the boston society of mechanics interview 09-DEC-98
Noah:
I don't wanna do an interview over e-mail.. . . . . . .
1. How did MANY SMALL FUNCTIONS begin, and what led to its creation?
Josh:
Joe Devlin and I have known one another since 1993 or so, when we both
called the same BBS in Worcester. We talked music and things, and he failed
to buy my CZ-101. A couple of years later, we both went to Northeastern. I
kept seeing this familiar-looking guy being creepy in the cafeteria....
Noah:
That's funny, people used to say the same thing about me...
Josh:
...Finally I went up to him and said, "Do I know you?" As it turned out, we
both hated the school and both still liked electronic music. Our first song
as Many Small Functions was written not long after. It was called "Thinking
Too Slow," and was mightily cheesy. We both moved back to Worcester and
spent a couple of summers buying up all the gear in town and selling it to
one another. We did everything with sequencers back then, and spent far too
much time swilling down Dr Pepper in unventilated attics.
After a while of this, and not doing much else, Joe and I did a brief stint
with D Krons, before Harrison moved on to people who actually like to play
the same songs over and over again.
joe:
josh and my first show with dkrons was intended to be something a bit more
than it ended up being. we practiced, trying to write some songs by the
date of the show, but it wasnt working. we had no choice but to go up
there and bullshit. we recorded some loops, and just did it.
Josh:
Joe was hanging around with Noah, and they did a couple of live shows under
a name I've forgotten.
joe:
Luciferase! The Way of Death! Fucking Wet!
Josh:
Uh, yeah. Eventually, we sort of accreted into one combination band under
the name Many Small Functions and started playing shows under that name.
Our favorite
sound person was Steve, so we stole him from behind the sound board and
made him
sit on stage with us. He seemed to enjoy this, and started bringing his own
gear. Finally, we just admitted that he was part of the band, and we've been
playing together since.
Steve:
I think that pretty much describes how I joined up.. I'd known
Josh and Noah for some time before I hooked up with them musically. I
think my
first experience with an MSF-like entity was when I mixed for a
strange combination of D-Krons and MSF as one of the openers for a
Big Catholic Guilt show at WPI. The rest, I guess, is history.
joe:
opening for big catholic guilt [as D-Krons- jb] was strange and painful.
harrison
and i were messing around with music. we could never seem to put something
solid together. i have to blame myself somewhat for that; i had all sorts of
stupid gear, samplers and keyboards and computers, and harrison had this
little shopping mall keyboard, and he could produce these really fluid
beats, the kind of stuff that sounded like drum loops, even if he did sound
a little bit like bobby brown. my equipment was complicated, and i was never
quite happy with what came out of it. so we never really produced anything
repeatable. it was around this time that i started hanging around with noah,
and making noise with him., usually under the influence. that was the most
fun, recording these huge, hellish noise things that sounded like flying
saucers landing, squeals of noise, and often times little melodies that
sound like video games, completely high, then listening to them with my
roomate, in our living room on a decent stereo, and wondering what we were
thinking.
later that year, during the summer, josh, noah and i started meeting in
josh's attic, recording improvs based on short jams. it just seemed
easier, at the time, to produce something we could be happy with by
just doing it. there was no way to do group sequencing, it always
ended up being a sort of round robin thing where someone, usually josh,
would sit in front of the computer, editing sequences, with me sitting
on the floor, or behind a drumkit, being bored. josh, noah and i
managed to repeat this improv fun a couple of more times, at least once
in the summer, and once at wjul in lowell. that improv was the most fun.
soon after, we played again, with steve mixing, and we started practicing
with him, and soon enough, he wasnt just mixing.
Noah:
For me, MSF started with our desire to combine some of the truly exotic
elements of music into one spring. Each of us had interest in fringe music,
so when we used to hang out before we created MSF, we talked to each other
about the arousing things which musicians were doing. Then, quickly, we
found ourselves developing our own strong desires. After that we started
meeting two or three of us at a time, and preserving the results of our
experiments. Finally, the opportunity emerged for us to form a consistent
connection between our name M.S.F. and the glittering, lilting sounds we
were making.
2. How would you describe your live show?
Josh:
I wouldn't. I tend to forget them immediately after. I list to the tapes
and think, "Who did that?"
Steve:
A few words come to mind.. "improvised," "chaotic," "unpredictable,"
sometimes "listenable," and sometimes "unlistenable." I agree with
Josh's observation - live shows and studio "jam" sessions (for lack of
a better term) tend to drive most of us into a sort of relaxed trance
state. I think that's when the best stuff happens.
joe:
i like it best when we surprise ourselves. i like performing, and playing
for an audience, but sometimes i feel like, screw them. if i dont hear
something new, something that makes me think "damn, whats that?" when we
play, i dont feel too enthused.
3. Without giving away too many secrets, how does your music get
created and recorded?
Josh:
Created: It just kind of falls out of our heads.
Recorded: We plug into the Layla or the MD and Steve hits record. That's
pretty much it. 8)
Steve:
We use a variety of sound generation equipment and
software.. We even build a lot of gear ourselves (ranging from analog
homebrew to fairly high-end microprocessor-based devices). I've spent
the last couple of years putting together a decent digital 8-track
home-recording studio, but a lot of the time, we just mix down to 2
track MD and live with that mix as an end product. The choice of MD
is purely convenience - I'd prefer a DAT.
joe:
we sit down and hit keys and change samples and edit synthesizers and
plug everything in all at once. when noah and i used to get together at my
house before msf, we would entertain ourselves by connecting everything and
getting it running, all at once. maybe its a little like those shakesperian
monkeys, but i guess that doesnt really matter too much. it reminds me of
this dadist poetry thing my sister had, which suggested cutting up a
newspaper
into words, putting them into a bag, and pulling them out word by word.
if i were to entertain some sort of pretense, it would be that.
Noah:
Do you know what it's like when you are hearing something that you know
you will want to be hearing over and over again, because it's something
that you have always dreamed about hearing? Usually, we set up
all of our machines and sources individually to kindle a single idea each.
Then, we slowly build up the sound from every one of them into a huge,
roaring fire. Once it's going good we say, "Let's save this." And we
record it.
4. What kind of response have you gotten to your live shows, at home
and out-of-town? addendum: What is the strangest thing that has
happened at one of your live shows?
Steve:
We've definitely had a lot of positive response. Sometimes
people just don't get it, but that's fine.. I'd say that our
music takes a certain level of processing on the part of the
listener. It can be very layered and complex, so it takes some time
for your brain to sort it all out. We're not unique in this, by any
means, but I think it might account for some of the "huh?" type looks
I've seen from some people. I love it when people get in to it and
understand what we're doing, though. As far as weird experiences,
I remember some woman ballet dancing during our set at a club in
Boston.... and there was the show we played with so much stage smoke
that you couldn't tell if we were actually on stage or not... I think Noah
started to read poetry on stage once.. that was pretty strange.
Noah:
what did I start? I remember that show...it was like, I couldn't see
anyone else in the band. the smoke was so thick, it was making the
music quieter. It must have made the whole situation more confusing for
everyone.
joe:
i say fuck em. some of them do seem to like us, and i dont understand it.
usually,
i dont believe them, because theyre usually friends.
i cant think of anything really strange thats happened. noah always has
stories abou t the things people say to him, he seems to attract that
stuff.
Noah:
those video mixing guys were cool, also a few people have given me tapes
of their own music after we played. One of the tapes (Greg Greg) was like
so strange! it was 90 minutes with no breaks in the sound, and seemed to
be continued from side A to B, and also from B to A. I don't know how
this band did it.
Usually people report that they were "taken somewhere else" while they were
listening to us. For example, we played for a group who mixed video while
listening to us, and when we stopped, their faces were like astonished and
they said they really got into what they were doing. I like to see people
feeling comfortable while listening to us, because so many people get tense
that no one danced at their concert or the crowd just stood there, but we're
not doing our thing to shake everyone's booty, or ignite their inner,
visceral desires to make their skin feel hot all over, like they have to rub
up and down against someone, just there to be weird and take people through
a little "journey into sound."
One thing I notice is people trying to find a correlation between the
multifarious rhythms of the sounds and our hand movements. That can be
tricky, especially when we're all listening to each other and playing
off each other. Plus, sometimes I like to mess with peoples' heads by
turning up a sample really loud when they look at us, then turn it down
when they look away, and so on.
I find it strange and fascinating when people you know show up at the same
laces and same times as you do.
5. What plans do MANY SMALL FUNCTIONS have for the future?
Josh:
Currently, we're remixing Canister songs (although I'm guessing that Doug
will suppress anything he doesn't like) and putting together a CD.
Steve:
We've also assembled most of the tracks for a moody little EP,
and have been leaking out small quantities of it to our friends. We
still try to play over in my studio every other week or so, so some
even newer tracks may come out of those experiments. Unfortunately,
we all have pretty busy schedules, so sometimes it's tough to keep up
with everything. Ultimately, I think we all hope to eventually
assemble a CD and put it out in 1000+ quantity. I also think it would
be cool if we did a RealAudio/RealVideo concert from one of our studios.
joe:
i dunnow. ive taken a break from MSF for a bit, to finish school, and focus
on things of my own. im all for producing something, but the thought
kind of scares me, in a way. i just wanna play more shows, and keep these
guys on their toes and make a lot of noise and have fun. i dont think
im helping things.
Noah:
Now that we have 2-3 years worth, and a zillion hours of source material,
Joe and I have some ideas that we would like to try out... We have this
"recombination bug". Where we want to constantly re-sample old material,
turn it into new stuff, then sample that new stuff. We would like to, for
example, play three concerts in a row, where each concert is the previous
one chopped up through a Cuisinart. We have already started doing this.
Also, we'll be implementing more of our own, homebrew effects, sequencers
and synthesizers into the sound.
6. What is your opinion of the New England electronic scene?
Josh:
It seems much stronger now than it did a few years ago, although I miss the
old-school Boston industrial bands, and I very much miss Think Tree...
Steve:
I think places like The Space in Worcester are doing good
things for the non-mainstream electronic bands/projects. Globally,
electronic music is all the rage, so I guess it makes sense that
there is some strong interest in it locally. The really stupid thing
is that I haven't actually just GONE to a show to just enjoy it in years --
I've either been playing with MSF or mixing other bands. Probably
should do something about that before I'm old and gray!
joe:
yeah, the space is taking some steps. i dont know about boston. the dance
club strip over at landsdowne seems to be doing pretty well, ive heard of
a couple of boston djs, sessions has attracted some big name talent like
photek, but what do i really know of the dance clubs? boston has always
had a sprinkling of electronic music, its always attracted a sprinkling of
outside, global bands. i used to really like ddt, and havent really
been enthused about local electronic stuff since then, or maybe the
first or second toneburst thing i went to. i think its harder to find
interesting electronic because of the glut. electronic music isnt the
new music it was in the seventies, or even the eighties, or early
nineties. its not something i really like to think about, because i just
end up ranting or thinking overly negatively, like why even bother.
Noah:
There is definitely good music to listen to! I like EOSS.
The only thing is I'm not sure the musicians communicate as frequently
as they ought to.
7. Where can your fans buy your music and/or merchandise?
joe:
ha-ha. Fans. Merchandise.
Josh:
They can email us.
Steve:
Yeah, or check our website. We don't currently do big-volume
sales.. Everything is hand-made (from only the finest plastics and
papers available!), so it takes some time to get things together.
Noah:
We have two CD's:
1) Disc 1
2) The Frosty Mud Sessions
You can get them online at
http://www.gweep.net/~mute/many-small-functions.html
or come up to one of us at a show.