If you are a haunter of Pittsburgh’s small noise and experimental music scene, chances are you might have seen one of J Wayne Clinton’s challenging projects. As Dream Weapon he sculpts mind-bending soundscapes based on atmospheric samples, harsh noise textures, washes of synth, and subtle percussion, creating aural vistas that indeed sound like the stuff of oneiric wandering. Just last month, Dream Weapon opened for “dread minimalists” Raime at the 2013 VIA Festival, and on Thursday, November 7, he will improvise with a variety of local experimental musicians for Crucible Sound #7 at Modern Formations Gallery in Garfield. Below is an email interview I conducted with Clinton following his VIA performance last month. Due to scheduling conflicts we were unable to complete it until now.
Can you give me a brief history of Dream Weapon? (Such as how it started, what inspired you, maybe even how you got involved with playing electronic music in the first place)
I started using the name Dream Weapon sometime in 2006, inspired by a lyric in a Coil song. I felt like it was reverent, considering the recent death of Jhonn Balance, and the connection I always felt to their work. At that time I was doing a project that was heavily sequence-oriented, and primarily electronic, but that project was naturally ending, having run its course and having served its purpose in my personal musical development – I didn’t feel that it anymore provided me enough room to explore sonic textures, to improvise (especially with non-electronic instruments), or to focus on subtlety rather than intricacy.
So I split my project into two projects: (1) Dream Weapon to focus on non-beat-having music, noize, ambience, minimalism, visionary and visual music not bound to the rigid structure of a sequencer timeline, and beats with slower tempos – and (2) Mind Tiger – which is almost always oriented towards fast intricate beats, with a focus also on overall sonic intensity rather than subtle changes.
Interestingly enough, since then a handful of others globally have also chosen to use the name Dream Weapon in some permutation or other. It seems a bit disingenuous considering each of those others had to have known that the moniker was already taken by me. Proof? Check the Soundcloud and Bandcamp usernames, all of them have been forced to add a suffix to their usernames because I already had it locked down… http://dreamweapon.bandcamp.com/ https://soundcloud.com/dreamweapon
What was your experience like opening for Raime at VIA?
The whole show went great. The Pittsburgh Filmmakers staff was cool, if a bit clueless at times. Alexis Icon ran sound for me, she is always great. Playing at seven PM is sort of a bummer, but the professional atmosphere and ability to use the big screen more than made up for it. Using the Big screen to debut this video material was definitely the highlight for me.
Can you tell me about the film that was screening while you were playing?
I have been working on avant-garde video for several years now, mostly shooting and doing very little editing, until now, having only recently overcome some technical hurdles. The first part of the video contained footage from a late 1800s wire and cable factory that has been continually refitted and used for a great variety of things since then, which provided an array of different interesting textures. All the video feedback used is analog.
The second part contains footage recorded years ago when on my way to an abysmal office job I kept for about a year and a half. The orange lights were work lights during a period of construction on the T-rail system. In the middle of the set I played a self-contained 10 min. avant-garde film I made with Domonic Vizzo (who had never acted before, but did an outstanding job transforming into someone else) which features a man slowly removing layers of paper and text from himself in order to reveal his actual self – this is probably the piece I am most happy with, and that I feel is the most “complete.” Interestingly enough, during the making of this everyone involved in the production (including myself) was out their minds on speed from Canada, we barely slept, and didn’t always communicate well, but the work seemed to flow effortlessly. I will put this video on Youtube soon, sometime in the next few weeks.
After that, the bit of video at the end features candid video of an alcohol-fueled, sex-and-violence-obsessed former lover (who I will not name out of respect) rampaging around and fighting. All of the footage is real, none of it is acting, there was quite a bit more footage, some of it very “revealing” – I had initially included a bit of it, but at the last minute edited out all of the vaginas, also out of respect.
Were there any other artists at VIA you were impressed by?
I liked Actress and Raime. It was cool to see Aaron Dilloway again and doing something different; I have seen Dilloway about a million times and he’s always good. Pharmakon was pretty dope, but I don’t feel that her sound was handled very well, could have been her gear, could have been on the venue’s end, I don’t know. I missed Adult, but would have liked to have caught them.
I wasn’t terribly impressed by any of the other DJs I saw. Don’t get me wrong, they were all fine, no real fuck-ups, and there is something to be said about the unique collection and knowledge that a dedicated DJ can assemble – but a digital DJ is just a dude with a computer. It’s hard for me to remember their names or to get excited by someone doing a simple robot job, something that could easily be handled by a software algorithm without the need for a human operator – I didn’t see anyone touch a single piece of vinyl (aka REAL DJing – that is in fact where the “D” comes from, it means “disk”). One dude with a computer had this cool wireless controller; that was far more exciting to me.
You have a pretty elaborate hardware set-up – do you construct any of your own devices/instruments?
Yeah, I do, I have been making electronic noise makers and signal processors for a few years now, primarily analog, but not always. I don’t code, I prefer physical circuit design – I totally respect those software dudes, but coding is just not for me. I don’t usually use exclusively hand-built equipment, although I have played a few live sets with only hand-built stuff (except the mixer). I really learned a lot from internet research, particularly the MFOS site, from studying/building various people’s kits, and from taking things apart (usually destroying them in the process), and bending. Now I can design my own circuits to a limited degree, but the physical design and playability are still the most important aspects to me.
Can you give our readers a brief rundown of your other projects?
Aside from Dream Weapon, I do experimental improvisational music with another multi-disciplinarian, Lorne Zeman, under the name Eyeless Face. I have an IDM collaborative project with producer Johnny Jitters. I have a sequence-heavy, hard IDM/ Breakcore project called Mind Tiger. Those are my active projects now.
In the past, I’ve been involved with a number of other things, Post-industrial and occasional improvisation with Parvulus Infectus – some of that can be checked out here. Neo-folk with Serpents Collective. Psychedelic Noize with D-Shift. Live Electronics with Cult of Divine Audio (a band I helped to start, which became God and his Bitches after I left the project due to personal clashes with co-founder Kirril Slavin). While living in Detroit I organized an electronic and acoustic large (five or six members) noize band called The Burnt Ear Orchestra. That was a unique project; we played live a few times but no recordings exist to my knowledge. (The Burnt Ear Orchestra also included David Cole of Metria). Psyche-rock with Casual Approach (which also featured Joe Romer of Macronympha fame). I did a few studio only projects in the past as well – Crystal Dragon (wherein which I did production and electronics and worked with an excellent multi-instrumentalist and drummer named Dean, whose last name escapes me at the moment). Lastly, Audio.Audio (with renowned former Pittsburgh producer Jeffery Diamond). I was also involved with T.U.S.C. back in the day, which included the members of Hedra as well as an extended family of interesting experimental musicians.
Tell me a little about your label, NOW IS WHY.
I started the label a few years ago with a few invisible partners and some limited financial backing to present interesting music to a larger audience in a world where the ways in which we access music are continually and quite rapidly changing. For me it was a way to become more organized, and is now a way to stay more organized. Now, as well as being a media outlet for the major releases of my project Dream Weapon, we have several other local and regional artists represented on the label. I don’t want this to be considered a “Pittsburgh” label, but for now that is what most people seem to think, which I was not expecting. Hopefully the label will gradually shed that association as more people from outside the region discover it, and that is happening, slowly, but happening. I am not interested in repping Pittsburgh at all with the label as I do not personally feel that Pittsburgh is supportive of experimental art/music in general. For this type of culture (experimental, avant-garde), the internet is our nation, our neighborhood. You can listen to every release I will ever put out on NOW IS WHY for free. Check the site – http://www.nowiswhy.net/ – click the listen button to get to our label Bandcamp.
Does the urban landscape of Pittsburgh influence your music at all?
Probably, but not in a conscious way anymore, however, it definitely used to. You have to understand that the urban landscape was very different then, when I am referring to – there were large abandoned and decaying industrial structures intermingled with the neighborhoods and regular buildings. There were also a bunch of different special abandoned buildings, like the old police station/jail that used to be on the south side flats and the glass-fronted restaurant that used to hang over the edge of the cliff beside one of the inclines. That’s all gone now, the character is being slowly eliminated, Pittsburgh is being gentrified and most of the really cool inspiring things are being replaced with sterile, modern, and ugly nothing-buildings. They look blank, like expressionless faces poorly rendered in whatever style you like the least. So, yeah, the look here has become bleaker, which may in fact be a subtle influence.
But I would like to stress the point that just because I live in Pittsburgh doesn’t mean that my music is in any way Pittsburgh-oriented, or that Pittsburgh is even a good conducive and/or supportive environment for any type of experimental art. It is not. Period. The general mindset here is ignorant, apathetic, and backwards. Pittsburgh is very behind the times in terms of new or modern art, the popular art here is generally classical (safe) forms of art, or craft oriented. Deliberately weak production values, rough handwork and sloppy execution are all very popular here right now – I call it the “faux-hippie” aesthetic, and it is generally abysmal.
There also seems to be an attitude here among the younger kids that if you put too much effort into something, it’s not cool, and they would rather watch a joke band or someone making music poorly in an “ironic” sense. I do not understand this, nor do I appreciate it. It’s the kind of thing that causes me to lose respect for people’s artistic opinions when I see them participate in this. Don’t get me wrong, there is a percentage of forward-thinking, art-interested people here in the city, but it is a small, fractured, unsupported, and oft-maligned and misunderstood minority.
Beyond that, I’d like to mention that I think the pace of living in an urban environ in general is a definite influence and is good for creative thinking, I notice this effect much more when I go to a larger city, especially New York. The pace, all the people moving, the speed at which they do so, all the energy trading around all the time, it forces (or potentiates) a sort – of mental gear up, increasing your processing speed, this applies to creative thinking in general, though I more-often-than-not prefer to get to the actual creative work late at night/early in the morning when most people are asleep, as there is less mental static and more “available bandwidth.” I feel like this is when you can flow much cleaner, clearer, and channel more directly. Also, urban living forces me into some sort of conflict or altercation nearly every day, especially since moving to the east side of the city. This, I believe, keeps me “on my game” so to speak – the easy life takes the edge off.
Any last comments on the experimental/noise scene in Pgh? Any musicians or artists you’d like to acknowledge?
We had a great experimental scene in the late 90’s, which sort of lulled out for a bit while kids that were then getting into the underground wanted to make dance music instead of experimental music. This was likely due to the rapid expansion and permeation of available music-making technology, but those kids had no roots, usually just downloading sample packs doing some slight re-sequencing and calling themselves producers (if you hear the term “hardstyle” run in the other direction!) Most of those kids got in and out of music making like a fad. This wasn’t just here, however, at this time the gritty, low-fi garage sound was down and the slick club sound was up as a trend overall.
After that, there seemed to be a “let’s all embrace rock and roll again” vibe (backlash?) in the local underground. That lasted for a few years and got old pretty quick when all the bands started sounding the same or worse, this period seems to have been the twilight of the house show as well – house shows and basement shows still happen, but not nearly as often or as organized as was common only a short time ago. Now, the weird music is coming back big time, our experimental scene is growing again, and has been for a few years. For a while there a couple years ago, I experienced an influx of many young people getting into noize again, but mostly for its ironic extreme value, as if they found it kitsch-y or something. There were even a few joke band/performers doing a (once again) little-to-no-effort cool pose rather than making focused art or music. Most of that has thankfully run its course, I don’t see too many of those kids around anymore, they’re probably all at pop-punk and fake-hobo-folk music shows now instead, or raising kids of their own in some shit-box in the burbs. A tiny percentage of them have stuck around (whether as audience or artist), obviously actually into experimental sounds, and they are the next generation of underground experimental music in Pittsburgh.
I have to mention Manny Theiner here as well. He is Pittsburgh’s underground super-hero, haters be damned. If not for MannY, nothing would be the same in the Pittsburgh underground, and many many of the totally inspirational acts that have been here never would have.
As far as other artists/bands go, like I said – a few do come to mind, but I don’t want to start making a list, because I don’t want to leave anyone out by mistake!
