It’d be terribly ironic if you give up doing music full time, get real, move town and go back to college, only to find that a whole bunch of new people are suddenly starting to really dig into your work. Of course, doing what Pete Swanson did and releasing an album as fresh, violent and unignorable as Man With Potential probably won’t help. Or indeed, Going Places, the final, posthumous album from Yellow Swans, the critically regarded duo of which Swanson was one half. These days, while studying full-time at Columbia University, NYC, Swanson makes the most nihilistic, brain scrambling noise supported by a new, raw techno backbone. The recently dropped Pro Style EP builds on Man With Potential and sees him moving even further in the direction of a dancefloor, but probably not one any of us are familiar with. This Thursday, Swanson brings his half a ton of tricked-out analogue gear to the Twisted Pepper for a rare live show on this side of the Atlantic. You can find more details about that here.
I wanted to ask you about University and your touring schedule. Does the kind of frantic nature of a two transatlantic flights and three shows in four days (and then back to class on Monday) have an impact on the kinds of shows you play? Is there more pressure to “make them count”, especially when it might be quite some time before you make it back to a given city again?
The tour I just did, which exactly fits the schedule you just described, was absolutely incredible. There is definitely a financial limitation with being only able to do one-off shows or weekend tours. There basically needs to be significant funding for me to be able to play anywhere at all. The travel is absolutely grueling and the shows fit the level of stress that goes along with such travel. My sets have been extremely loud, relatively short (25 minutes or so) and very cathartic. The audiences have been very receptive and enthusiastic despite being disappointed with either the length of the set or the volume. My measure of “making it count” is not based on anything other than making an impact. The sets need to leave a strong impression.
I don’t rely on any A/V garbage or lighting or anything beyond being a guy with a table of machines carving out brutally intense slabs of sound right in front of you. The premium is placed on sound and live musicianship, not on any gimmicks or reenacting tracks from records.
I’m currently planning a tour for January 2013 that will get me to Ireland, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Germany for the first time since 2007. Who knows how long it’ll be before I make it back.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzfwXogBG5g?rel=0]
I saw you on Twitter recently saying that you didn’t feel particularly prolific at this point and in comparison to YS, I guess you’re not. But do you think the slowed down release schedule has allowed people to engage more directly with what you are putting out at any given time?
I’d honestly like to slow down on doing releases entirely. I have trouble reconciling my feeling productive and my desire to not extremely over-saturate the small market for my work. I really need more time to develop my next album. My comment about being prolific has as much to do with time dedicated to doing music as it does about releasing music. I probably spend more time doing interviews these days than I do recording.
There was a dis-qualifier along with my saying I wasn’t feeling prolific with music, which was that I was too busy killing myself with school to be able to really focus my efforts on being musically active. It seems really hard for people to understand how I’m prioritizing education over musical success, but I’ve been busting my ass to get into this program and I’ve already seen what critical success can bring an artist, which is essentially a not very stable existence. I’m glad I was able to tour a lot when I was younger, but I’m not interested in touring as hard as I did with YS. Having people invested in what I’m up to now is very nice, but it can’t be a priority.
It does seem like people have really spent a lot of time with Man With Potential, which I suppose is a benefit of slowing down a bit. It also means that when I’m playing fewer than 15 shows a year, people put more effort into seeing me play.
Also, much of what you released before Pro Style was material that was previously recorded and released way after the fact. Have you found a way yet to integrate making music alongside the demands of your academic life? Has Punk Authority come out of that?
John Twells, who runs Type, and I both take a long time with things. We take forever sorting out tracks, artwork and masters and no matter what efforts we take, we always end up taking about a year to get an album from the first “completed” version of the record that I send him and the actual release of the record. As much as we try, we haven’t been able to improve on that much.
Pro Style happened a little faster and I imagine our next 12″ will also happen fairly quickly since the art is done, but I don’t really expect that to be an ongoing trend. Punk Authority isn’t much quicker in terms of turnaround.
The integration of music and my academic work has has happened in fits and starts. I haven’t found time to develop an album or anything. All the work I’ve released has been the result of my preparing for live shows. The EP format really suits the framework that I currently have to work in. I haven’t had the physical space or the time to dedicate to crafting an album. I just end up with a lot of individual tracks that I really like and I just bang em out until I’ve got a solid EP. Pro Style, Punk Authority, the splits I’ve done in the last year have all come out of having to work out music for performing and just having tracks around that I really like and labels that are pressuring me to put something out..
You’ve stopped doing your own tapes these days and I was wondering has that had an effect on the releases that you’re putting together? If you know you’re going to a label with something, do you approach it differently than you would have if you were still doing your own C20s? Is the editing a bit stricter or more disciplined?
I really would love to be releasing tapes, but I’ve got less time and more requests for releases than I’ve ever had as a solo artist. Hopefully this next year will end up with me doing far fewer vinyl releases and doing more experimentation and putting out more tapes. I’m feeling restless with the kind of music I’m making, so it’s time to open things back up a bit. Tapes are nice testing ground for new ideas. Things get more complicated when labels are invested in representing a certain thing from me.
The only significant change in editing between the tapes and the wax is that there’s more flexibility in length for these EPs. With the tapes, I can’t really use anything where a side is less than 8:30 and reasonably call it a c20.
Hopefully more tapes are coming…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTMWJlSa-mc?rel=0]
You’ve talked about Pro Style being an engagement of sorts with 12” club tracks and I was wondering was that a conscious decision? Also, have you ever heard your tracks played out? I’ve tried to put Misery Beat into a few mixes but it is not an easy beast to drop in, kind of the opposite of a DJ tool. Any chance of a Pete Swanson DJ set in the near future?
I’ve done a bit of DJing, but I don’t really like the typical approach that most people take. I could care less about playing music that people can dance to or creating a fun environment. The last time I played records out was in Portland and I played a lot of 20th century classical music and weirdo dub records. I’ve never used any of the DJ software. I do the old, haul along 50 LPs and toss ’em on the decks and see where it goes. I just play records how I listen to records, which is kind of all over the map, and I don’t want to formalize that at all. I wouldn’t find it interesting.
A lot of people were taken aback by the beats on Man With Potential. I didn’t really think the progression was that unusual, but I did see some potential room for growth in exploring more techno-oriented work. ‘Misery Beat’ wasn’t made to be used by DJs at all. I guess it could be, but the beginning doesn’t have a very clear beat to synch to, and I’m not sure how interesting the track is without that buildup of tension created by the lack of a tangible center. I did edit Pro Style together with the intention of making something that was more explicitly engaged in electronic dance music tropes. I’m not sure if it is ACTUALLY successful at serving a utilitarian function, but I think missing the mark can be a lot more interesting than getting it right.
I have heard my tracks played out. It’s always sort of an awkward experience. Someone was playing ‘Misery Beat’ out at the Holly Herndon record-release show I went to last week and it didn’t really get people moving. C’est La Vie..
Related to the above though, it does seem that 2012 saw a lot of crosstalk between the club and noisier elements. Obviously Bill Kouligas and PAN have had a huge influence on that, but also Type and Kassem Mosse and Perc and lots of others. People were talking about it last year but this year it really seemed to take root in a big way. Have you noticed that yourself and, if so, do you find it an exciting development?
Man With Potential was recorded in 2010 in the most remote place I’ve ever tried to make an album and the following years have found me less and less involved in any sort of social music community. I’m wary of very large-scale sub-cultural phenomena and take artists on a record by record, show by show basis. I know a lot of the people coming from the noise side of things and there’s some interesting stuff going on there. Same with on the techno side of things. I saw Kassem Mosse earlier this year and I thought he was great. I really love Andy Stott and Hieroglyphic Being. There’s a lot of interesting sound out there and there seems to be a bit more unbridled exploration in techno right now than there is in the more codified noise community. I ultimately have no investment in this being a larger cultural phenomenon. I’m just doing my music in the way that I want to do it and I really don’t care if it’s in dialog with what other people are up to. It definitely helps with press to have my work exist in some context, but weather it sticks or not is no concern of mine.
I am coming from a very different place than a lot of the club oriented artists. I play all of my music live, I don’t use software or a computer at all. My performances are extremely damaged, loud and oppressive and I don’t think I’ve ever played longer than 30 minutes. I see way too many dudes hiding behind their laptops switching up loops in Ableton, which is almost always extremely boring for me to watch. I’m really coming from a place that puts a premium on live execution, risk, struggle. There’s none of that when you’re just flipping through loops. A few people can pull it off, a few people take all sorts of risks on computers and make compelling live music, but I’m not going out to shows exclusively to dance. There’s a flip to all of this where people coming to my shows want me to do a more proper “club” set and that just isn’t what I do. I’m sure other people are trying to fill that gap and I wish them all the luck in figuring out how to make a compelling 2-hour long technoise set on their computer. That’s not what I do.
Pete Swanson plays the Twisted Pepper this Thursday with Lakker and Simon Bird in support. All the details are here: http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/events/3486/
