Kilt Vulture (continued)
I remember when Anatomy played me the beat for "Lovin' You Dangerous," and I thought he'd lost his shit. Now understand, I trust Stephen's production, and I consider myself an open-minded person with eclectic musical taste, but damn it!...It was fierce, metallic, repetitive...I didn't know how to approach it. It was like trying to pet a chainsaw. It wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before. Once I had time to reshape my thinking and tilted my head, I saw what Anatomy was doing. From that point on, we became somewhat fearless about what we were making. I believe we collectively just did not care to compromise, charm, apologise, explain, cater to or lighten the sounds we would build into songs, songs we would stand behind with unwavering conviction.
Noel, Adam and myself sat in Stephen's basement writing with these cold, abrassive loops ringing in our ears. It sounded exactly like the basement he'd produced it in.
Suddenly, we were free to do anything and everything we wanted to, if we felt it. It was a whole new litter box to shit in. I'd felt creatively retarded for months, and here we are working on something weird, exciting and raw. It felt like we were sewing a dead body together and adding on wings and antlers, or whatever the monster needed at the time. Whatever it was, it wasn't pretty.
These songs became a vessel to confess through- these were sacred grounds where we were all howling at our demons and pumping adrenaline through a holy night. Flashing visions of some cleansing ritual. Pure aggression. Primitive. Red Lights. Burnt sage. A train wreck. We were attempting to wake the dead and get 'em up outta their graves. We moved from the Twin Cities to Berkeley, California, where the sky is always blue and the pan-handling hippies have begging down to a creative art form and nicer cell phones than me. But like Chris Rock said (paraphrasing): "If you're homeless and you got a funny sign, you ain't been homeless too long."
We were living in sunny California, because we figured that if you've lived in Minneapolis and New York City, then the next obvious choice is San Francisco (or at least as close to it as you can afford). We had the embryos for our new sound, and we knew that they couldn't get too much sunlight, so we decked Anatomy's bedroom window with black drapes and covered his sky light with black construction paper which continually fell to the floor. Stephen's room held a mattress, a desk with his MPC, turntable and monitor, a chair, a short dresser and an antique wall-mounted candle holder, and at some point he wrote cryptic words like "dead dancing" on his wall with red paint using his finger.
On the flip side, Deetalx had already began producing "Expose Negative," which is the final Oddjobs album. This was the first time that Stephen and Devon would simultaneously produce seperate records, without the other's input. It was quite obvious that the two producers were not on the "same page" artistically, which meant that they were making very different records, and there was mounting tension within the group regarding the amount of work who was putting on who's album. At one point it felt like I was living with my parents during their arguing, diminishing marriage. I'd like to say that there were no hard feelings on a personal level, but I cannot. When you're in a band with four guys for seven or eight years, it all becomes personal.
Kill the Vultures was originally going to be released as an Oddjobs record. We did not plan to break off and completely start a different group, but after exhausting the possibilities of Plan A, it seemed like the alternative was best for every one. The last few shows we played with all five Oddjobs members were painful and confusing on several different levels. The main problem was that we were performing songs from what is now "Expose Negative" together with songs from what is now "Kill the Vultures," and they did not go well together, to say the least. We struggled to make adjustments, reconfigurations and compromises, but kept producing troubling results. We now had no idea how to perform as a whole.
I kind of moved off the subject of "The making of Kill the Vultures," but like I said, its a complex topic. It signifies the breaking down and rebuilding of all of our lives and how we live them.
I came back from hyping Atmosphere for eight weeks on the Warped Tour to find Stephen and Adam (Advizer) no longer living in the Berkeley house. They were living in Minneapolis- Adam, preparing for grad school at the University of Chicago, Stephen, just didn't want to live there anymore, so he took off and left most of his belongings in his bedroom. I was very confused. My group had basically broken up and I was living in Berkeley, working at an art supply store. I hated my job and I didn't know what the hell my plan was. I fasted for a week, meditated and decided to move back to Minneapolis, in October of 2004, where I currently reside.
Part Three Coming Soon...
Alexei Moon Casselle
Noel, Adam and myself sat in Stephen's basement writing with these cold, abrassive loops ringing in our ears. It sounded exactly like the basement he'd produced it in.
Suddenly, we were free to do anything and everything we wanted to, if we felt it. It was a whole new litter box to shit in. I'd felt creatively retarded for months, and here we are working on something weird, exciting and raw. It felt like we were sewing a dead body together and adding on wings and antlers, or whatever the monster needed at the time. Whatever it was, it wasn't pretty.
These songs became a vessel to confess through- these were sacred grounds where we were all howling at our demons and pumping adrenaline through a holy night. Flashing visions of some cleansing ritual. Pure aggression. Primitive. Red Lights. Burnt sage. A train wreck. We were attempting to wake the dead and get 'em up outta their graves. We moved from the Twin Cities to Berkeley, California, where the sky is always blue and the pan-handling hippies have begging down to a creative art form and nicer cell phones than me. But like Chris Rock said (paraphrasing): "If you're homeless and you got a funny sign, you ain't been homeless too long."
We were living in sunny California, because we figured that if you've lived in Minneapolis and New York City, then the next obvious choice is San Francisco (or at least as close to it as you can afford). We had the embryos for our new sound, and we knew that they couldn't get too much sunlight, so we decked Anatomy's bedroom window with black drapes and covered his sky light with black construction paper which continually fell to the floor. Stephen's room held a mattress, a desk with his MPC, turntable and monitor, a chair, a short dresser and an antique wall-mounted candle holder, and at some point he wrote cryptic words like "dead dancing" on his wall with red paint using his finger.
On the flip side, Deetalx had already began producing "Expose Negative," which is the final Oddjobs album. This was the first time that Stephen and Devon would simultaneously produce seperate records, without the other's input. It was quite obvious that the two producers were not on the "same page" artistically, which meant that they were making very different records, and there was mounting tension within the group regarding the amount of work who was putting on who's album. At one point it felt like I was living with my parents during their arguing, diminishing marriage. I'd like to say that there were no hard feelings on a personal level, but I cannot. When you're in a band with four guys for seven or eight years, it all becomes personal.
Kill the Vultures was originally going to be released as an Oddjobs record. We did not plan to break off and completely start a different group, but after exhausting the possibilities of Plan A, it seemed like the alternative was best for every one. The last few shows we played with all five Oddjobs members were painful and confusing on several different levels. The main problem was that we were performing songs from what is now "Expose Negative" together with songs from what is now "Kill the Vultures," and they did not go well together, to say the least. We struggled to make adjustments, reconfigurations and compromises, but kept producing troubling results. We now had no idea how to perform as a whole.
I kind of moved off the subject of "The making of Kill the Vultures," but like I said, its a complex topic. It signifies the breaking down and rebuilding of all of our lives and how we live them.
I came back from hyping Atmosphere for eight weeks on the Warped Tour to find Stephen and Adam (Advizer) no longer living in the Berkeley house. They were living in Minneapolis- Adam, preparing for grad school at the University of Chicago, Stephen, just didn't want to live there anymore, so he took off and left most of his belongings in his bedroom. I was very confused. My group had basically broken up and I was living in Berkeley, working at an art supply store. I hated my job and I didn't know what the hell my plan was. I fasted for a week, meditated and decided to move back to Minneapolis, in October of 2004, where I currently reside.
Part Three Coming Soon...
Alexei Moon Casselle
posted by Alexei Moon Casselle at 3:27 PM
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