Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Eugene Carchesio interview by Andrew Tuttle

Posted: 16 Apr 2009 07:04 AM PDT

For the last three decades, Eugene Carchesio, born in 1960, has produced a prolific output of art in the visual, aural and performance mediums, working alone and with a wide range of collaborators from his hometown of Brisbane, wider Australia and from international waters.

An idiosyncratic artist whose complete dedication to his craft results in a flurry of creative output, Carchesio’s ethos is gleamed from the Fluxus, dada, impressionist, punk rock and DIY movements throughout the twentieth century as well as the sub-tropical surrounds of Brisbane. Carchesio's music and art is created with a utopian sensibility, straddling boundaries between impermanence and degrees of magnitude. Carchesio explains that the flexibility of creating small scale works allows for the ability to create an abundant output of art.

“I guess the mood dictates what happens day to day. I live in a unit [so] I don't play music at home, but if the mood takes me I might attempt sound works on the computer or I will wait until I get together with the band to do acoustic stuff. I work small scale so it is easy and more immediate to draw or paint every day.”

Carchesio’s visual art and music are both disseminated to the wider public through a series of limited editions that showcase his constant evolution and allow for more works to be published within a short period of time. Through such a prolific and carefully honed output, Carchesio has developed mutually rewarding relationships with the Bellas and Milani galleries in the art world, and with Kindling Records in the music world. Operated by his constant musical cohort Leighton Craig, Kindling provides a fertile conduit for Carchesio’s various musical explorations.

Someone’s Universe - a recently concluded career retrospective at the Queensland Art Gallery - featured hundreds of Carchesio’s miniature watercolour paintings, geometric imageries and matchbox creations on a grand scale. A collection of works supplied by the gallery’s own collection as well as those of the Milani and Bellas galleries and private owners, the austere surroundings of the gallery provided a fascinating counterpart to Carchesio’s long standing interest in the concept of a ‘Museum Of Silence’. Carchesio’s artworks are beautiful yet undeniably experimental; with his ephemeral mediums reclaimed in the name of individualist art.

With such a large scale critical evaluation of one's work, it is reasonable to ponder the effect on an artist's work practices immediately after. Regarding this, Carchesio's viewpoint is typical of an actively practicing artist. “To be honest, I don’t really know what to make of being presented with one's past,” he says, “I suppose ‘now’ is the most important thing.

“I have just finished a volume of work consisting of hundreds of watercolours and drawings of animals and skulls. Now I am starting a project that requires 108 works based on a cycle of Buddhist prayer beads. [Also] recently I had the great opportunity to stay at Bundanon, in NSW, which was Arthur Boyd’s property before he died. There was an upright piano in the studio and I recorded 51 improvised pieces.”

At a time when Carchesio’s talents as a visual artist are deservedly recognised by a wider audience, both nationally and abroad, it is surprising that his active co-existence as a musician is not more widely appreciated on these shores. Although arguably more aesthetically discordant than his visual artworks, the processes linking Carchesio’s visual, musical and performance arts are inextricably linked. A shared interest in minimalism, repetition and hypnotism abound in all of his art. Carchesio has been performing and releasing music since the ’80s in a series of groups and projects ranging from the wilfully dissonant to those approaching an off-kilter sort of pop. A self-taught improvising musician, Carchesio’s instruments of choice include the saxophone and drum kit, in addition to - but not limited to - electronics, electric guitar, clarinet and voice.

Musically, Carchesio is probably most recognised as part of psych-blues via free jazz improv combo The Lost Domain. Formed in 1990 and known as The Invisible Empire until 1998, The Lost Domain has forged an outsider musical path that has developed parallel to contemporaries such as Jackie O Motherfucker and No-Neck Blues Band. Underappreciated until a few years ago, The Lost Domain has since released albums for international labels including Foxglove, Digitalis, Cook An Egg and Pseudo Arcana in addition to regular editions on the Shytone label.

Consisting of five mysterious souls of the netherworld with the stage names of Frank (Simon Ellaby), John Henry Calvinist (David MacKinnon), Mr. E (Eugene Carchesio), L-Tone (Leighton Craig) and Papa Lord God (Stuart Busby), The Lost Domain’s “hit or miss” improvised performance combines shamanism, anti-gospel and the theatre of men possessed. At their peak, The Lost Domain's live performances are a transcendental experience. “I always feel a warmth when a piece takes off - it’s like a space of sound cocoons around us and all is well with the universe.”

Carchesio says, “The Lost Domain is essentially Simon and David as its spiritual core, [while] the rest of us help push the vehicle up and down and around the path.” This may be a little self-effacing: although Ellaby and MacKinnon are the constants in a line-up that has shifted over the past two decades, Carchesio’s contributions are an essential component of the group dynamic.

Cut from a similar improvisatory cloth is Carchesio’s other primary musical vehicle, The Deadnotes. Featuring Carchesio on drums, clarinet, saxophone, guitar and voice alongside collaborators Craig and Busby, The Deadnotes are a decidedly more melodic combo than The Lost Domain, with bouts of freeform improvisation tempered with abstract pop sensibilities. In their relatively short existence, The Deadnotes has released two CD-Rs on Craig’s Kindling label, with an LP forthcoming on Soft Abuse.

A minimalist encapsulation of artists as diverse as soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone, Australian post-punk legends The Laughing Clowns and alternative tex-mex band Calexico, Carchesio notes that The Deadnotes have quite a different working method than any of their other groups, with the result a form of “structured improv, almost pop at times - but we are not afraid of that.”

Carchesio’s increased profile of late has also seen an overdue resurgence of interest in his solo musical project, DNE. Perhaps most directly encapsulating the lineage between his visual art, performance and musical output, Carchesio’s modus operandi as DNE was to create a prolific series of miniature audio vignettes, which have been released on dozens of cassettes and CD-Rs over the past two decades. To coincide with Someone's Universe, Lawrence English’s Room 40 label has re-released DNE's hard to find 1987 album 47 Songs Humans Shouldn't Sing on CD. With most songs on this album capping at less than a minute in length, 47 Songs is a succinct delight, with free jazz, alt-pop, improv and no-wave sounds darting in and out of the listener's ear. Ever modest, Carchesio simply says of the re-release of 47 Songs, “I have Leighton Craig to thank for that. He convinced Lawrence to put it out - but I don’t really know if there is any interest.”

Co-existing simultaneously with DNE in the late eighties was legendary art-punk trio The Holy Ghosts, featuring Carchesio alongside - at various stages - Ian Wadley (Bird Blobs, Small World Experience, St. Helens, Minimum Chips, solo), Clare McKenna (The Go-Betweens, Xero) and Pat Ridgewell (Small World Experience, Minimum Chips). A versatile improviser, Carchesio also regularly performs in other ad-hoc combinations, with past and present collaborators including Ed Kuepper, Robert Forster, Lawrence English and with his Lost Domain compatriots in various duo and trio formats.

It is also important to mention the influence of Brisbane as a city on Carchesio’s art. Brisbane's unique tension between a deeply rooted conservatism and its inevitable rebellion has a strong influence on the work of local independent artists such as Carchesio. Whilst not necessarily an easy place to showcase one’s artistic pursuits in public, Brisbane does provide a fertile atmosphere to create unconventional cross-platform art. “I guess living in Brisbane gives one time to think,” Carchesio reflects.

Throughout much of Eugene’s artistic career, his work has developed and struggled in sync with Brisbane's highs and lows as a cultural city. After many difficulties gaining appreciation, a burgeoning experimental music scene has emerged in the last decade with a broad spectrum of multi-platform independent arts promoters and organisations, in addition to publicly funded organisations such as the Gallery of Modern Art and the Brisbane Powerhouse. Regular formal and informal presentations from Room40 events and the Dadaist cousin collectives Audiopollen Social Club and OtherFilm are supplemented by ad-hoc events from an increasing array of creative provocateurs in galleries, clubs, houses, squats and other found spaces.

“If there was an experimental improv music scene in the late seventies early eighties, I didn't know about it. There was the punk and new wave thing happening where you would see a band in a pub or a hall. [In the] early to mid eighties there were artist run spaces happening where there was a bit of a cross over but no real audience for alternative sound and music. Now of course it’s a different story.”

DNE’s 47 Songs Humans Shouldn't Sing is available from Room40. The Deadnotes is available from Kindling Records.

Wavves interview by Richard MacFarlane

Posted: 16 Apr 2009 07:04 AM PDT

While talking over the phone to Nathan Williams, the 21 year old San Diegan behind Wavves, it becomes ridiculously evident just how much the internet has opened up the opportunity to have your music heard. It’s easy to picture Nathan - all flannel, upturned cap and chilled vibage - experimenting and working on his lo-fi punk behind a garage door warmed by Californian sun. I know 'that garage thing' is nothing new, but considering the sudden interest of an absurd amount of labels in Wavves, and the eruption of blog adorations that has followed, it’s kind of staggering.

“I almost thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew at first.” Nathan says, “All these labels that were asking me to do stuff were ones that I’d regularly buy from by mail order when I have a couple of dollars. So for me to say no would've been ridiculous, I just thought ‘whatever, I can do another record’. But then it was nine or ten records on as many different labels and I thought maybe I should stop and think things through.”

“I do once in a while get on and read those sites [blogs]. I think blogs and the internet totally changed the way music is recorded and produced. It’s so much easier and so much more accessible now. You can really just be some shithead kid in a room but as long as you can put it on the internet - which almost everyone can - and even if you don’t have the internet yourself, a friend of yours might. It’s cool in a lot of ways, but at the same time there are so many bands that you kind of have to look at a bit more closely, because I think anyone can do it now. There's a lot more possibility for people that otherwise might never have had a chance to get it heard.”

You could probably pin some of Wavves’ success on last year's breakthrough of No Age. Like Juan Velaquez of close LA contemporaries Abe Vigoda said in an interview last year, No Age playing on MTV is “fucking crazy”, and he’s pretty much right. While it’s not surprising these days for bands of such an unlikely aesthetic to cross over into the “mainstream” (according to more indie audiences), it’s not exactly a mean feat. Although the first self-titled Wavves cassette features similar forays into free noise/ambient as No Age’s Nouns does, but Nathan Williams is pushing lo-fi even further. Tape fuzz is his homeboy, and of course, all his gear is mostly broken.

“I was just fucking around, really. I was in this other band called Fantastic Magic, and we weren’t really doing very much at the time. The other two guys in the band both had girlfriends and there wasn’t so much concentration on what we were doing as a band. So because I was bored and I wanted to play music I just started recording my own stuff. I really had no intention of doing anything with it until another friend of mine listening to it urged me to send it around to some labels just to see what they'd say. So I sent out three or four demos and basically got three or four people that wrote back and said ‘yeah let's do a record’. So it just filled up my time, I just started recording and doing it all and it got lots of good feedback and snowballed from there I guess.”

I’ve gotta say, listening to a track like ‘To The Dregs’ - with its Dookie nostalgic rush and skewed Brian Wilson “oooohh ooohhh” chorus - is certainly exhilarating, though it's over way too soon at just 1:56. Wavves’ music sounds like distinct excitement mixed through pop/punk fragments. It feels like getting drunk and staring up at the sun in the daytime, a fitting type of imagery considering many have dubbed Nathan’s stuff “beach punk”. It’s pretty apt, really; it sounds just like those blurry skateboarding pictures on his releases, and also like Williams’ own pre-imagined ideas of San Diego.

“I lived in Virginia before I moved here, where I had this idea that it's sunny all the time and there are beautiful girls dressed in next to nothing, dudes skateboarding around, and everyone is getting high, just sitting on the beach and stuff. [I had] that slacker beach town kind of idea for sure. I got here on my freshman year of high school and I kind hated it at first. It was a total culture shock, being from Virginia, which is a much smaller place. My parents had made me go to Christian school when I was younger and I finally got kicked out of that and moved to San Diego, going from having 120 people in a school to having 5000 people and not knowing a single fucking one.

“It was kind of weird at first, being the mega awkward kid. The first friends I made were just from skateboarding and hanging out. In my head though, the place was a lot different. And that's kind of what the music I make is about; trying to convince myself that at one point in California's history there was this incredible time and everything was like the pictures I put up on my wall.”

In terms of both West Coast DIY music and wider pop culture it’s definitely easy to romanticise a beach town like that: all palm trees and babes in bikinis, dudes smoking weed and just “having a chill time y’all”. What’s it really like these days, though?

“San Diego is a really Republican beach town. It has the second biggest army base in the US, and overall there’s a jock mentality throughout all of San Diego. Maybe six years ago there were places where you could go and play shows but now you have to play bars and they’re not really very friendly for music. People generally seem like they don’t give a shit, but this is very general what I'm saying. There is a group of kids who go out and party and go to shows and stuff. I think a lot of people who dress the part, or are down for it, just wanna go out, get fucked up and pick up a girl, rather than [go out for] just for the music or art or whatever.”

Wavves’ aesthetic combines all those faded photos and half-real nostalgias with a gritty escapism purveyed via killer punk riffs and blissed out harmonies. Even if his recording style and general approach can be pretty lax (hang out/record a punk track/have a drink/have a smoke/record a noise track), those short recording sessions are surprisingly cohesive in terms of his overall vision.

“I always thought it was really cool when a band’s aesthetic is more than just their music, it’s this whole statement, a sound and feel. It kind of all comes together somehow. In the beginning I didn't set out thinking ‘oh, I’m going to write beach punk’ and I don’t even know why people started saying that I coined that term. I've never said that in my entire life. But it does make sense, I’m from the beach playing this punk-ish music, so, you know.”

Nathan listens mostly to hip-hop, and even if it’s sonically quite far from his own music, it’s an obvious informant of a certain rebellious type of scruffy pop. Wu-Tang informs his art probably just as much as old Wipers or Misfits cassettes. I guess both punk and rap both, as Nathan says, “fuck you” in various ways.

“I think there are a lot of similarities, I think about it quite a lot. People probably don’t think about it that much but the general idea is basically the same: a couple of people who are tired of taking it so they say ‘fuck you’ in whatever way that is. It's probably at opposite ends of the spectrum the way they actually say ‘fuck you’, but it’s still a basic rebellion. Rap is just as punk as punk is a lot of the time. That’s probably why I like both of them so much. But yeah, I’m angsty at 22. Something is really wrong with me.”

Not that Wavves sounds that angsty, but there’s a nihilism to it that’s not uncommon within no-wave/DIY circles. It’s also balanced with a battered sweetness, or - at a little more of a stretch - a very grubby sort of grandeur. Nathan doesn’t seem quite as much the slacker as the media has made out though. Even with that upturned cap, the grin and the skateboard underarm, it seems like there’s at least a hint of irony to fill out these San Diegan ballads.

“Its funny, every publication that I've been in so far has been like ‘loser king making music’ and ’slacker idiot’, it's like I’m king of the losers or something,” He laughs. “I think it is one of those things where your surroundings seep in. I didn't set out to do anything other than what I thought in my head sounded cool at the time. And once I’d recorded a couple of songs, I sat down and realized that every single song I’d written so far was all about the sun, or just about being a loser.”

“My surroundings just kind of seeped into the music. Once I'd done it a couple of times I felt I’d found a niche, for sure. I set out to work on that for the rest of the record. I like the general idea of everything so far.”

Wavves' Self-Titled Wavvves is available through Woodsist Records.