Ben thanks so very much for this. I hope it's ok.
-gabe
Questions
Cock-Now: So where did the psychedelic bug come from?
Your Team Ring: When I was five years old I was given a ten-dollar bill and told I could spend it any way I wanted to and, as kids are likely to do, I wanted to spend it immediately. I insisted my father drive me to Jamesway that instant. I think he was shocked when instead of heading to the toy aisle I ran over to the LPs to grab Sgt. Pepper. I listened to it literally forewords and backwards for the many months – for an extremely introverted, and often isolated kid the characters and stories were my Tarabethia, Narnia etc. Psychedelia has been much more about the ontological "mind journey" then any particular chemical substance. I’ve never been able to shake a number of ideas about how to make pop music: there is fakery (an unreal band) and hidden information (a meta-conspiracy), that pop music can do some pretty crazy things with persona and memory with dialectic treatments genre, subject and texture (A Day in the Life - a dreary dead socialite becomes a working class dreamer – the longest chord meets the highest tones meets the endless loop).
But it’s funny you call it a bug – because that’s how I think of it – as a virus, uber meme. So after Pepperland I thought it would so cool if we had our own strawberry garden – (Strawberry Fields is on the Yellow Sub. cartoon soundtrack). And my parents being good, patient parents let me plant some. The morning Lennon was murdered I was actually down in garden seeing if the frost had killed off all the plants. I heard my mother scream from in the house "they shot him oh god why?" I really didn’t understand what death was until that moment. It had a very sacramental vibe to it – take these strawberries they are my death.
CN: When you say in the song ‘In Service of the Villain’, "‘I’m the flame on the altar who’s consumed your only sons," whose voice are we hearing?
YTR: Yahweh - When he murders Aaron’s son for the offering of alien fire to his altar. It’s possibly the most disturbing and telling section of the Bible for me as it reminds of how unconscious our notions of God, or our own roles as a creator can be.
CN: How do you perceive the slipstream of time? How do you perceive those who slip out of the stream of our time? And last but not least, how do you think music passes through time, & simultaneously allows us to lose track of time, in the mind, through music through mind?
YTR: I’m not a neuroscientist but it’s been my experience that the rate of digestion of qualia and the analysis of qualia are often so mismatched that it causes a lot of down right spooky things to cross my mind at a given time, as yes it’s most always when pop music, music with comparatively simple repetitive parts (obviously I’m talking stuff before there was such a thing as BillBoard), is playing. Pop music amplifies synchronicities. That’s always been one of the big tricks hasn’t it? The way music alters our sense of time and the way it seems to bundle memories. It’s sorta half sedative/ half scrap book
CN: What do you think music can say that words aren’t capable of? Do you think music has the power to help us accept things & move on? (Say goodbye.) Or do you think it just expresses the process happening within us? (Without quite resolving itself, by resolving itself.) Do you feel like art has the power to help heal us? Or do you feel like art just expresses the healing process?
YTR: I believe it is only the creative acts that produce true healing. Make babies to replace the dead ones. Make words to replace the silence. Make gods to replace the emptiness. Make pies to replace the shit.
CN: Where do you see Your Team Rings place in the universe of music?
YTR: Your Team Ring is a recording project, and because of that it is most it really doesn’t have a very big place at all. Obviously I hope some people enjoy it or else I wouldn’t release the little parts that I do. But I have nothing much to loose if I were to stop sharing it and everything to loose if I stopped making it.
CN: What sign is Your Team Ring?
YTR: Virgo. So Virgo it hurts. I was born on the same day as Hegel, Mother Teresa, Man Ray, Ed Gein and Pee Wee Herman imagine all those people in your head having an argument over everything.
CN: How does recording work? Do you produce and engineer the albums? Is it mostly home recording or in studios, or, a combination of both?
YTR: It depends on the project, but basically I’ll do what I can at home and mostly go to the studio for drums and mastering. Right now I’m working on three different albums at once, and the studio seems to fit into the workflow differently with each.
CN: How do you perceive Your Team Ring’s evolution over the last decade?
YTR: Vocals range go up then down. Bit Rates grow, tape hiss stops. Treble waxes and wanes with hearing damage and recovery. Goofiness rises and plummets suddenly. Cryptic levels remain constant. Adding characters and players like Baron Munchausen.
CN: Do you believe in the spirit or soul, & if so, do you believe it lives on after the death of the body?
YTR: Not literally – but even if it were proved scientifically I still might think the idea of those things was way more important, more real to me.
CN: Can you give us some of your favorite psychedelic lyric leaps of logic from other artists you dig/respect?
YTR: "The bells of our senses can cost our pride, can toll out the boundaries that level our lives, can slash like the sunlight through shutters and cracks: our nakedness calling our nakedness back The rhyme of passion finds beauty in loving love, the rhymes of our madness burns cities it push and shoves and roaring through darkness the night children fly – I can still hear them signing the rhymes of goodbye." – Scott Walker
"The winter and the midnight Could not hold him The fire could not burn him Nor earth enfold him Rise up Lazarus Sweet and salty Brother soldiers Stop your gambling and talk to me The thieves were stealers But reason condemned him And the grave was empty Where they had laid him Why heroes die at sunrise Why the birds are arrows of the wise Why each perfumed flower Why each moment has its hour It's you It's all true" – The Incredbile String Band
"I have laid in the womb the rocks cold and still while she speaks in my heart with the voice of the hill, and when I am risen and ready to run, she will laugh without laughter to welcome the sun. But she will not learn language nor will she bare scorn because she is the best little dog that ever was born." – Shirley Collins
CN: Do you feel the contrast of self-deprecation & happy insane music helps put things in perspective? (Deflate the situation?)
YTR: I really can’t take myself to seriously especially when talking about all these BIG allusions and metaphysics – I have to throw in the ridiculous to round it out. I always have this image of Prometheus coming back with a torch in one hand and joke book in the other – like "I don’t know which you need more, asshole."
CN: How does the Your Team Ring song-writing process work?
YTR: I write songs to pre-existing music much to the hatred of my friends and family. I think most people who come from a folk sensibility find this down right insulting.
CN: What is it about exotic instruments that you find attractive? Can you give us a list of your favorite exotic instruments?
YTR: I love the idea of pop music eating everything in it’s path and then getting a little indigestion. I like instruments that have drone and melodic capabilities – like the hurdy gurdy and harmonium.
CN: Did recording in England differ from recording in America? Do you think the album would have come out the same irrespective of where it was recorded, or did certain places & impressions influence it?
YTR: I wasn’t present during the UK sessions for In Service of the Villain with Richy and Mary Jane. But if you mean Arundel Gardens (in progress) I found recording, like the rest of London, down right depressing. The Arundel Gardens sessions were when I was alone in my apartment without friends or my wife for just way too long. I’m afraid I was deeply lonely and the music I think reflects that. The southern English tend to not like talking to strangers – so making new friends was hard.
CN: When’s the last time Your Team Ring played live? I remember in college you had a huge ensemble for a few shows. Do you still play live? What’s your reason for this? Do you think playing live is over-rated? How do you perceive live music as an aesthetic experience, vs recorded music? Do you like going to live shows?
YTR: Your Team Ring has never played live – We used the name once as a joke the day before I was getting married but it was really "The Code Owl" that played an improv band featuring myself, Kirsten McCord, Daniel Carter and Steve Connolly.
I don’t play live for a number of reasons – mostly because it would take sooo many people to pull off making that sort of music that’s it’s damn near impossible. I have tried many, many times to put together a band to play out in some form – but all have failed before the fourth practice. I feel guilty for giving up – but I guess since I’ve lived it this long it’s ok.
CN: Tell us a bit about Richy’s other band, ‘The Condor Moments’.
YTR: Richy’s band is a three piece from Black Pool. They play this very, very weird horror movie kinda music that has got a really kinky sense of humor. At the time of this interview they don’t have any releases out, but I would strongly recommend folks track down the first two Richy Midnight and the Evil Bastards albums. They have many, many moments of rare genius. When first heard Richy’s music I dropped a plate I was so blown away.
CN: Could you philosophize about how percussion & samples should fill out a psychedelic universe? When you’re adding percussion, do you just experiment with what’s lying around, or are the parts composed and thought out before hand?
YTR: Whelp – I think I’m alone on this one. Drum machines and samples I think are scene by most in the "new weird American pies" as non-expressive and impersonal. I couldn’t disagree more, I like hip hop, electonica, and I’ve even trying my hardest to embrace techno and, gulp, house. One of the albums I’m working on now it’s mostly that sorta stuff. Nick Normal who I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with as of late has really opened my mind to lot new stuff in this realm.
But the connection to drum machines has always been there - Your Team Ring came into being the night I had a fever of 103 degrees and I was watching late night television. They were rerunning an old Saturday night live – the one where Joe Jackson plays Steppin’ Out. When they tried to play that bass line live with the drum machine (or triggered drums for "show" can’t remember) it sounded soo very strange (plus the fever). It was like bending time - a sorta unifying field theory on how electronic and human controlled instruments could work together. After the performance – they cut to some commercial about how could order your favorite football team ring. It was my "King Felix."
CN: On the first track on the album, the song ‘In Service of the Villain,’ you say ‘All you hide moves my seed into the skies,’ and this to me has always sounded remarkably like ‘Are you high.’ Was this an intentional psychedelic move, or just a coinkydink?
YTR: It wasn’t intentional. Sorry.
CN: ‘Thoughts of Norea’ is a very funny title for an instrumental (on ‘In Service of the Villain’): is Norea an allusion to anyone in reality or mythology?
YTR: It’s from the Nag Hammadi. "He it is who is within all of the Adams, possessing the thought of Norea who speaks concerning the two names which create a single name."
CN: Was dungeons & dragons or the muppets or star wars a big influence on you as a child? What do you think attracts you to this type of music?
YTR: Hell yeah - it’s fantasy. I think at the core of Your Team Ring is a hope that perhaps one day some kid might have the same sort of experience with Sgt. Pepper, of course to much less culturally significant, aesthetically great etc degree. You know I work in children’s culture as a profession – I’m deeply concerned with children having the same amount of richness in their stories and characters as we did when we were kids. There are not many films like Watership Down, The Secret of N.I.M.H. or the Dark Crystal anymore - stories that let kids work out some of the scary shit in life in a way that they can talk about together.
CN: How do you get your voice to sound so high pitched & elf-en? Do you slow it down and speed it up? Or is it oh natural, or doubled, or is that effects?
YTR: It’s natural – but often double tracked. I can’t really do it anymore, which I’m thankful for – it was getting out of hand one Homelife – I remember trying to create a voice how imagined the clone would sound – sorta childlike and like his nasal cavity wasn’t "cooked" enough. It gets a bit annoying in retrospect. But I was drunk on my own ideas at that point, idiot.
CN: ‘Heaven is Bending’ seems to be a turning point for the character, and the music alludes to this with disorienting musical passages that seem to replicate the narrators confusion, but then suddenly take off into the stars, as if towards heaven. Do you really believe in a form of heaven after death? If so, what do you think heaven looks like? Is the song ‘Heaven is Bending’ the sounds of heaven coming down to pick someone up off the earth?
YTR: In ‘Heaven is Bending’ I imagined a very self-satisfied man, insert any neo-con name, on his deathbed. An unkempt idea (an angel) comes to him and reminds him who he is praying to: a shared psychological construct – one that through his failure to contribute to damns himself and his ancestors and threatens his descendants. I don’t believe in literal heaven – but an informational one and in that sense, you are absolutely right – in the end I meant for the sounds to mimic the metaphor eating the man resulting in death – "between the word and the page is where he is born"
CN: ‘Who Is From Silence’?
YTR: Jesus. Silent Silence, I hear.
CN: And then, ‘Who is From Silence’ is such a beautiful calm after the storm instrumental coming after ‘Heaven is Bending,’ kind of like the morning after, with the cock crow (cock-now fave) and everything, very sun is rising. Some of my favorite tracks on ‘In Service Of the Villain’ are the instrumentals, songs such as ‘Thoughts of Norea,’ and ‘Who Is From Silence’. They seem to conjure magical ceremonies or elf-en lands: what’s the thinking behind these instrumentals? Are they planned as instrumentals, or, after laying down the tracks, do you decide later that vocals aren’t necessary?
YTR: There are ceremonial sounds on this track. You can hear chanting, water being poured, etc. It was to relate to the previous song – a washing, a redeeming, a new man, the son to the father: the rebirth.
CN: Your songs often (to me) have the feel of religious ceremonies, how do you perceive the role of religion in music, if at all, and is music ever a mystical or transcendent experience for you?
YTR: I find sacred music very interesting – not just the lyrics but the actual modes and melodies of hymns and gospel music. It’s so very beautiful. I’ve only been to church for funerals so I don’t have much first hand experience I’m afraid. But it always seemed to me that people don’t really have an emotional reaction to the texts until that organ starts – I think the smoke the opium for the masses travels on.
CN: It used to be live music was the way you found out about bands but now, with the rise of d.i.y. culture & the availability of cheap replicating & recording technology, there are all these insane bedroom projects of lush crazy bands that don’t exist live, that only exist in peoples mind but all of a sudden kids from all across the world can share the records of their minds...could you imagine what Your Team Ring would’ve sounded like in ancient times, before the dawn of recording technology?
YTR: Your Team Ring wouldn’t be a band – but a troop that performed Mystery Pageants or more genetically likely a couple of Wrenboys.
CN: ‘In Service of the Villain’ sounds like a giant sounding ensemble...can you tell us a little bit about the cast of characters you brought in for this one?
YTR: This was the 189 Devoe album we lived in this ridiculous Sopranos house in Brooklyn and I think the folks on the album were the main crowd stopping by at the time. We’d be drunk in the kiddie pool in the back yard and they say something like "the ground is sticky" and grab their hand and drag them up the spiral staircase in front of the mic to record a backing vocal.
There’s some great pics of when we all got together, even Richy on the YTR site.
CN: How does the recording process work now that you and Richy are overseas?
YTR: I live in Washington DC now. So I’m afraid the Atlantic between us again. I post mp3 mixes and then he sends the tracks on a CD to be mixed into the original.
CN: Tell us a bit about some film and multi-media projects you’ve done.
YTR: Right now, in terms of non-commercial work, I’m working on science fiction serial called "Next, Hem a Cyclic Door" with Tim Dedman – he’s just off the charts smart – and his comics are fantastic. Also video game about the Golem. You can find them both on my company’s Web site: www.codeowl.com.
CN: What are some touchstone albums that have influenced Your Team Ring?
YTR: The Stars on ESP – His Name is Alive
Scott IV – Scott Walker
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter – Incredible String Band
Faust – IV
The Man who sold the Earth – David Bowie
Gong – Magick Brother, Magick Sister
Tears for Fears – Songs from the Big Chair
Meet the Residents – The Residents
Present Tense – Sagittarius
Joe Jackson – Night and Day
Sgt. Pepper / Magical Mystery Tour – The Beatles
Smiley Smile / SmiLE – The Beach Boys / Brian Wilson & VanDyke Parks
CN: How do you see and what do you think the purpose of independent music is?
YTR: I don’t think it has a purpose, other than to share experiences that aren’t being addressed by larger media outlets. I love the DIY thing – but I think it’s more than that, right? It’s a genre of disaffected popular music; mostly rock that’s slightly more open to experimentation and hybrids then other music – but they have their limits. If I released an opera record – and I recorded it at my house – wouldn’t it not generally be considered independent music? It’s still opera. If the opera is recorded and distributed independently but about something disaffected, say a record store clerk or a suicidal forest ranger and you had some weird tonalities or a guitar– it’s suddenly independent music.
CN: Why did you begin your record label Perhaps Transparent? What would you say is its mission? How successful is it in terms of your original goals for why you started the label? What couldn’t you have predicted then?
YTR: Perhaps Transparent was started as a CD-R label with a sorta whole earth catalog vibe. I started it because I thought it was neat you could make one off copies of something and it was nice to meet new people. We far out did ourselves in terms of goals. Made some money lost some money – it all ended up ok. Stephen Connolly is now completely in charge of it. He’s much more diplomatic than me – I’m too tightly wound to deal with the profound amounts of entitlement and laziness some of the "artists" have. The most unpredictable thing was that the guy who put out the most cdrs on our label became an armed bank robber called "the grumpy bandit." Now that’s sticking it to the man – I guess.
But really I think about Pat (P.G. Six) and Steve’s music (Pothole Skinny) and I am just so in love with – it’s great that label allowed for that.
CN: What are your views on modern psychedelic mind-sets and your team ring and perhaps transparents place within psychedelia? What do you perceive as the pros & cons of drugs in psychedelia, and do you see it as a completely separate entity and, if so, why do you think this stigma has been attached to the popular perception of psychedelia?
YTR: Well – I don’t do drugs. I have enough mental instability as is – stuff I struggle daily with. So, yeah I see it as less chemical and more metaphorically the "mind journey." I’m no prude – but I tend to stay away from that whole scene. How many junkies will have to break your heart before you just think it’s fucking stupid?
CN: How big a role does music play in your life? How often do you think about it? How do you see your job career and your music career coinciding? Do they ever interfere with one another, one to the detriment of the other?
YTR: I sit in a room from 6AM to 8PM working on computers listening to music with my dog. I speak to no one except over instant message and various types of phones. I have a situation that if I wanted to work on some music while waiting on some digi-something or another I can. So the two tend to blend together. I don’t think I could ever go on tour with out a cell phone and laptop or two if that answers your question.
CN: Did you ever take lessons on any instruments, or are you self-taught?
YTR: I took guitar lessons for a few months. Other than that I look at books and Web sites to learn how to play.
CN: Who are some other bands or performers existing today that you really respect?
YTR: Other than the stuff already covered by my friends (which is the stuff I love the most) I really love the recent work of Animal Collective, Destroyer, MF Doom, The Books, The Fiery Furnaces, Hood, and above all His Name is Alive whose Cloud Box can full a whole day of listening. (Yes I own number 27/50).
CN: You music seems very cinematic, very animated, how does your film or multi-media work influence your music?
YTR: I am very influenced by the notion of dialectical montage – which is of course film school fodder: hard cuts, and dissolves of opposing genres and tones etc. The first Your Team Ring tapes were recorded over sound exercises for school – I left the tracks up in the mix. In terms of computer crap – I tend to learn a lot of hocus pocus at work that winds up on the records.
CN: It seems like you’ve played with a bunch of other peoples projects. Can you tell us about some of them? How do you look back now upon your time in Timesbold and the experimental element you brought to them? What has been your contribution to Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voices albums? I also saw you jump onstage with them at a cmj rothko show a few years ago. Was that a fluke one time only appearance or do you play with them on other occasions? And do you still play live with other people?
YTR: I played with Timesbold on the first LP and EP. Toured with them for a bit. That outfits got so much going for it – I don’t think I was missed. I can remember building a tin foil pyramid resonator over my pink casio sk1 and being like ‘sound good guys?… guys?’ – but ego aside, I think those albums are my favorite stuff Timesbold has done. Did you know you can actually hear me quit on tape at the end of Woe Be Gone? Pretty funny. Jason is such an amazing song writer – I really miss working with him.
Wooden Wand – Yes, I played a bunch of shows before we all went our separate ways. Last time I played with them was day in the studio last Christmas. I send in tracks by mail. I love James and Jessica – they are just an embarrassment of riches. My roll? I’m sorta like the guy that’s talking on the head set in an espionage movie – while they sneak past the sleeping serpents and whisky tipped arrows. "Get outta there! You got an asshole from Pitchforkmedia thinking you’re ‘what’s now’ at nine o’clock!"
CN: Now that you’ve been around a decade, where do you see Your Team Ring in ten years?
YTR: Making video only releases with more people involved in the production then will actually see and hear it once it’s released.
CN: What’s the last good book you read and movie you saw?
YTR: Poker without Cards by Ben Mack
The Mirror directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
CN: How do you perceive the whole rise of independent culture in terms of the quality of music, i.e., is there to much music coming out now? Where does this leave quality control or the idea of paying your dues? Or are these bullshit concepts to begin with?
YTR: Never too much! I think everyone should have their own recording project and have release it in some form every year like Christmas cards around the same time. Besides – it’s not a threat – it can only serve to make everything better.
CN: What role does improvisation play in Your Team Ring? How much is composed and how much is improvised? Do you relate to the psychedelic music the media has coined free folk or spiritual improv? I’m thinking of people you’ve participated on projects with in the past, like Matt Valentine from Tower Recordings and The MV/EE Medicine show, and Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice, and people I don’t know how you relate to, like Hall of Fame, Jackie-O-Motherfucker, Six Organs of Admittance, Sunburned Hand of a Man, etc.? What’s your opinion about the media coined psychedelia of freak folk? Devandra Bernhardt or Joanna Newsom, etc. Or do you give these labels no credence at all?
YTR: One of the projects I’m working on right now is called "The Private Devil’d Reel" and I’ve recorded twenty four hours of improvised material from which I’ve taken fragments and "rifts" and turned them into pop and folk songs via computer. It’s really always been an equal balance between documentation and formulaic structuring.
In terms of freak folk – I think Tower Recordings is one of the most amazing bands ever. They work in a way of recording, and reworking from the original materials – it’s very inspirational, very filmic. I had the privilege of working with Matt and Erika on "The Temptation to Zoology" and the way Matt’s mind works is so very associative and liberating and brilliant – it was wonderful to play straight man to him.
And Pat is the most gifted musician I’ve ever worked with. There are whole worlds in his guitar playing. I’m so pleased we are able to be involved in releasing his wonderful music.
My opinion of free folk is that it’s basically a group of musicians that do a mostly lesser job of mining the same grounds as The Tower Recording folks, at best. At worst lots of pretension, dumb costumes, escapism and other reminders of why hippies sucked the first time. Let it die – something beautiful will sprout in its place.
CN: If you were in an Ovid story right now, and how your feeling or what your going through metamorphisized into an animal, what animal would you turn into?
YTR: A rabbit being seized up by an owl. I am both.
CN: Thank you.
YTR: Thank you Ben (and Ed) so very, very much for taking the time to listen and to think. I mean so much to me. I am such a fan of both your music it’s really a treat to be interviewed by you.
To learn more about Your Team Ring or purchase their music please visit:
http://yourteamring.com
(Ed. Note: Ed helped me when drunk get to just the questions. Then Ms. Mapes helped further, my eternal gratitude for both for their help.)
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