By Neala Johnson, Australia May 20, 1998
Forget this side project
of a side project rubbish, Secret Chiefs 3 are the real thing. Yeah, so the
Secret Chiefs blokes also make up a large chunk of Or Bungle. They've played
with a hell of a lot of other characters too. But there's a sneaking suspicion
that Secret Chiefs 3 might lust blow all of that out of the water when they
play here live. Has your musical diet been lacking in "weird Islamo Hindi
pop Inspired by insanity techno surf music"? Then read on.
Talk to Trey Spruance,
the man with the Secret Chiefs 3 vision, and if you weren't already a convert,
it wouldn't take long. He's a man who obviously loves his music, and gets excited
when talking about things he loves. But ask Trey to try to explain a bit of
the theory which backs the band's music, and which lines the inside notes
of the band's second album, Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws, and he gets
a bit stuck.
"Yikes! I guess all the
music is related or describes a certain element of aspect, of a certain hind
of esoteric Shi'ism, that ... (laughs) I dunno where to even begin because
it's really gargantuan, and It's pretty idiotic even to try to translate any
of the stuff in the music. It's idiotic enough trying to do that, trying to
talk about it is really, really idiotic. But I will say this, the musk is
sort oriented towards an idea that there's an imaginative realm, or that there's
a world of ideas that's perceivable through images; things that correspond
to things that exist on, say, another level. And those images can be described
musically as well as symbolically I think more importantly it's about gaining
entrance to that world through the music, through the poetic imagination I
guess. So it's not just the spieling ail this stuff, the hope is that the
listener will become familiar with some of the things just by listening."
But which came first,
the music, or the theory? "Definitely the interest in all that stuff came
first, the hard part is figuring out where the music came into it, and linking
it up in a way that's meaningful as opposed to arbitrarily throwing song titles
around. So that's where most of the work in the record goes. As something
that was developing, say the surf songs, you've got these things seem to be
loosely associated in some way, I sort of just let the intuition take over
and let those things guide themselves somewhat And that's realty the whole
formula of the band in a ways, just to know what the intention of the music
is, and then let it happen. And try to be as faithful as you can in rendering
it welt, concentrating on the production." So, for the technophiles, is this
production process analogue or digital? "I wish it was analogue, just like
everybody. Let me put it this way, everybody who played on this record, there's
a lot of musicians who played-on it, everybody did it on the batter system,
so the record was actually made for no money. And mat's another aspect of
this band, that it's all done with no money, but sounds pretty good. It's
cheaper to do it on digital, but man, I worked my butt oh. to get rid of that
horrible sound. Digital's getting better. You work with what you've got."
Whatever, the music on
the Second Grand Constitution... certainly sounds amazing. Especially effective
for me was the track Hurqalya, which subsides part way through to just feature
the sound of wind, but a wind that carried a whole lot more with it. When
I told Trey that I thought I might be going a bit loopy, letting my mind go
off and hear so much more than the wind, he was pretty excited. "Man, I'm
so happy... did you listen to the album all the way through? Okay, well see,
the music, I tried to structure a so that you would start free-associating.
The idea with the surf songs, there's a tot behind those songs, but you're
not gonna like necessarily get it, or get any of a intellectually but the
hope is, is that, you know (laughs) that by the end of the record you'll just
appreciate nature itself or anything. There's this thing in Shi'ism called
"ta-wo" (that's how Trey pronounced it, that's how I spelled it), it's this
idea where you take anything back to its root significance its original self.
So say you have a ball point pen, and you start looking at it, you start peeling
away the layers of what it's made of, what it's molecular components are,
what its history is. Until you've dissected a back to its void-ness, and back
to its original spring, what organized it into itself. And then you realize
of course, ultimately it came from God. You know (laughs). So I dunno, I hope
in a way, that the wind kinda gets that in there somehow. (laughs) it might
not."
Trey is also extremely
bloody excited about the musicians Secret Chiefs 3 are bringing to Australia.
There's violinist Eyvind Kang, an 'improviser of mammoth proportions', and
a 'really seasoned player.' Then there's Phil Franklin, an old friend who's
a ridiculously fast percussionist, 'And Bar McKinnon who's also from Mr Bungle.'
"Nothing would even happen without him, because he's so good at doing anything
with the key boards, the sampler, and with his flute, I can always just kind
of turn to him and go 'oh, Bar, I've gotta play guitar in this part here,
you do this or you do that. He can go do it." The Secret Chiefs core is rounded
out by drummer and percussionist Danny Heifetz and bassist Trevor Dunn. Australia
is lucky enough to be galling the very first Secret Chiefs 3 tour, with only
one show played before this, at home in San Francisco. So what's with the
Australian connection? 'A) people are more receptive to stuff here, and here's
the main reason, When you have music that you can easily say "Well, this music
will appeal to people who like Nine Inch Nails; this music will appeal to
people who like Green Day" or whatever, It s a little bit easier to get people
to commit to booking a show for you. So even if they don't know you from Adam,
they're gonna take that chance and book the show and maybe have ten people
show up, especially in the United States. If they don't have anything to grab
onto, a you say, mall we're the Secret Chiefs 3, we play weird Islamo Hindi
pop inspired by insanity techno surf music they're gonna go, "Oh, well that
sounds real good. FUCK YOU!" In the United States they haven't really learned
that there's an audience for this kind of stuff. So you can come here, and
just the fact that people are a little bit more open-minded, and people who
book clubs are a little more willing to trust in a promoter - boy, it's pretty
magical what ends up happening. You get all these shows, you get all these
people at your shows. So the best thing for us is to come here, and pretty
much just show the promoters in the United States how it's done."
Reliable sources lead
me to believe that the live shows will be utterly awesome. Trey reckons they
"will be pretty terrifying in some ways." Interestingly, the band are playing
two venues In Melbourne, the Corner Hotel, and then The Continental. With
innumerable variations to their live show, seeing Secret Chiefs 3 at The Continental
should be unmissable. Trey will definitely approach this show differently,
but he hasn't figured out exactly what this will entail as yet. But don't
expect any 'freeform jazz workouts' / fretwanking / 'pseudo ironic horseshit'
from these guys. I don't wanna go there al all. There's moments, you know,
we will work in improvisations, there are totally indeterminate parts of our
set. But it's terrifying to even get caught up in something like that I've
certainly been involved in too many things like that already."
As a native San Franciscan
who is working drum 'n' bass sounds into his music, I thought I might ask
Trey whether there was any truth h the rumour that San Francisco was the world's
new dance music capital 'Oh my god. Who says that? You know who says that?
It's the people who moved up to San Francisco from Los Angeles one year ago,
when the main music magazine was bought by an LA company, These people don't
know anything about what's going on there. And I'll just top it all off and
say that there's nothing going an in San Francisco. Nothing! All of the records
that they're spinning are two year old records from London, it's the same
stuff, and It's just hitting there now. Some of it's good, but it is certainly
not pushing any new boundaries in dance music.
There is however, someone
pushing boundaries in "weird Islamo Hindi pop inspired by insanity techno
surf music" and you'd be wise to check out the live and the recorded Secret
Chiefs 3 for something completely new, and offensively compelling. Come now,
boys and girls, no need to be scared.
The Secret Chiefs 3 are
playing at the Corner Hotel on Saturday 23rd with guests Sheridan, Zaibatsu
and Steve Lucas They also play the Continental Cafe on Sunday May 24th.