Spencer Clark has been operating out on the far edges of audio expression for well over 20 years.
From the mind-scratching tape din of The Skaters alongside James Ferraro back in the hallowed CD-R days to his impossible-to-catalogue mutant new-age zonk-outs under such aliases as Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Black Joker, Fourth World Magazine and Typhonian Highlife, he spins on a unique axis far removed from the often dull and over-intellectualised world of ‘experimental music’.
In this interview assisted via the wonders of electronic-mail communication we discussed such important subjects as fidelity, the ancient astronaut theory and his upcoming multi-media masterpiece, Werewolves in Love…
In a few interviews I’ve read with you, you talk about going to ‘phase four’ as opposed to ‘phase one’. This seems at odds with most people who daren’t go beyond the surface. What are they missing out on by not hitting warp speed and entering phase four?
Phase four is a movie—it’s that humanity’s actual evolution is to spawn a hybrid for their ANT LORDS. Phase one is not a movie. Phase one is when you’re all agreeing on a genre name and then trying to get funding for that name.
There’s maybe a misconception about your music that it’s about creating new worlds, where in my head it feels like it’s exposing ones that are already there… like caves and jungles and other such cool zones. How does an idea first implant itself in your head? Is it visiting places? Or reading about stuff?
My preparation for inventing the reflection of nature’s gift, was long and arduous, and could still be considered arduous, but at this point there has been such a building up of zones, that it’s like Johnny Five reading backwards at 700 miles per hour. In no way do I think it comes easy, but it certainly comes with a ‘free wheeling’ mentality that needs to be cut with an intense isolating of what is really being thought of. If you’re in the zone almost 24/7, what is being thought of should just come to you really. Forcing concepts is an abuse of god.
For sure at all moments I wanna have like 10 discs in the head like ready to drop in when the keyboards get turned on, but I think in these times, like with Kowloon Spider Temples for instance, I was very specifically trying to enter into ancient Kowloon city, as they had torn it down. And my process for doing that was multifaceted of course. Most specifically I made an altar with AR FAUST, and then I used that altar to try and enter into another time through worshipping the material ingredients that were on the altar. The worshiping is the playing of the music.
Sure, my thoughts are wild and seemingly super trippy, yet they are serious, and their seriousness is celebrated by how far I can go into them. That is not necessarily making a new world as much as it is connecting and fleshing out the world we live in.
One of humans greatest gifts is for themselves to fantasise. Fantasising is morphologically projecting the growth of something. Goethe called it Exact Sensorial Fantasy, as he was working to imagine how the plants he was illustrating and studying would grow in his mind. So when a writer of music approaches this music and begins to talk about how artists fantasising are wishing to not be on earth, by not discussing what in their minds are earth topics, they are in themselves showing their own limitations.
Usually when people get ‘inspired by the natural world’ it ends up being some chilled out incense-scented new age snoozer, but your stuff is intense. Is nature more intense and chaotic than we give it credit for?
I think a really cool person that enters into nature in a poetic manner is Lieven Martens, but his way of doing it is by already being himself quite poetic entering into it, so that the result of his music is super contemplative and interacting. He is giving nature its cred by measuring up to its splendour. That is one view of nature, or a way in which nature can resemble humans.
I always want to be things, like I want to be a spider, or a bush—I want to actually become it—and I do not in anyway set myself apart from Lieven or anyone else here, respectfully, but it is my nature to become something else that who I am, and that feels so right because I do not know who I am anyway.
Ever since I read Emmanuel Kant and he spoke of not being able to feel the true nature of things within themselves, I have sworn myself to the challenge, to feel what that is to be within things as they are to themselves. I by no means think I can do that, but sometimes my music might be my chase at that.
Seeing as it’s over 20 years now since the first Skaters release, Dark Rye Bread, I probably better ask something about that. That’s quite a debut. What was the process behind those early releases? What else was going down in the life of Spencer Clark back in 2004? What was the input that created such a wild output?
James and I are very much zoning still now, and as I have said many times before, all my works are celebrations of that moment in time. I feel so close to that time that it is immeasurable in its proximity—it’s like right there. And everytime I see James or talk to him those moments are clearly present, and many other moments, but there is nothing like the reality of our connection before it was discovered.
In its actual stage it was crazy pure, and it was quick in a way, and then that meeting unfolded itself in reality for years after as a sort of performance of an initial immense spark. I feel like it still is, but we have separately filled out so many moments since then, and for me it is in most part a celebration of then.
The funny thing is that most of our music while we were alone recording sounded insanely clear and really out there, cuz it was in part private working in the spheres—but the recordings, as they are really cool in their own way, are pretty out there approximations of our zoning, and live we were amongst others which made our investigations mostly less deep. So in actuality the power of connection, stays within us, in that time that only we sort of experienced, and so it is saved sacredly within us.
A lot of people start out in the lower-fidelity realm, but then go fully pro and ‘get glossy’ once a bit of money starts rolling in… but I feel like your output has kept the depth. Does this kind of music lose something when it gets slick? Is ‘fidelity’ an instrument, if you get what I mean?
It’s really cool to hear everyone’s take on what their fidelity means as an instrument or expression. I’m super into it. I’m also not good at recording or mixing or sound or anything like that. I am super precise about how I want the sounds to be without understanding how people will listen to them. That’s one of my weaknesses, but I think gladly, for myself, I will fight against that and maintain, rather than just upgrade and make it easier. The MINDWARS continue.
And for anyone who has worked with me, I guess I can apologise now, for as fun as it is to hang with me and joke around and talk and think while we are mixing my music, it’s a pain once I start trying to separate myself from my music.
I don’t feel people lost any of their artisticness by recording digitally or whatever, I never think that analogue is better, there are no hierarchies to expression in this life, but I think anytime someone gives in to convenience then you hear it, and feel it, and then you walk away.
Yeah, that ‘giving in to convenience thing’ is a big issue. How do you avoid that? The path of least resistance can be tempting.
When I was in university, I was making photographs, and in my class when they would ask us to do an assignment, I couldn’t think of what to do for them, so I would just do something long and kind of wild. This was usually pointless and pretty stupid in the end, but it also trained me to stick to my process longer and stay within it somehow.
I think that if it’s easy to express yourself that’s great, but I think for having a unique voice, which is my place in the stars, one sometimes needs to stay in their romantic science and become a master at something that doesn’t exist, and to do that, you have to also in some ways invent your own way.
How important are names in this? You’ve got a few different monikers you release stuff under—does that free stuff up? How do you separate ’em? And do the names help you do things that just ‘Spencer Clark’ couldn’t do?
My main thing is doing stuff for the purpose of the expression and nothing else. I don’t want to have all my information of classification regarding my expression based on a template created by other people. I have a process of using my expression of the reflection of the world and universe, and it’s not insanely complex, but it’s definitely there to set my ideas into my own invented categories. It’s not complex, I’m not trying to confuse anyone, but I am definitely not trying to make it easy for Bob Dobalina to sell records.
Who else is currently running at Phase 4? Who else is pushing things forward right now?
I’m into Mondo Riviera from Italy, Keith Fejeran from San Diego, I like Melrose Daydream and that dude Carter from New Mexican Stargazers. I like Sunwarped Tape Reality from Russia. There are probably tons of other things I like that I don’t know about.
I imagine all the best music is hidden, and it will take me a long time to hear about it. I think when you’re making music you’re just in it, you’re a part of the process of culturally communicating, and whichever stuff communicates back is part of your experience. But there is that hidden stuff that I hope I hear… I really want to hear that.
What are your thoughts on the ancient astronaut theory?
It’s just one of many theories. I like more theories, my brain is thirsty, the ancient astronaut theory is I guess one of those that is put forth a lot. That’s like that aliens are us from the future, coming back to the past to save us, or that our world was built by aliens from a long time ago, and our temples were helped to be created by them. Either way, both those theories can be true at the same time of course, and many others as well.
The most important theory for me is to not be stuck on one or want to choose one as the reason why stuff is the way it is. Stuff isn’t the way it is, it is constantly changing, and sticking to old ideas is super boring. I like Phillip K Dick’s view, which was to use your brain to constantly offer up new theories and explain them all. That’s how the creator invented the world—by constantly expressing itself and colouring in further those expressions, then cataloguing them and using them as a collective identity to move forward as a genus. If your brain is allowed to work without barriers it will start to create new theories that are actually part of the process of the growth of the universe.
I personally don’t vibe with popular science, because it always has the authority to change its own mind, but new theories that it has not tested are off limits—but then when they change their mind it’s like all good. Respect to them for making the prisons and all the jail schools, but like please don’t pretend that you’re my godfather.
I like how you’re not afraid to play with modern cultural artifacts… From Avatar to Hellraiser, is it all fair game?
I want to be free to use and to reference whatever I feel helps to further create connections and a process. It’s not conceptual, I’m not trying to be funny or retro, but I am showing that all materials are equal in value. I learned that early on with the Skaters. I think learning that from James was a huge thing for me—it was very natural for him, and my mind was very receptive to that.
To banish the generalised hierarchies in accepted symbolism in the arts is necessary. From the outside and from the inside it’s clear that some music in art is people following each other’s trends… and that’s super OK—I’m definitely fine with that—but it is in some ways finding ways to all agree on the same greeting. It’s like, “This is how we handshake in our club of experimental music.” It’s very clear and discernible that this trend exists, and there is a necessity for it in some ways. but it is quite difficult when 15 years later there is a new age compilation on an obvious label, or constant name dropping of YMO or John Hassel—that shit is just like rusty—crutches for reality. So in my works, I want the references not to be too arcane, or obscure, or not to be too obvious, I want them to be unhindered at what they are.
I don’t mind that others are super slow to come to the party, cuz they at least want to party, but I do want to inspire you to make your own systems, and I want to make my own system more detailed and filled in.
Great answer. What is Werewolves in Love? Music? Film? Novella? All three and more?
Werewolves in Love is my new album. In Werewolves in Love are all the ingredients one would need to make a movie—there is a script, a soundtrack and footage. The album comprises what I have learned living in Athens, Greece. It is about the change of the world, as it has always changed, but from a perspective of things unseen. The package that can be devoured isn’t literally for people to make a movie, but as the three ingredients of the making of movie are separate, they are a latent force waiting to come to fruition, which is entirely what Werewolves in Love is about. The latent forces that are always on earth waiting to be realized that are then used, and how we are possibly unknowingly using them all the time.
What next for the naked ape known as the homosapien? Can you please divulge your ideas of where humanity is heading in the next 50 years? Feel free to go into detail here.
I don’t know anything, everytime I start to pretend to analyse the future, I feel dirty, and I feel that I am doing humans a disservice by not simply respecting our breath as it flows in and out each day. My mind sometimes looks back and feels that individuals were very free even 15 years ago, but then I would have to take into account that I have my own time arc of change and the environment has its own and so on, and so I don’t want to reflect so much on what has happened, rather I want to live in the now, and I want to make now really dank. But many thoughts that wander in my mind from time to time relay that we are being taken over by something.
I think the ‘70s movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers is kinda the best way to express how I feel so I don’t have to say it so much. My mind is flooded often with the feeling that beings are being taken over—are being captured. But sincerely, I think humanity has always dealt with its own affliction as best as it can. I always remember when I was a kid sitting in the dark at 8pm when my parents told me I had to go to bed, just sitting there thinking about how excited I would be when I could get to choose when I would fall asleep, so that I wouldn’t have to be alone in the dark every night over and over again. But maybe being alone in the dark marinated me to be ready for all the crazy shit I would do later? So I would like to take each breath as a lead to the next breath and not criticise the breath from before for helping me breathe now.
I can relate to the wanting to stay up later as a kid thing. Do you think you’ve actualised your dream from back then? What do you think Spencer Clark from back then think of current day Spencer Clark?
I think my dreams from back then actualized me in the future back then, and I am celebrating that everyday I wake up by praying to my keyboards now.
Roman Candle Magazine 