In Conversation with
Solypsis
A little background:
Saluations to Keith and UK Dragon aka my
partners in DIH for their help with this.
Solypis is James from Chicago in the USA, who I
also met through the Digital Vomit forum for
experimental acts – http://digitalvomit.aimoo.com/
As you may or may not know – through this website I met
Mitch who runs Hallo Excentrico which can be found
At http://hallo-excentrico.com/
who has released a number
of projects / releases of mine – one recent release has
the M.A.N. remix album ‘Narnia remixes’
which features 17 remixes of the above listed track.
Through Keith and UK, I met James who kindly
submitted a remix for this under the name Pulverized
Fontanelle who submitted probably the most hard hitting
remix on there and certainly the shortest.
Interested more, I looked into things more and was
advised he had released a few albums on Hallo Excentrico
under the name of Solypsis so I went and downloaded
and found them probably among the most hard-hitting
material I had heard in ages which in some places made
Kid 606 seem sane!
Of course after listening to them, it became apparent
this was another act that Setting Sun should be interviewing
carrying on it’s portfolio of approaching sometimes the
more extreme side of music, so I e mailed James and the
enclosed interview followed shortly after.
I don’t have James’s e-mail address to hand but you can hear at
least three albums of James’s material on
Many thanks to James for his interview here….
His WLNT tracks are in particularly well worth listening
To in particular, although they are not for the faint hearted,
I must warn you..
Cheers again
Andy N
Setting
Sun:
How
are things and what's happening at the moment?
Solypsis:
I'm all right. it's been hotter than hell here in
the u.s. this summer. i think it's nature's way of
telling americans to fuck off for all the damage our
government and corporations are inflicting
worldwide. so yeah, other than the world being
fucked over by u.s. policy on a daily basis, i have
no real personal problems at the moment but the big
picture often gets me down. i'm not sure how anyone
can be truly happy when the planet is in such
disarray. how's that for an uncomfortable answer!
As far as what's happening....i should be doing a
one-off show in arizona with terminal 11 and the
assdroids in october. that's about it at the moment
- i'm backing off on the solypsis stuff for a while
and focusing on a little secret project i've been
working on. it's much different...and much
mellower.
Setting
Sun:
Do
you play gigs? How do they compare to
your
studio work? Is their one thing you prefer
over
the\line other?
Solypsis:
I've done a little gigging around. my live stuff is
typically just me mixing my own material into a 45
minute block of sludge while mixing in "live only"
noise tracks to pummel the existing songs around a
bit and make them sound different. i think my live
stuff works better, certainly. there's more energy
and time to sink into the drones and drift away on
the blankets of noise. that sounded fucking
pretentious, didn't it?
Setting
Sun:
Next,
a few slightly more light hearted
questions
to wind down with, firstly where are
you
from? What's\line the music scene like where you
live?
Have you been to\line any good gigs recently?
Solypsis:
I live in the great city of Chicago, but am
originally from a suburban hell-hole in arizona
called mesa. if you've heard about the recent string
of arizona serial killings, well they were from
mesa. and i almost don't blame them for going
mental. the city is nothing but corporate
franchises, mini-malls, convenience stores, concrete
and severe, hellish heat. picture the makeshift town
in the road warrior and give it a wal-mart. but
terminal 11 lives there, so there's something good
to report.
I haven't been to many shows lately ----
I saw electric six a while back and they
rocked the shit. i love those guys. people either
"get it" or they don't. i feel sorry for people who
don't find them entertaining.
Jason Forrest put on a great show not too long
he is a "ROCK STAR" for better or worse.
He knows how to entertain.
Setting
Sun:
Next
can you tell us a little bit about the
history
of Solypsis - Who fired the starting pistol
be
it for a better word?
Solypsis:
Back in 1997 or 1998 a friend of mine showed me how
easy it was to download pirated copies of shit like
ReBirth and how painfully simple it was to make
music with those programs. i had been listening to
electronic music since i bought a depeche mode 7"
when i was 8 in 1981, so it kinda shocked me how
easy this crap was to make. i never actually
recorded much of anything using rebirth or reason or
any of those programs, though. i'm stubborn as hell
and was determined to do everything ass-backwards.
some programs just feel like a cheat, ya know? the
machine is doing all the work and everybody ends up
sounding the same. so i figured i'd use some
unpopular software and ignore the instruction manual
and turn the knobs til everything sounded like shit.
i started out with a mantra - "i'd rather sound like
shit than sound like you". so hopefully i don't
sound like everyone else, but i probably do indeed
sound like shit.
Setting
Sun:
What
are your influences music-wise and what
are
you listening to at the moment?
Solypsis:
Ughhh....in a very narrow sense my influences boil
down to slow, plodding, beat-heavy stuff like scorn
or techno animal (although i love the hyper-fast bpm
shit, i feel much more comfortable doing slower
stuff. i do get fast sometimes but i've never really
done the breakcore thing. i'm in awe of those guys
but i've never felt driven to emulate that style.
why do a half-assed version of something so many
others have already perfected?) plus the fuzzy,
gauzy shoegazer shit like MBV or early Slowdive or
Flying Saucer Attack. sprinkle in the anarchist,
annoying repetitive noises created by early severed
heads just to keep things sorta light and silly. i'd
hate to come across as all serious --- i like dark
sounding music, but it needs to be balanced with a
healthy sense of humor....oh, and of course merzbow.
and v/vm.
Setting
Sun:
As
Solypsis you have quite a few releases under
your
belt, but the one I have been listening to
quite
a bit is your free double CD download 'The
Green\lime
Album' which has a track on it called
'dance,
you stupid drugged up fuck, dance!'
Which
is an incredible title for a track
What
is the story behind that track?
Solypsis:
Well, for starters many my long, quasi-dancey
knob-twisting tracks were created while drunk, so
the titles are automatically belligerent. but the
idea behind that song was something that has
motivated me on a lot of tracks (specifically
Charming Pervert), and that's that i love the notion
of creating something just awful and hideously loud
and sorta commanding ---- a real driving, stupid 4/4
beat that can hypnotize a bunch of drugged up idiots
into dancing around to what is basically
unlistenable crap.
Setting
Sun:
What
is the inspiration for your name
Solypsis? out of interest too..
Solypsis:
I loved the word "solipsism" and then shortened it
so it didn't sound like a philosophy i necessarily
adhered to (the belief that the self is the only
thing that exists). then, i changed the spelling for
the most arbitrary of reasons --- the domain name
was taken. so yeah, i'd had about 100 names before
solypsis stuck --- it was the only name i didn't
hate after 24 hours. high praise, huh?
Setting Sun:
What's next for yourself? Do you have any
more\line releases in mind etc, etc?\par
Solypsis:
No releases other than a few comps on the way --- i
kinda threw everything out there with the purge dvd
so i don't have an album worth of new material to
shop around right now. plus, I don't really see my
stuff as being marketable enough for a label to
bother releasing a full-length. I'm not being
self-deprecating so much as practical. there are
only a few labels that release shit like mine and
they usually have pretty full rosters. not to
mention the fact that labels are losing money hand
over fist. i dunno --- i'm a pretty niche musician
and i don't expect a sudden influx of popularity,
but that's ok. the people that like my shit are
pretty enthusiastic, so that's cool. at the moment
i'm satisfied with self-released shit.
Setting
Sun:
What
would be your dream job if you were not a
Rock
n roll star????
Solypsis:
I'm searching for a really smart-ass response to
that question, but i can't find it.
I wish i was a an astro-vulcanologist. i wanna study
volcanoes, both terrestrial and in space. tell me
one thing that would be cooler than standing on the
rim of a volcano on a moon of jupiter? you said
"dream" job --- that's about as dreamy as it
gets.
Setting
Sun:
Lastly,
something light to finish off
(Borrowed
from a pal's zine almost)
Imagine
you were shipwrecked on a desert
Island
and could have (Clearly have second
sight
here - lol) the choice of having 5
records
or Cd's with you with a stereo of course-
what
would be your desert Island discs?
Solypsis:
Meat Beat Manifesto - Storm The Studio
Cranes - Forever
Skinny Puppy - Too Dark Park
Severed Heads - Since The Accident
Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children