WOLF EYES
Can you start by telling us how you first got involved in music?
Nate: My interest in music started with skateboarding in the late 80's. My skate punk friends and I would pull anything out of the dumpsters and shred it. Old crates, boxes of canned goods, heating ducts, and one time an entire cow carcass. This was just what we did, it wasn't too much of a stretch to start dragging the louder pieces of trash back to our basements and start banging on them together.
Johnny: Hearing one of those Motown K - Tel comps when I was kid like 9 years old. Had it set up next to my bed so it would be the first / last thing I heard during the day. My mother Sharon played harp and accordion and jammed “Chorus Line” soundtrack non stop so music was everything as a youth man. Started with punk drums, then alto saxophone and electronics after that. Now its a combo of em all really.
What does your current setup look like, as far as instrumentation for your live shows?
Johnny: Lyra - 8, Octatrack MKII, small cannibalized mixer feedback machine, Jomox T Resonator MKII delay filter, C - Melody Silver saxophone with X ray reeds, and new bass string / spring / reed instrument morphed from a white bed frame.
Nate: I've been making my own instruments for 25 years. I am currently playing a homemade drum synth that is based on paper circuits developed by Peter Blasser of Ciat Lonbarde. I call it the Crash Box. It's a collection of circuits that work together to form a system of sequencing based on sacred geometry. Basically even nodes oscillate and odd nodes create paradox's and when they interact you get an archaic electronic pattern. I am also using an Octatrack as a sampler, mixer, FX box, file player and VCA. The combo allows for constant motoring of the random patterns produced by the Crash Box and live sampling.
What have you been listening to recently?
Johnny: Anything on Tribe Tapes
Worth / Prose Nagge label
Gates of Janus new cd
Anything on Easy Listening Label
Slacking “Roundhouse A Bootlicker” 7”
Ethix “Bad Trip” 7”
RRR Pure Cd’s
AMK “Needle Hit the Groove” set
Nate: Mainly the Fall but I've dusted off all my old Underground Resistance 12's and they have been looping in the background of my studio.
Wolf Eyes upcoming record Dreams In Splattered Lines was recorded in Pontiac and Lansing. Can you tell us what it was like recording this new record?
Johnny: Handed off a lot of ideas / tracks in classic Home Taper fashion. Some old tracks, many of them new. A slew of splattered audio. The “suite” at the start is truly beguiling. We did not have a deadline and that kept things very fresh and choices sharp. Feel like it is our best full length, a truly varied strange journey through all sorts of tangled moods.
Nate: Dreams in Splattered Lines was recorded following Wolf Eyes’ residency at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. We started by continuing to explore the ideas of short dense sound collages that had similar behaviors to ‘hit singles.’ Using a lot of ideas that we established on the Difficult Messages series, we started to look at hit songs like terrariums: folding the idea of music and sound happening inside sound environments we created in the studio. The record starts with a Car Wash that includes a Short Hands track playing on the car radio while waves of white noise and contact microphones are plunging into water buckets. The track is then played in a car while going through an actual car wash and finally layered and mixed in the studio. We recorded a lot of the tracks remotely and found that some of the overdubs were best done blind. So many of the tracks were swapped with eachothers. This helped create surprising transitions and breathe new life into simple ideas.
Do you have a favorite medium for releasing music?
Nate: Lathe Cuts are my favorite.
Johnny: All formats are amazing and hold their own specialties / problems. Like Nate lathes are favorable but CDRs are prob my fave. Anything with soul.
What kind of car do you drive?
Nate: 2001 Subaru Forester
Johnny: 2009 Black Honda Fit aka the “Blues Hawk.” Had it from the jump, just had a radiator flush and CV joint fixed. 212K miles going on 412K. Love it. Manual. Broken locks and CD player so the aux in is for the audio destruction.
What are your thoughts on the local Michigan music scene?
Johnny: Amazing from a distance. Has everything and has HAD everything. Bottomless. Like no other.
Nate: It's my home and fam so it's complicated. I love it.
So, do you smoke weed?
Nate: Tons, I love RSO oil.
Johnny: Roll it up MF.
What is one thing that would surprise people to know about Wolf Eyes?
Nate: That we rehearse and record every Friday unless we are on tour. This adds up to roughly 3021 minutes of music a year. We've release about a quarter of it for the past 25 years.
Johnny: We have never stopped nor will.
How do you feel about the future of art/music?
Nate: We are all doomed! LOL
Johnny: Always bright and all ways dark. Even with a bleak AI future something will emerge utterly unique. Has to. “Be Yourself Don’t Hesitate.”
--- Wolf Eyes new record Dreams In Splattered Lines out May 26th ---
