04/13/2010, 10:00 AM
Artist Name: KBD || Real names: Michael Kimaid (MK), Toledo, OH; Gabe Beam (GB), Toledo, OH; Colin Helb (CH), Philadelphia, PA
Bent: Before you got into circuit bending, what type of music or art were you into?
MK: I started playing music in the hardcore scene of the late 80's, early '90's, and played drums for Snapcase before leaving Buffalo to go to graduate school. I always found the energy and confrontational messages in punk, hardcore and metal liberating, and the visceral reaction those crowds have toward music always provided an instant measure of the music's power. Concurrently, being a drummer in that time and place also meant deconstructing and refracting meaning through every movement Neil Peart from Rush was making and had ever made beforehand. I poured over every change in drum sets, every essay in Modern Drummer magazine, every new fill or ride cymbal pattern. Where hardcore allowed for ideological liberation and unrestrained energy, Neil Peart provided a model of discipline, technique, focus and deliberate methodology.
GB: I started playing music my first year at college in Toledo, basically a blues-based psychedelic jammy group, which was open enough for improvisation and experimenting, after a couple of sit in jam sessions with random musicians in the late 90's I became interested in solo work through tone generators, field recordings and synthesizers, around that time I started working with computers and sequencers in which I scored a feature length soundtrack for a local film. After the soundtrack I started working with a percussionist, diving into the world of free improvisational music in which I've continue today.
CH: Like Mike, I also first got into playing music in the hardcore scene, first as a guitarist and later as a bassist, playing in several forgotten bands in the Philly/South Jersey scene. Separated by a few years and a few hundred miles (I grew up outside of Trenton, NJ), it speaks loudly to social aspects scene that years later we discovered several common friends, acquaintances, and favorite bands shared between us. Along with hardcore and punk (the first song I played in front of people was "California Über Alles" by the Dead Kennedys at my junior high talent show) I also got heavily into psychedelic and experimental pop music with my first "real band" Dewback. After leaving for college, I continued to play in nearly any band who would have me, allowing me opportunities to play a large variety of genres (punk, rock, bluegrass, jazz, improvisational, atonal, etc.) on a variety of instruments (bass, guitar, upright, keys, drums) and tour extensively. Throughout, my first love has always been experimental music performance, fabrication, and production.
Bent: How did you get into circuit bending?
GB: Since I was 10 years old, I was always taking electronics apart and investigating how they work. I learned soldering at a young age, eventually merging music/sound creation into my interest into electronics.
CH: While I wouldn't call myself a circuit bender as much as an electronic hacker, I think I first got into it just as anyone else would: through perpetual searching for new sounds and the curiosity that accompanies that search. My mom would say I take after my grandfather who was, in her words, "also always inventing weird things."
MK: The liberation that hardcore initially provided eventually became a new constraint. Expectations to reproduce performance rather than explore in or during performance seemed as much of a hamstring on artistic liberation that other more institutional trappings of conformity represented. The variation and unpredictability in circuit bending and improvisational ethic offers another way, and it allows me to bring the seemingly paradoxical ethics I mentioned earlier into convergent practice.
Bent: Where do you find inspiration for your work?
MK: Theoretically, I strongly identify with Jacques Attali's consideration of sound in "Noise: The Political Economy of Music." In the culmination of Attali's work, sonic performance becomes an act of resistance to the technocratic monoculture of commodification and conformity, and celebrates the symbolic forms of communication we've lost with the onset of modernity and its ubiquitous manner of standardization. Much of Eddie Prevost's writing and the recent collection of essays "Noise and Capitalism" expand and refine much of Attali's work, offering new theoretical directions in the process.
CH: Attali's scholarship is a common thread between Mike, Gabe, and myself. Beyond that, I enjoy the attempt to sonically or tonally interpret the innocuous and mundane. Such as: how do I play "Tuesday" or "green?"
GB: I would have to say that I am inspired by a raw curiosity of sound, trying to emulate natural and often everyday noises, therefore mixing those sounds and arranging them in a musical sense along with an appreciation of change events, I feel there is a lifetime of experimentation ahead of me.
Bent: What is your take on the bending community at large? Where are you in it?
GB: I am constantly impressed and intrigued with the ideas and methods of reconstructing instruments and sound devises. I feel its safe to say, that the same curiosity I have for unearthing new sounds, is a common motivation for anyone making music today's music, regardless of genre.
MK: The experimental music scene is so fractious, not necessarily in a contentious way but because you've got a lot of erudite people who are able to articulate the most minute differences in their approaches that sets one group off from another in a way that uninitiated listeners would have no ability to distinguish. For example, the difference between drone, power electronics, harsh noise, electroacoustics, &c. may be obvious to someone deep into the scene, but impossible to discern to a casual listener. It's a lot like metal in that respect; there's thrash metal, black metal, death metal, grindcore, etc. Ultimately, all those aforementioned subgenres contribute to a greater whole that is widely termed "experimental music," but maybe is more accurately "experimental sound." The means may be different, but the ends are the same. They all seem to gear toward exploration, innovation, the rejection of conventional form and the pursuit of a liberating ethos. As such, the bending community is a new niche of experimental music for us to explore, and I'd have to say we are peripheral to it at best. That said, we know at the root of any branch division that the essence of our approach lines up with bending in both theory and practice. We're committed to sonic exploration, and these are relatively uncharted territories for us in that respect.
CH: I agree with Mike. The fractured nature of what can be considered a part of experimental music and art in general or specifically circuit bending is matched by a wonderfully bizarre dispersed, yet strangely interconnected, community. It is not unlike early punk and hardcore scenes, only with the invaluable assistance of the Internet. The international nature of it is particularly exciting.
Bent: Is there anything you want to accomplish while you are in New York?
CH: I like Gray's Papaya, Mike and Gabe are vegetarians. I spent a semester at NYU in 1994 and I like to walk by my old dorm on Fifth Avenue and think about how much money was spent for me to live there. Aside from that, seeing friends, walking around, and seeing some music. April 24th is also my birthday, so... I guess enjoying that.
MK: We have no expectations or predetermined outcomes, just to have a good time, meet some like-minded people, to leave inspired and full of ideas to build on later. In the meantime, if people hear us and take something positive from the experience, we're all better for having been a part of it.
GB: performing in a new setting and for relative strangers is always a plus for me; I look forward to embracing the city and all the culture that I can pull inspiration from.
Bent: Who are you most excited to see at Bent? Why?
MK: I'm not gearing so much toward any particular artists, but to see the festival as a whole and take it in. I'm sure I'll be both inspired and humbled by the artists who we're performing with, and I'm excited to see them all. The venue looks great, the organization has been impressive, and we're glad to be a part of it.
CH: I have been intermittently listening to the other participants over the past few weeks. I love what European musicians bring to the table and always like to catch anyone I am less likely to see again in the near future. Beyond that, "talking shop" with others is always a great time. I am also super excited to visit The Tank.
GB: I am excited to see the creations and enjoy others "labor of love". I can't single out anyone in particular. I'm more or less looking forward to being an audience member as well as a performer.