NEW YORK CITY! Join Jane Pain and Industry of Machines for a night of unrelenting technoise. Dj sets by Half Life and Ciarra Black. $10. Image/ flyer by Scout Pare-Phillips.
JANE PAIN AND INDUSTRY OF MACHINES PRESENT: PROFLIGATE AND HUMANBEAST
Tag: Noise
PHEMALE’S NEW MUSIC VIDEO, NYKY + RYKY
I premiered Phemale’s new music video, “Nyky and Ryky” for Impose Magazine:
Phemale’s new video “Nyky and Hyry” is a glimpse at his forthcoming album Dullard, as well as the imagined world of Wet Hood. For those who are not familiar with Phemale, it is the solo project of New Haven’s Michael Donahue, who has just released his twelfth full-length album, City Silk on Connecticut’s own Redscroll Records as well as a tape, Everything’s Haunted on Elm Recordings simultaneously.
As with most of his work, the two releases are strikingly different. The much anticipated City Silk adheres to a traditional pop and ballad structure, while Everything’s Haunted shows his penchant for experimental tape collage. Donahue’s astonishing repertoire is written from the perspective of characters that exist only in a world that he created, called Wet Hood.
Phemale performs live dressed up in his own hand made costumes as the different outré inhabitants of Wet Hood. “Nyky and Hyry” transports us from our world to his, by telling the heart-wrenching story of Nyky, a pet freak by trade (it is considered prestigious for the wealthy beings of Wet Hood to have such pets). His cruel owner Charlotte pays him in rocks after parading him around town.
Now without money and bruised knees, he must seek the help of a shaman who lives in the beach. Along the way, his friend Raymond provides him with a walking stick to aid him in his journey. A witch named Dahndra transports him to the beach, where the magical shaman provides a special crystal that delivers him from his pain. It is there that he sees his soul mate, summoning him to the sea, where they sit and hold hands watching the sunset.
Kern’s strong vision guides the tale beautifully. The track plays like a warped music box and you can almost imagine the downtrodden Nyky as the sad ballerina dancing forever in circles inside. Both the video and the track balance the strange and the delicate masterfully.
You can purchase Phemale’s newest LP, “City Silk” here
You can purchase Phemale’s newst CS, “Everything’s Haunted”, here
PHOTOS FROM SUMMER 2013
- Pineapple door stop and stems
INTERVIEW WITH PHEMALE
I interviewed Phemale for Impose Magazine. The original article can be found here: http://www.imposemagazine.com/features/phemale-michael-donahue
A link to the Phemale mix that I made can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/jane-chardiet/sets/jane-pains-phemale-mix-for
I first heard Phemale through a friend, during a long car ride. We listened to A Root Terror, a perfect album for speeding somewhere between North Carolina and New York, very late at night. I was immediately transfixed by Phemale’s peculiar pop music, unbound by genre or pretension. It turns out that this was a very serendipitous introduction to the project, as I may not have found out about it otherwise. Mixed media artist Michael Donahue, who has been playing under the moniker Phemale since 2008, is sort of a secret. And that’s not because he’s unknown, as he is widely loved in certain underground circles. And it’s not because his music’s not readily accessible, as anyone can download all eleven of his albums for free via the WFMU free music archive. I guess it may be because he just doesn’t really promote himself. (Until recently he’s only self released small batches of cassettes for his close friends.) During our interview, he stated that writing updates about his project in all capitals on Facebook was about the extent of his efforts to promote himself and admitted to being ‘bad at it’. I simply had to speak to Donahue after devouring every one of his albums one by one, finding it hard to listen to anything else for weeks on end. I was obsessed.
Michael Donahue met me at the New Haven train station and greeted me with a hug. We were strangers but this didn’t feel strange. The reputation that proceeded him, according to several accounts, is that of “the nicest guy ever.” He speaks much more softly than I imagined, and hides his smile behind chain-smoked Pall Malls. Even when he speaks of a musician’s worst nightmare – having two full length unreleased album demos stolen from him on tour – he remains positive and poised.
Donahue chooses to split his time between New Haven (where he works) and Providence, Rhode Island. While the commute is expensive and time consuming, he enjoys gathering inspiration from both places. He likes the dingy inner city vibe in New Haven, and loves his job as an art teacher. In Providence, he gains inspiration from the rich musical scene and close friends.
When we reach his home, he immediately introduces me to his new kitten and roommates before we settle in the back yard. Donahue speaks so openly that soon I find myself confiding in him and engrossed in a long conversation before we even begin to roll tape. I must remember what brought me there. I had a chance to talk to Donahue about “Wet Hood” and those who dwell there, his celebrity sister, and his new album City Silk, which is out this month on Red Scroll Records.
Due to some problems at the pressing plant, City Silk will not be available by its original July 4 street date, but you can stream and download our premiere of “Plastination” as well as download a mix of my personal favorite Phemale songs.
tell me a little bit about the beginning of phemale.
I had been doing really crappy folk music for years in college, bad “new weird America”. I got bored of it; playing coffee shops… And got bored of people so… When I was in college I had written a little screenplay with characters with masks and I decided to make a project around that. Each of the characters would have songs about stuff that they cared about and this [Phemale] came from that.
so when you dress up in different costumes when you perform live, are those songs written in different perspectives that relate to those characters and costumes?
Yeah. There is one character, named Raymond, and he is obsessed with aliens and his songs are all about reptilian conspiracy and stuff. And there is the Helper, which is an eight-foot tall lady and she knows everything so she is really affected by that in a negative way. She is a very troubled person.
fuck, i never picked up on that. i can’t wait to see you live now. how many characters do you have?
I have eight and I am working on a new one. A six-foot-tall four-legged creature on stilts. His thing is that he used to be a lot taller but he shrunk down. He doesn’t fit in with the normal-sized people or the tall people anymore.
do your characters tell parables based in reality or pure imagination?
It’s definitely a mixture of both. Half of the lyrical content is purely from fictional events that my characters go through, and half is derived from actual events that happen to me. It’s definitely a defense mechanism thing, too. It’s easier to write about things that affect me negatively under the guise that it’s all fictional. The stories my characters tell are usually about obsession, whether it’s obsession over a topic, or over a person or a feeling. There are even fictional characters within the lyrics that represent real people in my life. It’s all a way of balancing being honest and keeping everything secret.
do you have a favorite character, and if so, what is their story?
My favorite character is definitely Raymond Braybyr. I even have his face tattooed twice on my shoulder. He works at the worm counting factory where all day he counts worms and makes tallies of the numbers. He lives, as all my characters do, in a small town called “Wet Hood,” where all the freaks live. He lives in a dark apartment with a rat named Meat. Although this all sounds very grim, he’s actually a pretty happy person. He knows deep down things will get better and he will find his true love. He’s my favorite because we share a lot of the same interests like aliens and beautiful women. And we’re both introverts.
He also has a large deformed left hand that he is very sensitive about, which ties in with my dislike of my own small hands. He also looks like a mixture of Nosferatu and Batboy, which were two huge childhood heroes.
how many full-length records have you recorded, and how many have you released? have you released all the recordings that you have made?
I have eleven available for download [With most released as Female. His moniker had to be altered not be confused with a UK producer]. Then there are two tapes that are gone, because they were stolen from me in San Francisco. Before then, I had twenty albums of bad folk music that only my sister and a few close friends are allowed to listen to.
are you tight with your sister?
Yeah, totally. She lives out in Pasadena, [California]. She is an actress. Have you ever seen House of the Devil? That’s her. The main girl.
wow, really? damn, that is so cool. and she likes your crappy folk albums?
Yeah, but she likes the new stuff more. She has always supported me no matter what and I love her for it.
do you rapidly write songs and record them? or do you do things slowly and meticulously? i just can’t move past the fact that you have so much stuff out there and it’s available to everyone for free.
It causes problems in my life because I don’t go out and people only see me at shows, because I hide away. And play. I have been constantly recording since 2008. But that came from a fear. When 2000 happened, and I was one of those people who thought that the world was going to end. So since then, I have felt like I have to get as much shit as possible out before the world is going to end.
is there anything else that compels you to stay inside, besides trying to produce as much work as you can? i know you told me that you no longer drink or do drugs. do you feel that this alienates you from time to time, or do you think you were more alienated when you did drink?
I only felt alienated during the period directly after I stopped doing that stuff. I went from living a life that revolved around that shit, to one that had nothing to do with it. For a short while I had a very negative feeling around individuals who “partook,” but I was just being an idiot. Everyone has the right to do whatever they want, and just because that shit messed up my life, doesn’t mean that it messes up everyone else’s. As soon as I got over myself and started being around people who drank again I began to find comfort in being the sober one. I’m no longer compelled to stay inside because of feeling left out or feeling alienated.
I’m usually tucked away because I’m working, drawing, or hanging with my BFF, Kylie. She has been great for my confidence when I moved to Providence. She gets me out of my cave and into the real world where there’s people and sunlight. I realize now that any alienation I felt was self-inflicted. It helps immensely that I have a great circle of friends.
you have albums that are more electronic and dancey and the albums that are more guitar driven and a straight noise record… but a common thread seems to be horror soundtracks and the supernatural. can you talk a little bit about that? besides, you know, your sister being a horror movie actress.
Ever since I was younger, my sister and my friends would pass along horror movie suggestions or burn me disks of old horror movies that were not in rotation anymore. I really liked that because… if people are still watching them, it creates some redeeming value to them, even if it doesn’t reach the masses anymore. I love camp and kitschy stuff. It has a nice ethereal value to it, especially the sound quality. I immediately recognize when I am going to sample something because I can hear the exact sound quality that I am making anyway.
in addition to horror, it seems like there is a lot of “world” influence, although i cringe at the use of that word to describe a genre because it is so vague.
Yeah. I remember that someone introduced me to Ravi Shankar at a really young age. I like percussion-driven music. I have always found that more interesting than Western music, even at a young age. I went from only listening to that sort of stuff and being sort of pretentious about it. I got over that phase and realized that every culture affects another culture. Then I got into American music that was really percussion based. A lot of my influence comes from Bollywood. Even to this day they prefer a tape quality sound. They will make multi-million dollar movies and still use a blown out sound. They have a dedication to that.
what are some american artists that you like the most?
I like Crash Worship. I don’t know if they are doing stuff anymore. They had a hippie vibe I wasn’t so into, but they make this really throbbing, gritty sounding music. I am recently getting into cleaner sounding stuff. I recently heard ELG. I heard about it because they were released on the same label that put out the Sewn Leather LP. It is clean sounding. Container, too. Oh and I listen to [Aaron] Dilloway’s “Modern Jester” once a week.
speaking to the diversity of your music, your forthcoming album city silkstrikes me as a little bit more somber than a lot of your other records and ends with a piano ballad titled “deeply personal”. you told me that you had to re-record the album from memory because the original demos were stolen from you on tour. how did that incident affect the album and your personal life? how much of the mood of the album relates to this time, or is its sadness coincidental?
It was not coincidental at all. I remember the original demos that I had recorded were much more harsh, and there were some rock and roll songs. I was really happy with them and when they got stolen it hit me really hard.
I was in San Francisco when it happened. Initially, my tour mate, Kylie [Father Finger] was more upset for me. She knew that I had worked really hard on them. I had to call my Dad because I was afraid that they would get into my computer, which was also stolen, and take passwords that he had emailed me or something. He is this gruff, old dude with a heart of gold. When I called him he was like “Fifty years from now, no one is going to give a shit”. I was like… “You’re completely right.” And five minutes later, I didn’t give a shit. Whatever.
that’s so harsh though!
Yeah, it’s pretty harsh, but it helped me get over it too. It’s funny because Kylie helped me out by saying, “You can write new songs, but the people who stole your songs will always be bad people.” But this all pushed the direction of the album to a somber place, because that is where it was coming from. The songs are slower. But the stuff that I sing about is happy.
Except for that last song, “Deeply Personal.” That is about pure hatred towards someone. I thought it was a funny way to end an album, with the biggest downer possible.
i thought it was interesting… the track being titled “deeply personal,”and the nature of the song almost make it feel like you are overhearing someone singing in the shower… sounds like you are accessing something you shouldn’t be allowed to hear.
That was the idea.
it is so rare, in this internet age, to stumble upon an artist who has produced so much but has as little information available about them as you do. do you shy away from self promotion?
I do. I gear self-promotion differently. It happened because of the product itself. Phemale is a brand. Phemale is the name of the pop star that writes all the music for all of these characters. He is a ghostwriter.
I guess the biggest move that I do, when promoting things online, is to write things in all caps. I don’t really know how to do promotion… I am not good at it. I recently started making more copies of stuff. I used to just make ten copies of a release and give them to my friends and then they would disappear. It has become a pain now, because when I want to listen to something, I have to track down people who may have it and have them make me a copy of my own recording. Now I am getting used to the idea that I have to promote if I want people to listen to my music. WFMU has helped me so much. I got the in from Mark [Angels in America]. It really helps to have a place where I can put all of my music.
i’m so used to people trying to do things…
“The right way.”
yeah, and it’s not like i am suggesting that you should not put out records or that you should not be paid well to play shows. i am not saying that at all, but i’m used to people putting more energy into promotion than substance.
Luckily, the record label that is putting out the new record [Redscroll Records] knows me personally, and they know that I have a hard time doing promotion. They are giving me the rights to the music, so I can give it away for free if I want to. The records will be theirs, but the music will be mine.
I even have a hard time with the pricing of the album. It is such a small run that it is going to be a little pricey, at least for me. So I made sure that the album comes with a little book of art and writing and a mask cut out, so it is not just a record.
how do you feel with this new record coming out? what do you hope to gain from your project? what role does it currently play in your life and what are your hopes for it in the future?
I want to develop the world of Phemale more. I want to make movies about the characters. The only people who know about the characters are people that know me personally and ask me about it. Hopefully after I sell some records, I can make a little money and buy a video camera and then I can film and flesh it out more. I am crossing my fingers, because I asked Carlos [Russian Tsarlag] to help me out with a movie in August. He is incredible. People who see me live know that I do little play pieces. Hopefully in the future if they want to know more about what I am doing, they can watch the film.
I’m also currently writing a comic about “Wet Hood.” As for the role that Phemale plays in my current life, it is all-consuming. The project has become my child, and all the characters are like family members. Its easily compared to any practice or trade where it takes up most of your time. Say if you’re an electrician, you start to notice if things are wired weird. If you’re a photographer, you begin to see things as if they would look good in a photograph. Whenever I see like a weird bump on a tree or funny looking dog, I’ll want to recreate it in a mask or costume or song. It’s like a really healthy obsession. An obsession that evolves and leads to output. And like most proud parents I like to show off my child.
Video for “Time Erasur”, directed by Allie Kern: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HHf93Vj2cs&feature=player_embedded
Interview with Pharmakon
I Want to talk about Pharmakon’s beginning. Tell me about where you were in your life, at that time.
Well, I guess at the time that I started Pharmakon; it was a really lonely time… but I think it is not as though ‘the place’ was the reason. It was always dark before then, too. It has always been dark. It wasn’t specifically that time or place that bred Pharmakon; it was something that accumulated over the course of my entire life.
When I found out about noise, it was an amazing revelation. I had found my medium. It was like: ‘Holy shit, this exists, this is what I have been looking for. This is what I have needed for all these years’… I was making this other stuff [music] that just wasn’t doing it for me. Pharmakon was something that had been boiling inside of me for sixteen years. I could finally fucking exorcise it out of me. And look at it. And evaluate it. It wasn’t where I was living or what I was doing, [pharmakon] had been coming a long time.
Do you still feel the same way about Pharmakon?
Yes. Whenever I have problems with Pharmakon I am a complete fucking wreck and I find it really hard to function. I feel very, very depressed, very withdrawn. Very driven, but also very negative. I question myself, and the world, every step of the way.
There is always this part when I break through… I have a fucking revelation and then it’s like … The set has come together. Everything is okay again and I feel empowered and I can move on.
So Pharmakon is the Most important thing in your life?
I could not stop doing it or I would literally go insane. Pharmakon is about a very specific concept, but it is not something that is outside of myself, it is an extension of myself. It is not like Pharmakon is my alter ego or just some alias that I go under. Pharmakon is me. At all times. There is no way to extricate myself from it, which is kind of scary and depressing.
Do you feel comfortable talking a little bit about the specific concepts behind Pharmakon?
The name it’s self is the gateway to understanding what the project is about. Pharmakon is an ancient Greek word; it means both poison and remedy, at the same time. It is the philosophy of something being dual in nature. The idea that something which could harm you, could also help you. But the distinction that is important to me is that the project is about duality, not juxtaposition, it is not about two things that are on opposite sides of the same spectrum, it is about two things that are opposite being the same thing.
There are many themes that fall under that umbrella. If you break [Pharmakon] down to it’s core, it is human connection. It’s not some cold power electronics project. It’s hot and sticky. It is the moisture in your groin. What is it? You can’t help it; it’s just there. I didn’t mean to put it there. I know it’s offensive, but the human race is disgusting. If they think I am acceptable, then I am doing something wrong, frankly.
You’ve had several releases in the past but they are extremely difficult to get your hands on. Very limited editions. Is that intentional or is that just the only means that you had to release your recordings?
It is a little of both. I’ve had many offers from various labels, small, medium and large offering to put stuff out, but I feel that a release as a finished project is something that is so specific, especially in noise/industrial/PE that it is something that has to be whole and complete. Part of that is the music, the lyrics, the artwork and the label that it is on. It does say something about the context of the record.
(Laughs) Well, there is an entire record that I have recorded TWICE. The material was written in 2009 and it still hasn’t come out. I have entire full lengths that I have recorded and have an inclination to release but… I am true to myself. And my art. And if it isn’t what it is supposed to be, I am not going to release it. I am not going to jam for two hours and think that someone is going to care. If I am not completely at peace and passionate about a release, I could not expect
anybody else to give two shits about it. And if they did like it, I would be extremely upset at them. I would rather have someone hate me for the wrong reasons than like me for the wrong reasons.
The accidental part is that I mostly focus on live performance. Pharmakon is a live project, essentially. I am, right now, moving more towards recording but it has also been really important to me to play live because of the experience that it is.
Do you think it is more important for people to see you live than to listen to a recording? What is going on before, during and after a Pharmakon live show and how do you want people to feel when they see you perform live?
I think it is important to see my project live. I think if you are casually watching videos on youtube, or you are hearing one release or a collaboration that I have done with someone else you have absolutely no scope of what the project actually is. Live performance is incredibly important to me because live performance deals with the intangible and the impalpable. It deals with the “x-factor”, the other thing that is in music that cannot possibly come across in recording. Performance deals with a personal connection to other people through the music. Obviously, this is experienced through recording, but live, it is a completely different thing.
Connection to the audience is something that is incredibly important to me. It is a weird, parasitic, symbiotic relationship that I have. I feed off the audiences energy. But they throw back what I am feeding to them. You can play a show to three fucking people, and it is in some weird basement that smells like shit and can play through a PA that sounds like somebody farting underwater and you can have the best fucking show. Those three people can know you and understand your music and feel it and give you that energy that you need to kill it. Other shows, you can be there, and there can be a bunch of people but…
There are many different ways to connect to an audience, too. Over the years I have experimented with many different ways. People who go to a live performance have a need to connect with other human beings. Currently, in the 21st century, when we have all this technology that makes [connection] easy… It is cheapened, a lot. People don’t know how to physically and viscerally connect anymore. It is tragic…
The person who is performing has to have a need to connect. It is perverse. And I’m a fucking pervert; I need to connect with the audience in a way that is uncomfortable. Maybe it is something as simple as looking into people’s eyes.
Even that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
It does. And it is funny, too. Some people try to laugh, like it’s not big deal. I look into their eyes the longest; because they laugh out of nervous laughter. I am saying what I need to say, and I am looking them in the eyes and they are laughing. They are uncomfortable and I keep looking. Eventually, they start to get more comfortable. They stop laughing. It’s not funny anymore.
But my favorites are people that I am not reaching. My favorites are when I am looking into the audience, and I am telling them something and they have a disconnect and they think that they can look at me and not have a connection with me. No. I am getting inside of you. Right now. No matter how they decide to react, I have made them react. That is my control.
So we are talking about levels of connection. There is something as simple as looking someone in the eye and then it goes to more aggressive behaviors, which are appropriate sometimes. A long-standing tradition in power electronics.
You’re chipped tooth looks really good, by the way.
Thanks! That aggressive approach is sometimes appropriate or needed but is not always. It is typically what I am the least interested in, but it is somehow what people seem to perceive my contact to be. What I am really more interested in is something that I have been experimenting more with recently, which is what happens… At the Tesco USA show, or something.
There are a lot of people at the show. I am up on the stage, kind of separate. I was interested in breaking that boundary and come into the audience. It wasn’t an aggressive thing, where I have some sort of ego or bravado to say I am this ONE person in a couple hundred and I can fucking intimidate you. It is not about intimidation. It was me wanting to be touching a specific person in the audience: I am touching you; I am saying this to you. It might make you feel extremely uncomfortable, but do you think that it is more comfortable to be on stage with all these people having access only to you? No.
You know that everyone in the room is looking at you. If not they are looking at their phone or something, but guess what? I am going to fucking make you look at me. That is a problem with live performance. A lot of people in the audience are more interested in seeing the other people at the live performance as opposed to the performer.
They want to be seen. Fuck that. If you are coming here and you have any idea what this genre of music is about, you should be able to handle me caressing you and coming up behind you.
WARNING.
Warning. I am going to look you in the eye. Guess what? That is the most basic form of human interaction. I swear to fucking god, 75% of the population cannot handle it…we live in an age when you don’t have to look people in the eye. How many fucking parties have you gone to, where half the fucking people there are looking at their fucking Iphones, talking to people who are not at the party. About the party. They are taking to someone on the phone because I don’t actually want to be present. Live performance is about presence.
Live performance is also sonic. The sonic presence of live performance is something that you cannot get from recording… The presence of the sound mixed with the psychological and emotional and artists’ presence of the performer and the energy of the room… Which is what I am talking about when I talk about ‘x-factor’, that. All this stuff I do with connection is digging at people trying to get at that thing, that ‘x-factor’. That thing that you can not explain after going to see a live performance, this thing. It is not that it sounded great; it wasn’t that the performer was flailing around on stage or something like that, it is just the energy in the room, collectively, and that requires other people.
It is so interesting to watch the connections that you make with people, sometimes. For, example, Tesco fest. I also get my rocks off watching you perform and watching other people’s reactions to you performing live. Watching people squirm. But I felt like people were scared of you. A lot of people only know a little bit about you, or have heard something about you and don’t know what to expect. When you went into the audience, it was like you could feel collective discomfort in the room because people didn’t know what was going to happen next.
It is a powerful thing because people think that aggression is the way to influence people or to get under their skin. But when I went out into the audience, the moshing stopped, and that was what I wanted. It was a tender thing… I am not going out into the audience and pushing people… I am a five-foot tall girl. I look like white bread, whatever. Aggression is not the tradition of power electronics that I am grasping from. I think it is much more powerful and much more threatened by human interaction than the bravado of ‘I’m tougher than you’. That is really important. When I am performing, and I touch someone on the shoulder, everyone in the audience is wondering who is next. They are scared of that, and why? Right?
That is why live performance is important to me. This is a solo project. It’s just me. I am responsible for all the material, content, concepts, words, electronics, vocals, recording, and performance… I play by myself. But live, there is another layer. It is not as though the audience are collaborators, but there is something for me to suck up.
Do you have any experiences with people who just don’t get it, that stick out in your mind at all? How do you deal with people who just don’t fucking get it?
This is the thing; people will not come up to you after a show and say, to your face that they don’t get it. If they don’t get it, they go on the computer and talk shit about you. They don’t talk shit to you. If someone has a problem with what I do, I fucking DARE them to come up to me and tell me what they think about it. And I will talk to them. I will be fucking psyched. But guess what? Not a single person has ever done that.
People don’t ever ask you questions about what you just did after a performance? Thoughtfully? Or even unthoughfully? Drunkenly?
Questions, no. People have given me ‘statements’…I get a lot of comments… ‘YOU GO GIRL! That is empowering! It is great what you are doing as a girl!’ …. Do [they] think that gender was the major factor in play? Do [they] think that performance was about gender? Fuck off. It is really trivializing. I wish they didn’t like me. I would rather have someone hate me for the wrong reasons than like me for the wrong reasons. Can I piss during this interview?
Can I record it?
YEAH! [Margaret records a steady stream]
So what is the climate in noise right now? A lot of people that used to do harsh noise have gravitated towards doing more industrial stuff, or techno or dance. I know that you are a fan of some of these artists, but what is it like being a power electronics artist right now?
I do feel fairly lonely. Especially regionally. From what I have observed in the meager five or six years that I have been involved with this there are so many waves. Shit comes in and out of fashion and frankly I don’t really care. I guess when you are making noise or industrial or power electronics you don’t get much feedback as it is. I feel as though I create in a vacuum all of the time. So weather or not there is an appreciation, or a space, or a community that appreciates what I do specially, I am going to keep doing what I do.
In 2006, I felt like there was more of a community for p.e. and noise, harsh shit. And now it’s not so much. But, I also have this privilege of being a part of a group of friends that are insanely critical and supportive. I am extremely lucky to have people around me that hold me accountable for what I do, regardless of the genre. I feel that the art that I make is outside of genre. It doesn’t matter weather of not power electronics or noise are popular at the moment, because that is what this project is and I will make it regardless of weather people like it or not.
We’ve had a hard time booking shows at our house recently, because there are simply not that many good projects around anymore. So we’ll have tours coming through, and we wondering who we will book on the show and it’s crickets. There are not that many good bands.
Even in New York City.
Even in fucking New York City! We are in a bit of a lull point, but I don’t really care. It picks up, is farts out, it picks up it farts out. … To me, Pharmakon is a painful project. And it will always be painful. But never more or less depending on the climate.
Speaking of community, you live at a venue in Far Rockaway. Far the fuck out.
There is a reason why “far” is part of the name.
It is kind of lawless over here. It is like Wild West by the sea. It is a little bit scary. As far as location, it is isolated, but you have an inspiring group of friends that you live with. What is the Redlight District to you and how do you feel after Nick (Diaphragm, former room mate at RLD), Jesse Allen and Jackie (Very close confidants to all the room mates at the RLD) all moving away at the same time.
It’s funny. This is actually an extremely simple answer to a very complicated question. Redlight District is a group of friends. There may be 13 or 15 bands that come out of our group, but it’s really just a couple dudes connected on a very important level who make art together. And so the fact that Jackie, Jesse and Nick moved away doesn’t make them any less close to us. This is our family. What we have as a group of people is love for each other.
I don’t use the word love lightly. Love to me is something very rare. Very exotic, foreign. Hard to understand. And yet, I am so fucking lucky because I exist within a group of people who love each other. Who can fucking say that?
These are friends that transcend periods of time and space. Literally, the Redlight District is something that exists nowhere. We live in this house. It doesn’t fucking matter. Here is a set of people who have found that every single person feels [love] for every person in a group of people. This is something that does not occur, typically.
A lot of the Redlight District went to college together for sound. All of them say that what they learned had nothing to do with their schooling, but through the people that they met through that experience, and that is the group of friends that we have right now. It is something that I can’t explain and frankly I do not have the right to explain it. None of us individually have the words to do that. Gebo, the rune, the one that looks like an x, that the Nazi’s misused… The idea that the sum is greater than it’s parts. That is what the Redlight District is. Individually, we wouldn’t have what we have together and space and time cannot fuck with that. People can live wherever the fuck they want, we still have that.
But they try to insert themselves into it. People try to ride your collective dick a lot.
You can always spot a phony,
So, obviously there is inspiration is the Redlight District but where else do you find inspiration?
People are always like ‘what are your influences’, but you are asking what inspires me… Inspiration is life. Inspiration is not just the people that I am surrounded by or the music that I listen to, literature that I read. What inspires you to think? Why are you a human and not an ape? That is inspiration.
I understand that you are preparing a new set for a show with Bone Awl. What can we expect? What are you working on? What is changing?
This set is a weird combination/transitional composition between new ideas I had while writing the new Lp, mixed with some shit that I had been putting on the backburner a little bit. Stuff I didn’t want to deal with yet, emotionally. So this is a purge forward, grasping at grandiose ideas for the next phase of Pharmakon. A lurch forward towards what will happen next.
How is recording going for the upcoming LP?
All of the electronics are recorded and are in the process of being bounced. Ryan (Yellow Tears, DYsgeniX, etc) is helping me record on an 8-track, which gives it a full sound. The vocals are next, so I guess I can tell you after that. That is always the most harrowing, difficult part of the process I think. It is all I have been focusing on lately. When you say ‘how is it going’, I don’t know how to respond to that. How is my life going? I’ve been obsessed.
You go to school for visual art, and you are a visual artist as well, so what are the differences for you between visual art and noise? What do you get out of visual art that you do not get out of noise? Pharmakon does not satisfy all of your creative urges… you still feel the desire to make visual art.
All of the art that I make starts first and foremost with a concept, an idea. Then I scramble and claw at a way to produce this concept, to express this concept. I believe that different ideas and concepts need to be produced in different ways. Not every concept can be funneled into the same process. The same way as Pharmakon is an extension of myself, the same goes for my visual art. It’s just different ways that it is expressed.
The last question is a little bleak. You’ve been doing Pharmakon for a long time. Will it ever be over? How will you know that it’s over?
When I die.
Pharmakon is performing alongside Bone Awl and a FFH & HIV Coroner Collab, at the Redlight District. 4/6/2012. 8 pm.
JANE PAIN 