Free music. Free noise. Passionatelly run for over a decade by one man, Crank Sturgeon joyfully has abused the world with a host of releases of all types and formats, and equally numerous live appearances. A weird conglomerate of serious music research, noise pranks, audio junks, and the hell knows what else! Great for my ears! Here's Matt himself, in the longest, and the most in-depth interview (hurrey!!!), I've managed to do ever...

Matt, the better I know Crank Sturgeon's music, the more convinced I am that a "noise group" label is not enough to describe your music...

No it isn't, and it's certainly not up to encompassing everything else that I do under the CS list of activities. With just my recordings, it only fills in about half the picture. I'm puzzled by a lot of reviewers who choose to point out that it's not "as harsh as" their expectations or hearts would desire. I know that it's not harsh, of course it's not! My aims aren't always to be making NOISE noise or industrial-whatever. It's quite funny to be lumped in with it all the time, my guess being that there's really no other terminology out there ready to take over, plus old history dies hard: I had my start in noise, things over time have changed but the association is still there. Honestly? I don't mind the noise label. I still love to make the stuff, don't get me wrong, but it's a component. It's a gateway to another method of approaching sound that, if you examine closely a number of other "noise" artists' careers, you may find that a lot of them also have their wild deviations from the theme. Just look at the RRRecords catalog, for example. Or Bananafish. Both are these amazing representations of where one can find this specific type of music, but also its countless variations on the theme. That's exactly where I am... in the deviant circle. Noise as a whole, but also extra-curricular, I guess you might say. I don't have any definition for what I do... it gets tossed into the same old genre regardless of any of my own attempts to do something else, or something different with it. But I don't mind this either. The only thing that's starting to bother me about the noise-term is the negative connotation with the word itself. It's a little bit stifling or scares off a certain percentage of people, when in fact, it's still one of the most interesting places as far as adventurous sounds and modes of presentation go. It's no longer a bunch of pale angry white guys wearing black, ignoring one another and making factory noises. There is this quotient, but it's also where a lot of the cultural toss-outs go... essentially carrying on the torch of art experimentation without all the flotsam and pretentiousness of defining it as a movement or being "avant garde". A few years back I remember the mission statement for a festival I was playing in, it was pretty uplifting, and cleared out a lot of this name-game baggage by calling this simply, "wild music"... referring to a sense of exploratory sound in not just experimental music, but in everything: performance art, jazz, rock, electronica, ambient, academia, whatever... all of it lumped together, which I thought was great. I'd like to think we're done declaring this small-minded scene or genre autonomy, and can just get on with things.

Are there any stylistic frontiers you haven't crossed yet?

Absolutely. Recently, strange little oddities are opening up, becoming more enticing to give a go at. Things I would NEVER have touched a few years back, for fear of embarrassing or alienating myself... and now I'm really delving into these worlds and seeing what will turn up. For example, I've always used voice to some capacity, but worried it colored things too much. I've been afraid to go too far with it; sometimes I just can't stand the vocal improviser-role... which comes out as bad poetry ruining otherwise perfectly good sound. I know this is being unfair, and what I'm getting at is that I've been hearing more and more of this stuff that is actually quite good... and it's stirring up my own preconceptions, as well as kicking around the realization that I do this too! SO the joke's on me. It's quite funny, how things change, or that which you're opposed to, you end up trying out, out of curiosity. This goes back to the noise label as well. I loved it from the onset as it was an antidote to music, but my first love was with the guitar, so that musicianship eventually comes back into it at some point. But back to the voice stuff. My apprehension with it being exclusive to the roles of either singer, poet, or actor was the main reason for not giving a second chance. So I did it on the side, letting it come out in writing or just as a rant-aspect in performances. Lately, I've braved the waters and have been incorporating the words more, coupling with experiments in onomatopoetic sounds and homemade languages. It's suddenly occurred to me that this is all very primal, what I mean is that, well? Your voice is your first source of sound! It's like being on autopilot, making sounds with the mouth as a replacement for other instruments or appliances. What I like is the pure nature of this, and how it ties to my written/imagined world on paper... a place where it's always existed in drawings and words, and now it can lift off this surface and go from hand scribbles to throat versions. I don't know if this makes any sense... as it's nothing new to give "voice" to things, as this is what we call speech. I think what I'm basically saying is that the line between thought and imagination and creative output, whatever that shape or medium might be, is starting to take on yet another more personalized flavor... I'm becoming more comfortable with just voice, than say, gobs of gear to express what it is that needs to come out. While I'm not going to become a vocal improviser by any stretch (ha ha ha, we'll see!), the fun is also in combining this with electronics or recording or themes, and seeing what comes out. I think the style of things will always have that rambunctious or mischievous quality; mixing it up, combining, collaging... as that's who I am as a person. I cannot sit still and be satisfied with just one mode of expression. The best part of all of this is letting go of one's ideas of how things should "be". Trashing one's notions of taste or style and taking a chance with something you've declared as off-limits. It's that one step beyond rebelling against the pre-existing order. Instead of becoming the alternative, which essentially becomes the new order (and just as stifling), you take apart both, ask yourself what you're rebelling against, and THAT ANSWER serves as your guide to the next phase or concept of reality.

I'm under impression that an unrestrained approach to genre crossing mixed with fun or self-effacing humour is typical of many American combos. In Europe people tend to stick to the course they've taken and any changes they make have the nature of an evolution than revolution.

Very true. Americans I know (including myself) have a good deal of guilt, so it would seem that self-effacing humor is our method of apology. I don't feel I have to point out what we're dealing with, as it's obvious by what we export as pop culture and most certainly political ideology. The problems are so vast, it feels so out of control here, that you have to try and dice it up to make sense of it, to control it somehow, and humor is one method, genre mixing is another. Juxtaposing ideas on top of seemingly unrelated ideas is a way of expressing the jarring discontinuity and lack of harmony prevalent here. It's become part of the language to mince the metaphors and proceed ahead with giddy recklessness, and at the same time, this a way of expanding our minds to push beyond (and hopefully solve) all the problems, all the crap we're surrounded by. The culture itself is very base, very crass, and operates from an almost Roman form of lowest common denominator and entertainment (the idea of the bread & circus)... but the sophistication required to understand it all, has become a natural, albeit skewed, manner of approach. The culture has accelerated, and so we have to get up to speed. Perhaps we're spiraling out of control, but it's interesting to see what sort of art comes from this. Some of it is flailing helplessly, while other forms make you unsure you're witnessing it... as one has to become slyer than the culture, more clever. A question I've been asked is whether or not, within all of this if beauty is still a possibility. Isn't that what artists and musicians do? Create an ideal? I guess that's why I initially rejected art-museum art/high art and music. Lack of talent, sure, that was a factor, but also its inability to transcend time and act like an actual in-front-of-you person, with all the foibles and smells and shakey caffeine habit. I know what beauty is, but I don't want to try and create it. I want to create that ticking little sound inside me and use it as a means to propel me as a person in ways I wouldn't ordinarily see as someone doing, but in the same breath, being human. Therefore normal. But normalcy isn't to be confused with ordinary. Humans are extremely interesting things, when they let their guards and inhibitions go, or when they struggle to, or something like that. Music and art are still these pedestal ideals for me personally. Projecting an idea of something impossible or something so emotionally profound, inexplicable, but you understand it without needing the words: that type of communication and possibility represents the very best in human potential to me. It might not feed you, but it can move you. I think in the end, a lot of the fuck-all attitude we have to our work, the revolution vs evolution (as you put it), is just simply (and sometimes unfortunately) our way of doing things. Immediate gratification is a symptom of our times and often doesn't solve a dime. The process of doing this repeatedly either leaves you in a dustbowl situation with very little fertile ground to manage, or by undergoing and enduring the radical steps, the subtle things become slowly realized. At least that's how I've come to understand this in myself: big steps and jolts to the system, but in the end you really want to be just happily clucking along, peacefully. It's tough when impatience is part of the culture, but I'm definitely starting to appreciate the nuances in things. I think that's what they call getting older?

Do you still remember that moment when your approach to music changed from a purely emotional one (music as an outlet for aggression) into a more intellectual one?

I don't think it was always all that aggressive for me, when I was starting this. If I go way back to my teen years, when I was playing guitar and in love with punk & hardcore... sure, that was about the outlet. But it was also about being a teenager, who had this notion that through aggressive music, one could also combine it with high ideals, utopian dreams, a hope to build a better world. Not necessarily intellectual, but certainly more than the fluff that existed with mainstream culture. Or mainstream rock, which back then, you had your Poison, Cinderella, all that crap, and not much else.

Art school was definitely my transition into more intellectual approaches. I think what school did was provide a platform for experimentation in anything, including sound. I ended up attending an art college with a really interesting, out-there program, the Studio for Interrelated Media (also known as, S.I.M.). SIM's origins went back to the late sixties, combining all the freak components and real pioneering spirit in non-plastic arts: such as installation, performance art, Happenings, conceptual & minimalist stuff, electronic music, video, as well as rudimentary creative robotics, time-based art, landart, essentially anything beyond the wall hanging art object... which was also acceptable, of course. At any rate, I was quite drawn to this department as it meant I didn't have to sit at a table and be an illustrator, or suffocate with turpentine as a painter. The SIM students always seemed to be causing a disturbance, some absurd parade during an all-school exhibit, just fucking everything up and upsetting the quotidian balance. It really tingled those anarchist sensibilities in punk, in fact it out-punked punk. In moving to the "big city", the whole hardcore scene was all about looking the part or drinking the part... not about being your freaky self. And I'm not into this testosterone male thing either, which this scene represented in spades (shaving your head and being an asshole). SO? SIM was the haven. Once it started to really dig in under the skin, when I realized the challenge to be there was to CREATE something, that spirit of adventure and exploring the new possibilities was an epiphany. There was no reason to turn back.

More history. As a kid, before music entered the picture, I was always drawing and tape recording imaginary worlds to inhabit through these characters I'd invented. When I started doing music, this world became a little estranged. It didn't have the immediacy of music's punch. I was also involved in theatre as a teenager, and here I found it was an amazing thing to be able to get up in front of people (something I hated doing in class), and taking on another role... embodying that role, and finding an energy in the live event. So in artschool, these three potent sources, the invented worlds, the theatric, and the loud sound, COMBINED for me, essentially marrying into this one form. The culmination of this was giving it a name (and so you have) the invention of Crank Sturgeon. Things and elements such as the people I was working with and doing shows together, or meeting artists in residence, having critiques... there was such a new world being opened up. Whether it was mailart and the cassette underground, discovering Dada and Futurism, or listening to John Cage, Glenn Branca, or RRRecords for the first time... all these things contributed to this sense of both the exotic and the possible. I started making my non-musical forays early into this process. Readapting the guitar... preparing it like Cage or Fred Frith would. Writing my version of bruitist or futurist poetry. Carrying around a camcorder to grab visual textures that I'd remix at high speeds with a scraping soundtrack. Suddenly it dawned on me that I should send these to people in the mail... make tapes that sound as though something is broken. My very first tape encompassed all of this in a giddy swirl, documenting one particularly beautiful/awful hot sweating summer that seemed to want to give birth to dirty rusted metal fish-dinosaurs from the sidewalk. I called the recording, "Crank Ciudad", and didn't know what to sign it. Surely I couldn't use my actual name? And that's when the game began to play out... and I called myself "Crank Sturgeon", partly in ode to those hallucinated beasts, and also as a little joke for myself, a pinch of trickery to indicate that there was an operation going on there that wasn't specific to a place or time, a reference point or dead end. It was that step, when instead of looking outside of oneself for guidance to shape one's opinion, it became an internal quest to take up the reigns and try and harness this thing I'd unveiled. I don't mean to sound lofty, but it was a big deal for me to suddenly not feel an obligation to anything, as well as knowing exactly what to call it... it was spun from the imagination, not from someone else's doing. No longer was there a need to reference punk anymore (or later, art school or noise for that matter) instead it was its own thing, the culmination of separate sources, yes, but the spirits of these elements was only the catalyst which opened the floodgates. The result was its own pure babbling baby-speak... a new language, shape, and world for me to try and explain while building it. Half the fun was not knowing how to explain this to anyone, it wasn't "art" per se...

What stimulates you to make music after ten years?

I think the same motives are there, however just a little bit more refined. Life itself inspires creativity in ways that are unrealized until you're in the thick of it. And I'm definitely in what you might call "the thick of it". For instance, one cannot be stimulated by doing nothing. That's the key for me. Even when it's downtime and I'm not doing shows or recordings, I'm still busy working these ideas out or dwelling on problems that exist in my approach. Just keeping at it so as not to be watching too much tv or frittering my time away. I'm lucky to have places to play and people I can throw ideas at, whether these ideas work or not, it's a crucial and valuable exchange to have the freedom to experiment. The experience gained from this only initiates further methods or inquiries to be revealed. In certain periods of working on this, it feels as though it inspires itself, as if it were a lifeforce unto its own, somehow self perpetuating. But I realize that this is only a product of activity... of course it becomes its own organism sometimes. This might sound a little bit idealistic, but this is what I use for my version of self-enlightenment. CS is this method I can use to get out of my own shell, to break my own rules and inhibitions, and what the hell, it's also a good way to engage other people in other places. Touring and the prospect of meeting new people becomes a driving factor, because this alters one's perceptions. Besides, it's a lot more interesting than reading about places, it's a lot more inspiring than having an office job or trying to maintain this idea of the "American Dream". It's not hard to find motivation after ten years... ten years simply happen. The days fly by. Occasional panic sets in when I'm asked about the twenty year mark passing with little or no financial success, but that's just AMERICA talking. Wondering what income bracket you're in (or your social standing), instead of caring about the quality of your day or the air you breath. It's been an interesting ten years in that over this time I've gone from art student to this variation of practitioner/multimedia artist, so there's a tangible shift from nothing to something. Making the sounds, objects, and personifying them is what I do. Sometimes this is so easy and familiar it's like breathing, and yet (other days) it can also be incredibly hard to get it out correctly, the way I want it. The drive to find new ways or techniques is part of the daily digestion. Also learning how to harness and release the creative energy... some days there's this unstoppable flow coming out of the mouth, the head, the hands, that I'm always trying to capture... to record, or learn how to create a way that will allow me to access it at will so I can bring it to a live show or a recording session. There's a momentum in creativity that sometimes isn't always willing to come out when you want it. Things go in waves of creative bursts and ebbs, and I have noticed my energy has changed over time. It can be difficult to sit down and just make stuff out of thin air. It's almost like I need to "practise" as part of a daily ritual or constantly work on something, ANYTHING, to prove to myself I've done more than just eat, sleep, and work. I think this goes back to the earlier statement about being stimulated by pure activity. One process leads to another process. I find I have to be thinking about and making this stuff all the time, even if nothing grandiose is happening, even if it's silly little one-liners in my journal or just some miniscule recordings. While each one is made, done, and may lead nowhere, the idea of getting used to the process, getting thrilled by it, being captivated by these little activities throughout the day is par for the course of the creation of larger "whole" pieces or recordings, the outcomes and final products. These chunks of effort serve as platforms to bounce from, but can only be so if I'm being consistent. And consistency is always an endangered species. After ten years, sometimes it seems as though I've only just started to understand these processes and the idea that I'm trying to address. It's as if it requires ten thousand steps just to get to the point where one can actually justify talking about it.

What do you think of a certain method of listening to noise at an extremely low, almost inaudible, volume level? Noise loses its qualities and becomes a kind of ambient music and vice versa ? ambient, if listened to at extremely high volume level acquires some qualities of noise music. Is such a manipulation on the part of the listener acceptable?

Of course, absolutely! I always listen to noise stuff at a low volume. Manipulation has to be part of the experience on the behalf of the listener. I listen to a friend's radio sound collage program on a tiny mono-radio, partly because that's the only radio that receives his show, but also, it's very pleasing to hear it as an ambient part-of-the-environment entity. It becomes like a fixture within all the other sounds that exist in the house... the heater, the cars going by, the birds or wind outside. I'm not a sound purist by any means, and especially with noise, it's okay for it to blend with the world around it, because essentially that's what it is, except that it's encapsulated and made by human hands. I also listen to ambient stuff at high volume, funny how you've picked up on my listening habits! It can really fill a room and shake the foundations or like you said, take on the quality of noise, becoming abstract and monstrous. Sort of like hearing the cicada here in the northeast in the summertime, and then going down south and listening to them, where they are bigger and ten times louder, it's kind of frightening! But it's all part of understanding it... what a good thing to be able to control the volume so as to achieve a number of different responses from just one thing. You wouldn't have as similar an experience with most other forms of music. But it's also inappropriate to draw comparisons, so I'll stop there.

I must admit that most of your recordings I own have been dubbed from the original releases. Do you feel robbed in any way because of that? What do you think about a dramatically increasing exchange of music via cd-rs, downloading it off the Internet, etc. ... what will that bring?

No, I don't feel robbed, I'm just glad you found it. I'm not bothered at all by the exchange of information by downloading or making CD-r's, because I'm from the culture that did this with audio cassettes. Most of my teenage music collection, i.e., contact with counterculture and underground stuff was through dubs upon dubs of tapes, a vital thing for survival in the whitebread world of the 1980's. But I don't think I'm the one to be talking about the culture of downloading and getting stuff for free because my ideas on these things are skewed. I do think it's pretty laughable when Garth Brooks or Metallica get up in arms about Napster or used-CD stores selling their stuff or just giving it away. Like they're not making enough money from their stadium shows? Infiltrating the culture with a free means and access to information has more good than bad to it. But for me, would I make that 5 dollars or euros off of that potential CD-r that was copied instead of sold? This is the scale at which I'm operating... I don't make enough money from the recordings for it to make an impact, and even if I did, I know, as a person who listens to music, owning the actual recording (on vinyl or limited edition homemade release) is different than owning a copy. I like both, but prefer the original. There's nothing better than LP art, or a spiraling out-of-control booklet that comes with a CD.

As to what free access to music will bring? They say that it's officially undercutting the music industry, that the industry is suffering losses. I don't know if it will actually level the playing field for musicians. The Internet opens you up to a lot of different forms of music, much MUCH more than what the industry is putting forth. So to their own fault, it's opened our eyes and ears and stimulated our desire to know more, vs, accepting the given parameters of the usual shit. The music industry has a lot of catching up to do. An interesting footnote is that they said cassettes were going to undermine the sales of records and CD's in the 1980's, and so the industry put out cassettes, put cassette decks in our cars, and made cassette-dubbing technology incredibly crappy, so as to be noticeably inferior. The industry simply has to catch up with the digital age, and they will, like everything else, find a way of making money off the latest technology. In the end, they're going to do whatever the hell they can to get people to buy their pulp.

But when music is available for free, is this theft? In some manner, yes. Does the artist lose money from potential sales? Yes. But again, the ones complaining are already soaking in money, so it's difficult to be too sympathetic. It's a Robin Hood principle for me... I don't want the poor artists to lose money on sales, and could really give a shit if the rich ones did. Like anybody doing this, I'd rather be making money off of Crank Sturgeon than a day job, so it's a bit mixed up. So I contradict myself... and reserve the right to cast judgment on the wealthy! Ha ha! But ask yourself, doesn't the internet also give you access to other things you wouldn't normally receive through the pre-existing media? Yes it does. And is this a bad thing? Not at all. Now more than ever, we need to be worldly, understand things that do not normally occur in our daily lives, see how other people live, listen to their thoughts, cultural ideas, music, food, art... as all of this enriches our own lives, giving more depth and meaning, and in the end, an education. It's a hard call, to justify theft in this manner, but I feel I have to.

Who, apart from you, is behind Crank Sturgeon? Is that a standing or a fluctuant line-up?

While nowadays it remains a solo project, I'd be negligent in my duties if I didn't divulge the past partnerships. My first (and still ongoing) comrade-in-arms is an old art school friend who invented the role of "Clog the Cardboard Robot". Clog essentially started out as the one responsible for any percussive qualities; banging on a birdcage, washing machine apparatus, bass drum... as well as an ingenious flair for knocking everything over in an overly zealous death sequence. As the show got more involved, Clog became the proponent for issuing leaflets and manifestos during our shows, an old Dada tease. Days before the show, the two of us would scheme and blabber on endlessly in our homemade dialects, and with Clog's photoshop mastery, put out these marvelous texts and rants specific to each performance. More than anything, he helped intellectualize this to a place that made it okay for us to always tap into that stream of conscious or kindred spirit madness we all possessed, as well as giving it the visual pun. It was a really pairing up of minds, for we were able to push this past the idea of it being a noise-band and turn it into this secret pantheon with ever-changing costumes. We raised the level of expectation with the arrival of Gaylord Pasternak, who starred as the perennial whipping boy/idiot savant. Gaylord's strengths were in his ability to produce more mayhem than Clog, or be a little more daring when it came to acting out certain scripts he was given, or what drugs he was apparently taking. For a three or four year period, the three of us united as a joint effort called "Anti-Friend Hut", staging our shows on the sidewalk in front of some friends' gallery, conducting many dramas and science experiments for the unsuspecting public... it was really nice to do this outside where the circumstances are beyond your control, and it transformed our mission, suddenly turning this rudimentary circus into some epic adventure. Usually it was so over-the-top that none of us had a definition for it. It would always start as something specific, say, a show about losing weight... that somehow, through the props and bungling and eventual audience participation, would devolve into a snowball fight, holding up traffic. Just completely crazy, never intentionally geared towards creating chaos, but nevertheless something would always happen or get broken or inadvertently mixed up. I'm sure other groups of people making music or performances have this similar sense of it being "larger" than the sum of the parts. And this goes the same for us... each one of us had a part to lend, that once absent, was dearly missed. Gaylord's role was so unexpected, we didn't know if he was going to injure us, injure the audience, or himself. One show we were playing out in front of this old porn theatre, re-enacting our own version of Pearl Harbor Day, wearing little boats, ranting and banging away. Gaylord appears on the roof of the theatre, with some old costumes that he's supposed to lower down and be the "puppet master" of sorts. Little do we know, he's snagged a fire extinguisher, has been gulping volumes of whiskey, and suddenly there's this cloud of extinguisher contents... this orange stuff descending on us and the crowd, and when the canister is empty, Gaylord tosses it into the audience... I mean this is a lethal weapon from a two story building! Fortunately it bounces on the sidewalk, and only manages to graze my friend with the video camera (it's a hilarious video, by the way!). And certainly not an isolated incident with Gaylord. Perhaps it's critical to point out that in his "other life", he's a pretty upstanding citizen, working in an insurance company and paying a mortgage...

The photos of your live performances are quite intriguing. Do you do onstage anything else apart from making sounds?

I do more than just record and make sound. Drawing, writing, building art-pieces, are all aspects of my work that in some manner or another, address a visual element for the live performance. The most obvious connection is in the costumes and the masks. These emphasize the shape or the "misshaping" of this bumbling man-fish anthropomorphic character that is Crank Sturgeon. But even here, it's not so simple. I don't simply jump into this vaguely fishlike costume and twirl some electronics. That would be too easy! I prefer the convolution of themes and usually end up placing something of a narrative into this as a pretext, as something I can unify as a grounding for the show. The Anti-Friend Hut shows helped gel this pattern, and I don't really make too much of a distinction here (differentiating between the two), as the energy and drama of the two projects is very similar. The live show embodies what I mentioned about art school, the realization that three very divergent elements could all come together: the world I create on paper, the role playing theatrical element, and the loud sound. I try and personify all of these... for instance, I guess I should say that I don't consider it acting out a role. I prefer to think of it as a scenario with a lot of tricks up the sleeve, and it is for the most part, as each show is a live situation that one faces risks and to some degree, danger or failure. Making it visual has a transformative quality that can allow me to transcend these fears, and yet this also creates more problems. But the thing is, at its core, there's something very unpredictable about the live show. I like the idea that adding ingredients can make it go to a place I wouldn't expect. You cannot determine all the elements. Often the mood or the audience or unknown circumstances can place a spell on the evening that one would never be able to predict. And so you have to take this into account, implement it, but not depend on it. Often it's just funny or absurd enough trying to fight through this costume to do a show... the mask makes you sweat harder, you can't hear properly, or it's scraping against your scalp causing you to bleed a little... throw in another facet to this, and it's a potential cacophony awaiting. But this is the point, by inviting these other agents in, it can be even MORE visual, even MORE reckless, and really get into some strange territory. Is it deliberate surrealism? Perhaps, but not as an intentional act of "out-weirding" the previous show or what have you. It's about getting to the other side, what steps will take you there, and how to unify the sound with the visual with the performance. It can be as basic as an amplified helmet, and doing a show around this... or it can be a rant: incorporating a magic show, a broken violin with a guitar pick-up, a sad story about one's father, snorting ground pepper, and seeing what results... how does this all relate? Remember, in addition to this there's a costume hindering one's ability to see, an argument with oneself coming out of a tape player (which is also offering advice and directions), and through all of this babbling, the man-fish tries to make sense of it all. It's a scenario that's usually pretty funny, though what I find hilarious is not the external absurdity, but the fact that I'm doing this. This is by no means a joke, but something that I find exhilarating, a stirred-up emotional context that's digging at the self to come up with answers in the mode of a live presentation. There's a real joy to making this stuff up, making it happen. From the start... pulling ideas from the drawings and making the costume, finding a combination of sound ingredients that work very well with motion (amplified cans, tins, tape measures, etc) as well as occupy a good range of sound... and then justify the action of the overall thing or theme: why is he using this sound with this story that he's rambling on about? Maybe it doesn't work well together, but then again the juxtaposition of ingredients is what takes it to another level. Also, the noise-aspect still excites the hell out of me. This in itself is an anchor, because it's just something I love to experience... whether it's finding new ways of blasting this out, delving into the ongoing issues of simplifying and/or maximizing the sound, inventing that perfect new technique... it binds the show together in so many ways. It also defines the show... for some reason the sound comes across to me as a force of nature to be reckoned with. Like the visual distortion of a tall otherworldly helmet or costume, coupled with this procedure or narrative being conducted before you, there's this volume-quotient. It's still frightening, but in a way that a thunderstorm is... it tickles the membrane for some people, making them want to get out in the middle of the maelstrom. It too, is a variable for transcendence. All the elements act as binding agents in their own way, when one drops off hopefully another will help round out the picture.

So that's the ideology behind all of it, then there's the actual "what happens". I started incorporating the costumes fairly early on... for a while it was just costumed-noise making. I think the ideas were slow to brave the rapids in the sense that I was slightly self conscious about coming off as not-serious. So I kept it at a minimum, just doing this creature from the depths who'd appear, make a ruckus, and then be done. Nothing too performance-arty, just sort of weird. Needless to say, this didn't last, as I alluded to in Anti-Friend Hut's tale, the shape began to morph into other activities... soon enough the man fish was speaking and yelling and becoming his own biblical Charlton Heston rip-off (lots of huge gestures and dire over-acting), while also letting it break down, or when the show would inadvertently get unplugged from the amplifier, allowing these sequences of random chaos to play a part of the show. I started engaging the audience too, forming the show around either addressing them directly, or including participatory ideas... letting them in on it and interact a bit, so that it wasn't just this guy in a costume doing it alone, it was also up to them if they wanted to be engaged. This worked pretty well too, whether it was a melee of flying boxes or plastic cowboys and Indians, free gift giveaways (which was a great way of getting my recordings out!), making the audience sing... surprisingly this response was pretty good. I think when the barrier starts to slip, when the audience and performer lines are blurred and there's a lot of high energy/low inhibition ratio involved, the show takes a brilliant turn. Again it's that expectation level being raised. Nobody expected certain things to happen, such as Clog to be operating a lawn mower, chopping apart fruit... nobody expected fire extinguishers, nudity, giant inflated dirigibles filling up the space... if anything the show has catapulted into an idea of something celebratory, rather than low energy or being subdued. There are simply so many ways of approaching the same theme differently. I figure if I'm going to go on a stage and do this, I should push all the buttons in challenging my own expectations. Plus it's pure play and nervous energy. I think in some sense there's a definitive sort of noisey warble throughout all of this action and sound... this frenetic trill and tremble that encapsulates impatience, anxiety, joy, being a circus-barker, and making fun of everything including oneself. I'd never associate the words "dark" or anything typified with the more industrial noise-jargon, just because I'm way too much of a gibbering fool (without an off-switch) when it comes to presentations and performances. It's so much more than a performance of sound, it's a potential situation... it's an opportunity to slice and dice up seemingly unrelated things; it's an avenue for anything-goes.

Among the numerous releases of yours, are there any that are more important than other? How do you choose the sessions to be released on reputable labels like RRRecords and those to be put out on an obscure tape label?

I think my approach as of recent has been to break it down into categories. I will work harder on pieces for reputable labels, giving these recordings cohesion, thematic quality, what have you. Whereas more obscure labels will tend to get recordings that were done on the fly, or less involved, or a little more mixed up. That's not to say that these things aren't as thought out or by any means, bad. In fact, I will often like these recordings more because they're a lot more experimental and earmark the progress of processes... that is to say, they take risks that may not have occurred by hours of deliberation, and they chart where I've been a little bit more. I'm grateful that anyone would consider putting this stuff out at all, and so in either case, the label is going to receive something I do (at least at the time) care about. However, over time, I would say that some recordings are more important than others, but for reasons I cannot quite understand myself. Sometimes these things do not stand up to the test of time, or I look back at them as being testing ground for the recordings that followed. There's also the occasional upset (on my part and the label's), that someone isn't entirely satisfied with the end result. Or the whole is a flop, by whatever circumstances. Of course these things also happen, and I can't be too picky or judgmental, or worried about the next release. It's all a big learning curve. I like the idea that someone can chart the progress or experience the changes of an artist through a series of releases over the years. In this case they all become points along a map of a strange journey.

Could you describe in detail all the releases by Crank Sturgeon that have appeared this year?

2003 was a pretty busy year... between touring and releases, there were more recordings this year than many past years combined. It's basically too difficult going into each one at any length, as I not only lack the memory capacity, but on some of them, I don't want to ruin the surprise. So I'll give a few blurbs for each, and try to be kind. The year started out with I think, Gertrude Tapes' "Fabled Winds of Family Days" split cassette. I haven't heard the other side, nor could I tell you anything about whom I'm sharing this release with, as I still haven't received a copy! I think the other side is a birthday party field recording. My portion, all the same, is in a similar vein, a field recording of this beautiful shallow lake up in the Maine mountains. I was standing mid-waist deep on a hot August day, recording kids and parents splashing around... a great stereo cassette recording too, I might boast. The next release was a split w/ Kadef ten minute cassette on RFTS, a label operated by the Nautilus Deconstruction. This release is lovingly painted, packaged, printed, and comes with a flattened found metal object. I was in the plight of moving when the recording went down... all I had available was a tape deck and a microphone, possibly a drum, and five minutes to convey my secret crush on a certain pop diva. It's one of the year's best. Well, you know. Gameboy Records then released "SOUN" a densely packed compilation on a 7" featuring a thousand, one or two second long blips from every noise artist you've heard of since 1990. It's a brilliant collage... though I've yet to pick out my contribution. Fortunately he sent me two, so I can play both simultaneously. Next up, and one of my favorites is a collaborative CDr & booklet with Truck Van Rental. This was part of Truck's art-zine/sound series with other artists, packaged and presented with his very stylized comix ala hondenkoekjesfabriek episodic quality. Truck hilariously and brutally assaulted a handful of my journal and sketchbook photocopies, shrunk them down in size without losing any detail, while I scrubbed away at his soundtrack. About three or four generations of mutual sound scrubbing later, the result is this dire gypsy drone with biblical scribble testimonial. It's wonderful, and more than I ever could've hoped for in a collaboration. "The Portable Hake Atavist" 3" CDr on Mang Disc followed. This was the equivalent of an audio-diary. I try and keep a consistent 90 minute cassette "journal" going all the time... recording sounds that are interesting to me, and well, here you have this disc, 20 some odd delicious minutes of clicks, pauses, tape edits, and songs. The self released "Imperative Field Decorder (snorkel tube with bottom-feeder microphones installed)" followed this in a similar abrupt feel, and also served as my European tour CD for this year. There's a compilation feel to this recording, as it's in essence, a "best of" CS at that time. I'll be blunt, and say the same about the RRs.R split w/ Ripit, Crank Sturgeon, and Seimers CDr, and my "Hora for a BIG FISH whore" CDr on Rape Art, both also from this year. My contributions are compiled noises (the Rape Art being a bit more crunchy than the RRs.R) that have found good homes. Next on the chopping block is "Upon My Discovery of the Huso Dead Pan Lair" a 12 " LP on RRRecords. Uncle Ron asked me years ago if I'd wanted to give him a record... we dickered around with ideas... 5" records to be released in caviar tins, everything, until we'd exhausted ourselves, and just decided on a good ol' blue vinyl 12". This record too, is a compilation of pieces dating between 2001 and 2002. Though there's a thematic ebb and flow to this one, if not a little bit narrative, I was starting to go into other directions when the bulk of this epic was recorded... a real creative period, following something of a depression during all that September 11 th crap. It's a very personal and potent recording for me. Completely different is "Chamber Music, Mystic Out-Bop Review meets Rev.Crank Sturgeon" CDr on Aria Arts Recordings. One swirly day of mountain snow squalls inspired the music here. And it IS music. And the mountains were very near those where the aforementioned lake recording took place. MOBR is a very talented free improvisational trio: sax, upright bass, and percussion. With a guest seat on this one, yours truly filled in on mangled electric guitar. Hours and hours of tape were diced up quite nicely into colossal blasts for this release. Next that followed was "Promotional Video By..." a self released VHS, all of fifteen minutes, this one is a Sturgeon bumbler's abstraction inquiry. Short and sweet and tells all, but says nothing. Next is/was Tochnit Aleph Punk Series Vol.3, a surprise to receive, as I didn't know I was on it. Actually I think it's called, "Good Looking Communists"... at any rate, it's good ol' brutal brutal brutal noise (remixes), on a 12" EP, and I think there's some Sturgeon in there somewhere, but ah, who cares? Next up was a split w/Susipank CDr called "Live at Akumulator" documenting our show in Domzale, Slovenija from this year. Again the above statement applies (brutal noise, possibly some sturgeon). Nevertheless, it's a good tremble, and if you can imagine the pseudo-shaman fisch kopf costume and audience interaction, all the pieces fit. "The Date Fork Seeps the River" (compilation) 12" LP on Nauscopy Records followed. All really short tracks; as in order to be on the comp, one had to pay by the second. Not a bad deal though, as you got to be on a very fine (and very dada) slab of vinyl. It's one of those treasured pieces of vinyl one hopes to find in a used-junk store but never does. "Mesa-top Soporif (hands down)" CDr on Sonic Alchemy came out next featuring a few lengthy tracks of sound collage from my radio show. Scrotum Records' CDr split w/ Tote Stadt and Crank Sturgeon represents our summer doldrums in only the finest, laziest of ways. Tote gives the beat, while my track is off on some three part tangent, lecturing, yes lecturing, about baby food. This vein is re-emphasized on "E-Z Voiceover Box-Top Living Solutions" a 7" on Humbug. One side is a conversation. The other side is buzzing gift, also very summery feeling. I'm extremely proud of that one making it to vinyl! And last is a self released CDr, again to coincide with a tour, called "Hubris Huso Whoso Antebellum". Featuring again that compilation of stuff vibe, this one wildly roaming over field recordings (from my Europe trip), mouth sounds, sing-alongs, and is specially edited in the manner of my old tape releases... by utilizing the pause button. But being that it's the last recording I'll mention that it's also the best. And it comes with a special performance photo that makes me a target for hate groups.

Have you ever changed your equipment over those years? Do you usecomputers for music?

I've yet to use computers beyond the means to which I'm accustomed. That is to say, crude at best! I never really looked in to computer-recording because it's too fastidious and nitpicky to be dabbling and staring at a screen doing post production for hours. I stare at a computer enough as a word processor; I can't bear the idea of staring at for sound purposes as well. Interestingly enough is this duality going on nowadays, digital vs analog techniques. I guess I'm not opposed to either. I like my old reel recorders as much as my minidisc, and I think in the end, I'll adapt whatever technology that comes along into my work.

Changes come in strange waves, whether it's technology or adaptation or whim. On the equipment side of things, I started the project with just a guitar. I'd been experimenting with "prepared" techniques ala Fred Frith, though in a much more abrasive approach: applying mini-amps to the pickups, adding extra mics or contact mics, looping it back into itself via stomp-boxes and equalizer pedals, really making it sound as combustible as possible. When I started adding or inventing all these peripheral techniques, over time, they became more the instrument than the actual guitar. I'd also been using small mixers in my live set, so this became a leaping board for my sound collage stuff. There was also a turning point when it kind of hit me that the droning, creaking, scraping guitar sounds I was after were also apparent in gamelan, raga, and the field recordings I was making (I live in a pretty busy fishing town complete with the sounds of buoys, horns, creaking wooden piers and masts). So it came full circle you might say... or in a roundabout manner, as all these techniques were already present in the music and sound I was enjoying, I just had to tune in and listen. This kinda dashed my idea of what the guitar was for me, and humbled me a bit, as it had been my instrument of choice for so long and then suddenly I didn't need it! But again, all that other stuff was there, and it occurred to me that it wasn't about an instrument, it was about experimenting and trying to apply sound to an idea. Lately it feels more and more personal to be doing this, like something has been awakened by an internal alarm clock going off. I've really started to dabble in whatever I can get my hands on. The old trombone has added "bellows" made from balloons, the homemade violin has a hinge in its neck, hand-pumped melodicas, deer calls through pick-ups, modified tape decks, homemade switch & glitch boxes, etc etc... anything to test and tickle the whims of potential. What I like and recognize in other instruments (and gadgets such as homemade mics) is their color, a sound and flavor that isn't as wide a range as the electric guitar, and it's fascinating to try and squeeze or squirt out variations that you wouldn't associate with that instrument or tool. I think this is where voice is becoming more involved as well, it's in the narrations I do, and now I'm inserting all the other stuff into it... looping, working in live tape recorders, having it picked up by the electronics.

How do imagine an end to Crank Sturgeon? What would have to happen to stop that adventure of your life?

I cannot imagine an end. I don't think about that type of future, where this or myself are involved and there are quantifiable outcomes. It's all unwritten. This such a personal thing for me, I've tried to imagine other paths I could've taken and I don't think I would've found myself wandering in the same places, having the same experiences. Could I change that? Why would I? What would have to happen to stop this adventure? It's corny, but I feel that this IS the adventure. I've always wanted this (albeit idealized) romantic notion of seeing other places... something that I would do at some point in my life, though I didn't know how. When Crank Sturgeon was birthed, it was clear to me that I could possibly do both... have an adventure and do this creative "thing". It has been just that, and it's shaped things in unforeseen ways. I really don't know what else I would be doing, to be quite honest. I don't care about any of the unanswerables... the fame or the success, because it doesn't operate in those guidelines. This is something I'll never be "too old" to do. It's just a way of answering the world, talking or muttering into a recorder, grabbing a sketch of something, taking a snapshot of a crack in a brick wall, getting the parts and props together for the big man-fish costumes... whether it's a big production or if it's just a method of taking down notes, it's what I do anyway... a process of discovery, and I give it a name. This makes the drab more interesting, or makes the interesting all-out fantastic. Will it change? Certainly. Maybe I'll find a way of using those dreadfully boring laptops in the live set. Maybe the fish-headed celebration will peter out and I'll grow a huge beard and become a lot more docile and focused... maybe I'll end up just doing my collages and not record anymore. The thing is, there's this argument that this is not a practical or pragmatic thing to do with your life. But I'd much rather have an impractical life than one that has followed the rules... I fear I would miss this life I presently inhabit. The nagging logic of equations and outcomes is so deadening... it's not about sharing or creativity or art. Artistic pursuits are very difficult here and not an option in the usual hum-drum voyage of careers. We're so very obsessed in America to live in our own dear little prescribed boxes and preconceived ideas! The fact of the matter is, all of which deter the whims of the imagination, the personal tick that drives each and every one of us. Why put a limit on this? This may sound like complete bullshit, but I don't know how to phrase it otherwise: when you've experienced the profound, how do you go back?

What will the near future bring?

The immediate future is in a bit of a hibernation mode. I'm taking this winter to relax and work on recordings, as well as some long neglected art-pieces and collages. I need to take more time to absorb vs being on the road this time of the year. It's difficult because I find I have to sometimes sit on my hands to not take up every offer to do shows, as not all shows are worth the effort, and it's easy to exhaust oneself or one's area by playing too much. It's at the point where concentrating on tours is a much better approach for me, economically, energy-wise, all that. Plus I prefer playing night after night instead of one or two shows a month. The momentum in doing a tour is so much greater and more exciting, plus it's always a learning experience. So a tour for the spring of 2004 IS in the works, but I'll leave it at that, as I don't want to jinx it.

Otherwise I'm working on a few new releases for Audiobot and Time-Lag Records. There's a three way split happening with Hermit, Noggin, and CS (with a charming duet with I dm Theft Able) that's also in production... as well as a few collaborations with Cock ESP and the Nautilus Deconstruction. A split called "Dixieland" with XV Parowek is coming soon... I'm looking forward to that, as it documents my visit to Warsaw last spring. It's nice to have noises follow your travels! Here at home there's discussion about recording with Cerberus Shoal, as part of their series of split CDs. That should be a heap of fun, as they're hands-down, one of my favorite groups. Plus I've got a new website to build (cranksturgeon.com) and my usual daily ritual... drinking coffee, doing my radioshow, working on sounds, feeding the cats, trying to name the birds in my birdfeeder, and complaining about the government. Busy busy for supposedly hibernating!

www.cranksturgeon.com