—Daiana Feuer

Stream: Kronos Quartet “Nihavent Sirto”

(from Floodplain out now on Nonesuch)

Kronos Quartet connect the severe to the serene with four sets of strings and a preternatural sense for ceremony and resonance. They will be performing several shows this month including work by Harry Partch, Frank Zappa and a commissioned piece by film composer Tom Newman called “It Got Dark.” This interview by Dan Collins.

You just played with Terry Riley at Disney Hall last month, but he actually wrote an album for you a few years earlier, right?
David Harrington (violin): The Cusp of Magic. That’s a piece that Terry wrote for Kronos and the great pipa player Wu Man. And it’s a marvelous amazing piece of music. The pipa is the most classical of all Chinese plucked instruments, and I think Terry found a way of fusing the sound of the Chinese pipa and the sound of Kronos in such a magical… it kind of turned Kronos upside down because the first movement starts with me being the drummer! I’ll never forget the very first time we played it in concert. It was so weird to be in the role of the drummer, and I play a bass drum with a foot pedal and I have a shaker—a big peyote rattle. So I really am using both arms and legs. And then in the second movement, I suddenly pick up my instrument after kind of controlling the pulse for ten minutes, and I saw how different it is to be a drummer and a violinist because I had to be both on the same piece! And then a couple of the movements of The Cusp of Magic use kids’ toys. I’ll never forget when Terry came over to my home—my granddaughter was about one year old at the time and we sampled the sounds of a bunch of her toys, and they ended up becoming part of the piece. And then to do it live, we needed some of those toys—ha ha! Though I did promise her recently that she’ll get her toys back sometime.
Kronos Quartet has worked with a lot of rock acts. You recorded a piece for David Byrne’s film True Stories. And you did a cover of Television on the Elektra Rubaiyat compilation. And you did a Dead Kennedys song, ‘Moon over Marin…’
David Harrington: We never covered the Dead Kennedys. We did ‘Purple Haze.’
Oh, I’m thinking of ‘Marquee Moon’—I got my moons mixed up! But you certainly did a lot of covers. Is that how you made your mark? When did you know that you’d arrived?
David Harrington: Oh, I don’t know that we’ve arrived. We’re still in the process of getting where we’re getting. It’s one of the things I love about music—there’s so many things that can be done, and that it’s possible to be part of. I love the fact that nobody owns music. None of us own it. We just get to participate in it and share it. And that’s about all I know about it. I’m just one of those people who’s really happy being a musician.
I hope so—you guys have been together for thirty-six years! But for the last few years, you’ve been woman-less in your quartet. Is it a different dynamic?
David Harrington: Well, Jeff has been in Kronos since the last five years. I mean, when the group first started in 1973, it was four guys. And then Joan Jeanrenaud joined in 1978. So for the first five years, it was all guys. Or the first four years I guess—there were several changes of membership initially. It’s definitely different. And it’s interesting—Jeff Ziegler grew up hearing Joan play in Kronos, and Jeff and Joan are friends now. She’s a marvelous person. As a matter of fact, Joan is going to join us in a couple of weeks. We’re doing a quintet piece by a magnificent Russian composer named Vladimir Martynov. Vladimir has written a piece for Kronos plus an extra cellist, and I wanted to do something with Joan again—so this is it!
One of my favorite experiments I’ve heard from you guys recently is a piece you did on your 2009 album, Floodplains. It’s the piece from Kazakhstan, ‘Kara Kemir.’ It starts off sophisticated and intricate, and then gets simple and driving, folky—almost punk rock. It sounds genre-bending to my untrained ears.
David Harrington: That’s another great thing about music. However it sounds to you is the way it sounds. It’s like everybody has their own vocabulary with music—their own personal relationship. Everybody’s their own expert.
What was the name of that composer again? Kuat Shildebaev?
David Harrington: I can’t remember his name at the moment, but I first heard that piece on this very obscure recording that was made in Hungary. And at that point, the album didn’t even have the name of a composer on it. So it took some research to find out who had actually written the music.
The Green Umbrella showcased Gyorgi Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelle Aventures last year around this time. Have you ever performed any Ligeti?
David Harrington: We did the Hungarian premiere of Ligeti’s first string quartet, actually—that was written in 1950, I think. It was not played in Hungary until we did it in the eighties. We’ve played both of his string quartet pieces.
But you’ve done the opposite side of the spectrum, too—you’ve played with the Dave Matthews Band. Why would you do that?
David Harrington: You know what? He called us up and he knew all of our albums and he was incredibly conversant with our music. He’s a very good musician. We got into the studio, he knew exactly what he hoped would result, and we just really liked the music and the group, and we had a very good time.
Have there been some artists that you thought about working with and you eventually decided ‘maybe this is just not right for us?’
David Harrington: People decide that kind of thing all the time. Fortunately, there’s enough music in the universe, so there’s plenty that’s going to feel great. What I’m finding is how many things there are that I really can’t wait to do in the world of music. For me, the days just aren’t long enough. I’ve been a Sigur Ros fan since the first time I ever heard them. I just think they’re a wonderful group. We’re working with Bryce Dessner who’s in the National, and I think that’s a tremendous group. I mean, it’s interesting—for me, it’ll take me a few hours to tell you all the music that’s in my iPod! There’s a wonderful group that’s coming over from Sweden called Hurdy-Gurdy. We’re bringing them over for our perspectives concerts at Carnegie Hall in March. This is a group of two guys who play hurdy gurdy. And they make this music unlike anything I’ve ever heard before—beautiful, wonderful, fascinating… awesome!
What’s the most mind-blowing collaboration you’ve ever done?
David Harrington: Probably our most recent collaboration, a week ago. We just did our next piece with Wu Man—we premiered a piece called ‘A Chinese Home,’ and it featured an amazing video by Chen Shi-Zheng. And I spent several years getting the music together for this piece. There were a lot of amazing different instruments that we all played—basically, it was a theater piece! We were also acting. The whole piece explores the idea of home, and homeland, and it was inspired by a visit to a 300-year-old Chinese home that was brought piece by piece to the United States. Everybody that saw the show in New York said it was the most mind-boggling thing they’ve seen us do.
You’re still based in San Francisco—but what’s the one thing L.A. has hands-down better than San Francisco?
David Harrington: They definitely have a better baseball team!

THE KRONOS QUARTET ON TUE., DEC. 1, THUR., DEC. 3 AND FRI., DEC. 5 AT THE WEST COAST LEFT COAST FESTIVAL AT WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, 111 S. GRAND AVE., DOWNTOWN. SCHEDULE, PROGRAM DETAILS AND TICKET PRICES AT LAPHIL.COM. THE KRONOS QUARTET’S FLOODPLAIN IS OUT NOW ON NONESUCH. VISIT THE KRONOS QUARTET AT KRONOSQUARTET.ORG OR MYSPACE.COM/KRONOSQUARTET.

Stream: The Happy Hollows “Silver”

(from Spells available now from thehappyhollows.bandcamp.com)

The Happy Hollows self-released their first album Spells in October—satisfying months of local anticipation—and today they begin their month-long residency at Spaceland. Bassist Charles Mahoney speaks now about the new album, his new book on Latin America insurgencies and making friends with French people at CMJ. This interview by Britt Witt.

What is the luckiest thing that ever happened to Happy Hollows?
Charles Mahoney (bass): I think we’re lucky that we have Sarah—she’s the unique person in our band. She’s kooky, quirky, really artistic—the songs come from her and she can write so many different types of songs. She writes folk songs, artsy songs, pop songs—so I think coming from her we just have a lot of music. We can go from the simplest pop music to very artistic and sort of outlawed stuff, and we do both of those at the same time. Its not the style but the structure of ours that’s at polar ends.
Is Sarah the one who’s making the Happy Hollows video skits?
Charles Mahoney: Yeah, Sarah likes comedy a lot—our friend was just going to videotape us on our tour so it just started out as a typical tour documentary but while we were doing it, Sarah turned it into this fake documentary where she was just going crazy. She acted out the part with people while the video is going on—she’s sort of twisted in a way. The other one was just another comedy video where she is a woman from Long Island and one day she was just like ‘Check out this video that I did!’ And I was like ‘Alright—you spent your day doing that?’ So yeah—she has the comedy bones in the band.
So while Sarah is at home making videos, you’re at home studying politics?
Charles Mahoney: I’m basically writing a book about guerrilla organizations in Latin America over the past 50 years—looking at those organizations and comparing how basically different groups came to different ends. So like, how Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas took over the countries they were in whereas the other groups crashed and burned. Also comparing it to the stuff on terrorism that’s really hot now. Not that the groups use terrorism, but they’re all sort of terrorists in that they try to take over countries.
Your focus is Latin America?
Charles Mahoney: It’s more like insurgency, terrorism, guerrilla war—all the theory on that. And then I take that and because I know something about Latin America, I just apply to all the cases there. I wouldn’t say that I’m some Latin America guru or anything! But I speak Spanish and Portuguese so that’s where I try to apply it. I’m working on my Ph.D dissertation. I should be done in the spring. I’m writing chapters now. It’s like a 300 page book, so I go through highs and lows. I’m about a third and a half done. Hopefully I can finish!
What are you most concerned about in the world now?
Charles Mahoney: Latin America doesn’t have much going on right now. Obviously Afghanistan and Pakistan is the major security thing I’m worried about. The question is, ‘Should the U.S send more troops?’ It’s an interesting problem. Really, I think the U.S either has to send 200,000 troops or take everybody out of there. If the U.S took the army out, what are the odds that something would happen? If you just left the aid there and took the troops out, the odds of something happening is like 1 or 2%. You’re think, ‘We’re spending so much money and troops there just to change the probability of an attack on us by like 1%. We should probably just take the troops out and boost the aid where you can.’ Its hard for us politically because that’s where Al Qaeda and the Taliban are, so for a president to try and do that would not be popular domestically. It’s troubling because we could use this money to fund a health care program in the U.S. The money we spend on wars in the Middle East could give us total health care coverage in the U.S.—it’s tricky.
How do your personalities fit together in the music? Your songs seem to have a sort of whimsical pop aspect and then a heavier kind of art thrash aspect.
Charles Mahoney: The whimsical side is sort of our escapist tendencies. We’re just sort of trying to escape the every day sort of hustle-and-bustle grind. Rather than write about our problems, like sappy emo-type stuff or relationships—instead of wallowing in whatever is going on in our lives, we just create these other imaginary places or characters or settings or ideas. That’s sort of our way of escaping reality. Creating an alternate reality is a big theme or purpose of our music. The heavy or thrash part is just like sometimes we like to get loud and move around a little bit, you know? If you see us live, it’s sort of natural. If you’re feelin’ it, move around—if you wanna dance, dance!
How is Spells doing?
Charles Mahoney: I think it’s doing well. We initially had to self-release it. We got signed in the spring and this big label was going to release it but they backed out because of financial issues, so we either had to go around and look for another label—which takes a while—or self-release. It’s gotten a lot of good reviews and college radio play so we’re pretty happy with that. This medium-sized L.A. label called Autumn Tone is going to re-release it again in January. They’re going to give it proper distribution and get it into stores—do a more proper campaign in terms of media. We do the iTunes and all that stuff—Amazon, Emusic. We do a little media campaign like email listeners and then we sell at shows, but its not at any independent record stores or properly distributed.
Are you going to be releasing it as mostly a digital release? But maybe with vinyl?
Charles Mahoney: No, no. We still have CDs—I know a lot of people come to our shows and want physical CDs. We have a 7-inch vinyl of two songs on the album and the digital, of course. But people definitely still request physical compact discs—people do still exist in the physical world so we made CDs and we’re selling those at shows. We did all the artwork ourselves. It was our singer and guitarist Sarah. She got some watercolors together and started splattering them around her room. She came up with 100 or 150 different sheets of watercolor and then she started painting different animals and lines and clouds. She did this theme of clouds that looked like palm trees—you cant tell if it’s a palm tree or a cloud or a mushroom cloud. She took the best three or four drawings or patterns of colors and put them all together into just four different slides and that became the artwork. It took her a while—hard work! But I think we’re really happy with it. It’s our artwork and we didn’t pay someone to do something that didn’t really represent us. It’s like colorful and bright but also the dark—nuclear bombs. So I think we’re all really happy with it.
What’s changed most since the Imaginary EP last year?
Its hard to say—a lot of the songs we put on the album, we had written at the time of the EP. I think the EP and the album together are sort of the same musical theme. But the recordings are better and the mastering is a lot better, so it’s just sort of louder and bigger. In terms of writing and style of the music there’s not that much difference, although we left a lot of the stronger songs for the album and not the EP. The EP—we just stuck in a couple good songs that would not have made the album. When we’re through with this album and touring, we’ll have to regroup and see where we’re at artistically and figure out if we want to record in a different way or write in a different way.
How was CMJ this year?
Charles Mahoney: It’s really fun to go to. South By Southwest has become really corporate—there’s a lot of money in it now and everything is sponsored by Pepsi. It seems like CMJ wants to be that way but its not. Big bands don’t really go to it and it’s still a little bit under the radar. But it’s fun going around New York seeing other bands play and playing in these bizarre venues or venues you would never really go to. The networking is more for the music business people, you know—like managers and publicists, labels, all those good people. I think it’s really good for bands that are getting really huge right at that moment. For us, we just look at it as having a good time and we do interviews and whatever. New people see us for sure. It’s not so much about meeting other bands I guess. It’s kind of like hit and miss. This time we played with a cool French band from Paris called Jordan and they were straight from France. That was pretty neat—we hung out with them a little bit so we met a band and maybe made connections that we otherwise may not have made. I don’t think bands should look at it as like ‘we’re gonna go here and we’re gonna make connections that will further our career.’ I think that they should go there and have a good time and that’s it. It’s just an excuse to party. Some bands are forced to go by their labels or managers. Usually the little ones think they’re going to go and become huge—the rest just go to have a good time.
What’s the next big goal for Happy Hollows?
Charles Mahoney: Our only goal is to make better music than we did before. That’s it. The album is a representation of what the band has done for the past 2 or 3 years. We’re always just excited to write songs and experiment and make new and interesting music. If that goal is achieved than we’re happy!

THE HAPPY HOLLOWS IN RESIDENCY EVERY MONDAY IN NOVEMBER AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVER LAKE. 9 PM / FREE / 21+. TONIGHT THE HAPPY HOLLOWS PERFORM WITH PEPPER RABBIT, DIRT DRESS AND A SPECIAL GUEST. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. THE HAPPY HOLLOWS’ SPELLS IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM THE BAND. VISIT THE HAPPY HOLLOWS AT MYSPACE.COM/THEHAPPYHOLLOWS.

(from A on Office of Analogue and Digital)

Is your new attic in Glendale healthier than your old bedroom in Williamsburg?
Matt Gangi (guitar/vocals/samples/drums): Definitely. I don’t know if it influenced the record, but there was black mold and mushrooms growing out of the wall—bigger than the size of my hand. And growing out of the ceiling. The place was rent-stabilized and the landlord didn’t care because I was just like a noisy kid paying cheap rent.
He didn’t care if you lived or died?
M: It was pretty terrible. They cut open the ceiling and this green and brown stuff was dripping all over my stuff. My neighbor came down and said, ‘That shouldn’t be exposed! I built your walls out in the ‘60s and that’s asbestos!’
Lyle Nesse (drums/keys/samples/vocals): Matt always called me thinking he was dying—that’s just his personality.
M: I’m a hypochondriac in general.
L: That’s an understatement! But I went up there and there actually were huge fungi and mushrooms growing out of the wall.
M: Completely non-edible.
Did you try?
M: We don’t go that far out, man! People in the building got really sick. In Williamsburg, people were getting all these cancers—sarcomas. Someone got cancer in my building, and the person who lived above me got nose infections from the toxic mold. And he got an autoimmune disease akin to lupus and had to take HIV medication. I was finally like, ‘Hey, man, the album’s done—let’s get on the road!’
When you came to L.A., were you like, ‘Ah, smell that fresh air?’
M: Exactly. Better that than aspergillus.
What are your favorite two songs to DJ together?
L: When we DJ out, Matt and I are pretty much switching every song. I usually bring hip-hop, Afrobeat, some gamelan music—so beat-heavy music and hip-hop and then Matt playing a lot of psych and reissues. So that idea of bringing together all of that and people who listen to all that music, and the people who listen to only that music exclusively.
Have you been to Low End Theory?
M: We’re really into Low End Theory. We were there just the other day to see Gaslamp Killer. He’s amazing. Crystal Antlers played a couple weeks ago. It’s really exciting when these communities come together. There shouldn’t be a separation between those scenes, and there’s not.
What is an information bomb and how do we live in it?
M: We decided before not to burden you with this kind of an interview.
Really?
M: ‘What if we just took it really conceptually and answered by putting every interview question into Google searches?’ Why even answer an interview about ourselves when you can type in a question and get so many voices and experiences? That’s more interesting than anything we could say.
What is interesting then?
M: What’s interesting is what would survive. Lyle comes from a hip-hop background—so it’s which samples survive—which ones are interesting and relevant. What’s interesting about an information bomb in general is the back catalog of information. A catchy little phrase or word combination in the future might be really interesting to people in a way it isn’t now. We played at Little Radio and the sound guy was talking about John Titor. It’s just kind of silly but an interesting idea. That a blog from the past could foretell the future. That’s kind of why I’m into all the reissues coming out now. I’ve really been digging on like Brazilian recordings that made it out when all the psych recordings had been destroyed by the government for being subversive. That Marconi Notaro record.
L: To me what’s interesting is what part is preserved and what ends up in a basement somewhere. From a sampling and beatmaking background—it’s the more obscure things that you as a producer can blow off and bring into the light.
Like the Skull Snaps.
L: Just bringing it back into circulation. Like in psych and folk with all the reissues coming out. It’s so confusing to me that appropriation is looked down upon in some circles. It’s so important to culture to bring things back out.
M: The act of appropriating in general is a political act because of all the things it brings up. Every phrase is like trademarked now—the Situationists had that line ‘revolutionize your everyday life’ and now that’s how products are being sold.
L: You just made me think of the book I’m reading now—by an author Matt’s been corresponding with. Sebastien Doubinsky. For his first draft of his new book Potemkin, he took the titles for his chapters from the songs on our record.
M: It’s interesting how the internet creates all these new worlds. When I was creating the album, I was just throwing new ideas on Rupert Murdoch Myspace and you’d get people writing me like ‘Check my work! Check my blog!’ He was like, ‘Read my writing!’ And it ended up his writing was really interesting. As I was recording, he was taking the song titles and writing along with it. But that’s my idea lyrically—by writing with disjunction or different voices, hopefully the person who is listening has more room for interpretation. ‘Commonplace Feathers’ has a line about ‘these matters shook up the community.’ The line is taken from a farming book. People are like, ‘Oh, September 11?’ It’s those things that the culture is putting in and interpreting. A lot of words and images from outside. But we’re creating them as much as any other author who is like, ‘I am the author! I’m speaking from the energy flowing through me!’ If you approach it more conceptually, you can kind of make a statement about the fact that most stuff is regurgitation. A catchy sample or a catchy meme—information that’s surviving and moving into the future.
L: In the book Sebastien wrote—the writing is very much sci-fi. The dystopia he creates in his book—the way people escape it is through this internet world that’s very commercial, where you create your character and go in their shops and buy their things, but this group of hackers has created another world in that world. I don’t wanna give it away but in the world within that world is the black market for culture. It’s where you go to buy all the records the government burned, all the books—to have a meaningful exchange with people.
M: We’ve been reading Virilio and he’s talking about scientific advancements—kind of how science is more destructive because we’ve created a way to completely destroy each other, and the advancements don’t outweigh the negatives. I was reading how in the ‘60s and ‘70s performance artists—a woman could take her top off and walk down the street and get arrested, and they’d say, ‘You’re a woman—you’re not allowed to walk around topless.’ And the woman would say, ‘Oh, I’m a man.’ That was really interesting politically and culturally then. Now with technology you can just get your ID scanned—‘No, you’re a woman!’—and get arrested. Today we have to find new forms. As a performative act, a hacker could hack in and change their gender from female to male, and then they’d walk free!
L: Just to be clear—I don’t endorse anyone hacking anything!
How does someone make music under the domination of the info bomb?
M: Making art that makes people think is really important.
Who has done that for you?
L: I was really into the first Eno and David Byrne record My Life In The Bush of Ghosts. Just the idea to me with all the sampling—you put that record on and it brings up all kinds of things—what you think about, what you haven’t—but it doesn’t preach. And they’re often using samples for simply the way they sound. So anything that encourages anything but passivity.
M: When Lyle and I take samples, that’s kind of the first concern—how it’s working sonically. For our cover of ‘Fire In Cairo’ on the Cure tribute Manimal Vinyl is putting out, we had that sample from the Egyptian workers’ strikes. We were listening to the different commentators—it was less about the language and more about the tonality of the voices, and how it affects the listening experience.
L: I’m listening to Rainbow Arabia and the fact that they take from so many sources is interesting—Middle Eastern sounds, Asian, African—that’s synthesis!
M: Danny from Rainbow Arabia imports all his keyboards from Afghanistan and Iran. We were talking about covering the names on our gear because it’s like branding, and he was like, ‘I have to leave this one—it’s Casio in Arabic.’ There’s something in that—how many people are creating your sound? People are so anti-sample or appropriation, but every synth sound—every plug-in in Logic or whatever interface—how many artists and designers went into making those sounds that we’re using? So many other people were involved in creating our sound. It seems it could go even further. Sampling text—emotive bloggers to corporate propaganda—because there’s already so many creative people giving input into the sound.
L: It’s great that in underground music circles that the obscure is always prized. Instead of rehashing old shit, you’re bringing something new into the cycle.
M: You can’t get away from appropriating. Just from being in a certain environment—all you are is a rehash. You can’t create outside what you know.
Public Enemy sampled Wattstax for sort of the same reasons.
L: The Bomb Squad is a huge thing for me. That brings to mind something Matt said. It’s impossible to not be political—the way the Bomb Squad sampled, it was so claustrophobic—and if you’re not taking anything from that, it’s your fault. There’s so much there.
You have that United States of America sample on the album—what else is in there?
M: ‘Ground’ sampled the EPA and the New York Times. Brooklyn was a really loud place. I recorded in my apartment and there was so much noise. I recorded sirens on my street, ambulances going by, chattering on street corners—and the EPA talking at you.
L: At our live show, we look for all kinds of stuff that catches our attention in the sampler, and because we’re looping through the mic, it’ll pick up some of samples I hit. We have a sample of Hugo Chavez in front of the U.N. yelling that Bush is el diablo, and that will get caught and create some new word.
The Chavez Diablo Vortex?
M: We’ve also been sampling news about the Large Hadron Collider.
L: This amazing propaganda film. ‘CERN in three minutes! CERN is good! The Large Hadron Collider will probably not destroy the universe!’
M: There’s a rap video my friend Kari turned me on to—people rapping inside of CERN.
How’s the production?
L: Godawful.
What would be an appropriate way for someone to build on something you’ve made?
M: However they want.
L: That’s part of the fun. Do whatever they wanna do with it. In a really cool alternate reality world, I imagine in fifty or a hundred years when it’s all dusty in someone’s basement—some kid will find it and sample from it and bring it back to life somehow. There’s a scene in Scratch where DJ Shadow is down in the basement he’s been digging in for years, and he’s basically like, ‘When you’re down here, show respect.’

—Chris Ziegler

GANGI WITH LION OF PANJSHIR, GOLDEN ANIMALS AND JEFF RAMUNO ‘N’ THE GUNSLINGERS ON THU., SEPT. 11, AT TANGIER, 2138 HILLHURST AVE., LOS FELIZ. 8 PM / $7 / 21+. FOLDSILVERLAKE.COM. AND WITH CRYSTAL ANTLERS, ABE VIGODA, PRINCETON AND MANY MORE AT THE EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FESTIVAL ON SAT., OCT. 4, ON COLORADO BLVD. BETWEEN EAGLE ROCK AND ARGUS. 5 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. MYSPACE.COM/EAGLEROCKMUSICFESTIVAL. GANGI’S A IS OUT NOW ON THE OFFICE OF ANALOGUE AND DIGITAL. VISIT GANGI AT MYSPACE.COM/GANGIMUSIC.