Pitchfork

In addition to pounding skins and hollering in Lightning Bolt and Mindflayer, Brian Chippendale busies himself with his Black Pus solo project, releasing noisy 4-track knockdowns on his own diarreahRama label. For those who can't locate the Black Pus 1 or Black Pus 2 CD-R's at their local record shop, they're downloadable at Faux Fetus. The click-and-save option's nice, but you'll miss Chippendale's fantastic silk-screened cover art, an extension of his work as a comic artist (Ninja, a 144-page art'n'comic hardcover was just published by Gingko Press/PictureBox), something he's also incorporated into his increasingly frequent gallery shows (check your favorite art rag). While you're stalking the guy, keep your eyes peeled for the newly hatched Black Pus 3: Metamorpus. It slays.

I e-mailed Chippendale a long ways back, curious to learn how he maintains the breakneck pace. We continued the discussion for quite some time. That said, take a deep breath and relax: What follows will teach you, among other things, why drumming can be a more satisfying cardiovascular activity than jogging in the park.

Pitchfork: When I first wrote, you were busy pasting up an art show in Los Angeles. Can you tell me more about that?

Brian Chippendale: The gallery is New Image Art. The title was 70 More Artists to Be Announced, or something like that. Me and my girlfriend, Jungil Hong, who's also in the show, drove out to L.A. to install. I've been creating work by silk-screening images of arms and legs and heads and objects on paper— like drawings of vegetables, guns, hats, whatever-- and then also printing sheets of patterns, colorful polka dots and line drawing patterns. I generally make a patterned background, glue patterns together, and then wheat paste the arms and legs and props into scenes. Like paper dolls with presto-magic backgrounds.

I had some pre-made collages and the idea that I would make a record store in the gallery. I've made two CD-R's of my new (fake) band Black Pus, which is me and my cassette 4-track. My label is diarreahRama records. So I built the diarreahRama listening shack. You could sit inside and listen to the two albums. The CD-R's are silk-screened; the shack is a papier-mâché over a sort of string skeleton, stretching strings and draping newspaper over them. It comes out being a sort of stiff papier-mâché tent covered in patterns. I also created pattern fields and new scenes of characters around the shack, the colors sort of overlap between the 3-D and 2-D. Jung made a huge collage on the wall in a similar fashion, cutting and pasting pieces. Finally, we filled up a lot of other blank walls with prints and drawings, other little things. We spent four or five days, sleeping in the gallery, working nonstop to fill this place up...

Pitchfork: Is it important for you to have the art and music overlap?

BC: There are people who seem to be on the verge of going either way, and something kicks in to support either the visual or the auditory. Maybe if you are in a rush for success you follow the one that is the most successful, and the other falls to the wayside. It doesn't even seem to matter which one you're good at-- it's whatever people like. That's a different story than good or bad.

I have to boil this down to some sort of basic thing for me. I try to drum each day. It's therapeutic. I've been recording solo crap-- literally crap-- almost everyday Lightning Bolt's not jamming. I'm addicted. I love it. Like any exercise, it ‘s so liberating if you do it hard. It just so happens to have a byproduct that's more beautiful or emotive than jogging.

Each day I also try to draw. It's a similar expulsion of buildup: Milking the cows every morning. Checking the chickens' eggs. Why should that be limited to a certain medium? Shit builds up inside you on multiple levels; if you don't degrease the system it clogs. Drawing brings me back to reality by sending me past reality, a sort of out-of-body perspective. The drawings creep off the page; they have to, if you believe in liberation. They climb to the walls the ceiling, they surround… they surround the drums. (I spend time decorating our practice room, and the rest of my house.) They influence the sound; before you know it they don't want to be dislodged from each other. They cohabitate, so they actually complement. They form and inform each other: I dumped a bag of jellybeans in a shallow wood box and covered them with glue. The jellybeans were making me sick. They went from friend to enemy, now they hang on the wall. I pass them on the way to the drum room. I'm wound up on sugar, singing jellybean songs. The colors could make a nice print; the print could cover the walls; glued jellybeans all across the floor. We could and should be writing a song based on fourteen small colored circles next to each other overlapping slightly. Why not? I come out of drumming with images in my head; drumming opens valves to drawing, back and forth.

Pitchfork: What do you make of all these music celebrity art shows? I opened a recent Artforum and there's a full-page ad for a Devendra Banhart exhibition as well as a full-page ad for Sunn 0))) and Banks Violette. Weird-- or is it just a continuation of the Warhol and Velvet Underground thing?

BC: You really shouldn't open Artforum. It's made to be on your table when you are photographed for things. I wish I knew more about the Warhol time. I assume it was as viciously commercial as anything else advertised in high-end publications, but it has the feeling of being more subversive. It seems people have their thing-- band or art that they are known for-- and then their other thing that people kind of let them do on the side. Kim Gordon, the painter? Who knows-- in 10 years it could be Kim Gordon, the musician? Devendra is obviously a serious drawer. I hear reports of him drawing things for people at shows. I'm into that. It's one of the more fun things to do before, or more likely after you play, especially when the bouncers want to kick your ass because you haven't even begun to clean up your crap yet, but you're too busy drawing skateboarding Smurfs for some kid you may never ever see again.

I talked to a guy on tour. He's the drummer for Bilge Pump and Polaris, two British bands. He's really one of the best drummers I have seen. He made me feel like a one-trick pony. Hmm, maybe I am a one-trick pony? But it's a long and exhaustive trick. Anyway, he tries to practice up to four hours a day. I try to do an hour if i can-- sometimes more, sometimes less, and sometimes I flake on it. I'm reading Space Is the Place, the biography of Sun Ra. He practically played and composed from breakfast till bedtime, with maybe a walk in there somewhere. There seems to a movement towards spontaneity and naiveté, the magic of new discovery. You can't be both a painter and a musician and master anything. You can't. And live a life. See the sun, etc. That's where I am: Non-master of a pile of things. It's painful to not be able to fully focus, but it keeps you fresh. It also keeps you in a different league then a master. Maybe mastering is going, or gone, out of fashion. In fact it is. But then there are the non-fashionable people, and good for them.

Pitchfork: At this point, RISD is ingrained into the history of the band. The art world knows Forcefield from the Whitney Biennial. Paperrad is crossing back and forth. The art and music overlap is really fruitful and rich right now.

BC: It's a fruitful time because galleries are looking for art that crosses over with music. They're seeking it out. It's modern, I think. All senses combined. When enough people finally step up and say, "Well, what does this object sound like?" then maybe there is a point where artists have to start exposing their objects' sound. Maybe it's kids growing up on video games, computers, and TV's-- everything has both. It's not the old days of radio and book and silent movies, all mediums completely unrelated.

Maybe it's just leisure time-- art and music is the last to go in an economic crisis, people purchase entertainment even when they are struggling. More people than ever are spending money to support more artists and musicians and give them more leisure time to build cereal balls…and the art world is eating those balls up!

Galleries are becoming overwhelmed with psychedelic music/art. I like it; it's a good direction, a new blurring of the lines between what you do. More so on the artists' side. A lot of bands are still just bands that artists ask to get involved, but a lot of artists are using sound they create. This is different from referencing music. At the New Image Art the gallery, I saw two different painters painting pictures of KISS, a few paintings with sort of metal looking captions over simple cartoon paintings. At least three different artists' works lying around in the back room of this gallery were referencing metal. This is fun but incorporating the music is more interesting. I myself probably reference music a ton, too. As for integration, Forcefield did this fantastically in the Whitney: The sound had a purpose as the sounds of the sculptures.

Pitchfork: If you could curate an art show with both artists and musicians who would you include?

BC: I did non-curate an art show at a bar called the Safari Lounge last summer here in Providence. I put flyers around inviting whomever to hang things. It was fun-- we got some random stuff. (Unfortunately, the mom who called me wondering if her kid could hang something in the show, him being well under bar age, never made it.) The Safari was a long running venue-- free shows, totally wild shit, local drunks and scenesters head-banging together to anything from Deerhoof to To Live and Shave in L.A.-- but it got engulfed in the Bostonization of Providence this past fall. It's closed now. Sad.

Okay… I got off question. I almost find the question off-putting because curating is such a violent act. Instead, let's list some good bands I have seen or heard lately: Dynasty, a Providence band, who are a sort of explosion of Harry Pussy with Godflesh drums. Kites CF is in it. You'd probably hate it. I would just invite all my friends and acquaintances, mostly from Providence. Am I skirting around your question? We don't need another list do we?

Pitchfork: Why would I hate Dynasty? I love Harry Pussy and Godflesh. The combo sounds great.

BC: Maybe you wouldn't hate them; maybe you would hate me because I compared anyone to the gods of swirling rock, Harry Pussy, who I also adore. Sorry, I really don't know what you would or would not like. Try to see Dynasty live sometime: A spastic little explosion, three electric waterfalls over a rockslide.

Pitchfork: Why do you dislike lists? They can be helpful. Do you mean lists as an artificial hierarchy?

BC: Lists are OK. I started to make one in England because we were at the All Tomorrow's Parties and I started to brainstorm who it would be fun to have there. One of which is this great performance group in Providence called TruthEaterTheater. Someone should invite them to a festival. Back to lists: Lists just sometimes dangle too close to namedropping for the sake of self-inflation. I love a lot of people in bands and people doing weird art stuff, but i will always forget someone and i don't really want to be part of stamping the boundaries on a scene.

Pitchfork: Speaking of scenes, what's sprung up in Providence to replace Fort Thunder. I guess it still exists as a website....

BC: Fort thunder, the website-- sad truth. I made another paper house at this RISD Museum wallpaper show and the assistant curator jokingly referred to it as "Fort Thunder Lite." Too painfully true. As for replacing Fort Thunder, that really hasn't happened. There have been awesome show places like a two-building mill complex from like 2002 till 2004 that housed maybe seven clubs: the Sickle, the Bakery, the Pink Rabbit, the Providence Civic Center, the Munchhouse (this one predated most of the others and crossed over time wise with Fort Thunder), Valhalla Goldmine, Volume. I had one on the first floor in a room I had a key to called the Candle Factory. I changed the name on all the fliers but it was sort of known as the Candle Factory. It was covered in wax. These places are all lofts in a crumbly building that people held shows in. They were also their homes. In January 2004, in like the coldest week of the year, the building got condemned and 60 of us had three days to get out. Fast ending, but there were some awesome parties in there. But again, it wasn't Fort Thunder: Less dense with debris, less time under their belts, smaller spaces, more people in charge, but noisy and crazy all the same. Actually there was a lot more variety in the music shown and way more shows over a shorter period of time.

Pitchfork: Lightning Bolt's been around for about a decade. How do you keep it fresh? If you're together for another 10 years, where do you imagine you'll go with the sound? Ever imagine working more lyrics into your stuff?

BC: A decade, it's true! The third Black Pus CD-R has a huge lyric sheet. Lyrics may make more headway into Lightning Bolt, but I'm not sure. They did a slight increase on Hypermagic Mountain-- you can pretty much read them in the notes. I actually write a lot, but mostly just daily gibberish. I am a documentation addict: "I just peed. I walked down the hallway. I dropped my pencil. I just aged a minute." I write crap like that all the time, occasionally sliding off into more abstract thought. I would rather concentrate on vocals as sound for Lightning Bolt. That's why i started amplifying my voice at all, to capture the little sounds I make when I am pushing my body physically, drumming away. Lyrics always fall short with the amount of energy thrown into the playing. Lyrics to some extent are just the product of a singer's insecurity with singing.

We have been playing some since the record came out; it's been very loose, freeform. Generally when we're not playing shows that's where it goes-- becomes more drifting. Hopefully this will inform the next stage. We thought this last album was going to be more of a psychedelic album but it came out more metal. I hope to continue to walk a line between those things, but I also hope to incorporate more variety of beats, more syncopation. It becomes very easy to play straight beats; straight rock is alluring.

Pitchfork: Can you tell me more about Black Pus 3? You're interested in lyrics as sounds, so why a lyric sheet?

BC: I seem to have lost my huge lyric sheet. Pirates or something. That's what it was about, and that's who took it. I have a song whose lyrics thus far are "come by my neighborhood and buy my neighborhood." That took a lot of brainpower. It's a little ode to all those furious real estate developers who are crawling all over our cities looking to exploit what should be a human right, space to live and work. The other day I sang a perverse little song about longing for someone, which I had kind of jokingly written for my girlfriend to be her artist statement. And then there's this long babbling thing. But suddenly I can't find the paper; it's under a pile of crap somewhere. You'll get your lyric sheet when it comes out.

I thought it would be funny to base a whole CD on lyrics, or just slather lyrics over a thing. Again, in the sense of words as noise. I am trying to focus Black Pus 3 on mostly drums and vocal sound, so it seemed like a solution. Just because I said lyrics are a sign of the inability to sing doesn't mean....A) I believe that, or B) I don't think they're cool. They are cool. Words are great. I sing along with my favorite songs, but when I am drumming and singing, the words become a note that for me. In the process of playing they have more emotional impact as notes then an actual word.

I am a musician before a writer, and a drawer before a writer. When I lose sight of that, which I do, my work tends to suffer. That's just me. I feel that music is more flexible than language and your song, or "piece" is only as flexible as your least flexible component. Again, that's taking things really seriously. Fun has to rule in a lot of scenarios. Occasionally, when you are really getting going, you need to stretch beyond language. It has to go out the window.

Pitchfork: How'd you come up with the name, DiarreahRama? You're just releasing your own Black Pus stuff, right? Sort of fitting.

BC: DiarreahRama. Or Diarreah Diarrama records. It was just one of too many not so great names I throw around. Bubblecum records? Gross things I guess. Gross things sound funny and set people up to listen to something a little uninviting. The idea of "Shit running out of you at an uncontrollable rate that you then document and present" sounded like a good label name. That's sort of what I see my art as. Yes, at the moment I am releasing my own stuff: Black Pus 3 and a drum project, me versus me, that I think is called Ultimate Beat Off. I may release that, or convince someone too. Maybe a Mindflayer CD-R. It's really nice to have things to mail to people when they mail you things, or trade to people at shows. Something homemade, it feels...down to earth. It feels community oriented. I made Black Pus 1 because I wanted to be in the CD-r section at our local record shop, Armageddon records. Another one for the pile! Something fast. Good or bad. Just done.

Pitchfork: I dig the Black Pus stuff. Black Pus 2 especially-- it's more immediate and raw than the last Lightning Bolt. You said you record all the stuff on your own. Can you ever take Black Pus on the road?

BC: Black Pus is definitely an in-house project. It's three or four of me, so it may be hard to tour with. I might try to get a few friends to do something someday. I know a really good saxophone player. I have been making recordings of solo stuff I do live too. That might be another CD-r this year, and could play a show or two. I just bought a computer, my first ever, pretty much so i could start editing home recordings faster. Black Pus, Mindflayer, Lightning Bolt. All of it. I ‘m really excited. I'm glad you're into Black Pus 2. It's more refined. I really like it!

I have always felt a little held back by working with other people in recording. I love what the Lightning Bolt records have captured, but it all still is a step away from what i would listen to. They are all very formal. It doesn't fall apart as much as i like things too. I don't think i am really that formal; or at least, there is another side to us that really hasn't been touched on since the Yellow Record. (Which a lot of people hate.) And that is the hours and days and years of us just jamming, what we do the majority of the time. The live songs, and the records, are just the parts we can remember a second time.

Pitchfork: In my review of Hypermagic Mountain, I said it lost steam in the middle. Maybe I was just nitpicky, but how do you refine or develop your sound without losing some of its primal drive?

BC: Hypermagic Mountain maybe did lose steam. Who knows? Songs three and four, "Birdy" and "Riffwraith," were sort of last minute add ins. If you take those two simple songs out you have, I think, an album more in line with our others: A set of songs with some variation and a few leaps into new territories of a more digestible length. Maybe that's where you thought it lost steam, though that's near the beginning…I think the album takes off in the middle, but anyway...How do we refine or develop without losing primal drive? That's a good question. Maybe we will solve it. I think the key is to not refine. We are super refined right now...We have to push it to allow as many accidents into it as we can…unravel.

Pitchfork: Why'd you add those two tracks at the last second?

BC: We made those recording after maybe 12 or 13 days of recording in our practice space. At the very end-- or almost the very end-- we just wanted to add something that was fresh for us… something now and in the moment. They sounded interesting, or interesting enough. They fit into an album that was becoming more and more sort of straight cruising rock. Again, they seemed a slight variation on what we had done. We've never done something as stupid as "Birdy," not quite that simple.

Pitchfork: Could you imagine going back to something like your original form as a trio?

BC: I love the occasional emails I get where some dude thinks his guitar work will help us out. We are deep in the two-piece thing. We have to make a lot of decisions about things, not musically, more like scheduling, practicing, touring...recording…whatever. At this point we have that stuff balanced out rather comfortably. I don't think we could ever have a third person as a full partner in Lightning Bolt. I would get jealous and violent. Maybe we'll work with a person. A vocalist might be interesting, but it still feels fresh and vibrant just the two of us.

Pitchfork: There are always beautiful, slower gems on your albums. Would you ever do an entire recording of those sorts of moments, like "Hello Morning" or "Wonderful Rainbow"?

BC: I think Lightning Bolt is going to be one of these bands that when we eventually break up, the flood gates will be open and all the "other" stuff will come out. Finally there won't be a build-up of new recordings and ideas. We'll have the time to sort thought 200 plus tapes of jamming. Or not. It will be off to the next thing...We have done (lo-fi) recordings of long ambient pieces. I actually compiled all the non-rhythmic, more abstract sounds from the Hypermagic sessions, but it wasn't so fantastic. I have recently embraced the CD-r and, as I mentioned, got a computer and can finally start editing some of my own and Lightning Bolt's stuff, so I think the next couple years will reveal more sides. Our problem is that we play too much and don't reflect as much as we could. We try to do art and whatever as full time as Lightning Bolt is...so a lot of music we make gets filed away and forgotten. We probably forget 95% of what we come up with and some of its really good. There might (there should) be an ambient album in our future.

Pitchfork: Why do you think mainstream press and listeners are more interested in so-called "noise" these days? Sonic conditioning?

BC: Sonic conditioning. Kids will always look to out brutalize the last gang. Maybe people are finally tiring of watered down grunge rock on the radio.

Pitchfork: A friend wanted me to ask if you realized that not playing on a stage could sometimes alienate fans like her who are "short and/or not aggressive." Ever thought of using a stage now that you're more popular?

BC: The thought does cross my mind. I don't like people feeling like they've been cheated out of their money, and I too have been caught in the back of floor shows, only to inspect the backs of necks and the mudded sounds pushing though bodies. That said....No, no plans for stages any time soon. Maybe we will get to a point where we will play shows that are so long and hard people will get really sick of us at live shows and over the course of two hours or so they can rotate to the front. The music has become entwined with the presentation, for better or for worse. My playing has been informed and formed by the needs of the immediate crowd. It's made me such a stronger physical player to have to push crowds of people with nothing but natural sound, to have people crowding in and sending energy waves. I am an addict of those people in the front now, like curling up to a fire for warmth. We are a party band, a ritual band... it's tough! Tell your friend to come up to me and I will stick her in the front on the side...We did a few shows in Europe with a video projector and a screen showing the action filmed in the front. I am sort of into that. I really apologize to those who feel like they missed something. We are delaying the decision to go on stage till after we break up.

Pitchfork: Any new materials on the horizon?

BC: Ki/oon released our split CD with Guitar Wolf in Japan. We have two new songs on it, "Powwowwee" and "Planet of the Lightning Bolts", one being a straight rocker and the second a freeform meander. Both were recorded in hi-fi glory on my cassette 4-track machine. I would probably have the CD in my hand at this point if we had actually gotten into Japan to play the release party, but we didn't due to not having work visas. I have a big book of comics called Ninja. Yeah, Ninja is a dumb title but it's something I started when I was 11, so blame him, the 11-year-old.

Pitchfork: Can you tell me more about Ninja?

BC: Ninja is a monster! It's been my comic strip output for the last four or so years. I drew comics about this violent ninja when I was 11 or 12, or something. 13 episodes. A few years ago I started Ninja again, 18 years later. Now I am at about episode 75. Each episode is a very dense 11x17 pages-- some stretch a few pages.

It's a comic about a city currently called Grain; no, it changed to Groin, because the evil Albus Groin bought the water supply and demanded that his name be the town's moniker. But I think the Master of the Dead is about to take it over and change it to "Grave". That may have to wait till the next book. The last few episodes are the sex scene and the introduction of the one non-partisan superhero group, featuring such heroes as the Nighty Knight, FarMeridian, and Defender/Destroyer of the Earth. They come to rescue the captured citizen of the Organo city being held captive by Groins' war council. Then there's also the grand finale: The town deadbeats discover a tunnel under their friend's house. He's away but they're hanging out in his house and the tunnel leads under a mysterious black cube known as the void. We come up inside and see what's been in there the whole time, which connects with the return of the Ninja, who really hasn't been seen since the very first pages, except for a visit in episode 50. Sound like total bullshit? Sort of. It actually sometimes sounds better than it looks, or at least than it reads. People have a hard time reading my comics. I think I leave things out, but I feel you should. I love digestible art, but I make what I think is organic and realistic, and therefore it's incomplete and completely tangent oriented. I try to keep with what I am thinking about that day-- which changes too fast.

UPDATE: After Brian and I spoke, he completed Black Pus 3: Metamorpus, which didn't go according to his above mentioned plan (e.g. there are some anti-gentrification/developer and etc lyrics, but no "huge lyric sheet"). Cool guy that he is, Mr. Chippendale gave me this description of what happened:

BC: The first two ideas I had for Black Pus 3 were: A) A really long sort of casual free form jam that ended up on track 6....I think 6. The long sometimes annoying one ["Exerschism"], and B) This lyric based recording with some freeform words I wrote down, but that recording just didn't come out so interesting. Then I lost the lyric sheet in my pile of papers, so I didn't rerecord it.

The premise for this set of recordings was vocal and drums primarily, so I figured it would be more lyric oriented, but in the end, when I had a pile to chose from, only a few lyric ones made the cut. But there are a few lyrics on there. Somewhat embarrassing. I still have a hard time making words and music hold the same amount of weight. It's why I play music...but i love to sing. But really, are vocalists really believing that same word every time they sing it? Song after song? Seems strange. I think alot of vocalists believe in the sound, or the way they sing it-- it's interchangable. Words, for me, don't have as much contextual leeway as sound. Anyway, vocal noise won the day again.