“Rudy liked that idea, and of course he did what Rudy does, which is make everything grey. “I liked the idea of those thin and thick stripes just because I saw our music in that way, the positive and the negative space,” remembers Horton. Some of the band’s and VanderLans design ideas can’t fully translate to the digital realm-the original CD booklet was only a ⅔-size sleeve, showcasing the physical CD itself in a way few such releases did at the time-but the striking cover art has literally ended up in a museum. The 1991 debut has recently been remastered and rereleased by the duo, the first in a planned series of reissues and archival recordings hearing songs like “Primary” and “Aluminum” again with fresh ears makes for vivid listening. Emigre’s Rudy VanderLans took to Supercollider’s music, releasing both their self-titled debut in 1991 and a follow-up, Dual, in 1993, as well as working closely with the band to create striking cover art for those efforts. They began submitting their initial cassette recordings to one record company after another only to be met with a total lack of interest-until a remarkably lucky break arrived in the form of Emigre Records, a near-bespoke side project of the famed font and design firm founded in Berkeley in 1984. We’d find out what sounds something can make and put them together and then kind of go from there.” A lot of it was more serendipity than it was actual vision. The process of programming one idea can inspire other ideas. ![]() “In programming the equipment, you can discover things, and changes and other parts can be added. “I was the one who had my hands on the sequencer, but was really writing the parts,” he says. Haut, meanwhile, concentrated not only on percussion, but also on learning the vagaries of the then still-new technology with which they were working. “I just wanted to strip things down, play with the sound of words, break them up, and pull as much meaning-even if it was a little obscure-out of three-or-four-word lines to have little surprises as the song unfolds.” cummings, reading a lot of the Beat poets,” he recalls. Pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track Horton credits artists like Sonic Youth, Joy Division, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich-as well as visual artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd-as inspirations the resulting combination of stark, austere guitar patterns and his serene but still emotional singing reflects those influences, as does Horton’s willful defiance of verse/chorus/verse song structure. ![]() The duo’s first formal track, “Primary,” was already in place that same year. So I bought a sampler, and Philip and I started writing Supercollider songs in 1988.” I’d read about sequencing and sampling, and just liked the idea of very constant timekeeping-a very ‘non-argumentative’ sound source to play against. ![]() Philip responded to an ad of ours in 1986. “When I was about 21,” remembers Horton, “I had joined a band for a short time, sort of R.E.M., Smiths. (The only comparison that comes to mind is to the equally far-flung and underappreciated UK band Disco Inferno, and even that is a bit of a stretch.) Horton had spent his early years playing in Orange County punk bands while Haut, younger by a couple of years, studied percussion at college in his native Virginia before heading to L.A. Writing songs that fused minimalism and post-punk with sampling and sequencers, and lyrics inspired by modernist poetry, Supercollider weren’t just unique in that era of Southern California, dominated by the final wave of hair metal and the homegrown hip-hop explosion, but almost anywhere in the U.S. Both of those qualities-the camaraderie and the complementary dynamics-are at least in part owed to the fact that they’ve known each other since the late ‘80s, when they founded Supercollider in Long Beach. They also know how to balance each other out speaking from Haut’s studio near downtown Los Angeles, Horton talks at a quick, breathless pace, while Haut delivers his recollections with an easygoing swing. ![]() In conversation, Michael Horton and Phillip Haut have the noticeable easy rapport of two longtime friends.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |