started out by attending music (not noise)
open mics, then hosting their own poetry open mic readings. Anyway I like their
work and therr story, as it is. But again, I’m no performer (I don’t even think
of myself as that much of a reader). And most I’ve ever done is in the online
non-localized noise videos. So, can’t say.
- As active musician, What inspire you to create more and more content? From where you find the inspiration for be a music creator?
I like noise making as an process, like recording. I don’t play out. Those who do have their own impulses. The band I liked playing in best was running quiet without a PA and with minimal drums (no high hat, bound dowels as sticks, etc). Quieter dynamics. I never played this and only saw video clips of Hal Mc Gee’s Apartment Music and Stipulation Party sets. Like most noise sets, about 10 minutes. Plus for practical purposes, quieter set ups with mini amps and open acoustics. I like that kind of thing, making noise on the down low, with dynamics allowed for.
Having seen The
Dream Syndicate live (the pop band with Karl Precoda playing feedback guitar),
that too was fun, but the frequencies that kept playing in my ears were like
those I’d never hear again. So.
- Any anecdote that you want to share with us in the creation of some track?
Once upon a time I had a kick drum from a kid’s drum kit. Via thrift store.
And in those times had a stairwell wherein I “played” the kick as a resonator for an open air feedback loop using a miniamp with a piezo based homebrew contact mic patched in while touching said drum. Think it all went into a bunch of now old/then new tracks like “Hornets in the Elevator”. Of the moment and made fresh with at hand “unobtainium”.
- Any news for the rest of this 2022 in your music project or future collaborations?
Nothing definate. Hoping to contribute more track stuff to The Red Ghouls and h{EE}l. Maybe that to others in like fashion. We’ll see.
- Any other thing that you want to say to your listeners?
Feel free to
float. Or don’t. As things require.
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