Quarantine Interviews

// LIGHTNING BOLT // BLACK PUS // SCRITCHY DRAWINGS // DRUM DESTRUCTION

Supra grateful (™ by Solilians) to Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale (aka Chirpendale aka Black Pus) for carving out time to conduct an interview with yours truly! Grab a digital copy of Live in Minecraft, BP’s latest, if you haven’t already.

Even more interviews in our vaults – think Thor Harris (Thor & Friends, ex-Swans/Xiu Xiu), Martin Atkins (Pigface, Ex-Killing Joke/Public Image Limited), Zach Hill (Hella / Death Grips) and many others!

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Lets start with the title of the new album…it says “live”, but its a live set played for a virtual benefit (“Galactic Federation’s Benefit in Minecraft for The Union of Music Workers and Allies”), which I find very interesting. Does the title indicates burning desire to get back to live gigs and what was the said benefit/how did you came to participate in it?

I think the live title was kind of a surrender to “pandemic live”, like, we’re living in a matrix world now, or we were, for a time. Live in a chamber inside your brain .

B. Dolan, who is in LA, but used to be in Providence reached out , it was all him . He set it up , I’m not sure if the musician Union reached out to him or which way it went, but it went, and I went along

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It does feel like living inside Matrix – that’s a good way to put it…Does music helps you to cope with that feeling – either listening or playing (or both)?

Yah both for sure . Playing helps immensely , I play just as much to keep my sanity as to pursue the craft. Drummings physicality , the act of doing it, helps keep me calmer and more focused through the day. One persons gym is another persons kick drum…. ???… !!!! ….

And listening too of course. Music is inter-dimensional , it can release you from your prison

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Absolutely. Any records you listened to more often than others lately (or specific artists, for that matter)?

Black Pus Live in Minecraft over and over and over hahahaha

This week it’s been a lot of Black Sabbath w Ozzy

Is that how the title Ozzy Fugazi came to be?

Haha yah, plus I’m singing waiting room lyrics on that song , I am a patient boy I wait I wait I wait . Currently checking out the Big Brave Body collab

Robyn. Robyn is , or was, so good

I think I jammed Body Talk every day for two or three weeks at some pandemic point

Oh shit I can only hear one song on his big brave body collab. Moved on to the latest Big Brave

I think when you’re in a weird home isolation you have to branch out to find Sonic fulfillment . So yeah reaching out to other musics. You realize you miss all the terrible music you hear on the periphery so you start to incorporate it into the playlist

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I found that dance music, indeed, improves a mood during this pandemic. This morning our associate Phirnis posted a video by Falco from 1996 – this happy hardcore tune and its a riot.

I don’t understand the word of what he’s saying, but it works – things I don’t usually listen to, but somehow they work better than expected given what’s happening around me…

Anyway, the lyrics – wanted to ask about those! As far as I know Lightning Bolt never had any – or at least never published the official lyrics and this album includes lyrics to two songs. So how important are they? Are they more of a texture or a thing in itself?

Actually the last LB had a shit ton of lyrics . They’re all printed inside the packaging , it’s like two sides of the record sleeve worth. There’s always some songs with lyrics , since the beginning. But that said, yeah lyrics are the least important . It’s about the feeling , it’s about being lost in the Sonic aspects of it . Words are a life raft in our noise tsunami and i don’t always want to give you a life raft.

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Last, but not least…

Bricolage – that’s the word @PeteMurphyMusic mentioned to me recently. That’d be the idea of creating music with raw materials at hand. 

I’m a little less bricolage and more bric a brac . I wish that meant something profound but it doesn’t , as they’re actually kind of the same . My objects aren’t very miscellaneous in that I use a very limited set of instruments; drums, oscillator, voice. But I do try to push those limited things to make miscellaneous sounds so damn maybe I can align with Pete