Land of Decay is a tape label that you can trust to release shit that will numb your brain! Their most recent tape by Number None entitled Strategies Against Agriculture is a testament to how this label is in a universe of it’s own. Created by Chris Miller and Noah Opponent, this tape examines the different textures of feedback bent around various shades of noise! Listening to Number None inspires me to ask questions about the creation of humanity and the destruction of humanity at the same. This is the kind of music that will affect everyone in different ways. This is why CVLT Nation is streaming Strategies Against Agriculture in full below, so that you can find your own meaning in Number None. Also check out the in-depth interview between Scott McKeating below and number none after the jump!
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Scott McKeating (Rock-a-Rolla, Zero Tolerance) interviews Chris Miller & Noah Opponent (Number None)
Can you recall much about the recording process for Strategies Against Agriculture? What came first, the quote or the tracks?
CDM: The tracks came first. Actually, only two of the four tracks on this version were meant for the original version, if I recall correctly. Both “Viagra/Lunesta” and “KKKamera” were late additions.
As far as the recording process, my memory is better for some than for others. “Viagra/Lunesta” is an excerpt from a larger live performance at Lord Ortmann’s old Nihilist Loft, supporting Binges and (believe it or not) Pissed Jeans. I’d say we were definitely the odd man out on that bill. I don’t remember feeling that it had been an entirely successful set that night, but listening back on it, it’s much more cohesive and interesting than it felt at the time.
“Vile Gnarl” was conceived in my basement on a sweaty summer night. It may not be recognizable now, but my primary instrument that evening was a two-bit bagpipe chanter, which Noah was sampling, modifying and looping the shit out of (largely) in real time. I believe he was also introducing some samples from an old kids toy that had a bunch of animal sounds on it. They were pretty poorly recorded to begin with, and the sound quality on each kept degrading further each time we sampled it as the batteries ran down. I may have also been playing either violin or ebowed guitar.
Much as I remember those two tracks, I have very little remembrance of the creation of either “KKKamera” or “ID-Vision.” Maybe Noah can shed some light on those two?
Full interview after the jump…
NO: “KKKamera” is one of the oldest tracks on this release; it was recorded in October of 2006, which probably means it was recorded in the “Blood Dorm,” one of the places where I was living in Chicago. I have notes from the session that night but they’re pretty cryptic and don’t illuminate much.
“ID-Vision” is probably the release’s harshest track, and I’m proud to say I have no recollection of how we’re making any of those sounds. They came out of some kind of evil portal or something.
The only other thing I’d add here is that “Viagra/Lunesta” contains some noise samples from recordings that we did with our erstwhile collaborator, MPA (Medroxy Progesterone Acetate). They’ve been pretty well digested / composted here, but there’s definitely strands of MPA DNA in that track.
Has the concept/art/quote changed since it came to LoD? It feels like a really great fit.
CDM: While the concept has remained largely the same, I’d say the latter two things were “refined”, for lack of a better term, once SAA came to LOD. It may have been a case of the tail wagging the dog, but the title and conceit were primary, while the quote was a sort of providential afterthought that Noah had come across and suggested that we consider. It was so apropos of the title that we couldn’t not use it. As for the art, that was entirely the graphic genius of Noah’s studio, Houses in Opposition, and was the last thing to come together.
NO: The concept was an old one that we’d committed to back when first priming the album for release. But the art—and the Jared Diamond quote—were added as part of the process of getting ready for LOD.
Are you comfortable talking about why/how NN ended?
CDM: Not really. I don’t have a great deal of clarity around it myself, and until those of us involved actually have an extended and honest conversation about it, I don’t think it should be shared publically. Let’s just say that the relationship between the two of us remains amicable.
NO: Nothing in this world has a single cause. To do an autopsy on any project is necessarily to invite the creation of a fiction. I will say that 2007 fell squarely in the center of a pretty rough period for me, and it required a pretty scouring reassessment of all the vectors, influences, and agents active in my life at that time. A painful molting process. Part of that process required me to leave Chicago, and to exile myself to the wilds of southern Massachusetts. There’s a lake there. I build a lot of fires and try to avoid thinking too hard about things that ended.
Do you see the underground experimental scene as having changed since NN’s last release? Does 2007 seem like a long way away?
CDM: Wow, does it ever! 2007 seems like a lifetime ago. Nowadays, music years feel like dog years, and scenes evolve/mutate so quickly. Trends and styles cycle through a ridiculously short half-life, and it’s really hard (for me at least) to keep up with any musical scene or movement before it becomes passé or has mutated into something else.
The outer fringes of music, the noise/drone/experimental axis have definitely become more factionalized. Not in an antagonistic sense, necessarily, but people seem to confine themselves within pretty specific microgenres or subsets of a certain sound, and that seems creatively limiting to me. On the one hand, I appreciate that sense of commitment to a singular vision or sound. On the other hand, it feels a bit stifling and indulgent, if you get my drift. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but it does make one’s creative output seem less essential when you’re devoted to basically apeing the sounds of a older artist/band, genre or era. It’s getting harder and harder to find anyone with a truly distinctive voice that isn’t just the sum of their influences, esp. when the stuff they’re fetishizing I’m a) old enough to remember, and b) didn’t think much of in the first place.
Lest you think I’m some sort of nostalgic curmudgeon who longs for “the good old days”, I do think there’s a lot of music to be excited about these days, some of which could be said to be the epitome of everything I was just railing against. For instance, I LOVE the Ghost Box/hauntology aesthetic: Belbury Poly, Advisory Circle, Kemper Norton, Pye Corner Audio, The Caretaker/Leyland Kirby, et al. Death Grips is definitely doing it for me. Demdike Stare couldn’t be cooler, either. With stuff like that being made today, I can hardly complain- and even that stuff, as cutting edge as it seems, wears its influences on its collective sleeve, but it transcends them, too, and that’s so often what I find lacking in most contemporary acts.
NO: I sometimes joke that I got out of the noise scene right at the time that everyone stopped doing noise and started doing “new New Age.” In reality, of course, there are still plenty of people doing noise, but the turn towards New New Age was sort of the first twist in the “scene” that really hit after I left Number None.
As Chris mentioned, lots of fine work continues to be produced out there: recently I’ve really been enjoying the blasted solar screech of acts like Millipede and We Were Ravens. Aeronaut, recording out of Brooklyn these days, is a guy who has been overlooked to a nearly criminal degree: his self-released stuff gets me “there” every time. I think he has a cassette release coming out sometime soon; people should definitely hunt it down. If you’re too lazy he has a Bandcamp page, too. And although late-period Number None was pretty blistering and noisy, I never really lost my love for the delicate, dreamy, ambient stuff you can hear in our earlier recordings, and I still continue to feed that side of my aesthetic by enthusiastically purchasing just about anything put out by 12K or Room 40.
Are you guys as generally as apocalyptic as the guys in the LoD office?
CDM: Apocalyptic? I’m not sure what that term really means any more, esp. when it comes to music. I’d say I’m pretty pessimistic, but not apocalyptic in my outlook. But then again, I’m pretty suspicious of anyone who claims to be “apocalyptic”. I tend to equate “apocalyptic” w/ “fundamentalist”, which always scares me, regardless of what faith tradition it’s coming from.
What we probably don’t share with most of the LOD “stable” of acts much Metal DNA, but aside from that, we’re coming from the same place. The direction in which NN was headed before we stopped collaborating was much more in sync with the various strains of dark musics that LoD largely travels in. It’s hard to say whether we’d still be playing that sort of stuff now, but around the time of our dissolution we were very much enamoured of and influenced by the Noise scene that was taking off around us, and I think that’s really reflected in the pieces on SAA. I’d hate to describe it as trying to fit in with the prevailing aesthetic. I think it was more a matter of needing an anodyne to the more placid sounds of our past, and finding inspiration—and a more “Rock” foundation—in the stuff that the Noise scene was generating at the time. We wanted to push ourselves someplace different, and Noise unlocked a certain dynamism and freedom that we were really trying to infuse into our sound.
NO: I don’t want to shatter anyone’s illusions, but I always found Terence and Andre—and many others in the noise scene—to be some of the nicest and kindest people in person. It almost seems to me like there’s an inverse relationship between the aggressiveness and foulness of the music and the aggressiveness and foulness of the people who produce it. This makes me wonder whether people who produce really mild and gentle music are actually really savage and mean in real life. Is James Taylor an enormous asshole? I’m not sure I want to find out.
You were very well regarded when you were active and obviously influential on Locrian, what do you regard as your successes as NN?
CDM: Well regarded? Were we? First I’ve heard!
As far as successes go, the things that I’m most proud of it is the mere fact that two (essentially) non-musicians like Noah and myself were able to overcome our lack of chops and technical knowhow and create music together that I think we are both proud of. I’m proud of the creative partnership that we shared, the perseverance we displayed to our own growth, and the end result musically, which is something that I never would have realized on my own. It was a very potent partnership.
Beyond that, I’m really pleased to have become part of a larger creative network of musicians who I respect, and whose work I really admire. I also consider the Rebis label a real success- not financially, but certainly creatively and critically.
NO: I can speak to particular pieces that I remain proud of. I think our album Urmerica is one that shows us at the top of our particular game—it was a record that was made at a time (2004) when my relationship to our country and government was pretty fraught, and I tried to funnel everything that I love and hate about our country into that record. Listening to it still brings back all those emotionally complicated memories, and it really serves as a memento of that time. There’s also an EP, Nervous Climates, that consists of four pieces recorded during the Urmerica sessions¬—the two centerpiece tracks on that disc stand out as some of the material I’m proudest of. That EP was released on Mike Tamburo’s New American Folk Hero label, but I doubt it’s still available: at some point we’ll likely re-release that in a downloadable format through our Bandcamp page.
For most of 2005 we worked on a follow-up, Edison|Orison, which is a turn away from the “political” towards the “spiritual.” It’s an album that tries to imagine what it would be like to literally worship electricity, in an animistic sense, as though electricity were God (or vice versa). I was thinking a lot about Erik Davis’ “electromagnetic imaginary” and indulging in the hubris of trying to channel as much God-like magic as possible. Singing, chanting in a devotional way. Going out and recording thunderstorms. That sort of thing. Consequently, that album feels very personally meaningful, and I hope it sees release and finds a receptive audience.
There is likely to be increased interest in NN with the release of the tape, have you discussed a dig through the archives for other NN material?
CDM: We do have some other releases that we hope will see the light of day sometime.
The excavation process began last year, actually. Another album from the same era as SAA, Wrong Axon Fog, had been languishing for years in limbo. The original label that it was to be released on just sort of ceased operations, so we decided to make it available (for a very nominal fee) on Bandcamp.
The proper follow-up to Urmerica, Edison|Orison, will someday get out there as well, but this time the fault is ours. The music is done, but we’ve been remiss about getting the art and liner notes together. The label that we’ve been working with has been incredibly patient. I think the renewed attention in Number None may just be the impetus needed to finally finish things and get it out there.
Beyond that? I think our archives are pretty exhausted at this point. There’s one more thing, a live recording of a piece we’ve been calling “Printemps,” that really needs to get out to a wider audience, but aside from that, I don’t think there’s an album’s worth of material that holds together stylistically and is begging to be heard. I’d love to stand corrected on that, but as far as I know, we’re not sitting on a vast hidden trove of awesome stuff.
NO: Yeah, as I talked about earlier, Edison|Orison is a fully-completed album that we really worked hard on, and contains some of my favorite stuff that we ever did—it really marks the culmination of a certain creatively rich period. Sort of a “missing jewel” in our somewhat dubious crown.
Do recordings of your UK tour exist?
CDM: As far as I know, none exist. It is possible that Has and Ben (of our tourmates Jazzfinger) may have recorded some of our sets live to tape on a boombox, but I’m pretty certain that we never had a chance to record any of them.
Having said that, I’m pretty sure I had my minidisc recorder with me on that trip. I’ve bags of old minidiscs I need to listen to/catalog, so never say never.
Is there any chance of some new NN material being recorded?
CDM: I certainly hope so, but few overtures have been made at this point. Filesharing is a possibility, of course, but I’d much prefer realtime, face-to-face interaction, and that’s pretty tough given the distance between us right now.
NO: Since the end of the Number None days my sound-making has been in a distinctly fallow period. Of course, one of the lessons of agriculture is that everything is cyclical if you wait long enough.
Can you tell me about any music projects you’re working on at the moment?
CDM: I’ve done a few solo sets as Th’ExceptionalChild, the last being last summer, I believe, playing with Sudden Oak when they were last in town. I continue to sporadically amass recorded material which I’ve sworn will someday see the light of day- not that anyone’s gagging for it. My 5-yr-old daughter and I also share a fondness for The Beets, and do impromptu covers of their songs (w/altered lyrics) with acoustic guitar and Casio as The Scary Jack-O’Lanterns. I doubt that we’ll be playing out any time soon, much less touring, unless it be afternoon matinees in elementary school cafeterias and kindergarten picnics.
The trio version of Anemone Lodge (myself, Gwyneth Merner of The Opera Glove Sinks in the Sea/Byssus, and Matt Erickson of Sudden Oak/Radiant Husk – both are proprietors of the Bezoar Formations label) spent a weekend recording new material in Jan. of this year, which we’re slowly sifting through now. We’ll see what comes of it.
NO: I’ve been concentrating almost exclusively on non-music-oriented projects, including completing an incredibly dense and complicated novel entitled Meanwhile, which will be seeing publication this summer with Dirt, an adventurous e-book publisher based in NYC. The good people at Dirt have collected a bunch of challenging novels, including mine, and are publishing them for the Kindle through Amazon.
If you’ll excuse the plug, I’ll give you the official blurb here: “Meanwhile visits a hundred different humans—teenage girls, traveling businessmen, macho academics, occult weirdos, sex slaves, soldiers—blows their lives into tiny particles, and recombines the particles into a jittering wide-screen view of our contemporary cultural moment. Like a cross between Richard Linklater’s Slacker and a Mark Lombardi diagram, Meanwhile wants to transform your attention deficit into a grander, vaster form of understanding.”
Will people who enjoy the Number None output enjoy this book? Maybe: my work on this novel and my musical output both share a real love of intricate, tangled, dense patterns that are unpredictable, beautiful, kinda disgusting—the kinds of patterns that the SF writer Rudy Rucker might call “gnarl.” So if you ever want to read something that’s like a noise album set in print, this might be one to check out. It’ll probably cost five bucks or less.
‘Special thanks to all those who let us down’ – is that a barbed middle finger to someone (American Grizzly?) or a joke?
CDM: Not a joke. A dig? Perhaps, but not at anyone specifically.
At the time, it was rather disillusioning to be approached by several labels who seemed really interested in putting some NN stuff out, only to a) submit material to them that never got released and b) never hear back from them and find out why, even after repeated attempts to contact them. While that indifference (for lack of a better term) did sting at the time, had they not “let us down” then we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to put this stuff out with Andre and Terence. LOD have done a fantastic job on this album, from the mastering to the artwork to the promotion and marketing, and I couldn’t be happier. It was worth the wait!
(Other interpretations may be completely valid as well, but they’re left entirely up to you.)
NO: One should be ever-grateful for adversity.
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