Podcast 2021.15 Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Illuminating Daydream is the work of Nick Chupka from Raleigh, North Carolina
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
NC: I think my environment has affected my music more negatively than positively. I recorded the album partly in Asheville, NC and partly in Raleigh. Asheville is this pretty tourist town in the mountains where there’s not much to do but spend money and drink beer at one of the numerous breweries lining the city streets. Rent is expensive. The ground is littered with hypodermic needles and the mountaintops are dotted with luxury homes, if you can imagine what I mean. I spent a ton of time in my room making music and didnt really leave except to go to school or work. If there’s any song on the album which portrays my feeling about that town it might either be “deathly sound (grandpa talking)” or “the hand”. However, there are a lot of good bands and good people in Asheville, and I don’t mean to totally write it off. I was in a depressing situation and I found it to be kind of a depressing place to be. The time I spent in my room recording gave me the opportunity to record a ton of music, some of which may or may not come out in the future and for that I am grateful. I live in Raleigh currently and I don’t feel it has influenced my music in any way different from how my time Asheville influenced my music, I still spend most of my time in my room. What inspires and influences me the most is listening to my favorite music and just generally, feeling good about what I’m doing overall. If I feel good about what I’m doing the music will reflect that.
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
NC: To be realistic, outside of a few semi-successful jam sessions with friends, I have never collaborated with any other musicians in any serious way and since I mostly record and edit music alone on my laptop, I’m not sure how collaborating would go down. I love the music of Death Grips and sometimes I’ve fantasized about being a fourth member of Death Grips, so maybe them. But to be honest, I dont have a straight answer. I love the music of Lungfish and their side projects, maybe them too.

I corresponded with Geoff Grant aka Johnny Mindfunk
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
JM: I live in Wilmington, NC, which is very humid in the summer. Doors closed and AC on at all times, and it’s usually too hot to mess around outside during those months. So A lot of my writing gets done during that time. I guess I’m an opportunist? January and February are same thing, except the heat is on. Otherwise, it’s really nice out and we have the windows open and you can hear the birds and other outside activity, which isn’t great for mic’d recordings. I have a few tracks here and there where I swear I can hear a few birds in the background. Maybe I should try more of that, actually…. But physically, the town doesn’t feed into the music much. “Coming Home” is definitely about where I grew up – Mansfield, Ohio. It’s a depressed town in N. Central Ohio, and the best thing I ever did was get out of it asap. I still have some friends there, but most people went off to college and never came back. The song is a embellishment of how I felt the last time I went there, kinda of a “look, I got out and you could’ve too, but you didn’t, and now you’re looking at me as if I sold my soul” feeling. I think there are people there who feel trapped in life just because they didn’t have the courage to open a door and walk through it. What do you have to lose, right?
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
JM: I was just thinking about Tom Petty the other day. I bet he’d be great to jam with. So laid back, but such a great song-writer. Probably could write a tune every 15 minutes. I bet he was fun. If I’m playing guitar and writing, I’d want Tony Markellis on bass. He played with Trey Anastasio for years, and he just lays down the fattest grooves. RIP Tony! I like to come up with bass lines and then loop them while I play guitar over them endlessly until something good happens, and he would be the perfect fit. If I could resurrect Keith Moon, he’s be on drums. Not only because he was so great, but we’d have a ton of fun in-between songs too. My 2nd choice would be Tony Allen from Fela’s band Africa 70. Tony and Fela invented “Afrobeat” which is it’s own music genre. I’d really like to have Nick McCabe on guitar. The things he did on those Verve albums were amazing. It’s like the instrument is a paintbrush and the canvas is the inside of my skull. Amazing dude. Give me Bilinda Butcher from My Bloody Valentine on vocals and I’d have a weird little group to write unique music with that would give me endless pleasure.

I corresponded with Stanton Warren of Venture Lift from Woodstock, NY
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
SW: The town of Woodstock is very interesting, which I find inspiring. Beside spawning the famous concert, It is also home to the original Bearsville Recording Studio and label started by Albert Grossman.
Living here has brought many, many talented people into my sphere. I’ve heard some of the legends of free-jazz perform at various venues around town including Jack Dejohnette, Don Davis, Karl Berger and Juma Sultan to name but a small fraction of stellar musicians who call this area home. In that way Woodstock is a magnet for new talent and also for people attempting to do something a little different creatively.
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
SW: I’ve never really given much thought to that. I’m pretty self-contained as a songwriter but in passing I think currently my go to collaborator would be Robyn Hitchcock. There’s something about his fresh approach and intelligent lyricism that always gets me to listen to his albums.

Drooling Clerics are one of the artists on the Home & Garden label, based in Minneapolis. I corresponded with Jason Millard.
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
JM: The answer to this question would have been fairly straightforward before May 25 2020. I would have said that living in Minneapolis informs my music by being surrounded by nature while living in an urban environment and also my close community of friends and collaborators. This is all still true, but, I live a few blocks from the sight of George Floyd’s murder and my life was forever altered after he was killed by police. Music became a place of serenity and escapism for me to zone out and decompress while trying to process the brutal world around me. It is also an outlet for my rage and frustration. While trying to come up with ideas for new songs or improvisations, I try to take myself out of my own head/body and divine music from my subconscious. Thus, all of my music is directly influenced by my surroundings.
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
JM: Jimi Hendrix has been a big influence on me since I was a child so he is probably the obvious choice. I would also love to travel back in time to Germany in the early 70s to witness/collaborate with the greatness (Ash Ra Tempel, Can, Faust, Harmonia, Neu!, etc) in psychedelia that sprouted from that time and space.
I really like Kraus from New Zealand as far as current musicians that I would like to collaborate with.

The Gluts are from Milan, Utaly. “Eat Acid See God” was released on Fuzzclub.
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
TG: The urban environment feeds into our music to the the extent it has provided venues and gigs where we could play since all of us was a teenager. That’s what we can say consciously.
A more detailed analyses is pretty impossibile, we guess, but maybe it is significant to notice there are no references to Milano in our lyrics. Maybe because urban issues and social reality are classic themes of other genres, such as hip-hop or rap. We can’t claim this bottom-up musical approach as ours, but we like it.
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
TG: We would have enjoyed a recording session with Cobain around, and Sir McCartney would be a great host too.

Cosmic Letdown are from Cheboksary, Chuvashia State, Russia. I Corresponded with Vika and Artem.
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
Vika: Honestly, have no idea. Maybe somehow on subconscious level but openly in no way. Place my music comes from is not the ‘real’ one to make distinctive connections with the result.
Artem: I love trees, nature and the river that surrounds me. In a sense, music is a continuation of all this.
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
Vika: I’m shy and i don’t want to bother anyone… Especially the dead ones.
Artem: White Fence & Syd Barrett.

Fuguers Cove is the work of Justin Bendell, and has appeared on Turn Me On, Dead Man a number of times now.
TMODM: Would you mind just describing the approach you took with this album? What made you venture further into psych territory?
JB: I started this album last summer. I wanted a pandemic album that captured the feel of elsewhere. Being stuck in my home all I had was my memories of places I’ve been and dreams of places I might go. I wanted a tropical vibe. I wanted to capture the sound of what I called tropical psych. I listen to a lot of dub reggae, cumbia & chicha. I wanted to pay tribute to these influences without appropriating them. I spent some time living in Trinidad and Tobago during college. I’ve traveled in Venezuela, Guatemala, Nicaragua. I’ve lived in Miami. These experiences certainly informed my choices on this record. As for making a psych record after making one that was folky and more sober, I tend to write more psychedelic records in the summer. Something to do with the freedom of summer. Something to do with the hazy heat. I like to whip out a garage rock record of some capacity during the summer and the rest of the year I tend to play with other sounds. But there is no sure fire reason for it other than once in a while I get in the mood for a lot of reverb and delay.

Black Tempel Pyrämid are an experimental American primitive Krautrock band from Fort Collins, CO
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
BTP: Landscapes of the past and present have always strongly influenced my music, they’re usually represented by field recordings and loops recorded in them or include creative themes that I felt were relevant. That’s most of BTP’s stuff. Wildlife Advisor was written during the Cameron Peak wildfire of 2020, which was super close to my house. I remember while cutting different versions of that track, actually looking up and seeing both of my skylights completely covered in red ash. It was like looking at Mars. The entire album “Mountain Meditations” which Wildlife Advisor is on is sort of a requiem written for the hundreds of thousands of acres lost (and countless souls impacted) by that fire; it’s a brutal harbinger of what remains for humans and global warming…
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
BTP: There’s so many but easily Ennio Morricone, Sun Ra, Wendy Carlos, Conny Plank, and Klaus Schulze. Probably have to include Richard Pinhas and Dennis Hopper with some “IF is the middle word of Life” vibes too 🙂

Dog In Confusion is the work of Stavros Thiakos from Athens, Greece
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
ST: I live in Greece in a suburb of Athens with my wife and child. I would say that this last’s year isolation due to Covid19 had the most effect. I used to be busy and work all the time always putting music at second place. I temporarily lost my job due to Covid ( I work on the VFX industry) and that put enough time in my hands to actually give music a chance.
Other than that my family is a huge inspiration and support to me. My wife is my biggest fan and she always roots and helps as she can.
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
ST: The musician I would absolutely want to collaborate are Anton Newcombe from BJM and Kevin Parker from Tame Impala. Apart from the fact that I really admire their music I somehow feel a connection to those guys. Perhaps the one man band aspect of things. At least during the creative process.
From dead the one and only fanboy alert Kurt Cobain. Not sure if I would like to collaborate or just be in the same room and chat for a while with him you know 🙂

Chino Burga is from Lima, Peru. Chino got his start in the mid 90’s and was member of La Ira de Dios, 3AM & Culto al Qondor. Lately he has focused on his solo career developing his signature drone sound with hard driving kosmische and dark soundscapes creating a hypnotic space trance.
TMODM: How does the place you live — your city, town, landscape — feed into the music you make?
CB: I live in Lima, which it’s an extreme chaotic and noisy city and it’s located in the middle of a desert between the ocean and the beginning of the mountain range. So the contrasts are really notorious. I, in particular, live in the east side of the city, close to the mountains, and let’s say a more “relax” part…still noisy…but definitely more chill. But to be able to watch the mountains everyday its very important to me as a musician cause I think they have a special energy. In fact, in ancient Peru, they thought the mountains have souls named Apus and they worship them. I think there’s still a power going on around our Mountains
TMODM: Which musicians — living or dead — would you enjoy collaborating with?
CB: Nico for sure, she is the first one. Conny Plank and Simeon Cox in the not-with-us-department. Alive musicians are too many, Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottsching, Mark Clifford, Dave Pierce, Thomas Koner, Dead can Dance, Windy and Carl, Pete Kember….