Musician Michael Morley is from Port Chalmers, New Zealand.  In the mid 80s he was part of the duo Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos.  Later that decade he formed the band that he’s most known for, The Dead C, with Bruce Russell and Robbie Yeats.  They came to the attention of savvy U.S. record buyers through a number of good-to-amazing records on the Siltbreeze label.  Morley has also kept busy with solo records, under the name of GATE, and collaborations such as Tanaka-Nixon Meeting (feat. Danny Butt) and Two Foot Flame (w/Peter Jefferies and Jean Smith of Mecca Normal).

The last few years have been good to fans of Michael Morley’s work.  The Dead C released a new lp, Secret Earth, toured the U.S. and have had their early releases reissued in handsome dbl gatefold editions by Ba Da Bing.  And now Morley has released his first Gate album in several years.  The vinyl-only, A Republic of Sadness finds the artist using a laptop and electronic dance beats. This may sound like a dubious proposition, but once Morley’s voice comes in, any worries of YACHT 12” remixes are set to rest.

I recently had the privilege to correspond with Michael Morley to discuss the new Gate lp, his work with The Dead C, and whether or not what he creates is even “rock music”.

–Alex Parrish

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Baby Dee is a fascinating individual.  For some, there is a novelty in the fact that she’s transgender, which they’ve allowed to overshadow her work as an artist.  For others, her musicianship takes center stage over any personal identity that Baby Dee might have.  In reality, the work is far too revealing, honest, and personal to ever be completely separated from the person who created it.  In our approach to any interview conversation that we try and conduct on this site, there is a belief that the humanity of the artist and the exploration of them, their history, insights, and experiences as an individual on this planet should always remain a focus, beyond just the art that they create.  The “why” is more important for us than the “how”.  Even more important is the “who”, because from there the why will expose itself.  These concepts became especially relevant in our recent encounter with the Cleveland-born pianist/harpist.

It’s true that Dee continues to build a catalog of deeply engaging and beautiful music, and that is something that we, in no way, wish to discount.  We hope to open the door for you to explore her work further, but the sounds and feelings presented in her work are things that you can continue to discover slowly, in your own time.  I feel that our job in a piece like this is to attempt to truly help introduce you to the soul of  the person behind the work.  Baby Dee is a fascinating individual, but I think the point here is that, with or without her affiliations with various other artists, being transgender, or even her abilities as a musician, her unique character and quality as a person would still sustain her as such, regardless.  We trust that, after viewing our video interview below, you will see her in the same light as we do.  Her talents as an artist are undeniable, but music is little more than a simple medium to manifest and display the immense levels of truth and personal ideals which she holds inside. (more…)

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LSD…  it’s a helluva drug.  Back in the day, I did my share (and, perhaps, the shares of a few others).  Some believe that it has the potential to help turn you into such a super genius, that you appear freakishly insane to anyone else that’s not “on your level“.  Then again, it’s always possible that the reverse is happening and they really are going so ape-shit crazy, that it only leads them to believe that that they have a growing mental superiority.  One thing’s for sure; these chemical roller-coasters have the ability to twist up and whack out a synapse, like eating a parasitic egg-salad-sandwich from the vending machine of an interstellar truck stop bathroom.  The reality is that, even with all of the epiphanies and life lessons that one may obtain during these odysseys, there is really no scientific control for the experimenter/guinea pig and, short of a clone or view into a parallel dimension, no one can ever really know if they would have arrived at those same conclusions without the “aid” of the hallucinogen.  The good part is, since there is no way to make that determination, it doesn’t really matter and there are more detrimental things in the world than examining the differences between arrogance and confidence, exploitation and opportunity, respect and glorification, inspiration and contrivance, hustling and…well, hustling.  Despite the blatant self-aggrandizement implied in his stage name, Sean “Har Mar Superstar” Tillmann seems to have an incredibly firm grasp on these concepts and plenty of others.  Of all the electric realizations that I had, however, there is one specific principle that truly epitomizes Tillmann‘s career for me: “Regardless of how clearly, simply, honestly, or directly you express a pure truth, it doesn’t mean that anyone else will, necessarily, hear, believe, or even understand what you are trying to relate to them.” (more…)

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Right off the bat, I’m going to openly and officially claim the proceeding interview as a “success“.  I’m sure that you will all draw your own conclusions and, most likely, many of them will be different than mine.  Many of you will even leave your own comments contradicting my assessment.  I probably didn’t ask the “right” questions as you “would have” and I may not have even gotten the answers that you would have wanted to hear but, if this was a Myspace page, I would be posting a goofy ass little emoticon with some bullshit smiley face next to this article that read “Mood: accomplished“.  To me it is successful.  This interview almost didn’t happen or, more accurately, it ALMOST did happen more times than I could count.

When David Berman formed the group Silver Jews 20 years ago, he did so with cohorts like Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich.  The production of the early EPs and recordings were extremely low-fi, with the use of such unorthadox recording equipment as a walkmen and answering machines.  By the time the full-lenghth Starlite Walker (1994 Drag City) was released, Malkmus and Nastanovich had already made a name for them selves in the band Pavement and the Silver Jews were wrongly classified by many as a Pavement side-project.  Regardless of the facts that the two bands were very separate entities and that Berman was the primary driving force  behind the group, David lived with that tag stapled to his forehead for the better part of the following decade.  Although Malkmus was again featured on the 1998 release, American Water, “The Joos” were comprised of a revolving door of musicians over their 20 year stint.  Throughout that time, Berman overcame struggles with crack addiction and even a suicide attempt.  Eventually, he would even make a conversion to Judaism.  In many ways, these became just more incidents that overshadowed the work of the prolific songwriter and poet. (more…)

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I saw Onsen‘s Subaru from the balcony of my apartment, so I ran down the steps and hopped in to the passenger seat.  We were running late to meet with the artist Thea Wolfe, creator of the WEEN coloring book.

A week earlier, I had received a Google instant message from a friend and staff member at Cornish School of the Arts here in Seattle.  He informed me that there were some really great paintings of WEEN posted up at the institution and suggested that I come down and see them.  In all honesty, I was a bit leery about the validity of the work.  I knew that it was probably either going to be amazing or fucking terrible.  For me, it’s hard to find any gray area with that sort of subject matter.  I was sent a couple of iphone photo images and quickly realized that the artist was no joke; the paintings were, in fact, much more than I could have ever expected.

I wanted to help the student get their work to the source and I quickly had delusions of grandeur, in which I became like Maurice Starr when he discovered New Edition and NKOTB.  I’ve been in semi-regular contact with WEEN‘s management since the site began and I knew that, if I forwarded the images of the painter to them, the work of the artist that I was “discovering” would be undeniable.  “What’s her name and contact info?“  I asked my friend.  He went to check and typed back the name “Thea Wolfe“.  I recognized it immediately and knew that she didn’t need any help from me; I already owned a copy of the coloring book that she created for the group last year.  She wasn’t a current student at all, her paintings were posted up on the alumni wall.

After checking out her site, I headed down to see the paintings in person.  They were much more impressive than any still frame camera could represent.  Colorful and full of motion, many of the paintings had reflective iridescent shapes and pentagons within them that shifted depending on the view, lighting, and angle.  I had never seen a simulation of psychedelic experiences portrayed that way through paint, or any that more accurately conveyed them.  The artist statement explained that the series was based on what Wolfe refers to as “The Year of the Wrong“, a period of time in which she traveled thousands of miles to attend a number of performances on WEEN‘s “La Cucaracha” tour with a primary focus of doing what she felt inside, regardless of how unreasonable, ridiculous, or “wrong” it may seem to the outside world.  Based on her work and various statements and views that she’s expressed through interviews, her website, and elsewhere, I knew that there was the strong probability for a good conversation to come from meeting her in person. (more…)

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I went to meet artist Brian Despain with great intentions and high hopes. I read all the content of his website, went to a gallery show and took adequate notes, and did a good study on his bio.  All my ducks in a row with my dictaphone set and ready but, as I dipped out to meet him at a landmark Starbucks in an upscale suburbs of Seattle, I quickly got lost.  As I rolled past the well kept streets, the impeccably groomed parks, and the happy families taking the ol’ afternoon stroll with their kids, I got … well… comfortable.

Living in a “largish city does keep you on your guard, and you don’t realize it until you see the “American dream” lifestyle played out before your eyes.  The wholesomeness of it all almost slaughtered my mental preparedness for the interview.  Why? Because, up until then, I was fully immersed in the art movement known as pop surrealism, lowbrow art influenced and perpetrated by illustrators, punks, and street culture in general.  The sunny, preppy burb that I was now lost in, was such a far cry, or so I thought, from the dark and sometimes dirty world of art (or was that my car) that I had just come from.  I eventually ended up finding the coffee shop, 10 minutes late, and met with fine artist Brian Despain. (more…)

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