Naturally, underground music often gravitates toward experimentation and the abstract. That's understandable, and more often than not, it feels great to dive into a difficult album and swim a few laps.
King Crimson is never easy; it's challenging. That's why I like it.
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
I don't know what the vintage Sonic Youth sound is.
Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.
Pan Sonic sound like they are playing music of the future made with the electric instruments of yesterday.
Rip Rig + Panic that I joined, they were really influenced by jazz and blues and punk. So I think what happened from punk, which was kind of DIY, was that it created a kind of creative place that was kind of without limits, in a way.
Something new has been added, a new art of sound. Am I wrong in calling it music?
I started using contact microphones that you can place on common, ordinary objects, like a rake. I put a microphone on it and it picked up the tines vibrating and turned it into a horrible din. What attracted me to it was the horrible din - that's what I really liked.
